Chapter Text
I
Blake closed the front door wearily and surveyed his silent house. He was never quite sure what to expect when he came home to the two of them, although it warmed his methodical, detective heart to see their bond grow stronger. This was the third time he’d asked Miss Scarlet to keep his daughter company while he was working late and the first time Sophia had requested the lady detective specifically. He needed to do something about finding a new nanny. Mrs Banbury couldn’t be called upon at every hour and Miss Scarlet hardly deserved to sit at home with his daughter while he was out working cases. But, he reasoned, she was also aptly positioned to guide Sophia in ways many others could not. She knew what it was to lose one’s mother at a young age and she believed that women could do anything that men could do, and though that kind of influence might yet prove to be a two-edged sword for him, he couldn’t deny that he wanted Sophia to have the freedom of choice in her life that was afforded to her male peers.
The front parlour was dark and vacant, so at the very least Sophia was in bed, if not yet asleep. He made his way up the stairs, placing only half a foot on each step, skipping the creaky one at the top, so that he might avoid disturbing them. Light spilled onto the corridor in front of Sophia’s bedroom, the door ajar, but the room quiet. Nary a giggle nor a silly voice to be found. He tiptoed around the door frame and his breath caught. Two heads pressed together as if sharing a treasured secret, side by side and sound asleep.
Sophia was propped up by a pillow while Miss Scarlet perched on the side of the bed holding a copy of Heidi, with her thumb still marking the page. They were turned towards each other, as though Sophia had been resting her head against Eliza’s arm while they read, before the sleep angels took over and drew them to their slumber. The rise and fall of their chests were in near-unison. A tender spirit bloomed somewhere around his sternum, unfurling its wings gracefully and relieving him of a weight he didn’t know that he’d been carrying.
Blake edged forward, hesitant to break their repose but knowing he couldn’t leave Eliza there to wake, disoriented, in the middle of the night (or worse still, the following morning) with a stiff back and a cricked neck. He prised the book carefully from her hands and set it on the side table. When he leant across her to give his daughter a gentle kiss, his presence seemed to trigger Eliza’s investigator radar because by the time he’d stepped back again, she was blinking at him with confusion, as though he was still blurry around the edges and she was grasping at the fringes of her dream.
“You must have fallen asleep while reading, Miss Scarlet,” he whispered softly.
She continued to look muddled, stretching a knot from her shoulder with a hand pressed against her forehead. She squeezed her eyes shut as if trying to gather herself.
“Where am I?”
She stood slowly, putting her forearm onto his to aid her progress as if it was the most natural thing in the world, and then, upon looking up into his steel grey eyes crinkling amusedly at her, she was almost startled to find herself there in the room at all. She made a flustered attempt to pull way and restore some sense of decorum.
“Inspector Blake,” Eliza whispered. “Forgive me.” She looked behind her and registered Sophia’s still-sleeping form. “I don’t know what came over me.”
He held tight to her forearm, refusing to let her slip from his grasp as he helped her to stand and shuffle away from the bed.
“I knew you didn’t get enough sleep,” he accused with a knowing smirk, not unlike the expression he’d given her when he’d deduced that she’d withheld information about her connection to Fitzroy’s mother.
She looked blearily into his face, blinking slowly as if time itself was winding down. His expression grew serious. She briefly wondered what it might be like if he kissed her. Their forearms remained clasped together.
It was a long, dizzying, wordless exchange. As reason seeped in slowly, she was aware of the warmth that started where their arms were joined, the almost reflexive caress of his fingers underneath her elbow. She could feel her pulse throbbing in her wrist and was grateful for the layers of her sleeve and his coat that likely prevented him from being aware of his effect on her. While initially the entire scene had been hazy, waking from a kind of peace she wasn’t yet ready to relinquish (or acknowledge), here, arm in arm, he transformed into sharp focus, and all she could see (feel) was the steady thrum of his regard upon her, the warmth in his gaze, the way the blaze of the lamp rendered his hair somehow golden, like a halo, the in and out of his breathing that seemed to beat with the same rhythm as her heartbeat. Eliza didn’t believe in fairytales or princes or knights in shining armour, but the very real presence of this steadfast human man standing before her might just make her believe in…something.
He drew in a deeper breath, as though he was about to speak, and later, when she reran the entire sequence in her head endlessly while chasing sleep at home in her own bed chamber, she swore to herself that he even made to draw himself closer to her, but in the end all that released was a deep sigh.
“I should let you get on,” she said eventually, in the absence of any words from him.
“But of course,” he replied, dropping her arm and stepping clear of her path.
She felt the absence of his warmth far beyond his immediate grasp, as though it had also been removed from her entire person, her grip and her chest and her heart. She ran her hand across the arm he’d been holding as if to try and restore its former glow, then took her leave. Blake turned down the lamp and restored the covers over his daughter. He joined Eliza again on the landing.
“You must take my carriage,” he said. And he held up a hand to indicate he would brook no argument, so she closed her mouth to her protests and acquiesced instead.
“Thank you, Inspector Blake,” she said.
“Goodnight, Miss Scarlet,” he replied. “Sweet dreams.”
But she lay awake watching the shadows dance across the ceiling for hours on end until at last the sun came up and chased fragments of thoughts unbidden and best buried back to the recesses of a tender heart and an obstinate mind.