Work Text:
1. and i'd give up forever to touch you
Enola is 18 and still (mostly) dodging her brothers when Tewkesbury asks her to marry him for the first time. Of course the proposal comes at the worst possible moment, because Tewkesbury is still a nincompoop. They’re crouched in an alley at midnight, watching the residence of the lady who had hired Enola to find her missing dog. Enola, who suspects that someone in the house is looking to ransom the pooch in hopes of a handsome payout, had allowed Tewkesbury along on the stakeout after bumping into him at the flower market. She has not had a proper chance to talk to him in weeks because the House of Lords is in session and she’s had a glut of clients coming through her store front.
They have not had much chance to talk during their current escapade, either, but Enola is less than fussed about it when necessity has her pressed against Tewkesbury’s side in the alley she found them to hide in. She can feel the whole length of him warm against her, since she had switched into trousers before setting out for the stakeout.
“You know, I think I could get used to this,” Tewkesbury whispers in her ear. “Sneaking down dark alleys at night with a beautiful woman at my side.”
“You make a good enough sidekick when you’re not being a nincompoop, my lord,” Enola murmurs back.
It is too dark to make out the entirety of Tewkesbury’s expression, but after years of sneaking around with each other she can guess at the twinkle of amusement in his eyes and the curve of his grin well enough. The fact that both the twinkle and the grin make something twist low in her gut is not a new development. It is also not a development Enola is inclined to investigate.
She is just about to suggest sneaking a little closer to the house to gain a better vantage point when Tewkesbury shifts against her. Enola freezes in place at the slide of skin against skin (albeit through several layers of clothing).
“I mean it when I say I would be happy with this kind of life,” Tewkesbury says, still in a whisper. “Marry me, Enola?”
Enola’s heart thumps in her chest so loudly she fears Tewkesbury might hear it. The strangest part of the whole thing is not that he feels comfortable enough to ask. No; the strangest part of the whole thing is how desperately Enola wants to say yes. But they are only 18 and she has so much left that she would like to do. He is a lord, and as much as Tewkesbury is not the kind of man to ever ask her to change, there are certain expectations society will place on her as a member of the peerage that Enola is not prepared to meet. She does not want to become her mother in 30 years time, looking back on marriage and children with mostly regret. Safer to break his heart now and let him find the kind of blancmange who will be happy to marry a viscount and carry the sons he will be expected to have.
“I can’t,” she says. “You know that. You know why.”
She catches the glint of Tewkesbury’s melancholy grin in the meager light of the closest streetlamp. She should perhaps make her rejection more clear, make sure to leave him without a speck of hope so he’ll be able to move on. Enola cannot bring herself to say the words though, as much it might be a kindness in the long run.
“I know,” Tewkesbury tells her, reaching out to take her hand, squeezing it once before letting her go. “But I still had to ask.”
2. and all i can taste is this moment
The second time Tewkesbury asks her to marry him is for a cover. Enola is investigating an earl she suspects is stealing money from his impressionable young fiancée, and requires an escort to a society event where she hopes to catch her target in flagrante delicto with the woman he’s been seeing on the side. Tewkesbury is all too happy to oblige when she shows up at the window of his London apartment late at night, covered in soot from recent endeavors in chimney related espionage, and asks him to accompany her to a ball.
“This is horrendous,” Enola whispers sotto voce to Tewkesbury the next evening, plucking a canape from the buffet table to add to the growing collection secreted in the various pockets she has cleverly disguised on her person.
Tewkesbury gives her a wry look from under his lashes for her thievery that Enola pretends is not absolutely devastating. Enola widens her eyes at him, playing the innocent. Living on her own has its disadvantages, such as no cook. She’s become proficient at beans on toast and the occasional bits of sausage and eggs but she can’t resist the lure of food that she didn’t cook herself.
“You know Mother would gladly welcome you at our table any day of the week,” Tewkesbury tells her as Enola picks up yet another hors d'oeuvres.
