Free The Marriage of Mary Russell by Laurie R. King

Marriage is a contract, a formal acknowledgement that two individuals—and their families—are legally bound together. Yes, for some (particularly the young and impressionable) marriage is also the end point of wild infatuation, romantic fantasies, and physical urges, but when the two people in question are undeniably mature and constitutionally level-headed, they keep matters rational.
    At least, they try to.
    —
    It was February 1921 * . I had known Sherlock Holmes for the best part of six years, during which time he had gone from unexpected neighbour to demanding tutor to surprisingly co-operative partner-in-detecting. I had recently turned twenty-one and stepped into the responsibilities of my inheritance, but even before that, I found myself deliberating the benefits, and disadvantages, of the married state in general and to one specific male person in particular.
    This was, remember, a time when the Great War still loomed. A quarter of my generation was dead. Those who remained were often physical and emotional shadows of the men they had once been. Being unsuited to nursing, and unwilling to lower my demands, I was left looking at the man I had met during the War, the Baker Street detective-turned-Sussex-Downs beekeeper, who had taken me on as his apprentice, his equal, and finally, his partner.
    On the one hand, the very idea was absurd. Marriage, to Sherlock Holmes? He was the least marriageable man I knew. On the other hand, we were already partners. And having that piece of paper—that otherwise meaningless piece of paper—would undoubtedly ease such matters as border crossings, hotel rooms, and claiming one another’s body in the event of a fatal mishap. Marriage would also keep me from the temptations of pure academia, a world that, especially for a woman, could become terribly enclosed.
    Marriage—
this
marriage—would ensure that I was never bored.
    So, it was a rational decision, a sensible choice for two intelligent and level-headed people, the obvious next step in our partnership.
    Ironic, really, that it would be Holmes who complicated matters with the emotional. And I am fairly certain that the mild concussion I was suffering at the time of the proposal had little to do with it.
    One might imagine that, given his devoutly Bohemian nature and my own youthful disdain for societal mores—and considering how little family either of us had—marriage might not have been high on our list of necessities. This was, after all, the modern age, when the exhilaration of those who had survived the War looked to be ushering in an era of high spirits: even at its early stages, the Twenties showed little interest in Victorian, or even Edwardian, niceties.
    As for the concerns of
The Book of Common Prayer
(our society’s guide to the rituals of life): neither of us had any intention that the procreation of children enter into matters. Nor did we anticipate being tempted by the sin of fornication—
that such persons as have not the gift of continency might marry, and keep themselves undefiled
—since defilement seemed a Medieval sort of concern, easily dealt with by a solemn vow not to pull the other aside into a nearby
fornix
for the purpose of gratification. If anything, the Prayer Book’s third concern came closest to defining our choice:
for the mutual society, help, and comfort, that the one ought to have of the other, both in prosperity and adversity
.
    Experience had already proved that adversity was inevitable. And as the Anglican rites agree, there’s nothing like a signed contract to make one stick to one’s commitments.
    Still, we would have been just as happy to spend the rest of our lives in a state of amiable sin, regardless of the ease with which we might be abandoned and the risk to our immortal souls—except that we each had one person whose disapproval filled us with dread. In Holmes’ case, this was Dr John Watson. The two men had met in 1881, going from flat-sharing to friendship over the