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Mrs. Robert Summers, née Jane Watson, was just packing away the last of her widow’s weeds when a peremptory knock summoned her to her front door.
A strangely familiar girl stood on her doorstep, perhaps fifteen years of age, with reddish hair coiled neatly into a demure bun and large grey eyes that swept Jane from head to toe, coolly assessing. Jane bristled at the frank gaze; but then Mr. Green trundled up from the kerb laden with several suitcases, and the girl’s familiarity coalesced into startled recognition.
“Shirley! My goodness, you’d best come inside.”
There was the usual taking of hats and coats, Mr. Green ably stepping in to the task when it became clear that Jane had no domestic help of her own; an offer of refreshment, accepted once Shirley spotted the tea tray that Jane had made up earlier and not yet touched (though Mr. Green immediately whisked it away to freshen the pot), and soon enough Jane and Shirley were seated across from each other in the little parlor, nibbling on biscuits.
Jane did some assessing of her own. Shirley was even thinner now, tall still, but all coltish long limbs not yet grown into, and wearing a dress obviously altered to better fit her diminished (nearly-nonexistent, now) bosom.
She had the same absurdly high cheekbones and decided jaw, but the cheeks between were rounder with youth, and the effect was actually. . . pretty. Jane thought Shirley must hate that.
There was perhaps a graceful segue possible, but Jane was too impatient to attempt to find it.
“What on earth has happened to you, Shirley?”
“An unfortunate encounter with a cursed objet d’art. Nothing to concern yourself with, and I have been assured that its effects will wear off within the month.”
“Nothing to concern myself — Shirley, you’ve been turned back into a young girl!”
“My mind and memories are intact, therefore the curse is little more than an inconvenience. Which is what brings me to your door—”
“Inconvenience!”
“Yes, Jane, an inconvenience, if you would attend for a moment.” Jane huffed but motioned Shirley to continue. “Now, I thankfully have no cases currently pending, but my maid has had to return to her family due to her mother’s regrettable accident with a unicycle, and in my current state it would be beyond the bounds of propriety to stay at Baker Street with only Mr. Green’s chaperonage. Thus you find me at your door. I assume that I am still welcome to your second bedroom?”
Shirley’s face was schooled to indifference, but her child’s body betrayed her in ways Jane was unaccustomed to being able to catch — there was a slight tremor in her voice, and her fingers tightened on the teacup handle until she set it down on the table with a clink.
As if there could be any doubt of the answer. Really.
“Of course!”
* * *
Shirley Holmes despised being sixteen.
She had despised being sixteen the first time around, eager to enter the world and begin some useful work, constantly stymied by the conventionality (and outright idiocy) of the adults around her. Now that she was being forced to revisit the age, Shirley found herself even more impatient with it.
Everyone she interacted with, with the exception of Mr. Green, treated her with unwarranted condescension. Tradesmen asked to speak with her father when she attempted to arrange repairs to the kitchen window; matrons who came upon her in shops immediately looked for her chaperone and attempted to steer her back homeward when it became clear that she was unaccompanied. Even her maid, a girl of little more than twenty, suddenly had far more opinions about what was appropriate garb and how Shirley ought to receive visitors. Shirley had not been sorry to have her called home.
But worse than the changes in how the world responded to her were the changes she felt in her own body. Her sense of balance, honed by the past several years of martial arts instruction, was entirely absent; she felt constantly on the verge of tripping over her own feet; unexpended energy coursed through her, causing her to fidget and pace, unable to sit still for a stretch of more than ten minutes at a time.
And her feelings for Jane, ungovernable at the best of times, threatened to spill out of her traitorous mouth every time their eyes met over the breakfast table.
Their hands brushed while passing the marmalade and Shirley was unable to suppress a shiver. Their knees knocked under the table and Shirley felt her face flush with heat. Jane inquired politely about her most recent cases and Shirley had to bite off a plea for Jane to come back.
Shirley felt raw, exposed; her temper shortened, and she found herself speaking less and less as the days wore on, terribly afraid of saying too much, of making her craving for Jane’s company too obvious, and driving her into the arms of another unworthy man.
* * *
It took Jane several days to work out Shirley’s strange behavior.
Shirley was usually so composed, her demeanor and conversation measured, rational. Jane knew her to be capable of great passion — for the ideal of Sherlock Holmes, and the justice that Shirley sought for their clients in his name. Jane’s favorite moments from their partnership had always come when Shirley had pieced together the clues and her deductions were falling into place — her cheeks would flush and her eyes would sparkle and her mouth would turn up at the corners as she hastened Jane out the door in pursuit of some villain. That passion always drew forth an answering fervency in Jane’s breast; her heart would race as she ran to keep up with Shirley’s long strides.
But Jane had never known Shirley to display that passion in any matters of a more personal nature. She had been wooed by several men over the course of their acquaintance, and to all she had been unfailingly polite and resolutely cold. Jane did not like to admit it, but she had at times thought Shirley rather heartless.
This version of Shirley, however, was anything but.
Shirley, though still in possession of all of her memories and intelligence, had clearly lost the habitual control she exerted over her demeanor when her body was reverted to that of a child. Jane was fascinated by how easy Shirley was to read like this, how every passing thought could be seen flitting across her face for a moment before being ruthlessly suppressed. How even after Shirley regained control of her countenance, her body continued to display agitation or impatience or frustration in the set of her shoulders or the twitch of her fingertips.
It was her eyes, ultimately, that gave Shirley away. Her body did its part, swaying into Jane’s orbit at the slightest provocation; her hands too, their motion caught almost but not quite in time, reaching frequently toward Jane’s hands or hair or hips. But it was her eyes that lingered several seconds too long on Jane’s every movement, hungry; her eyes that filled with tears blinked quickly away whenever Jane spoke of her marriage or her late husband.
Jane had never before suspected that Shirley might harbour a passion for a person made of flesh and blood rather than one constructed of ink and paper. To discover that indeed she did — and that that person was Jane herself — caused Jane’s heart to race with an answering fervency that far outshone what she had felt in those too-short days at Baker Street.
So when Jane awoke one morning perhaps a fortnight later to find a restored Shirley sitting at her breakfast table, she did not hesitate. She rushed forward to pull her into a hug, for she had missed her friend’s usual face, full of all the knowledge and character of a life lived well, albeit unconventionally. And then she clasped Shirley’s hands in hers and kissed her on the lips, willing her own body to demonstrate to Shirley how eager Jane was to follow her lead in this regard as well.
Shirley was frozen, unresponsive, for only a moment; then she let her ardour loose, pulling Jane to her breast and wrapping her arms around Jane’s waist tight enough to squeeze the breath from her lungs.
When they finally broke apart, Shirley’s eyes were shining with amazement and delight. Jane tucked a strand of hair that had come loose back behind her ear and asked what she had been wanting to ask nearly from the moment she had accepted Robbie’s proposal.
“Please, Shirley, may I come home now?”
And Shirley responded with the widest grin Jane had ever seen on her face, no trace of hesitation or censure.
“Of course!”