Sherlock Holmes and the case of the Virgin Bride

"Further observations of 'what', Holmes, not 'whom'," I clarified. "Yes, we have met the players. Is it now not the time to observe the play itself?"

Palmerston took a sharp intake of breath. "Dr Watson, surely you cannot mean ..." he met my eye fiercely. "You cannot intend an intrusion upon our bed chamber!"

"But that is precisely what I mean, Lord Palmerston," I retorted. "And before you object, remember that I am a physician with service in the army. I assure you that there is no part of the human anatomy, inside or out, that I have not seen before – and nothing that you have not already shown your own doctor."

"A doctor, yes. I see your point, Dr Watson, but ..." his eyes shifted briefly to Holmes.

"Lord Palmerston, trust me when I say that you are not the first client with a delicate matter who has darkened the door of the great Sherlock Holmes. The only reason that his discretion is not legendary is precisely because he is the very soul of discretion; people are not even aware of the mere existence of the great and embarrassing secrets to which he is privy.

"My Lord, you might search the county and not find two more dispassionate or more discreet observers. And as Holmes correctly states, his methods are faultless; the collection of the right data, wherever it lies, will surely lead to the breakthrough you seek."

Palmerston appeared to consider the proposition most deeply and finally his eagerness for resolution shone through.

"Very well, gentlemen," Palmerston stood and began to take control. "I shall have Victoria's lady's-maid place two chairs in her chamber, after which she will collect you from here and show you hence. For propriety's sake, the room shall be darkened and lit only by the coals in the hearth. You shall be seated in the deepest shadows, and from the moment of Victoria's arrival, you shall remain silent. For all intents and purposes save for the collection of data, you shall not be there."

"That strikes me as an adequate arrangement," agreed Holmes.

"After ... the act," Palmerston took on a grave countenance. "Assuming a repetition of past failures, we shall retire silently to this room to discuss your observations."

"Agreed," we said in unison.

"And now gentlemen you must excuse me," Palmerston stood in preparation for departing. "I must explain to my beloved why I have invited our houseguests into her private chamber." He gave us a wry smile. "Wish me luck."

Luck indeed! My own pulse was racing with the possibilities of what I had just suggested. A dispassionate doctor I may be; but Sherlock Holmes excepted, no man could gaze upon the perfection of Lady Palmerston's beauty and remain unmoved. And now I should sit in a darkened room and regard that beauty in the loving embrace of a man; naked perhaps, in the firelight; to be taken as a man takes his wife. My heart pounded as I sat in companionable silence with Holmes while we waited for the lady's-maid.

I confess that I am no stranger to the female form. As is the practice of most servicemen stationed abroad, I admit to having visited a professional woman on occasion; and though I have never married, it is not for want of practice, as I have on made many loving overtures to ladies of my acquaintance; welcome ones, I hazard; it is just that none of them has taken root.

Holmes and I stood as a young woman not many years older than Victoria opened the door and bid us to follow her. She led us upstairs and stopped outside a closed chamber door.

"His Lordship will meet you inside," she said simply and then departed in silence.

I looked at Holmes, shrugged, and then quietly opened the door. It was as Palmerston had described: darkened save for the dim glow in the hearth and with two straight-backed dining chairs placed in the shadows on the opposite side of room. In the middle stood a four-poster bed trimmed with festoons of white silk at the top and laid with an intricately fashioned lace coverlet.

Closing the door behind us, we took our assigned station wordlessly and waited in silence for the couple. It was not two minutes before the door to the adjoining dressing-room opened to admit the sublime figure of Lady Palmerston, clad only in a shift of shimmering white silk that draped closely over the curve of her hips and completely exposed the terrain, if not the flesh, of the small, flawless swell of her breasts.

My heart skipped a beat when this vision of beauty approached not the bed, but us: the male intruders in a young virgin's bed chamber! With the hearth behind her, her face was invisible in the gloom, however I had the strongest intuition that she was looking directly into my eyes. She came within three feet of our position in the corner before rounding the foot of the bed and kneeling at its side to whisper a night-time prayer.

