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The room smelt of wine, leather, flowers, and sweat. Sherlock noticed that one of the bedposts had been snapped clean through, while several bloodstains adorned both the floor and the wall above the headboard.
Someone had hurled a vase of flowers straight at the wall over the bed, scattering shards across the room. Sherlock shifted his footing. Glass crunched beneath his boots.
Flower petals floated in the blood upon the floor.
“Good Lord,” said William. “What on earth were they doing in here? The bed’s obvious enough, but…”
Sherlock stepped forward and touched one of the stains with his fingertips. He lifted his hand and sniffed at the red smear.
“It’s blood,” he concluded.
“And this is cherry,” said William, examining the stain near the headboard.
Louis, who had remained waiting politely in the doorway all this while, leaned his head into the room.
Poor Lou-Lou, Sherlock thought. Looked as though somebody’d died in here, and it weren’t clear whether it was Louis’s brother or his immediate superior.
It was pretty telling that Louis did not particularly wish to lose either of them, though surely he must love one more than the other. Sherlock, naturally, saw no reason not to ask outright.
“What d’you reckon, then? Which one croaked?”
“I do not understand what you mean,” Louis replied politely.
“Oh, you understand well enough. Told you this marriage were a bloody terrible idea. End of all livin’ things, this is.”
“I believe,” Louis continued with the same impeccable courtesy, “that it is still too early to draw conclusions. Most likely they…resolved their disagreement and went out for a walk.”
“Oh!” William emerged cheerfully from beneath the blankets. “Here’s the ring.”
Sherlock crossed the room and took the ring to examine it by the window.
Well, well, well.
“Right,” he said. “Now it’s all perfectly clear. My disgusting brother was standin’ here…Liam, come over. Little to the left. There. Right there. Old Albert was standin’ here…Louis…yes. Stay there an’ don’t move. Albert threw the ring from here”—Sherlock mimed the motion and tossed the ring neatly into the exact spot where William had found it—“then my brother picked up the vase…” Sherlock demonstrated the shape of it with his hands. “…an’ sent it straight into the wall.”
“A remarkably fine throw,” Louis observed modestly.
“Then afterwards they, mm…” William hesitated slightly. “Went to make peace. Over there.” He pointed towards the bed.
“The argument lasted about twenty minutes,” Sherlock added. “The reconciliation lasted…forty.”
“An hour,” said Louis darkly.
“Well now, that’s not a bad guess,” Sherlock praised him.
Louis let his shoulders sag wearily.
“It is not a guess. I was staying in the adjoining room.”
“Case solved.” Sherlock yawned and began shaking a cigarette from its packet. “I suggest we go an’ have breakfast, seein’ as we’re livin’ off the newlyweds.”
*
Sherlock had never expected this wedding to resemble his own with William in even the faintest degree.
The two occasions shared little beyond a reasonable level of secrecy, though Mycroft was far too well protected by his distinguished employer to feel any genuine concern. Albert, for his part, cared very little for gossip. It had all seemed to promise a peaceful holiday, yet the difficulties began before they had even departed.
Albert was entirely determined to show both his fiancé and his brothers the little homeland from which, according to both himself and several alarmingly fat family archives, his family had originally sprung.
Mycroft objected to marrying in Ireland at all, and objected especially to marrying in republican, anarchist-leaning Cork, where Albert had first intended to go. Dublin became the compromise, and so they travelled from Liverpool to Holyhead, and from Holyhead onward to Dublin.
When Mycroft was anxious, he became even more insufferable than usual, and poor Albert was harried over every trifling thing.
For instance, Mycroft strongly disliked the fact that the young and beautiful housekeeper had begun teaching Albert Irish phrases. Had the housekeeper been old and shrivelled as a dried plum, Mycroft would scarcely have blinked.
Unfortunately, matters had taken a disastrous turn: Miss O’Brien possessed extraordinarily long red hair, hazel witch-like eyes, a magnificent bosom, and a deep voice.
The old and perfectly English manor house to which Albert had brought them was inhabited only by Miss O’Brien and the cook with the gardener, neither of whom spoke a word of English.
In the mornings, Miss O’Brien and Albert would chatter pleasantly over coffee, and before long Albert had taken to greeting everyone with Dia dhuit!
“Dee-ah hweet,” Mycroft would mimic under his breath, naturally only when Albert was out of earshot. “Who precisely does he intend to converse with in Irish? This is Dublin.”
“Well now,” Sherlock would say, for he neither possessed nor desired the habit of pitying his brother, “Miss Bosom, obviously.”
William had also picked up a few things from Miss O’Brien, and one evening before sleep—but after sex—he told Sherlock, in the tone of a ghost story:
“Did you know banshees are real?”
Sherlock could not have cared less about banshees.
“I think,” said William, “that the banshee didn’t scream for us because we never truly died.”
“I thought it were ’cause you ain’t related to Albert.”
“Ah. Quite right, I forgot about that. But what has that to do with it?”
Sherlock yawned.
“Only the ones it concerns can hear a banshee scream. Dead person’s family an’ all that.”
“So your brother would hear it, then?”
“No, mine wouldn’t. He’d be at work.” Sherlock kissed William lightly on the forehead. “Let’s go to sleep.”
*
The newlyweds exchanged rings in an empty Catholic church, once again against Mycroft’s wishes.
