So... after a very long hiatus, here 's my new attempt at fanfiction. This story is beta-ed by the wonderful mrstater whose fics girl in black and another chapter proved there was room for Richard/Mary stories after all...

Disclaimer: I don't own anything...

PROLOGUE

Downton, April 17th, 1919

The sound of a piano playing downstairs was the first evidence Mary was not the only one in the house having a difficult time to getting to sleep this night. She felt exhausted, she could tell, but sleep had eluded her ever since she had said goodnight a few hours ago and walked up the stairs to find solace in her room. However, this self-imposed isolation – from the carefully composed grief her family displayed while comforting a distraught cousin Matthew, and from the rawer shock that had left Anna and the rest of the staff haggard and utterly lost – did nothing to appease the guilt that gnawed at her.

It was all her fault.

Lavinia died of a broken heart, Matthew declared solemnly in front of the grave, because he and Mary had been unable to resist their fateful and doomed attraction. They were cursed, really. And Bates… Bates was now in jail because he protected her secret, and Anna had to suffer the sight of her husband of a few days accused, handcuffed and taken by two grim policemen, because of a brief moment a weakness and passion.

It was all her fault.

Matthew's grief and guilt. Anna's distress and fear. Everything was deeply rooted in Mary's behavior, indecision and rash decisions. If anybody was cursed, she was the one. "I am a lost cause," she had cried years ago in front of her mother. And a lost cause she still was, most definitely. The sound of the piano made her hesitate, and she stopped her way down the stairs to the kitchen. She did not know what she was seeking down there, in a place she barely visited, if at all. However, unwanted company was the last thing she desired. She wanted to be alone, with her a guilt. She wanted to escape the ghosts that haunted her upstairs, and most of all in her own room, once her solace and now her very personal torture chamber. There were too many memories, too many unbearable memories: Pamuk dying in her bed, Matthew kissing her in the dining room, Anna sharing her wisdom and hopes while helping her prepare for dinner, Matthew, once more, reappearing suddenly in the library after having been declared missing in action along with William, her own voice caught in her throat at the wonderful sight, Matthew, once more, unknowingly breaking her heart while he announced the date for his wedding to Lavinia…

The piano stopped finally, and the distinct smell of cheap tobacco filled the air. This was quite peculiar. As far as Mary knew, which was not much, she had to concede, only Thomas, O´Brien and sometimes Bates were known to indulge in this habit. Bates was not present obviously, and neither O'Brien nor Thomas played the piano. This had been William's prerogative before he decided to put a uniform on and fight the Huns… Mary could not help being a little curious, and she resumed her way down as another tune began resounding in the kitchen. After a few martial accords, the notes rushed like some incantation, invoking the wind and pouring of a summer storm, or a never ending breathless cavalcade. It was the kind of tune the music teacher insisted Mary and her sisters had to perform, with no success. Even Edith, the most gifted Crawley daughter in this particular area, never managed to strike the right tempo, the right technique, much to Mary's relief… Sighing, she put an end to her musings – thinking of her rivalry with her sibling was the last thing she needed since the very thought of her sister started the path down to the unwanted memory of Pamuk – and she reached the kitchen at last, not daring to cross the threshold, content to observe the improbable and seemingly insomniac piano player without perturbing his concentration.

An unguarded Richard Carlisle was not a common occurrence, indeed, and Mary could not help but feel like a voyeur while she studied the way his lips soundlessly hummed the notes his fingers were playing, the way his right arm moved graciously along the movements of his hand, the way he inclined his head while his touch on the keyboard became light as a feather, suddenly producing notes she could barely hear. Mary thought she knew her fiancé and was rather unsettled by the pianist in front of her.

At first, she had been attracted to his handsome features, his snide banter and, to be honest, his money and ambition. There was also some mystery attached to this surprising character. Sir Richard was a social climber indeed, a self-made man as he liked to proclaim, anxious to be part of the upper-class, but, at the same time, he appeared to consider the world in general, and the nobility in particular, with a detached, cynical amusement. Such a paradox had intrigued her since their first meeting and had prompted her to accept his first invitation to dance, then the second. However, this had been when she thought she could envision a life outside Downton. This had been before Matthew came back into her life, and the doubts and dreams and insecurities crept back to the forefront of her slowly mending head and heart.