Our view of Lady Palmerston by the fire's dim light was assisted by the smooth, white fabric of her nightgown, and as she perched on her heels in prayer I realised with a surge of excitement that just below the tip of her long silver braid, I could see the cleft of her buttocks as an unbroken line in the silk; the only flaw in the perfectly smooth globes of her small, round bottom.

My manhood rose with the understanding of her near nakedness; to see her so close, so beautiful, and so obviously bereft of any undergarments; I grew hard with desire for her. As I entertained a vision of stripping that thin sheath of silk from her body and feasting my eyes and my carnal lust on the naked perfection that I knew lay underneath, Victoria stood from her own prayer and granted one of mine. With slow, deliberate movements, she unbuttoned the front of her gown and removed first one shoulder and then the other until it was held only by her cupped palms beneath her breasts. We were seated behind and to the side and saw her in partial profile. With the firelight playing across her naked shoulders, I felt sure that I saw the glint of a reflection in the corner of her eye as she perhaps checked that we were watching her, and then with a flick of her eyelash she released the gown and let it drop to the floor.

As I have said, the female body is no mystery to me, but it is also true that neither the whores whom I bedded in my army days nor the patients I have seen undressed in private medical practice were even remotely the equal of the goddess in human form standing before me.

Like many men, I am partial to a woman who has some 'meat on the bone,' shall we say. The angular countenance of very slight women holds little interest; they remind me of the young street-waifs who can be seen in the poorer back-alleys of London. Victoria was every bit as slight as one of those urchins, but every part of her body was shaped into a delicate curve such as might be fashioned on a master potter's wheel.

One breast was exposed to us in profile; and whilst small and projecting from her chest not more than an inch, it was also full and round and wide and topped with a small peaked nipple that stood in tantalising silhouette against the background gloom, surrounded by a soft pink penumbra of light. Another glow caught my attention: it was the firelight playing through the tiny inverted triangle at the junction of her thighs. For a breathless moment I realised that the top of that triangle was the virgin entrance to her sex – the reason for our presence in this room – and my cock leaped with yearning for her as I strained to see that most intimate place. As I stared in breathless fascination, she quickly turned and instead gifted me a glimpse of her blonde wisps before slipping between the sheets and into bed.

Taking long, deep breaths through my mouth lest she hear my excitement, I fruitlessly tried with infinitesimal movements to relieve the pressure on my swollen member.

Before a minute had passed the room was briefly bathed in light from the hall as Palmerston entered wearing a long robe of some dark shade that rendered him all but invisible. He approached the bed from the opposite side; the one from which I thought Victoria would enter, which would have afforded us a much less complete view of her naked beauty; and with much quicker and more deliberate movements, Palmerston shed his robe and to my great envy, he entered his virgin bride's bed quite naked.

Sliding over and alongside her, he whispered a few words of love – which she reciprocated – and then to my abject horror he mounted her; all within half a minute of entering the room! I don't clearly recall, but I believe my jaw probably hung agape with disbelief; such a woman as Victoria is to be cherished and adored; a man must pray, he must worship at her altar before he takes of her communion; to take her like a dog to a bitch without so much as a kiss ... it made me boil.

I was so close to standing and calling a halt to proceedings when Holmes made a small noise, a clearing of the throat in the almost silent room that caused Palmerston to pause. He flashed briefly – angrily, I thought – over his shoulder at us before intuiting Holmes's intent; and that was we were there to observe an act that was currently hidden from view by the bed clothes.

Balancing on one elbow above Victoria's supine form, Palmerston pulled back the coverlet to reveal their bodies completely; Victoria's slim legs were opened wide with knees drawn up but lying flat against the bed, and Palmerston's bulk was poised above her and resting in the sweet cradle of her thighs.

As he drew back to position himself at her entrance, I felt a pang of sorrow for the young girl; so sweet and innocent and entering her husband's bed ignorant of the act of sex, not knowing how rudely she was being treated.

What must Palmerston's experience be? Surely a man of his years must have taken to the bed of a prostitute. And perhaps that is exactly the problem; such women would be well accustomed to impatient men. I had known several whores to use their own saliva to smooth the passage of their coupling; in the army I had even heard tell of Mediterranean women using olive oil.

