Fic for Violsva: Upon a Ring, PG-13

[tweedisgood]

Title: Upon a Ring
Recipient: violsva
Author: sanguinity
Rating: PG-13
Characters: John Watson/Mary Morstan; past Mary Morstan/Kate Whitney
Warnings: Period-typical and internalized homophobia
Word Count: 5,500
Summary: "I did know a lover before you, but…" My heart hammered in my chest. John nodded once, his expression carefully schooled. "She wasn't a man."



My marriage bed with John, I was relieved to learn, was no less joyful than the bed I had once shared with my Kate. The discovery was not truly a surprise, given the evidence of our embraces in Mrs Forrester's parlour, and yet so much seemed alien and surprising on our wedding night. The width of his shoulders, the breadth and strength of his hands, the fur of his legs and chest…the sheer weight and size of him, even as he was scrupulous about not letting me feel intimidated by it.

"You must tell me," he had said earlier, his knuckles brushing against my hair as we stood in the window of our hotel. The wondrous tour Eiffel dominated the skyline, the streets, and every souvenir kiosk, but John looked at me instead of it. "You must tell me what you enjoy, and what you do not. I would not bully you for the world."

I enjoyed nearly everything. John himself was unfamiliar, but much of what we did that night was not. The only act I did not enjoy was the one most unfamiliar, and even then it was not so much displeasure as a sense of disconnection, John's apparent distraction unrelieved by his repeated murmuring of my name. Disconnection and frustration, for it was also deeply unsatisfying. But that, at least, could be remedied by slipping a hand between my body and his, which I did. I turned my face into his arm, breathing in his bitter scent, and rubbed hard at myself. His paroxysm eventually overtook him, and several long shuddering breaths later, he crawled down my body, breathless and clumsy, to push aside my hand and replace it with his mouth. There he gracelessly kissed apologies and devotion into my mons, working me with his fingers and tongue while I directed him how I wanted him, until my own paroxysm overcame me as well.

He crawled back up to flop beside me and gathered me against his chest. His shoulder under my cheek was clammy with his sweat, the skin scarred and rumpled, but John was to be mine henceforth, mine in a way that Kate never had been and never could be, and I treasured every strangeness and imperfection of him, all of it mine to protect and hold and care for.

We were quiet, I tracing patterns in the hair of his chest while he recovered his breath. Then he turned to hold me more fully, pressing a kiss to my forehead, and stroked his fingers lightly over my waist. "Mary? My dearest?"

I hummed into his skin, curious as to what he would propose next.

"You've known a man before." He ran his knuckles down my side.

I went still in surprise, before a chill overtook me. In my experience of the world, it was not a question a loving husband would ask.

"Because I didn't bleed?" I asked, attempting to express less concern than I felt. "I grew up on station, remember. I rode horses when I was younger." It was true, as far as it went; Kate had not made me bleed, either.

"No, because…" His hand continued to stroke my side, steady and gentle. "Because nothing I did was a surprise, or a shock. You knew how you wanted to be touched. You weren't scared of me."

My ill-feeling grew stronger. "Should I be scared of my husband?" I wondered.

"I'm pleased you weren't. I hope you aren't. I'm sorry, I know it's a boorish question."

It hadn't been a question at all.

"I don't judge you, you know. Engagements can be broken through no fault of one's own, and young people in love don't always wait for the wedding."

Another woman might have clutched at his generosity—as perhaps I should have done—but I felt only a morbid curiosity as to how far his charity extended. "And if there had been no engagement…?"

His eyes widened slightly; his fingers stopped moving on my side. He seemed at a loss for words. I began to pull away, but his arm around me tightened. His other hand held my waist, keeping me where I was. "Then I strongly suspect that someone has earned himself a horsewhipping."

I stared blankly at him.

"I volunteer to supply it. Mary, my darling, please don't look at me like that. I know you. Whatever the story might be, I have perfect faith you were the wronged party."

His expression was so open, so earnest, so loving, and I had no idea what to do with it. I shook my head. "There was no man before you," I said, because it was the truth.

His brows drew down into a frown.

"Truly," I insisted, touching his shoulder.

He nodded, but I could see the hurt in his eyes. "Of course," he said. He took my hand in his and kissed my fingers. "Yes, of course."