Suddenly, in spite of the war, in spite of the existence of Lavinia even, the long lost dream of a life with Matthew, in Downton, went and shattered all the healing process the regular trips to London had symbolized. London became a vulgar place, unworthy of her presence – except when she had needed Richard's help, of course – because this was the city where Richard lived and worked and made money while Matthew was sacrificing his life for the King and Country. Haxby, which she had admired so much when she was little became vulgar and vain as well, as soon as Richard bought it. The ambitious Scot who had intrigued her in London morphed into a pompous and blackmailing newspaper man as she compared him to the heroic heir of Downton. She was not worthy of Matthew's love, but moving on was simply impossible, unimaginable, unthinkable. So she consciously and unconsciously sabotaged her relationship to Richard at every step. And, God knows, he had been a great partner in this dance, threatening her, blackmailing her, manipulating people around him, making it easy for everybody in the house to hate and despise him. Like a bull facing a red rag, he had rushed, charging to the merest provocation, comforting her in the idea that this relationship was a toxic one, comforting the whole family in the idea that Mary's future and Downton's future depended on the same man, Matthew…

And now? The man she wanted had burnt all the bridges, and she did not know the first thing about the one she was supposed to marry...

The piano was bad, and was in dire need of some serious tuning, but it was still a piano, and playing always had a soothing effect on him. It was a school of concentration and focus in which anger had no place. "This is quite simple," his mother used to say when he struggled with his frustrations. "Keep on like that, and you'll never be able to produce a decent sound. Take a breath, run around the corner, calm down, and you'll finish the piece in no time." Thirty years later, it was still the kind of advice he followed respectfully, especially in the unnerving, frustrating atmosphere of Downton.

Usually, the few days he spent on a regular basis in Yorkshire left him bitter and angry, as his appointments on Monday mornings could testify. Ever since the announcement of the engagement – not his smartest move nor his most considerate gesture, granted, but Mary wanting to pay him off for his services like a mere employee after keeping their agreement secret for months had managed to push him off the edge of decency – the weekly routine had been the same. He boarded on the train to Yorkshire every other Friday hoping to find a better situation, impatient to meet Mary again, much to his growing shame. Saturdays could range from bearable to utterly unbearable and hurtful, depending on a certain man's presence. Most Sundays left him wondering why he kept doing this to himself. As a result, he was a true nightmare on Monday mornings, so much that his own employees had nicknamed the day after his routine visit to Yorkshire Black Monday. The rest of the week usually rushed in blur. The week-ends he did not spend in Downton were spent at the hospital where his nephew was slowly but surely suffocating from exposure to mustard gas. Then, he started another week, calmer. Then came Thursdays when he found he missed Mary dearly and booked his ticket to Downton, ashamed at his own behavior. Richard Carlisle was a proud man, too proud for his own good one might comment, yet, he kept on coming back for more humiliation. He was a rational man as well, and recognized when a situation did not deserve anymore investment, yet he kept coming back hoping against all odds for an unrealistic chance.

A fool in love.

This was what he was, unable to put an end to a hopeless relationship, desperate for a smile or some attention. Sometimes, the man he was becoming while in Downton quite disgusted him. He did not even like Yorkshire and he still bought an estate there, spending the money he had reserved to buy and restore some castle in the Highlands. He was a manipulative and cynical bastard, everybody in the London place knew it, but asking a servant to spy on his fiancée was something he would never have seen himself doing. Work was one thing, and private life another, normally. He did it nonetheless. Groping arms, commanding, threatening… What was happening to him? This place, and this situation, seemed to nurture the worst and darkest sides of his personality, and it made him sad.

Whatever he did, it was the wrong thing to do or to say. Dinners were particularly painful when he could feel each pair of eyes, assessing, judging him, considering him like a stranger. Worst of all, Mary often acted as if he was not here at all, or as though his very presence was an inconvenience. What the hell was he doing here? He could enjoy the weekend with his friends in London, visit his family in Edinburgh, or spend the night with Isabel, the Mexican painter who was so fond of him back in 1916, and would appreciate him visiting sometime soon. when they met again at the inauguration of her new exposition last week. "No me le creo, Rico, te convertiste en un monje," she had mocked him, giving him her brand new address in North London when they met again at the inauguration of her new exposition last week.

