He placed his glass on the table and palmed my cheeks with his hands. “Pray tell me, Poppy, what the point of rehashing that would be?” he asked.
Although his purpose was to inveigh on the topic - that being our fleeting flirtation with romance - as always, a blast of summer heat, a gust of fiery air, a tinge of warm gold as if the sun had just risen, slinked through, soaking my face and neck. Sherlock’s touch was the chink in my armour. I had tried to hate him. I almost did when he was somewhere else... when his hands and his eyes and his smile were somewhere else. I felt I was straddling the remains of what seemed like an ancient time in my life, a romance that had withered like dried mustard, and the stark truth of my present relationship with him. But when Sherlock was near, I travelled back to my dreams. I travelled back to the cottage, remembering the ripple of muscles just above his waist and the tautness of his arms.
Now I let my eyes roam down the slope of his shoulders and recalled my palms on them and the rise and fall of his chest as he slept and the sweet melody of the surf just beyond the window. I felt myself shudder and tremble.
I sighed and looked out the window, recalling the night that I had run into Sherlock at Oscar Wilde’s recital four years after the death of Victor’s father and Victor’s departure for India. I had severely chastised him for failing to attend the wedding ceremony joining my best friend Effie to my brother Michael, Sherlock’s sole friend now that Victor was gone. I had rebuked him for his failure to appear at Effie’s funeral and scolded him for his refusal to come to my nephew’s christening. But we had never discussed the night of passion we shared in the cottage by the sea, nor his immediate withdrawal from me afterwards, nor our momentary reconciliation in the ballroom in Victor’s home, which was torn asunder by Victor’s appearance, his jealous rage, and the violent fight that ensued.
“This is not the time for such reminiscences, Poppy,” he said.
“I am certain you believe there will never be a good time to talk about love,” I said.
“Love!” he shrieked, rising. “You want to talk about love? This is what I think of love. It is madness. It rips your innards out, it makes you reel with rage. It gives you a thirst you cannot quench and a hunger you cannot quell. Your logic slips from you as if you are in an oil bath. You see with one crazed eye. You try to hammer it to stillness and nothing you do will smooth the pits and bulges. It is the strongest of metals and the most recalcitrant. It refuses to melt. It refuses to bend. You pound away but it does not yield. Instead, it reduces you to a feeble tremor!” He threw up his hands. “What has love done for your brother?”
“What has Michael to do with this?”
“He loved Effie and he lost her. He has barely survived that loss and has only done so because of people who helped him with the loss. Who would help me through it if I lost - ?” He stopped mid-sentence. Then he added, “Who? Mycroft? Sherrinford?”
“Sherlock-”
Sherlock shook a clenched fist in the air. “Why must women do this?”
“Do what?”
“Women dwell in the past,” he said waving a hand behind him. “They penalize when you do not explore the uncertain future. They reprove you when you are honest.”
“I do none of those things.”
I looked away and thought for a moment. I knew that lately I had not been very sensible or levelheaded where Sherlock was concerned - that fact was not lost on me. But I also knew that logic and rationality were my only imprimatur. I had to appeal to his logical mind if I were to sway him to my disposition on this matter. I surprised even myself by remaining so calm when I spoke again to him.
“I simply believe that we are compatible,” I said. “You said it yourself. These feelings that you - that we have for each other... rather than let them get in the way, we should teach them to live side by side with logic and deduction. I think we should be open with each other. After all, we have never discussed the fact that I lost my innocence to you, that you immediately tried to push me out of your life, and then tried to seduce me again when-”
He pumped his fist into the air again. “You see? You embark on the very journey of which I speak. Talking about the past will not change it. Reproaching me for a momentary lapse that led directly to the end of your satisfying relationship with Victor and my burgeoning friendship with him will serve no purpose. Why do you seek to exhume our past history? To disinter it from its very solid place in-”
“In what? In your brain attic? In the depths of my heart? Do you even know where these painful memories are buried? Or if they are, in fact, buried, for I have not embalmed them.”
“And you see some point in fossicking all of that?”
“I do.”
“And what point is that, Miss Stamford?” he yelled. “It is inconceivable to me that under the present circumstances you wish to discuss-”
“Whether we wish to or not, we must be honest about our feelings, so that we can deal with them,” I urged. I held fast to my composure and continued. “You must ferret out your emotions and acknowledge them, so that you can apportion an appropriate part of your life to them.”
He sat down again and said, “I have no problem whatsoever knowing or dealing with my feelings. To begin