Enola doesn’t answer, just grins through a mouthful of mincemeat. Out of the corner of her eye she catches sight of her target sneaking out of the ballroom. There’s a younger gentlewoman in a truly horrible shade of chartreuse watching him go rather obviously, so Enola takes her chance. Tewkesbury trots after her dutifully as she wends her way through the crowd to follow the cheating earl down the corridor he ducks into. She’s a few paces down the hallway when the earl pops his head out of an alcove a little further on, clearing expecting his mistress, and catches on eyeful of her instead.
“Damn,” Enola mutters, avoiding eye contact.
She pretends to brush a few stray crumbs off her skirt before turning to collect Tewkesbury for a tactful retreat. Only Tewkesbury is down on one knee, eyes twinkling merrily at her as he reaches up to take one of her hands in his.
“Enola,” Tewkesbury says. “I love you, desperately and wholeheartedly. I know this is not the done thing, but I could not wait another minute to make you mine. I followed you down this corridor to ask you a question. Marry me?”
Enola knows that Tewkesbury (stupid boy that he still is) is only proposing for the sake of her cover. She also knows that if she actually said yes he would marry her in a heartbeat. The best lies have truth at their core, and Enola knows in that moment that Tewkesbury does love her (desperately, wholeheartedly, and all). But she is still not willing to be tied down, still not willing to admit that she loves Tewkesbury (despite the fact that she knows she does) simply because she is terrified of what it might mean.
“Oh Tewky,” Enola cries in lieu of giving an answer.
She throws herself into his arms and lets herself press a chaste kiss to his lips, ignoring the way Tewkesbury’s breath hitches. The earl down the hall ducks his head back into the alcove, clearly embarrassed to be interrupting such an intimate moment. Enola pulls away from Tewkesbury and makes a scene of dragging him loudly down the hallway before doubling back and finding them their own alcove to hide in. She ignores the way her pulse is thrumming in her veins from the kiss. Enola has a job to do.
3. and i don't want to go home right now
Enola is 20 the third time that Tewkesbury proposes. They’ve kissed several more times since the night of the ball (have, in fact, done far more than kissing), but Enola has made it clear that marriage is not on the table. She enjoys their arrangement immensely. Commitment would just muddy the waters. Tewkesbury, however, has other ideas.
It’s the beginning of summer, Enola has just wrapped a big case, Tewkesbury is in London on business, and she's found her way into his bed for a bit of afternoon delight. Enola, pleasantly sticky from the heat and recent exertion, is lying with her head pillowed on Tewkesbury’s chest recounting the details of her latest investigation for his benefit. She’s content in a way that’s been rare these past few months. Sherlock is running her ragged with his cast off consulting cases and Mycroft has begun harping on about the scandal her lifestyle evokes whenever he deigns to grace Baker Street with his presence.
Sometimes, she thinks reconciling with her brothers is more trouble than it was worth. And then she remembers her weekly fencing lessons with Sherlock and the increase in business he’s gifted her with. The middle Holmes, at least, is well worth getting to know. Mycroft can go hang for all she cares.
Tewkesbury chuckles as she recounts the rooftop chase she’d been drawn into while tracking the thief from her case, fingers trailing lazily down her spine. Enola grins at his laughter and turns to press her nose into his breastbone, nipping lightly at the skin.
“Marry me, love,” Tewkesbury says. “I want to spend every day like this.”
Enola stills against him. Tewkesbury looks down at her with something akin to melancholy in his eyes, and Enola knows that although he’s asking he does not think she’ll answer. His mother has been parading bridal prospects past him for the past few months, women that Tewkesbury likely has no interest in, and they both know that a crossroads is coming soon. Enola has enough morals that sleeping with a married man would give her pause regardless of whether he loves his wife or not, and Tewkesbury has enough morals that he would feel endlessly guilty for carrying on behind a spouse’s back.
“I can’t be what you need,” Enola whispers much later, once Tewkesbury has dozed off. “And I won’t saddle you with a wife who will be the laughingstock of polite society.”
Tewkesbury stirs slightly at her words. Enola presses a kiss to his brow, lifts his hand gently off her hip, and disappears out the window with his britches and shirt towards 221B and her brothers’ demands.
4. yeah, you bleed just to know, you're alive
The details of Tewkesbury’s fourth proposal are a little fuzzy on Enola’s end, on account of the fact that he makes it at 2 o’clock in the morning while she’s suffering from fairly massive blood loss. Her assailant hadn’t been fooled by the corset this time, although the boning has probably saved her from being gutted like a fish.
