So, the oneshot became a work in progress in the end. This story was posted long ago and was set during Christmastime 1920, in canonverse (that's to say that 3x05 happened here). Violet and Mary want to make some errands in Ripon a few days before Christmas but the weather isn't really cooperating, which leads to a rather awkward encounter. As a consequence, this story is now the first chapter of Behind the scenes, a fic set in canonverse, told from Violet and Mark Carlisle POV. Here, Mary and Richard are at the center of the story, but a bit like Moby Dick. In a nutshell, this is story told from "behind the scenes".

As usual, a big thank you to MrsTater, her betaing skills and her cheerful comments.

WAITING FOR THE TRAIN

The Downton station platform was unusually crowded, even for Christmastime.

This was the time of the year when the villagers, those who could afford it, ventured to Ripon or even York to buy new garments, the last gifts or seasonal treats for the children to indulge on. For that reason alone, the customary slow pace that characterized the village train station was replaced by disturbing, humming activity. In normal times, Lady Violet did not like the train and anything associated with this mode of transport. The noise was deafening, the smell of smoke and heated metal and people was nauseating. Above all, even if the existence of the First, Second and Third Class maintained a certain social order, she could not help but have the feeling of a rather implacable, worrying disappearance of old conventions. What was the point of separating people on the train if while waiting for it one still had to endure the noisy children and share a seat with a tenant's red-faced wife?

For that reason alone, the Dowager avoided the train like the plague, and the customary summer trip to London for the Season was more than enough for her. However, the winter cold had been especially biting this year. Ice and fresh snow covered the roads, which made it dangerous to drive to Ripon as she and Mary had planned earlier. Her granddaughter needed to pick up the gift for her husband, a rare edition of some sort, which had finally arrived at the book shop, whereas the Dowager still had to find the gift that would satisfy both her need to spoil her first great-grandchild and Tom's sensibilities. To be honest, accepting the chauffeur as part of the family had been difficult, but their common mourning, their shared pain and their will to cherish Sybil's memory made him an integral part of the Crawley clan as far as the Dowager was concerned. For better and for worse, Tom was her great grandchild's father.Alas! Instead of a nice, comfortable outing in the shelter of the car, their little trip to town had become a true adventure of the sort Violet preferred to stay clear.

As a consequence, here they were sitting on the crowded platform waiting for a train that seemed not to be coming at all. Fortunately, the last remnants of deference had not totally disappeared from the county, and both women had managed to find a place to sit sheltered from the icy wind that came down from the North without any difficulty. However, that was the only consolation in such a dire situation, the Dowager noted as she resisted the urge to reprimand the scallywags who had decided to claim the iced platform as their new playing and sliding ground. Instead, she chose to imitate Mary's proud and impassible posture and sit straighter with the help of her cane. Maybe this would remind the people around her who they were waiting for the train with.

At the very least, Violet hoped it would intimidate the little rascals and discourage unwanted scrutiny from the man standing on the platform, a folded newspaper in a gloved hand, calmly leaning on his cane. Apparently indifferent to the wind and oblivious to the commotion provoked by the children playing around him, he had been watching both women quite intently for a few minutes now, and this fact alone was unnerving.

The fact that Violet felt as if she knew him was even more unsettling.

Actually, the elder man's blue eyes were fixed on Mary. His stare was insistent and stern under the hem of his hat. If the slight clenching in her granddaughter's delicate jaw was any indication, the young woman was conscious of the unforgiving observation as well. Mary being Mary, she returned the man's hard look, the patented one that had gained her reputation of coldness in the entire county. His only answer was a raised eyebrow and a significant tilt of his head. His blue eyes were still unflinching, his mouth hard under the white mustache. Violet felt Mary sigh heavily beside her before getting up, and leaving her sheltered seat to a young mother burdened with her toddler and her suitcase. As the woman sat down heavily, endlessly thanking Lady Mary for her kindness, the Dowager resisted the urge to roll her eyes in exasperation. If only the roads had been practicable, if only the train had been on time, there would have not been such a fuss. After all, the mother and her child had stepped onto the platform well after Mary and Violet did.

