redfiona99

Title: House Arrest
Author: Red Fiona
Fandom: RDJ-Sherlock Holmes
Disclaimer: Not mine. Holmes is Arthur Conan Doyle's, while Coward is Warner Brothers. No money being made from this.
Characters: Sherlock Holmes and Lord Coward
Rating/Warnings: PG-12, post-film gen.
Summary: As far as Coward is concerned, after Blackwood comes the flood.

Coward's family estate in Hertfordshire was palatial, with the family house done in Palladian style and garden by Capability Brown. It spoke of riches, wealth with a long history. It was a shame that this branch of the line had come to such an end.

To Holmes, more particularly, it was a shame that the present Lord Coward was in residence here, rather than hung or jailed at Newgate. But Coward had managed to convince a jury that he was weak in his mind and not responsible for his actions. For a grown man to be so willing to play a wounded pup would be sad, were it not to save his own skin.

Coward's mother had pulled strings and used her own influence, as the daughter of a duke, to have Coward placed under the care of an alienist of her choosing, who then declared that it would be safer for Coward to be treated in his own house lest his mania influence the other patients in an asylum. It was nice to know that all professions were equally amenable to bribery.

Coward couldn't fool everyone, of course, and Sherlock, through his brother, had ensured that there was a guard around the estate. They had orders to shoot if Coward tried to leave the grounds of the house. It might not work, but hopefully it would slow Coward down. While Holmes didn't doubt that Blackwood was the prime intellect behind the plot, he couldn't have committed his acts without a second of equal infamy.

A footman showed Holmes into the morning room, where Coward was already seated. Another footman followed him in and brought tea.

"Will you be mother, Holmes? I find myself unable to pour." Coward indicated the straitjacket in which he was confined. He wore it well, making it look as stylish as the fine shoes which had given him away.

Holmes poured. There were two cups, which struck Holmes as pointless since Coward could not drink unless someone aided him, and Holmes would be damned if he was the man to help him. He would never forgive Coward for nearly hurting Adler, and for hurting Watson so badly.

"To what do I owe this pleasure?" Coward asked.

"I wanted to assure you that you haven't won. You may have been able to convince a court of your insanity, and her ladyship may have convinced them that this is a suitable place of confinement for you, but I know the truth. And the only way you'll leave this place is in a wooden box."

The laugh Coward emitted was frankly terrifying. Possibly Holmes had underestimated the alienist.

"You really think you've won, don't you, Holmes? You've slowed me down, yes, but think, I have what, ten years on you, maybe fifteen on your brother, and neither of you live the kind of lives that lead to good health. And who, without you two, would post an armed guard on a harmless invalid? Time makes all forgotten."

“I think I will take a long time for people to forget treason.”

“Ask the common man and who remembers Oxford?”

"Oxford wasn't a member of her Majesty's government."

"Touché," said Coward, leaning back on his chair, with a cat-like look of absolute contentment, which riled Holmes. The man had been caught, was imprisoned in a straitjacket and trapped in his own house. What did he have to look so happy about? Holmes couldn't let it stand.

"You lost, you realise, and you're totally discredited." Another bored yawn. "No matter what you do, Blackwood won't win. He's dead, and who would follow in the name of a man who has been shown to be a fraud? Even your friends in the Order, the ones who will have anything to do with you despite the disapprobation you've brought upon their whole society, aren't likely to join your mission in the future now that they know it wasn't magic but science that led to your abilities."

That touched a nerve; Coward was still Blackwood's man, even now. Coward stiffened in the straitjacket. "Why, because you told them so? A non-adept, someone who not only doesn't know our secrets, but is unwilling to accept they could even exist. Of course such a man would lie to discredit the Order."

Coward looked directly at Holmes, almost through him, and raised his chin proudly. "Anything you say, I can turn back upon you." Coward's confidence had returned after the brief lurch Holmes had induced. Holmes wondered if Coward's sureness of self, his certainty of victory was based in anything solid. As far as Holmes could see, he was the one who was correct, there was no way back for Coward, not for his own person, and not for some cult of Blackwood's. Yet Coward's belief was strong. Holmes did not doubt his own previous conclusion that there was nothing wrong with Coward's mind, but no truly sane man could believe that he could win from this position.

"There are things coming, Mr. Holmes, terrible things. All Henry wanted was to make sure that the Empire was in a position to come through them on top.”

There could be no harm in humouring him. “With himself as leader?”

“There was no finer man for the role. He was better than these milksop fools that claim to lead us now. The queen cannot last forever, and the Prince of Wales is a dissolute dandy.”

There was some truth to what Coward said, and yet, "I think that, whatever happens, it will be better than what will have happened if you'd won." Holmes left with that, hoping to make a grand exit.

But he couldn't shake the foreboding that Coward's quiet reply, "I wonder if you will feel the same way when the inevitable chaos happens." Holmes had sensed there was an organising force in London's criminals, something, *someone* new. Holmes had written them off as merely being an ambitious criminal but now he knew the name of the presence in the darkness, behind the theft of Reordan's device. Moriarty was coming.

End notes: I'd like to thank