Edwards, house steward to the Palmer Estate since her teenage years, cleared his throat at the threshold of her study to garner her attention, announcing with poorly hidden displeasure that Mr. Holmes was come calling. Ink stained fingers, she’d been balancing the stock ledger to hand over to Edward so that he could make the chances he saw fit in his experience and give to her for final review. With an indulgent look to her servant, more friend then employee, she asks that tea be set in the blue room and that she’d be over shortly. A basin of water and a bit of scrubbing later, she arrives in the blue room with newly cleaned hands, and greets her guest with a soft smile.
“Mr. Holmes, I hadn’t expected to see you so soon,” one of the house maids, young girl, a relation of the cooks she thinks, gives the tall man a clear appraising eye as she sets down the tea tray. And for a moment she tries to see Sherlock through a young girls eyes, he cut a fine figure in his suit, with sharp eyes and contoured features. Yet, she knew the man’s temperament and personality too well to be taken blindly by his fine looks.
And because of that very knowledge, she wasn’t looking forward to informing him that their partnership might have to come to an end. As a female practicing the medical arts, she was already seen as a source of rumors, but the majority of her practice was based around wealthy ladies who paid well enough for perceived ails that she could run a Clinic for the needy and impoverished. That being so, despite her status as both spinster and heiress, she needed to maintain some sort of standing among the London ton, and running around with an unmarried man solving crimes had set many tongues wagging that she couldn’t afford to ignore any longer.
“Milk or sugar, Mr. Holmes?” she questions, pouring out a cup of tea for them both.
{ @consultndeduce gets a victorian smol }