The feeling of familiarity bordered on a sensation of déjà-vu, now. The only problem was that the Dowager could not remember where she had met the man before. The fabric of his dark grey coat was a fine one, even if the cut was extremely simple, a bit old-fashioned. Maybe was he a local gentleman farmer she had met during some garden party organized by another family? However, the typical tartan design of the red, expensive looking scarf indicated that the man was probably not from Yorkshire. Actually, the stare was quite reminiscent of another pair of blue, hard eyes which used to constantly disapprove her granddaughter's behavior or the family's way of life. And, the way the man had resumed reading his journal as soon as he had obtained what he obviously wanted was disturbingly familiar.

Violet was outraged, both by the man's audacity and her granddaughter's unexpected submission, and she darted a hard, indignant look in the man's direction.

"Excuse me, sir," she put as much venom as she could muster in the civil address to underline her doubts about his condition. "Have we met before?"

Before answering, the man took his sweet time to fold the paper carefully.

"I believe not, Lady Grantham."

His voice was calm, with a light Scottish brogue, and the light twitch of his lips revealed he was quite enjoying the game.

"And you are?" Violet enquired with barely concealed hostility. Instinctively, she did not like the man at all, just the way she felt when Mary had invited the newspaper man to Downton for the first time.

"Granny, let me introduce you to Mark Carlisle, Richard's father." Mary answered instead with a clipped voice.

The man tilted his head respectfully, raising his gloved hand to his hat.

"It's a pleasure to finally meet you, Lady Grantham." The sarcasm in his tone was unmistakable. Then he turned slightly to her granddaughter, repeating the polite gesture. "Lady Mary. My son's descriptions weren't an exaggeration."

Violet recognized a double meaning when she heard one. This was a declaration of war in due form.

"The pleasure is mine," Mary responded automatically while her whole attitude betrayed her discomfort. "I see that the photographs in his office are true to nature."

"The ones he hides in his drawer whenever I travel down to London to visit him?" Mark commented with the hint of conniving smile. The man's tactic was obvious and implacable. Was there a better way to denounce Mary's lack of involvement than evoking a familiarity that should have existed and never did in reality?

"I… I suppose so, Mr. Carlisle. I didn't travel that much to London," came the lame, almost shy reply.

"Sure you didn't," he rejoined, his accent getting heavier with each word.

So it was the first time Mary ever met her former fiancé's father, which was not really a surprise if you consider how she, and the whole family behind her, vehemently resisted to the notion of traveling to Scotland in order to make the proper presentations. It was not a lady's place to travel all the way up north to meet with a family of nobodies.

That was where self-made men like Sir Richard came from, wasn't it?

To be honest, Violet had never given a single thought to Carlisle's background, merely considering him like an inconvenient obstacle to be removed. And, judging by Mary's reaction which bordered on embarrassment, the young woman barely thought about her former future in-laws either.

Until this day, Richard only had been a lonely, abstract figure, an intruder that the family had to protect themselves from. A man they simply did not like. Little had she thought that the Carlisles could feel a reciprocal animosity. In front of her stood an indignant father judging and disapproving what the Crawleys had done to his boy.

Suddenly, it felt as if the table had been turned, and a whole new game had begun.

"And what business brought you here just two days before Christmas?" Violet came to her granddaughter's rescue. Was saving Mary from a Carlisle's clutches becoming a Christmas tradition of some sort? "Is your son starting a new tradition at Haxby to ease himself in his new costume of an estate owner?"

"Not at all," Mark Carlisle answered candidly, eyebrows raised and usually narrow eyes widened all of a sudden. "Richie is out of the country, visiting my daughter in New Zealand, and I was checking the progression in the installation of the central heating. I've to say I'm really disappointed in your English workers' competences."

"Because they won't let your son enslave them?" Violet snapped back, remembering clearly a conversation in which the expression cracking the whip had been uttered.

"Because they're lazy bastards who take advantage of a distant and rich employer?" he answered without missing a bit. "Do we have to accept being fooled just because we can afford it?"