 

It was not an auspicious beginning for a honeymoon. John did his best to put it aside, but there was such resolve in his good cheer that it was impossible to ignore. We wandered through l'Exposition Universelle together, and time and again I would look up to catch him watching me with that same hurt, bewildered expression. John, realising he had been again caught out, would bluff a smile and re-direct my attention to a heathen sculpture, an imperial jewel, or a machine that made cigarettes.

We went on like that for two days.

After the second long day of determined conviviality, we returned to our suite, and instead of gravitating to each other, like newlyweds ought to do, we again drifted toward opposite ends of the room. I found myself suddenly exhausted by it all. This was not what I had hoped for when I had married him.

"I wish you would believe in me," I said to him, without preamble.

He smiled, tight and grim, and poured himself a drink. "And I wish you would believe in me. I understand why you don't, of course." He waved his glass, sadly sketching reasons in the air. At least he hadn't pretended ignorance. "But I wish you could."

"John…" I sighed. He waited, but I could find nothing more to say.

"But as reluctant as I am to correct you, I do believe in you," he said. "I believe that whatever it is you're keeping to yourself reflects no dishonour on you. How could it? I know you, my darling. It's only…"

"It's only what?"

"It's only I've seen what comes of husbands and wives not trusting their secrets to each other. Time and again during Holmes' cases, so much grief that could have been avoided, if only… What is it, Mary?"

I was shaking my head, marvelling at him. How could John have spent so much time with his friend, see what they had seen together, and still be so innocent? "Mr Holmes is a detective," I pointed out. "Of course you've seen the grief of secrets kept. Would anyone dream of calling on a detective for the griefs of secrets long since shared? Secrets that would have been better kept?"

"So there is a secret," he said, as if he had not been convinced until that moment.

I inhaled, too well-bred to shout my frustration. "John. Surely you have things you wish to keep private?"

"No," he said without hesitation. "Of course I don't. Not from you. Anything you wish to know, Mary." He waved his glass expansively.

I laughed bitterly. "You had no women before me," I challenged.

He seemed genuinely bewildered. "Is that something you wish to know? I had thought to spare you. It's not fit for the ears of a lady."

I didn't know whether to laugh or cry. Did he even hear himself, accusing me of having had a lover in one breath, then calling me a lady in the next?

"Mary, my darling, I have no wish to press a confidence. I have tried not to press a confidence." He sighed, genuine regret in his voice. "It seems I've not been very successful."

"Oh, John." I hated seeing him like this. Just days ago, he had seemed so happy and proud to marry me. I took an impulsive step toward him, then hesitated, thinking better of it.

But that was cue enough for him to put down his drink and cross the rest of the distance to me. He pulled me into his arms. "I just wish you felt you could confide in me," he said into my hair. "That's all, Mary, nothing more."

I sighed and drew back from him. He let me go, but I held his forearms, unwilling to fully relinquish his embrace.

"Mary?"

"I…" I attempted, but didn't know how to continue. "Oh, here, come, sit," I sighed, drawing him to the settee and pulling him down beside me. "I don't know if I'm doing well or ill in telling you."

"I have no wish to hear anything you don't wish me to know," he assured me, but his eyes were fixed fast on my face. When I didn't continue, he took my hand in his.

"I didn't lie to you, John, I swear. I did know a lover before you, but…" My heart hammered in my chest. He nodded once, his expression carefully schooled. "She wasn't a man."

His brows drew down in confusion. His expression cleared momentarily, but then he frowned again.

"She was a school friend," I went on, when it seemed he had nothing to say.

"Oh!" He brightened. "A schoolgirl crush! Well, that's—" He abruptly frowned again, evidently remembering what had first betrayed Kate's existence to him. He shook his head in confusion.

"It's not all hockey and cocoa parties and poetry," I said to him, gently.

"I didn't know schoolgirls did that. Could do that."

"Did you not? I thought schoolboys did the same."

He scowled and shook his head, definitively denying it. "No. Schoolboys are foul, amoral little beasts. They'd sell their own mothers if they thought there'd be a moment's gratification in it."

"Oh," I said, picking at the lace at my cuffs. "I thought it was the same among men, just not spoken of. You and your Mr Holmes, perhaps—"

He looked as if I had poleaxed him, and I swallowed the rest of the sentence.

