The Adventure at Baskerville Hall & Other Cases

fingers. Having Holmes's strong grip clasping my hand had been rather pleasant, after so long apart, and I missed the physical contact even as I sternly reprimanded myself for such weakness.
    "I trust you, I would trust you with my very life – need I truly remind you of all of our cases where I have done just that? I came here not because I believed you incapable, but because I have been most desperately worried for you. I could not stop thinking about the danger you so coolly agreed to face, was entirely unable to concentrate on anything else, and so I came down here and having been living in this wretched hovel so that I might be near you, close at hand should you need any assistance and yet not intruding on the time that you so desperately seemed to need."
    He had not bothered to button his jacket and it flapped loose as he moved, showing me that his lean physique was somewhat leaner than I remembered it, and his chin was shadowed with beard growth. On another man it would have passed unremarked but on Holmes, who was always so fastidious in his habits, it spoke volumes. "Wretched hovel" indeed.
    "You have been living here all this time? Outdoors, in late autumn, with barely an intact roof over your head?"
    "Yes." He made a wry face, the tension between us relieved momentarily. "I assure you, the rain of the past two days has rendered this one of the less enjoyable episodes of my life as a detective."
    A thought struck me, and I began, "So the man I saw on the tor, several nights ago–"
    "Was me, yes. When I saw the light from the hall, I knew that it must be you and Sir Henry venturing out onto the moor." He smiled at me faintly. "To come out to such a place, on such a night, in the company of Sir Henry – the man who was highly likely to draw an attack down on you both – was one of the most courageous acts I have ever seen in my life."
    "I knew it was you," I said, filled with amazement. "I don't know how but, on some level, I must have had an inkling; when I saw you, I felt the strangest thrill run through me."
    "Did you really?" he asked eagerly, sounding almost hopeful, and the next moment he made a frustrated noise and came to stand before me, looking determined. "This is utterly ridiculous, Watson; I am shilly-shallying around the point like one of my own more feeble-minded clients. What I wish to say is that I love you. There." He cleared his throat slightly louder than was necessary, and added, "I had thought that you were aware of it and were keeping silent through a lack of reciprocal feeling, which is doubtless the case, but just in case you weren't..." he made a helpless gesture. "There it is."
    "Do you really?" I could hardly believe my ears.
    If I was taken aback, then he appeared to be equally so. "Of course I do. How can you doubt it?" He turned away, but not in time to conceal the flush that was climbing up his throat. "I am aware that there are many more amorous encounters in your past than in my own, and as such our ... arrangement may not mean as much to you. I know I am not as forthcoming nor as open as yourself, and–"
    He was cut off by my mouth on his.
    I had thought that he saw this as nothing more than a convenient "arrangement" – as he had termed it – and had forced myself sternly to keep my distance, while he had taken my reticence for a lack of any deep affection for him. When the need for air forced us apart, I took a deep breath and then grinned at him, wanting to laugh aloud with giddy delight.
    "For a consulting detective, you have been most appallingly blind," I teased him.
    He had been still through surprise during our embrace, but now his hands settled lightly on my waist.
    "Does that mean that..." he began hesitantly.
    "It does. I am completely mad about you."
    The faint flush of mortification that had been rising up his neck had turned into a pink bloom across his cheekbones that I found quite enchanting.
    "I hoped you did," he murmured, one hand cradling my face. "I cannot tell you how many times I read the last page of that report and lingered over your last sentence. In my lighter moods I told myself to have hope, that it might mean that you felt more than you dared to commit to paper, and the next moment I wondered if you really wished for my company at all, and whether you had not merely felt obliged to add that social nicety."
    I shook my head at him in amused disbelief. "And here I thought that my every feeling for you was written all over my face. I thought