At a Loss For Words

The weather was dreadful, even for England. Day after day of cold wind and pounding rain had turned the countryside into a seemingly endless landscape of mud and muck. Flooding had become commonplace, sparing not even the intrepid British rail system. What should have been a rather relaxing journey was now entering its fourth hour, with no end in sight. Trains were delayed, diverted and then cancelled altogether as travel conditions deteriorated. The third class passengers were packed in like sardines; passengers in first class were better off, but only just.

Lady Edith Crawley had been sharing her compartment with an elderly couple who dozed most of the journey, God bless them, and a middle-aged man with an apparently atrocious head cold who threatened to infect them all. If he wasn't sneezing he was blowing his bulbous nose into an increasingly moist handkerchief with much more noise and gusto than any civilized person would dare. Under other circumstances Edith may have felt some remote sympathy for him, but any such feelings were abolished by his continued habit of honking, snorting, hacking and grunting in a futile attempt to clear his head. It was as if someone were trying to strangle a pig using a goose. Edith gave up trying to read over an hour ago and instead began to entertain various thoughts of homicide that did not require her to actually touch the man.

She was musing over the feasibility of hanging him by his own scarf from the luggage rack when the train began to slow down as it approached York. Edith breathed a sigh of relief; with any luck, she would be home just in time to change for dinner before going directly to the dining room. She grimaced when she remembered that Mary's "desire of suitors" would all be there, and then chuckled softly to herself. In the past she would have been jealous of her sister's almost magical ability to attract men, all the while holding herself so aloof. Now, however, she wouldn't have one of them if she were forced to it. They were such a bland, homogenous bunch, pretty much evenly matched in looks, education, wealth and pedigree. All perfectly suitable, just waiting for Her Ladyship to grace one of them with her favor. Mary was welcome to them, Edith would wish her well when the time came, and she would actually mean it. There was only one person with whom Edith longed to share her life. And, ironically, it wasn't a man, but a chubby-cheeked infant with strawberry blonde curls.

"No, no, no. Mustn't think about that now," Edith mentally repeated the admonition, like some kind of prayer. It failed, of course, like it always did. How could she not think about her baby? Granny and Aunt Rosamund must think her made of stone if they honestly believed she could forget about her daughter. But she did feel a need to keep her composure in public (she was English, after all) so she tried to divert her thoughts to other topics.

Michael Gregson. Ah, therein lay more madness. Edith wished, not for the first time, that she would receive some sort of news. And in her more honest moments, she knew she wanted word of his death, because the thought of him being alive all this time without contacting her would hurt far, far more than learning he had died shortly after arriving in Munich…

Munich. Why Munich? To become a German citizen and obtain a divorce. But Munich was so far in the south of Germany, and the rumblings coming from Bavaria were disconcerting, to say the least. Michael said he wanted to write a book – perhaps about post-war Germany? Did she ever ask? But why not go to Hamburg, or even Berlin? It was closer to England than Munich, and perhaps they would have been able to arrange a rendezvous….stop…madness…madness…madness.

Edith shook her head to clear the mental demons. Speculation was the enemy of calm, and she must keep her wits about her. She had become rather adept at playing her part, at keeping up the appearance of the helpful, spinster daughter that her family had come to expect. If her parents noticed her melancholy demeanor, they merely assumed that she was still worried about Michael, over a year after he went missing. It would never occur to them that there was anything else going on in her life to make her so tired and sad. And it really was easier that way. Edith knew that she would have to do battle with them one day, but she needed to marshal her strength and resources well beforehand. Once begun, there would be no retreat.

"You're beginning to sound like an old soldier," Edith thought to herself. Old soldier…

Anthony.

If dwelling on Michael was madness, then thinking of Anthony must be absolute insanity. Well, thinking of him in a positive light, anyway. She should hate him or be overcome with coldness or thoughts of revenge. To be honest, she had felt all those things in the weeks after being publicly humiliated. But the three years since had changed her in so many ways. She wasn't the girl who had fallen in love with love, or the young woman who so desperately wanted to be married and out from under the shadows of Downton. She was an adult, a journalist, a publisher and a mother. Almost a mistress. Things were no longer the black and white of her girlhood. There were so many shades of grey, so many nuances to good and bad. And harboring a lingering fondness (Edith wouldn't call it love) for Sir Anthony Strallan fell squarely into the grey zone, alongside the unrelenting wish to speak with him one more time…

Madness and insanity. They should get me a cell. Lizzie Gregson and I could be roommates.

Edith chuckled to herself, earning a glare from Mr Plague, which she returned in spades. She was beyond relieved to see that he was gathering his things, obviously getting off the train in York. The sweet elderly couple was also preparing to leave, and Edith relished the thought that she might actually have the compartment to herself for the rest of the journey. As her three companions left the carriage, Edith closed her eyes and simultaneously reached her hands above her head and extended her legs out in front of her, pointing her toes and luxuriating in the feeling of stretching her dormant limbs. So lost was she in her cat-like maneuver that she did not at first notice the tall gentleman enter the compartment. The gentleman in question, however, noticed her immediately, but was not fast enough to beat a retreat without being seen. Edith's eyes snapped open.

For the first time in over three years, Lady Edith Crawley and Sir Anthony Strallan were together, face to face, within arm's reach of each other.

Edith, who made a more than respectable living with her magazine, who spent hours every day reading hundreds and thousands of words from authors, editors, advertisers and subscribers, who proved herself a success in the business of communication, was suddenly and inexplicably struck dumb, having forgotten the entire English language. She just stared, open-mouthed, like a landed carp.

Anthony, who was educated in the classics at Harrow, then Oxford (first in history, naturally), who was fluent in four languages, who was just returning from a grueling conference on the continent where the increasingly worrisome state of the German government had been examined and debated and questioned until the participants were hoarse, who was wanting nothing more than to return to his library at Locksley to immerse himself in words of peace and comfort and beauty, was not much better off. Staring into the eyes of the woman he had loved, abandoned, and tried to forget, he said the only word that came to mind:

"Shit."

Which was unfortunate.