"No," he ground out, with an intensity that was nearly frightening. "We most certainly… He wouldn't… I would never…"

"Forgive me," I said, and started to draw back.

But his hand shot out and clasped my wrist. "No, stay. I…" His grip was gentle enough that I could have broken it, if I wished. "Please." He tried to smile, but it was more of a grimace. "Did you love her?" he eventually asked.

"We were devoted to each other. For years." We were less devoted now, although I had wanted no one but Kate to stand beside me at my wedding.

"Well, see then," he said, blowing out a breath. "That's not the same at all."

I raised my brows, but didn't dare contradict him.

He flushed and looked away.

"Do you regret my telling you?" I asked, when I couldn't bear his silence any longer.

"No," he said immediately, then after further consideration, "No, not at all. I asked you to confide in me, and I'm glad you did." He didn't sound especially glad. "It was driving me to a distraction, the thought that you couldn't." He still held my wrist, and now he turned my hand over, stroking the lengths of my fingers. He paid especial attention to the finger that wore his ring.

"When you married me…"

I laughed, unable to help myself, and clasped his fingers tight in mine. "I thought you claimed to know me, John Watson."

He lifted his eyes to look at me. "So I did."

"So you do. That was a long while back, and now I have you, in a way that I never had her. You're mine, and I'm yours. Isn't that so?"

His mouth twitched. "Yes, that's so," he agreed.

 

We stayed in that evening, reading in separate chairs. John did not turn many pages, and neither did I. When I finally gave it up and retired, he kindly wished me good night, but did not follow.

The next morning, however, he greeted me with warmth, and suggested that we forgo the crowds of the Fair and tour the Roman chapels instead. I found, as we went from one architectural marvel to the next, that all his little courtesies and attentions had returned. He had not treated me shabbily the previous two days, and yet John was a tactile man. I had missed his frequent touches on my hand, my elbow, my waist. I had missed, too, the way his gaze drifted to me to discover what I was looking at and whether I was pleased by it.

At Sainte-Chapelle I had stepped away from him to look at a bit of statuary, when I felt him come up behind me and put his hands on my waist. We were in a somewhat sheltered nook, and he tugged me back against his chest.

"We're in a church, John," I scolded quietly.

Undaunted, he rested his chin on my crown, but discovering the sharp ridge of a pin there, he nudged through the coils, looking for a more comfortable spot.

"John, you'll disarrange—"

"I've missed you these past days, Mary," he murmured.

His words were such a relief, so welcome. I leaned back against his chest.

"I've been a fool," he continued, and I shut my eyes to hear him better. "Can we be at peace again?"

I wrapped my arms over his, slid my fingers into the spaces between his own. "Of course. I never wanted anything else."

"Thank you," he said. He bent his head next to mine, to speak nearer my ear. "And perhaps when we go back to the hotel—"

"Church," I hissed at him, stiffening in his embrace.

He only chuckled and snugged his arms around me more tightly. "So it is. And yet I recall that it was in a church that I gained the privilege to ask you questions like these. Perhaps you recall that, as well?"

"Jonathan Watson," I scolded him, but I allowed him to pull me back against his chest again.

"Perhaps when we go back to the hotel," he murmured, and the brush of his moustache against my ear made me shiver. "You can show me what you and…?" He paused expectantly.

I went still in his arms, uncertain of our ground. There had not been so many people on my side of the church that he couldn't have guessed Kate's name if he put his mind to it, but I would not volunteer it for him. I might trust him for myself; I had no right to trust him for her.

"Show me what you enjoy," he continued after a moment. His voice was little more than breath. "What you and she did that pleases you."

"Show you?"

"Teach me," he expanded.

I shook my head. "What can a pair of schoolgirls possibly teach a man of the world?" I wondered.

He harrumphed. "If I've learned anything these past few days, it's that I'm not as worldly as I thought. I suspect those two schoolgirls knew more about what my wife enjoys than I currently do. Although I hope you'll find me a dedicated student."

I twisted to look at him. There was no guile in his face, just a question. A question, and so much love. He lifted his knuckles to my jaw. "Mary?"

I pulled free and stood back from him, smoothing my bodice. "John Watson," I said, stern but low. I resisted the urge to touch my hair and discover what damage he had caused there. "I remind you again that we are in a church. If you cannot bring yourself to behave with the proper decorum, then I suggest we should go back."