Sherlock likely would’ve been a better bet in terms of men’s windows to show up at covered in blood, but Tewkesbury’s townhouse had been closer. And the most base part of her, the one in control at the moment a decision needed to be made, had wanted Tewkesbury’s face to be the last thing she saw given the likelihood of the worst coming to pass.
“Come on, Enola,” Tewkesbury says from somewhere above her. “You can’t leave me now. You haven’t even agreed to marry me yet.”
Enola chuckles wetly. She must be worse off than she thought if Tewkesbury is bringing up marriage again. That’s the last thing she thinks at all before the darkness takes her. The last thing she hears is Tewkesbury’s voice, although she can’t quite make out what he’s saying.
5. when everything's made to be broken
The fifth time Tewkesbury asks her to marry him they are 23 and his mother has finally found him a match he can’t say no to. They’re in Enola’s bed this time, curled towards each other like parentheses, early morning sun peeking through a gap in the curtains. Tewkesbury quirks his lips in a pale imitation of a smile, eyes unbearably sad. Enola likes to think she’s hiding her own melancholy well. It’s far more likely that she isn’t.
“We could be happy together,” Tewkesbury says. “Enola.”
“If I were to marry anyone, I would want it to be you,” Enola whispers. “But I do not wish to be wed and we both know why.”
“I wish I could say that it wouldn’t be like that,” Tewkesbury whispers back, reaching out to tug a lock of her hair. “But we both know that would be a lie.”
“There’s a universe somewhere out there where you are a botanist and I am a detective in my own right and no one gives two figs about our standing.”
“Would you marry me in that universe?”
“In a heartbeat.”
Tewkesbury smiles then, a small sad thing. Enola feels her own mouth twist in a matching expression. She loves this man, this person, who has grown out of the useless nincompoop she once rescued from murder on the London Express. They have both evolved, older and wiser and with lives hopelessly twined together, and now it is time for them to say goodbye. Tewkesbury will finally have the wife Enola has always known he would need, and Enola will continue to have her own agency (overbearing older brothers hounding her down the path to spinsterhood notwithstanding).
Tewkesbury leaves moments later, plucking his shirt from the floor and his breeches from the chair near the door. He turns to look at her one last time before he goes, gold limning his features from the light streaming in through the curtains he opened on his way out of bed. Enola fixes the image in her mind. She wants to remember him like this, gorgeous and still hers to have for a few more minutes.
+1 i just want you to know who i am
“Only you would manage to get yourself kidnapped on your wedding day by your own bride,” Enola says, mostly fond.
Tewkesbury, still twisted awkwardly in the trunk his would-be wife had stashed him in, glares at her rather more balefully than Enola feels is warranted as she helps him out. It’s not her fault that his mother is a terrible judge of character.
“Maybe I let her do it on purpose, just so you would come to rescue me,” Tewkesbury shoots back.
Enola finds herself laughing then, drunk on a mix of relief and affection. She’d feared the worst for a moment there when she’d walked in to find the sealed trunk. Bodies were easier to conceal than living persons, after all. But Tewkesbury is fine, only his dignity damaged, and Enola has finally realized something besides.
“I think you might want to reconsider this match,” Enola says, batting her eyelashes at him.
“You don’t say,” Tewkesbury grunts, busy chafing feeling back into his wrists.
Enola steps forward to pull his hands into her own. Her fingers slot neatly between his. She’s always loved his hands, the square fingers, the nails trimmed short so that dirt won’t get under them as he tends his garden. Tewkesbury has a workman’s hands despite the fact that he’s a gentleman. That dichotomy is what she’s always loved about him.
“I do have an alternative in mind,” Enola whispers, flinging her arms around his neck, guiding his forehead down to hers. “Marry me, love, won’t you?”
“I thought you’d never ask,” Tewkesbury whispers.
Enola is still smiling when he leans in to kiss her.
“So that’s a yes then?” she mutters against his lips when they finally come up for air.
“Of course,” Tewkesbury tells her. “I’ve just been waiting for you to ask.”