A fool in love.

Of course, he had ignored the very tempting invitation, and instead, against all reason, he had booked the first train to Yorkshire as soon as he has heard about the bout of flu in Downton. The whole trip had been a nightmare as his imagination went wild. In Leicester, he pictured Mary fainting from exhaustion because she had kept vigil by her mother's bedside all night. In Sheffield, he hoped she would be reasonable and stay the hell away from the sick, Lavinia and her damn fiancé especially. In Bradford, he could not help but visualizing a coughing and feverish Mary, lying in her bed. Witnessing Michael's worsening condition week after week made him paranoid. When he had arrived in Downton, the very sight of Mary, healthy and snob and snarky, was such a relief that he almost did not mind that, once again, she had managed to invite Cousin Matthew in the conversation. "Poor Matthew," she lamented when he was stuck in his chair, but otherwise perfectly healthy and alive, contrary to too many men. "Poor Matthew," she cried when he was afflicted by his fiancée's sickness. Matthew this. Matthew that. "Poor Matthew," she managed in a blank voice even when he stepped on Mary and made her share the burden of his own guilt. Richard had behaved badly, he could recognize that much, and wished he had it in him to find the words to apologize, but seeing this big hypocritical heir as he imposed his egoism on his own fiancée again and again was unbearable.

He was still reeling from the scene he witnessed earlier this morning at the graveyard, and no amount of Beethoven seemed to appease his seething mind. His right middle finger and ring finger mixed up a difficult crescendo passage but he managed to keep on with the phrase. "She died of broken heart…" As if Spanish flu was not a reasonable enough explanation! "We are cursed, you and I…" His left thumb touched two keys at the same time, producing a rather discordant sound. All of a sudden, Richard stopped playing and punched the keyboard.

No use in butchering Beethoven anymore…

The sudden interruption and the unexpected outburst caught Mary by surprise, and her first reflex was retreating down the corridor. She did not know what to do with this unguarded moment she'd just witnessed; she did not want to embarrass him, or herself. However, at the same time, the sight had been oddly comforting, the music soothing, and for a few minutes, she had forgotten her guilt… So the young woman stood there, in the shadows, hoping her fiancé would not notice her presence. Unfortunately, Mary never had been very good at hide and seek – this always had been Edith's area of expertise, much to her jealousy – and she discovered her hiding place was in fact in plain view when Richard turned around to reach for his cigarettes.

"I didn't know I had an audience," he stated as he cracked a match, oblivious to the fact there was a lady in front of him. This simple gesture, the mere fact he was smoking cigarettes and not the cigar, and the open bottle of beer on the table, the rolled up sleeves of his shirt, his whole attitude indicated that the kitchen had somewhat become his lair over the course of time. One more thing she did not know about Richard.

This was unsettling.

"Mrs Patmore is going to have a fit when she will learn how comfortable you are in her kitchen," she teased. Snide remarks appeared to be her only weapon left to hide both the guilt that had led her down the stairs and the confusion the present scene was provoking in her mind.

"Mrs Patmore and I have an agreement," he exhaled a puff of smoke and reached for his beer. "I can do as I please as long I leave the place like I found it." He smiled, a rare occurrence. "Great place to work, bad piano nonetheless, but it does possess the merit of being in a place where I won't disturb anyone," Richard commented as he gestured around him.

"False modesty does not suit you, Richard." This unwanted, veiled compliment surprised him as much as herself.

"Actually, I am content just playing for myself. I am selfish that way," he replied, studying her face intently for a few seconds before adding with a pointed stare. "Now we have commented on my nightly, insomniac habits, let's talk about your presence here, which isn't a common occurrence, I believe."

Typical Richard. When cornered, always strike back. He could use this adage as a motto the day he would obtain a lordship and a coat of arms…

Mary stood there, unable to talk back as she realized he was reading through her like an open book, and, for once, he did not bother to hide his perceptive gaze behind a veil of badly imitated aristocratic coldness. His blue eyes were unwavering and pinned her in place; his face did not betray a single emotion. The only indicator of his mood was his right hand playing nervously with the match box.