His answering smile was slow, and almost entirely in his eyes. "Of course, Mrs Watson," he said, and offered me his arm.

 

Our wedding trip ended better than it began, and then we were back in the bustle of London and our new lives, I learning to run a household and John growing his newly-bought practice. Late one afternoon, two weeks after our return, I was planning our first dinner party, attempting to decide if Mr Holmes would thank us to be invited and whom I might reasonably pair with him. Bess and Emma might be blue enough to keep up with him, but then I would need another bachelor to complete the numbers, one who could be trusted not to make himself obnoxious to Bess or Emma. I was still puzzling it through when the bell rang. It was Kate's voice in the hall, and I went to welcome her.

"Why, Kate!" I said, taking her hands. She was impeccably gloved and coiffed, her dark hair in meticulously neat coils. Unfortunately, her care with her person suggested nothing so much as a desperate attempt to hold back the chaos of the world. My heart went out to her. I was familiar with the attempt; I had worn it as my own uniform for years.

"Mary," she greeted me warmly. Someone who knew her less well than I would never have noticed the strain in her smile.

"John will be home soon, but please—" I began, but something passed over her face at the mention of John's name, and I paused. "Oh, no. It's John you've come to see, isn't it? Is it Mr Whitney again?" Her husband's opium addiction was an open secret, it having long since surpassed his ability to hide it.

Her smile was brave and rueful. "I wanted Dr Watson's counsel, yes. In case he had advice about how to..." She trailed off unhappily.

"Oh, Kate." I squeezed her hand.

"But really, Mary, it wasn't just your husband I came to see," she rallied. "I should think you know me better than that."

"Of course I do. Alice will bring some tea, and you can tell me all about it."

She sighed. "Must I? I'd rather hear about Paris, if you don't mind."

"No, of course," I reassured her, showing her into the parlour. "You may hear about Paris for as long as you like. And perhaps a bit longer, even."

"Thank you. Isa's illness is so… Oh, I know this sounds awful of me, but it's so wearing. There are days that I can't remember having thought of anything else."

My grief and worry had felt the same way, in the first years after my father's disappearance. Once through the fresh pain of it, it had become exhausting and more than a little tedious, and I had craved any kind of diversion. "Where shall I begin? They've finished that tower, you know."

"Is it as horrible as they say? There's talk of building one here."

I laughed and told her how the craze for the tower had overtaken the city, and then what it had been like to dine on the platform, with the great superstructure swaying above us while the crowds of the Exposition passed below. But conversation about Paris inevitably wore around to questions about our wedding night, and not even a decade of marriage could suppress Kate from quizzing me like a schoolgirl. I was eventually forced to confess to her John's suspicion that I had had a lover before him.

"No," Kate protested, her eyes wide. We were curled into the settee, her hand in mine and our knees brushing, but now she sat up and leaned forward. "He didn't. Oh, Mary!"

"He very much did. Did Mr Whitney?" She had never said anything about it at the time, and I would have appreciated the forewarning.

"Isa?" Her laughter was bitter. "He was in no state to notice anything. And what was there for him to notice? We didn't marry for love."

I looked down at our twined fingers, one of which bore her diamond and onyx wedding ring. Kate had married not for love, but for the respect of being a matron with a proper place in society. If I had not been so distracted by my father's disappearance, I might have fought harder for her, but many things might have been different, in that case. By long agreement, her decision to marry wasn't something we spoke of.

"What did you do?" she asked. She gripped my hand more tightly. "Did he believe you?"

"Did he believe what?"

"That you'd never had a lover, of course."

I frowned. "But I did."

"Yes, but…" She frowned at me, impatient. "That's not what he meant."

"Kate," I said, but I didn't wish to argue with her. "He already thought I was lying. It seemed better to tell him the truth."

She snatched her hand from mine as if I had stung her. "You didn't."

"I kept your name out of it, of course. Of course I did!" I would never dream of letting her fall prey to the gossips and scandalmongers. Her reputation was all she had; it was all any of us had.

"What kind of fool are you? Who is he supposed to think it was? Bess?"

Bess had gone to school with us, but continued on to Newnham like our headmistress before us, and there met Emma. Emma had propped her within days, and they had never parted since. As far as I knew, they never intended to. "Why does John have to think it was anyone? We don't talk to everyone we knew at school."