"I see that Richard's success and sense of entitlement had contaminated the rest of the family," Mary interjected coldly, having recovered from the first unexpected blow at last. If only she could stop pacing and revealing how much the cold was bothering her when the elder man was standing oblivious to the wind, it would be perfect. One just could not give the merest advantage to this kind of men. "You seem to enjoy the position your son's money gave you a trifle too much."

"What should I do? Refuse his gifts? Refuse to help him when he needs it? Deny the fruits of his life work? Trample on our family values of hard work?" he replied back, his voice raising a little over the crowd's humming. "Let me tell you one thing, Lady Mary. I'm very proud of my son, and I've the weakness to believe that he owes part of his success to the education we gave him."

"And what kind of education would that be?" Violet asked, not hiding her disbelief. How could anybody be proud of having fathered a hawker of newspapers gossip and a blackmailer?

"Simple, exactly what my own father told me. Study hard, work harder, see the world, don't spend money you don't have, always keep in mind that the wheel can turn any time. And the most important rule of all: do better than your father. That's how our family elevated itself from a sailor during the Napoleonic Wars to a millionaire in about a century. Thanks to education and hard work."

"You make it sound like a plan," the Dowager commented bitterly. Such an education explained a great deal of Richard's behavior, his barely concealed contempt, his incomprehension of the Crawleys' ways. Once more, she rejoiced in Mary's wise choice, but for another reason entirely. In spite of his vehement protests, it had been easy to bully Tom into a morning coat, and more extensively their world, in spite of his grandiloquent declarations, Matthew was more of an aristocrat than many Earl's son. Richard was another beast, backed up by a proud and intransigent family. He would have never been one of them. Worse, he could have changed Mary…

"Not really. We'd planned a millionaire for next generation; Richard just skipped a few steps, that's all."

"And in this grand scheme of things, what was your own place, I wonder?" Curiosity had always been Violet's worst flaw, and it overcame her in the worst moments, when reason dictated she should not give more occasions to her opponent to share his views."

"A modest editor of the Art and Literature section in the Edinburgh Telegram, and an ephemeral independent publisher." His expression as he presented his own achievement was anything but modest, even when he conceded his failure. "Even if Richie and I have our disagreements about the ethics of journalism, I can appreciate he succeeded where I failed."

"Publishing dirty gossip?" Mary intervened, the fugitive expression of anguish on her face betraying how some scars healed too slowly.

"Taking the readers and their needs into account. Accepting the idea that newspapers aren't textbooks but a source of distraction as much as a source of information. Playing with the sharks and beating them at their own game." Carlisle pronounced his tirade in a lower, calmer voice, standing straighter without the help of his cane. "But I suppose that the strategies of journalism don't interest you as much now that you're safely married to the heir to the title and estate."

The clenching in the elder man jaw, his biting tone and his cold stare betrayed a deep resentment. At the same time, the outburst seemed to make Mary retreat into her shell once more. Carlisle men appeared to have this particular talent to transform the young woman into a hesitant little thing.

"Mr. Carlisle, you must understand that was Mary's choice, and that, unfortunately for your son's affections, my granddaughter's history with Matthew Crawley was deep rooted and that it only was a regrettable misunderstanding that had kept them apart for so long." For the first time since she had met Richard Carlisle, the Dowager recognized that the newspaperman's courtship of her granddaughter was not entirely about ambition.

"That's how you call it?" Indignation perspired in his every word.

"How else would you call it?" Once more, Mary had recovered and she was biting again, as always whenever Matthew was concerned. Violet had always been impressed by her granddaughter resilience, and this was one of these times. The young woman was her blood, no doubt about that.

"How about leading Richie on? Using his connections when you needed them? Humiliating him by choosing the man who had placed his sacred honor above you when the man who was your fiancé was willing to spend less time with his family in Scotland or his friends in London to bury himself in the middle of nowhere?" Violet could see his gloved hand gripping the cane harder and harder as he went on with his tirade. "Kicking him out after having prevented him from spending Christmastime with his own folks?" His voice almost cracked in anger. "I know that we live on different planets but in our world, when a girl invites a lad to meet the parents, it means that a ring is expected very soon, and that a positive answer awaits an eventual proposal. I don't know your own customs, tough."