I wanted to say something – to stop this butchery – but at that moment a knot popped in the hearth and the fire flared briefly, casting an ominous light upon his cock-head positioned between the dry lips of his virgin bride. The conflict inside me raged. To see the paradise of her womanhood was beyond exquisite; but to see it so defiled ... my mouth opened to voice my protest, but not a sound emerged. As Palmerston pushed down I saw Victoria's heavenly softness dimple beneath the pressure, but without lubrication it steadfastly refused to admit him.

Pressing and releasing at her entrance, the shadows played across the soft perfection of her sex, her lips flexing and heaving, it almost seemed that they struggled to protect her virginity; to hold his cock at bay.

Finally Victoria could take no more and she did what I could not; she cried in pain and begged an end to Palmerston's incompetent plundering of her womanhood.

To his great credit, Palmerston desisted at once and rolled away from Victoria, momentarily granting us the breathtaking unencumbered view of her naked body before he pulled up the bedclothes to cover them both. I used the brief flurry of activity to shift my own weight and adjust my throbbing erection to a more comfortable position down the leg of my drawers.

What to do now? Should Holmes and I leave first? Or should we exit with Palmerston? Thankfully he answered my unspoken question without the need to ask.

"Gentlemen," he said quietly. "Would you give me a moment of privacy with Lady Palmerston. I shall meet you in the library."

"No, wait," Victoria pleaded; I could hear a tear in her voice. "I am just as much a part of this as you, my darling. Was it not I who suggested the intervention of Mr Holmes and Dr Watson? I would hear their observations myself, if you please."

"Very well, my dear," Palmerston sounded defeated, which in a very real way, he was. "Perhaps just leave us for a minute then to allow Victoria the opportunity to dress."

"Oh, poppycock to that!" she said with a dismissive wave as she sat up in bed, allowing the sheet to fall in her lap and once again exposing those small, flawless breasts. "This is hardly the time to be crying over lost modesty."

"Very well then," Palmerston sighed resignedly as he too sat up and exposed the broad expanse of his naked chest. "What say you, gentlemen? I think there is no remaining dignity left to salvage, so let us have your observations without any of the window dressing of propriety."

I looked at Holmes nervously; even now having been acknowledged I felt queer to announce my presence by speaking. God bless Holmes though; the man has neither compunctions nor conscience; I cannot think of a situation in which he would not feel comfortable to announce his presence and speak his mind.

"Well then my Lord," he began sombrely. "I know that you would hear all I have to say, but I must shame myself and admit the truth: I have nothing of value to relay."

Holmes sounded every bit as defeated as His Lordship, which felt anathema to me because with blood roaring in my ears and heart pounding in my chest, defeat was the last thing on my mind. I was primed for action and filled with an almost unquenchable desire to take the exquisite body of young Lady Palmerston for my own.

"All I can offer you, my dear Lord and Lady," Holmes continued, "is the humblest of apologies and the assurance that the solution to your difficulty lies not in the purview of the criminal investigator."

"I feared as much," said Palmerston. "I apologise for detaining you, gentlemen. I shall allow you to retire for the night now and will deliver you to the London train in the morning with my best wishes."

"Let us not be too hasty, dear," interjected Victoria. "As a physician, Dr Watson may have a different perspective to Mr Holmes." She locked her eyes on mine and I used all the willpower I possessed to keep my gaze from dropping to those wondrous breasts that I longed to touch.

"You look flushed, Dr Watson," she continued with the merest hint of a smile; perhaps she could sense my excitement. "Or is it just the light of the fire?"

I have no doubt at all that I was flushed. I didn't need to check my pulse to know that it was racing; I could feel my heart pumping madly and throbbing at my temples.

"In one way I agree with Holmes," I began, swallowing nervously and ignoring Victoria's observation of my discomfort. "I too agree that your problem does not lie within the purview of the criminal investigator; however I should like to pursue the matter further from another standpoint."

"But Dr Watson," lamented Palmerston. "I assure you that our physician was most thorough; surely we have already exhausted all avenues offered by medicine?"