"But you talk to almost no one! You have to tell him it was Bess. She doesn't have a reputation to lose."

"Kate! She certainly does have a reputation to lose!"

Our whispered argument was interrupted by the front door opening and closing, and John's voice calling my name. I exchanged a quick look with Kate before calling back to him.

"Oh!" John said a moment later from the parlour door. "You have a guest, I didn't realise. Mrs Whitney, how lovely to see you! And how is Mr Whitney?"

Kate stood. Her cheeks were pink from emotion; her posture stiff from her displeasure with me. It was clear that she intended to make a hasty excuse and leave.

"She came to see you about Mr Whitney, I'm afraid," I interjected before she could. I took her hand, hoping to give her courage. "It seems he's not very well."

"Oh?" He glanced between us. "I'm sorry to hear that. If you'll give me just a moment, Mrs Whitney, I'd be pleased to hear all about what's troubling you."

She murmured her assent, and he stepped out again. The instant John's back was turned, Kate shot me a fierce glare. "Mary!" she hissed.

"If you had bolted, he would wonder why," I whispered, once I was sure he was gone. "And then what would I say? You've never been shy of him before. As it is, he'll think you're upset about your husband, if he thinks anything at all." I squeezed her hands. "Kate, please. Trust me, I beg you. John would never hurt you, and I would never let him."

Her look was pitying. "As if you could possibly stop him." She took back her hands, but she reseated herself, this time in an armchair across from me.

I tried not to show how much that hurt. "Please don't fret," I said, hating the distance she'd put between us. "It'll be fine, you'll see."

"I'll certainly do everything in my power to help," John said, coming back into the room. He took the other end of the settee, giving me an affectionate glance as he did. "Forgive me, I couldn't help overhearing. Now, Mrs Whitney, if you'll be so good as to tell me what's troubling you."

She told the story. Much of it I already knew—Mr Whitney's hidden opium habit, the growing addiction—but John had heard only the barest outlines before. It seemed that Mr Whitney had now moved from opium eating to opium smoking, and would sometimes disappear to the wharves for entire afternoons. I was grieved but not surprised; I had thought at the wedding that he looked worse than I had ever seen him before.

John sighed when she finished. "There's not much that can be done, if he doesn't wish it. I can't even examine him without his consent."

"Could you speak to him?" I asked.

"Under what pretext? I've only met him the once."

"We could have them to dinner. Just the four of us. Perhaps there would be an opportunity to speak with him over cigars."

He looked to Kate. "Would you accept an invitation? Would he come?"

She bit her lip. "He would intend to. He doesn't always do what he intends."

I ached for her. "Then we can only hope, and try something else if it's needful. Would next Tuesday do?"

We agreed to a date, and she left soon after. John accompanied us both to the door, so there was no further opportunity for private conversation with her, but as she left, I tried to reassure her one last time. "Don't worry about anything, Kate. It'll all come right, I swear it."

She only gave me a sad, reproachful look and kissed my cheek as she left.

When I turned back from shutting the door behind her, I found John watching me with serious eyes. "You shouldn't promise her that, you know. It may yet end in heartbreak. These things often do."

I smiled thinly, unable to tell him what I had actually been promising. I took his hand and kissed his cheek to welcome him home, as I had not before. "But you'll do your best for them."

He made a gruff noise. "It'll be a dismal sort of dinner party."

"I'm sorry, I couldn't think what else—"

"No, no, it's fine," he reassured me. "I've done far more for a friend, and I'm honoured to be able to assist yours."

Overcome with feeling—at his generosity, at Kate's heartbreak—I took his lapels and settled my face against his chest.

"Dearest? What is it?" he asked, his arms coming around me.

I shook my head, at a loss. "Only that you're so good to me."

"I only wish that I was. Come, I have a present for you."

"A present?" I asked, perking up.

"Well, an apology," he said, and disentangling himself from me, he reached for the parcel he had left on the hall table when he came in. He took up a slim, pale yellow volume and presented it to me.

Long Ago, Michael Field, the cover said. It was graced with a medal of a Grecian woman in profile, quaintly identified as Saφo in a mix of Roman and Greek letters. I opened the cover to find that John had inscribed it to his darling Mary, with all his love. Further inspection showed that it was a book of English poetry, each lyric prefaced by a short Greek epigraph printed in gold.