It was easy to remove an obstacle to the family's happiness and reject a man you did not consider suitable for your granddaughter as long as you conveniently forgot how your actions could affect other people who had nothing to do with your feud. Moreover, she could not help but sympathize with the man's anger. If Cora's family had acted with Robert the way the Crawleys had done with Richard – after all, at first, Robert's courting had not been that different from Richard's – she would have made them regret bitterly every slight and insult. That was what parents did. And Richard Carlisle was not the fruit of spontaneous generation, had a father, a sister, a quite normal family, in fact. Right there, on the platform, waiting for a train that would not come, Violet regretted her parting snappy remark.

Do you promise?

But there was no way to erase these words. Heartfelt peace offering would have to do.

"I understand your position, Mr. Carlisle, believe I do, but I hope you understand ours…"

"Listen, Lady Grantham," he did not let her finish, a bad trait father and son seemed to share, among others. "I know that Richie isn't perfect. He can be a pain in the arse, forgive my words, he's prone to overreaction when provoked, and tends to forget that his London world isn't the normal world. Sometimes even, his success gets to his head. But he's a good son, he listens to reason, an honest, private conversation does wonders to his stubbornness, and a simple fishing trip to Skye with his old man suffices to put him back in his place."

This was quite an unexpected portrait of Richard Carlisle. What did she expect from his father? The stereotypical description of a heartless and ambitious son who had betrayed his humble roots? A quick look at Mary revealed to the Dowager that her granddaughter was not as surprised as she could have been by this description. Maybe it had something to do with the fact that a feared article had never appeared in the press, in spite of Richard's angry promises.

"I'm not very objective on the matter, I'm afraid, but he didn't deserve any of this, and I surely didn't deserve to see my forty-six-old son appear more than half drunk on my door step on the fifth of January," Mark Carlisle added sternly, after a moment of hesitation. "Why do you think Richie is spending Christmas at the other side of the planet while I'm dealing with your lazy workers and I'm stuck on a train platform in the middle of Yorkshire?"

Violet observed him acutely. Obviously, such an admission shamed him, but he seemed to think that some harsh truths needed to be said. Well, this was another point they could agree on. The man was proud and generally insufferable, just like his son, but one could not deny his involvement as a parent, and this was more than respectable.

"I'm sorry to hear that, Mr. Carlisle." Mary's voice was soft, hesitant. "I… I already told Richard how sorry I was…"

"I know, and I know he had forgiven you, foolish as he is."

Violet raised a surprised eyebrow while Mary kept her eyes down. Well, that would explain many things and especially the lack of articles about a certain Turk or some former valet.

"But I…" he went on, his expression very serious, almost threatening.

The shrieking sound of a train arriving at last covered his last words, fortunately, and made any more chatter impossible. They had been about to enter dangerous, unforgiving territory, and the hard expression on Carlisle's face revealed he felt he had almost said too much. It was better to let the hatchet where it was, deep buried into the ground.

The frozen crowd on the platform came back to life, its humming becoming plain noise. Parents retrieved their playing children, adjusted their coats and caps, and rushed them to the train, ignoring the childish protestations. The train itself was overcrowded, and the passengers had to struggle through the pressing people to get down with their suitcases and packets. For a second, the Dowager was tempted to call it quits and send her maid to town tomorrow. However, Mary had already turned around and began to step to the waiting train, her arms crossed to protect herself from the cold wind, and maybe from unwanted memories.

"Will playing the old woman card right now be another source of disapproval, Mr. Carlisle?" Violet asked as she got up from her seat, trying not to stumble because of her probably frozen toes.

A fugitive, self-conscious smile formed under the mustache. "No, I don't think so." And his hand went to her elbow to stabilize her footing. The Dowager gave him a dark look before stepping ahead, mindful of the ice on the platform.