Sherlock could not help admiring the effortless composure with which Albert stepped gracefully over each and every objection his fiancé raised, while Mycroft simmered, staged silent scenes of outrage, yet endured and endured and endured.
The quarrel had most likely flared up for precisely that reason.
It took a great deal to make Mycroft throw something at a wall.
And for Albert to cast aside his ring…
Sherlock still wore his skull ring, though he had changed it to another finger, while William wore only a very plain little band. So plain that one would never guess its meaning without being told.
Only Louis made any serious attempt to search for the wretched newlyweds, and even he soon resigned himself to the conclusion that they were perfectly fine: the place was crawling with Englishmen, the weather was splendid, and Miss O’Brien was thoroughly occupied cleaning the devastated room.
But by evening the weather turned. The wind rose sharply, and Miss O’Brien hurried off to fasten the shutters because something in the chimneys had begun wailing most desperately. Then the rain came.
The lovebirds returned only just before sunset. They walked beneath a single black umbrella, Albert holding Mycroft by the arm.
Louis fixed them with a long scrutinising stare—confirmed that both remained alive—and went off to bed.
*
“I thought you’d done each other in,” Sherlock said with distinct disappointment, shoving his hands into his pockets.
“We saw the room,” William explained, helping Albert out of his damp overcoat.
“Ah, that.” Albert spoke with his usual easy composure. “Yes, we had a disagreement, but afterwards we arrived at an understanding.”
Sherlock glanced towards his brother, and Mycroft’s bloody expression made it abundantly clear that there had been no understanding whatsoever.
“Whisky. Two fingers.” Mycroft thrust his coat at Sherlock. “Immediately. In the drawing room.”
Sherlock nodded, and the moment Mycroft disappeared, he relaxed his arms and let the coat drop straight onto the floor.
Albert immediately bent to retrieve it, but caught sight of the way the others were watching him and faltered, visibly embarrassed.
Sherlock stepped over and took hold of his cold, trembling hand.
“Watch this,” he announced. Albert raised an eyebrow, but humoured him.
“Ta-da.”
Sherlock slipped the ring into Albert’s palm and folded his fingers shut around it.
“Don’t lose it again.”
Albert darted a quick glance towards William, then nodded guiltily.
*
“And I still think it’s a bloody catastrophic idea.” Sherlock lit his pipe and crossed one leg over the other.
He and William sat side by side in neighbouring rocking chairs before the fire, their hands touching lightly between them.
Upstairs, the newlyweds first engaged in some violent discussion and then, with equal enthusiasm, began reconciling.
Sherlock could practically hear Louis politely refraining from slamming a door as he hurried off in quick little steps towards whichever room lay furthest from the domain of Albert and Mycroft.
“Well,” said William, “there were people who considered our wedding a mad idea too.”
“An’ look where we ended up.”
“In Ireland…?”
“I don’t mean that, Liam.” Sherlock exhaled a ribbon of smoke. “I mean it never once crossed my mind to take my ring off an’ chuck it away.”
William laced their fingers together with quiet gratitude.
“I know. But they shall learn.”
“Or they’ll part ways. Tomorrow.”
“That too is entirely possible.”
After lingering together a little longer in the warmth, William finally decided it was time for them to go to bed.
*
Someone knocked cautiously at the door, and William called softly:
“Come in.”
Albert peered into their room with the expression of a son arriving at midnight to inform his parents that he required a model of Buckingham Palace for school by eight o’clock the following morning.
“I wished to apologise,” Albert said, folding his hands behind his back. “We were rather loud yesterday and—”
“Today as well,” Sherlock cut in.
“—and we are very sorry.”
“Where’s the other one? Ain’t he sorry?”
“Mycroft is asleep.” Albert glanced aside and ran his tongue briefly over his lips. “Arguments tire him dreadfully.”
“He gets tired from everythin’,” Sherlock laughed. “Your husband’s an old man.”
“I prefer experienced,” Albert replied.
He defended with remarkable persistence a man who had hurled a vase of flowers at him.
Then suddenly he hesitated and asked:
“Will, have you ever regretted your decision?”
William opened his mouth, only to close it again at once as Sherlock began mercilessly tickling him beneath the blankets.
“Well then, Liam, what’s this? Go on, answer him, since you were about to.”
“Ne-ver,” William pronounced between bursts of laughter.
“Not even when I blew up our flat? Back in America.”
“Not even then,” William sighed.
“What about when I fell asleep with a cigarette still in my hand?”
“Not even then.”
“Listen, old chap.” Sherlock abruptly grew serious and pointed a finger at Albert. “It won’t be easy. If you can’t love my brother when he’s sayin’ or doin’ idiotic shite, don’t torture yourself over it. Part ways before somebody ends up dead.”
Albert did not answer. He remained standing there a moment longer before wishing them good night.
*
By morning the newlyweds had vanished somewhere again, and Sherlock, William, and Louis asked Miss O’Brien to prepare them a continental breakfast. She drifted about the kitchen humming softly to herself.
Louis went out for a walk, and William immediately seized the opportunity: he took Sherlock’s hand, pressed a kiss into his palm, and asked quietly:
“Never?”
Sherlock narrowed one eye, making it perfectly clear that nothing had changed since Vermissa.
“Never.”