"They're meant to be completions of Sappho's fragments," he said. "An attempt to make them whole again."

"Sappho, who killed herself for love of a man? It's a rather grim love-present," I teased.

"Actually, I had intended it as…" He cleared his throat. "Well, some say that she..."

I looked up at him in surprise. He was blushing.

"Oh, you dear man," I exclaimed, and leaned up to kiss his cheek.

He flushed more deeply. "It's an apology, for being such a boor on our wedding night. I said that I hadn't wanted to bully you, and I fear that I did. I am truly sorry, Mary."

I shook my head. "You were kinder than I could possibly have hoped."

"Be that as it may," he demurred, gruff. "This isn't widely known, but the literary gossip says that Michael Field is the pseudonym of two women who write together."

"I know who Michael Field are," I said, even as I felt a flush of pride that A Study in Scarlet was respected enough for my husband to be privy to literary gossip. "It's not only literary circles who gossip about them." I laughed at his expression. "Nothing like that, John. One of the Fields went to Newnham, and Bess does like to brag."

"Oh," he said, a bit embarrassed. A long, thoughtful silence followed, and I prayed that he would not ask if it was Bess who had been my lover. But he only leaned over my shoulder, to better see the page I had landed on. The lyric was a passionate love poem addressed to Gorgo, the queen of Sparta. "Now, let's see," he said, puzzling through the Greek at the top of the page. "Dactyl is finger…"

"It's something about a great ring," I said. My Greek was deplorably rusty—there had been little call for it as a governess—but I had worked out at least that much of the epigraph. "Here it is," I said, finding the fragment in the last lines of the poem. "O foolish woman, dost thou set thy pride upon a ring?"

The sentiment was so familiar that it hurt, and I read back over the previous lines. The whole poem might have been about Kate. I touched the page: two thousand years, and Sappho had felt the same griefs as I.

Or rather, the women who styled themselves Michael Field imagined she did.

"You read Greek?" John asked, and I looked up. He seemed to be flummoxed.

"Bess was a school chum," I reminded him, "and she passed the Cambridge entrance examinations. For a while I thought I might go." But then my father had died, and that ambition with him. Years later, the pearls might have paid for university, but I hadn't liked to sell them without knowing who might come seeking them. And by the time my questions about the pearls had been answered, I had met John, and everything had changed again.

I couldn't object to how things had come out, but in that moment, with the lines about Gorgo's dark and divine beauty under my finger, I was keenly aware of another life that I might have lived.

I put aside the thought. "It's a lovely gift, John," I said, and leaned up to kiss him again. "It can't have been easy to find."

"I knew someone," he said, abashed and pleased.

"And what else did you bring home?" I asked. A second book, a volume of Catullus, lay on the table. I opened it, but there was no inscription. "What's this one for?"

"For me, actually. And… I couldn't rightly say." He was oddly hesitant, and I looked up at him. "But my Latin is better than my Greek."

I nodded; he was a medical man, after all. The Latin and English lay on facing pages, and on a whim, I went looking for a particular verse that we had once passed around in scandalised delight during my school days. After a short search, I found it; the English had been expurgated, but the Latin had not.

John cleared his throat, and I abruptly realised that my husband, who could read Latin, was looking over my shoulder. I flushed violently and shut the book.

"Mary," he laughed, catching me around the waist. "What a surprise you are."

I pulled away from him in a huff, and when he tried to catch me again, I thrust the thin volume of Sapphist poetry at him instead. "Make yourself useful and read to me," I demanded. "We've a little time before dinner."

"Read to you?" he asked, but he led the way back into the parlour. He settled himself at one end of the settee and opened the book. "I should have thought you could read this better yourself. Where should I begin?"

I reclined next him, and careful of my hair, I placed my head in his lap. He seemed startled but pleased. "Begin wherever you like."

"And if I need assistance with the Greek?"

"Then I'll assist you with the Greek," I assured him.

"At the beginning, then."

He turned to the first lyric, and in a mix of fluid English and hesitant Greek, John humbly entreated the Muses for their blessing.

---

Hither now, Muses! leaving golden seats…
Come, Gorgo, put the rug in place…