TM Prompt #216: Impossible
May 1891: Heidelberg University
Lord Milton Milford sighs, looking again at Professor Strichner's chessboard. The pieces haven't moved since Bella left, since the Chancellor sent for her...an urgent matter, his assistant had exclaimed. When she returns, he smiles and waves at the men. "Your move."
"I forfeit," she replies, sinking into the chair and staring absently out the window.
"Bella....you never give up a match."
"I have to leave, Milty," she murmurs, blinking quickly to keep tears from coming to her face.
"Leave? We'll all be leaving after commencement next week," Milty says, confused."
"Milty, it's my father....he's dead."
"Oh...was he ill?" Milty knows illness. People get ill all the time. It's not hard to suppose that a morally dubious academic may have caught...oh, let's say a chill in his study...and perished.
"No, Milt. It's...He...." she pauses, gathering her thoughts. "Sherlock Holmes pushed him off of the Reichenbach Falls, in Switzerland. Dr. Watson reported it to the Journal du Geneve, and one of the classics masters is a native of Geneva. He showed the article to Herr Chancellor. I have to leave, Milty. He thinks it would be too much of a scandal if anyone found out I was here."
The next day, word had indeed spread throughout Heidelberg (and much of the world) about the profession--and demise---of James Moriarty. Bella didn't go to lectures. Instead, she stayed in her room, reading and crying.
And Milty seemed to have changed as well. He ignores the comments he overhears about Bella and her family, and...instead of visiting her under the careful eye of the chancellor's wife, he leaves a note.
Bella---
I just want to tell you that I'm so, so very sorry. You....you deserve so much more than this....But I can't, Bella. I can't help you. Imagine...what they would say. Mother would disown me. She's met this woman whom she thinks would be a great wife. Her name is Mildred. Lady Mildred Something-or-Another. I know what we talked about before; me asking around to find a university willing to take you but...it's impossible, Bella. It's all impossible now. I feel like a fool writing this. I do care about you, Belladonna Minerva Moriarty. I want you to be happy, but.... Oh, dash it all!
-Milty
"It's impossible...it's all impossible now," Bella whispers, folding Milty's note into quarters and sticking it in her sketchbook, right next to the article that the chancellor had given her.
February 1897: 221 Baker Street, Sitting Room of Mrs. Martha Hudson, London
"When you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth."
However improbable.
Milty was my best friend. He married Lady Mildred Something-or-Another, and she sent me a strongly worded letter warning me never to associate myself--or anyone in my "vile family"---with her husband.
Their wedding announcement appeared in the Society page of the Times today.
I never wanted to be Lady Milford, or whatever the title would be. See? I don't even know. Lady Bella? I couldn't be the wife of Milton Milford....so why am I so disturbed by his happiness? He has Oxford. He has a family that is perfectly happy for him to marry. He is marrying the person they want him to marry. His mother did not just send poison (hidden in a hatbox, of all things) to his beloved's home. For someone like Milty....Lord Milton Milford, that would be impossible. Unthinkable. A trivial plot from a trivial penny dreadul.
But for me...
I am twenty-seven years old. My father was pushed from a waterfall when I was twenty-one. I tried to kill the man who caused this, and succeeded only in falling in love. My mother wants to kill my fiance. I work at an overrated women's school where the patronness thinks I am evil. Despite all of this, I still think of myself as a thinker...an academic...a mathematician above anything else I may have done. For most women, these thoughts, these events....would be impossible.
But you should know. My life...my situation is highly improbable, true.
But not impossible. And if it is not impossible to get into this bizarre situation....it cannot be too difficult to work my way out of it.
Muse: Bella Moriarty
Fandom: Sherlock Holmes: The Musical
Word Count: 700
Note: Milty and Strichner are my own invention. I don't know if I've mentioned that before. Also, the quote Bella ponders in the later part of this is from "The Blanched Soldier" by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle.