Blossom and Grow
(Tom Branson knows that no one ever became anything overnight. Especially if the person in question is the rebellious daughter of an English nobleman. Branson and Lady Sybil talk suffrage, sometime around 1x05.)
Tom Branson may not be a particularly wise man – after all, he knows he's a young man, and he occasionally owns he's arrogant at that – but he knows that no one ever became political overnight.
It's the full-bloomed summer of 1913, and Downton Abbey seems to have returned to an even keel after Lady Sybil's demonstration a few weeks past. Despite Lord Grantham's ire, his youngest daughter has not given over an inch of ground, and has certainly refused to give up. Whenever he is tasked with driving her somewhere, she is bursting to talk of her quest to find a suitable employer for Gwen, full of questions for him and demands for more reading material. What can he do but smile and acquiesce?
Someday, he knows, he'll be in trouble for it – he's a chauffeur, not her tutor – but he'll swim when he gets to the water. For now, he is content to pass on newspapers and pamphlets, to help Lady Sybil start to see her world.
It is an already-hot July morning, and Lady Sybil hails him, standing shyly at the entrance to the garage. "I wonder if you could do something for me."
Something furtive and conspiratorial is glinting in her eyes, something knowing curling her mouth into a meaningful smile. Branson finishes wiping the grime of the engine off his hands, as he replies, "Of course, milady."
"I've got a letter for the post. I don't want anyone in the house knowing I've sent it; Carson would certainly tell my father. Will you bring it into town for me? Bring it with any of your letters and the rest of the downstairs mail?"
"Certainly."
Sybil bites her lip, and hands the envelope over. He can read the inscription, directed to an unfamiliar name in Manchester.
"There's no trouble, is there, Lady Sybil?" He doesn't see how there could be, but he wants to be sure. And, he's starting to find, he wants her to know that he can be trusted.
"Not at all, Branson. Cousin Isobel said that I might write to Mrs. Imrie about the National Union of Women's Suffrage Societies. She might be able to help me contact the local branch," she says brightly.
He turns the letter over in his hands. "I appreciate your confidence, milady. You can count on my discretion. Only -"
"Only what?"
"When Mrs. Imrie responds, to what address will she write? Not to the Abbey?"
Lady Sybil laughs, not disdainfully, but with a sort of sheepish pride that she has thought the deception through. "I've said that she should write care of Mrs. Reginald Crawley, at Crawley House. I'll rely on Cousin Isobel."
"You can rely on me, as well," he repeats, "Is there anything else I can do for your ladyship?"
"Only drive me into Ripon tomorrow for my charity meetings."
She gives him one last smile, and hurries back up towards the house.
Branson places the missive on the seat of the Renault, thinking about the calm rationality of the National Union of Women's Suffrage Societies and the radical Women's Social and Political Union, the Pankhursts and the worn copies of The Suffragette he has hidden somewhere in his cottage.
Someday, he thinks. She's worn trousers and can converse about Parliament; she's reading John Stuart Mills and can quote the morning news to him. But Rome was not built in a day, as his grandmother would say. Lady Sybil has begun to come into her own mind; someday soon, he knows he'll see her flourish like a bloom in the sun.