"Where are you headed, Mr. Carlisle?"

"York, Glasgow, Inverness. One year we spend Christmas with my family in Edinburgh, the following one we travel up North to spend it with my late wife's folks."

"Such a long way…"

"I've got good company," he shrugged. "I don't like the Times but their crosswords are the best."

"But your children…"

"They are spending Christmas on the beach near Auckland, around a barbecue while their cousins and I will morph into solid ice in the Highlands, yes. With a bit of luck, we all will be unfrozen by the time the rascals come back to Scotland this spring."

Christmas on the beach? This was another reason why any association between their families would have been impossible.

"But you wouldn't have it another way, would you?"

Mark Carlisle shook his head. "Honestly, some things could have been better." There was no need to precise what. "But, generally, we're a rather happy and carefree family, and Richie's money improved everybody's lot: good schools for the kids, recognized physicians for the sick, nice houses, work for the ones who need it, it helps a great deal, you know."

The Dowager could relate to this kind of unspoken responsibility. And she finally understood why she had felt that Mary's marriage to Richard had been such a bad idea.

Not because he was insufferable.

Not because he sold newspapers and gossip as a living.

Not because he had bought his title.

This had been a bad idea from the very start because the daily comparison to a rising family would have been too hurtful for her family's assurance and trust in the power of tradition. Accepting Richard would have been too big of a change to swallow, even more than accepting Tom. Everybody had to stay in their place, the Crawley deeply rooted in Yorkshire, the Carlisles happily scattered between London, Edinburgh, Inverness and Auckland.

"I suppose it helps, Mr. Carlisle, I suppose."

Both elders proceeded to walk across the icy platform cautiously, trying to keep steady in the pressing crowd, fending with their canes against the onslaught of suitcases and running children. After a minute or two of thoughtful pondering, Violet heard her unlikely companion mutter at last:

"I hope you'll forgive me for not having presented my sincerest condolences before, Lady Grantham. I can't imagine how horrible it must have been."

This latest sentence stunned the Dowager into silence and she considered his sympathetic face for a beat. She could recognize a declaration of war, and she knew how to recognized an attempt of peace offering.

"Thank you, Mr. Carlisle. Let me present mine as well. I understood your grandson had been a fatality during the war..."

"Michael, yes. My daughter's eldest."

"Do you have other grandchildren?" she enquired in spite of her better judgment. On the one hand it was a topic she should not be broaching with Richard's kin of all people. On the other hand, being able to talk to someone who could understand the gnawing idea that something was wrong in a world that let young people be taken in the prime of their lives when old geezers like her outlasted their stay among the living.

"Four. Two granddaughters, one is engaged and the other one has begun to study literature at Auckland University, I heard. She wants to follow in her father's footsteps. And, of course, the unexpected twins, two boys. Abby will bring them up to Scotland this Spring so that I can meet the two devils at last. And I hope that Richie will come back to his senses one day, also..."

"Grandchildren are a blessing, aren't they?" The evocation of these mysterious two devils had brought Violet back to a time long forgotten, when the girls fought about their dolls' ribbons. How she wished she could go back to that time, and, knowing what would come, cherish those moments so much more.

"Yes, they are..."

As they reached the train at last, they found Mary waiting for her, ready to help Violet into the wagon.

"Are you traveling in this coach as well?" the young woman enquired. The Dowager was satisfied to notice that her granddaughter had regained some colors.

"In coach two, I believe." He touched the hem of his hat. Lady Grantham, Lady Mary, let me wish you a merry Christmas.

Violet noted that the good wish did not extend to the whole family. One could not ask for too much, after all.

"And a merry Christmas to you and your family, Mr. Carlisle," she answered most affably, relishing the slight surprise and embarrassment on his face.

Christmastime did not mean Lady Violet Crawley would not try to have the last word.

Christmastime was the best moment to erase some regrettable words, tough.

Mary and she had barely settled in their compartment when the train whistle made itself heard, announcing the departure to Ripon and York.