"That I do not doubt, my Lord," I explained, growing bolder as the idea formed in my head. "But perhaps the possibilities of medical science are not as exhausted as you imagine. I have two reasons for saying this; firstly, I think that your physician may not have had the benefit of the demonstration that Holmes and I just witnessed."

"That is most certainly true," Victoria said in a low voice laced with irony.

"And secondly, I speak of a brand new field of study that has emerged on the continent called Psychology. It is likely that your doctor is unfamiliar with the pioneering work of Dr Wilhelm Wundt, and more recently Dr Sigmund Freud."

"Psychology?" Victoria said the word slowly, as if she were tasting the word while it passed over her tongue. "Is that the study of ... ," she paused for a moment, searching for the correct word that a young, bare-breasted maiden might use before a strange gentleman in her bed-chamber. "Intimacy?" she finished.

"Psychology is the study of thought and behaviour," I answered. "Although not specifically about intimacy, Dr Freud has made several interesting connections in that field. I'm sure I tell you nothing new when I say that there are many areas of the body that evoke an intimate reaction when stimulated, but it may surprise you to learn that the brain is foremost amongst them – and this is especially true of women."

"Dr Watson, I'm afraid I don't understand your reasoning. I think I speak for both myself and Lady Palmerston when I say we were both thinking deeply on the subject of intimacy this evening. If you are suggesting that we think upon it more deeply, I assure you that it is hardly possible."

"I do not doubt your sincerity in that regard, my Lord; but you mistake my meaning," I said. And now I had come to my moment. I was conflicted about what I would say next; I felt guilty because I knew it was driven by lust, but at the same time I felt justified because my actions could actually assist the couple.

"If you will, I should like to conduct an experiment in Psychology with Lady Palmerston," I said, clearing my throat nervously. "This will require some talking on my part to induce a state akin to day-dreaming."

"That sounds harmless enough," agreed Palmerston.

"I would also monitor the physical effects of the experiment," I continued. "And I should warn you that this would require an intimate examination not unlike that rendered by your physician." I watched Victoria as I said this and saw that she looked shyly down and away from Palmerston with that fetching smile curling again at the corner of her lips. I could not tell in the low light, but I would swear that she was blushing.

"I think we have come too far now to be discarding new ideas," she said decisively. "I place myself in your expert hands, dear Doctor." She held her arms out to me in a gesture of offering, causing the soft swell of her breasts to lift and nestle together, creating a shadowy valley in the middle that I longed to kiss.

"Would you prefer privacy, my love?" Palmerston asked tenderly.

"In this instance, you should stay, my Lord," I advised. "If this experiment is a success then you may wish to repeat it yourself." He seemed satisfied with that response and bid me to continue.

I brought my chair over to the edge of the bed and guided Victoria to lay back down. Incredibly, she chose not to pull up the sheet and left her breasts exposed for me to gaze down upon lovingly. It would have been the simplest matter to lean forwards and kiss them as I had fantasised doing; to take a nipple between my lips and feel it harden beneath my tongue while I cupped the other tenderly in my hand and teased the same response with my fingertips.

"Shut your eyes please, Lady Palmerston," I said softly in a confident but gentle tone. "I would like you to try to relax." She did as I asked. "Try to take slow, deep breaths; and concentrate on the sound of my voice."

I gave her a few extra moments to concentrate on her breathing, watching the perfection of her breasts gently rise and fall.

"Do you feel relaxed?" I asked.

"Yes, Doctor," she whispered in a soft, girlish voice that filled my heart with lust.

"I shall remove the sheet now," I warned her. Trying to avoid the eye of her husband sitting opposite, I plucked the edge of the bed linen between my fingertips and drew it slowly down to reveal her slim form in its entirety.

The flat of her stomach, the flowing curves of her waist, her hips, her wonderful thighs; they were entrancing. The blonde curls of her womanhood glowed golden in the firelight. I wanted to comb my fingers through them and feel the soft mound of flesh beneath and search for the hidden parting that guarded the gates to the paradise within.

My blood ran so hot. I had to touch her. I placed my palm flat over her lower abdomen below her navel, causing her to flinch.

"I apologise, my Lady," I said. "Is my hand cold?"