What could she answer to such a pointed question, and the veiled interrogation behind it she did not want to recognize? What are you doing here? There was no easy answer that would allude to her guilt and the ghosts she tried to flee. Are you alright? There was no way she would admit to Richard how much Matthew had hurt her this morning, absolutely none at all. The way she had clung to his arm, and the comfort she had found in his mere presence by her side while walking back to Downton had been a moment of weakness she wanted to forget.

Mary closed her eyes and sighed, as if those gestures would make the inquisitive stare go away. However, when she finally looked back at him, she discovered through unshed tears he had left his chair and was walking to her, hands in his pockets, still staring at her.

"Nothing's your fault, y'know," he almost whispered, his face serious but not unkind, his usual carefully controlled accent suddenly slipping back to his Scottish roots. A few steps more and he reached the spot she had been glued to since he had noticed her presence in the room.

Then, in spite of every rule of good breeding, he wrapped his arms around her in a tight embrace. "Nothing's your fault," Richard repeated as he stroked her back in a soothing motion.

This was most unsettling.

Sir Richard Carlisle did not comfort people, didn't he?

And Lady Mary Crawley should not find any comfort in arms others than Matthew's, should she?

The first thing Richard saw when he glimpsed Mary standing on the threshold of the kitchen was how pale she was. Then, as they exchanged some futile banter about Mrs Patmore and her sacred territory, he noticed her eyes, red with lack of sleep and unshed tears. She was physically and morally exhausted, it was obvious to anyone caring to observe, and yet, she managed to maintain this aristocratic, cold composure that drove him crazy at times.

The cold and careful Lady Mary Crawley.

Most of time, he let her think that her act convinced him as it seemed to convince everybody around her. However, tonight, he had little patience for these games and aimed at the throat out of the blue. He immediately hated himself for the pain his lucid interrogation inflicted on his fiancée, but he managed to force his expression into a neutral mask – in London, his rivals and his partners as well had learnt to fear his poker face – and kept on examining her, the way she worried her bottom lip while considering his question, the way she crossed her arms in a defensive posture, the way her sigh sounded almost like a strangled sob. Mary never answered him. To be true, she did not need to, her whole attitude being a clear enough indication of the toll the past few days had taken on the young woman. He went on examining the quivering form, fighting against the surge of pity and the urge to comfort her that threatened to overwhelm him.

What the hell was he doing here? Why was he hesitating? She was his fiancée, for goodness' sake! If he did not help Mary in this situation, when would he ever comfort her? However, the remembrance of their confrontation in his office when she asked for his help to bury the Pamuk story was still a stinging memory. She did not want his help; she had made sure he understood that as she proposed to pay him back. The evocation alone of this moment and its consequences was enough to keep him motionless in his chair…Mary did not want him, period.

The cold and careful Lady Mary Crawley.

Then, the thought that had prompted him to seek refuge in his familiar lair tonight crept back to the forefront of his thoughts. Lavinia's funeral easily could have been Mary's, and only some mysterious medical hazard had protected her as she exactly did everything that exposed her to contamination. Hell! He had witnessed young people dying from the flu without previous contact with a sick person, in his own staff, in his home, at the office. His father in Edinburgh commented in a letter earlier this year about the paralysis that struck the city, the visible fear in the street, how people avoided one another as much as possible. Michael's barely recovering lungs had not resisted the bout of flu he suffered last January, and he was now dying, stuck in a London hospital, thousands miles from his family in New Zealand. It could have been Mary, and nobody seemed to care, even herself. Richard shook his head angrily. Of course she did not care! She was too busy berating herself and convincing herself she was obviously cursed!

Unable to help himself anymore, he got up and walked to her with feigned nonchalance. He blurted out some whispered reassurance and his emotions got the better of him, as the slip back to his Scottish brogue indicated. The dam had broken. Never leaving her eyes and, for once, without thinking, he engulfed Mary in a tight embrace, reassuring her, soothing her, and taking comfort in her warmth, proof she was not the one in her grave.

The cold and careful Lady Mary Crawley felt good in his arms.

Richard's unexpected show of affection had paralyzed Mary, and it took her a few moments to accept the very idea to relax in his embrace. She should not accept such a common behavior. She should berate him. Yet, she could not bring herself to do anything but accept the comfort he was offering her at the end of this hellish day. More than the gesture, the repeated words – Nothing's your fault – felt like a balm on her guilty mind. Oh! She had wanted to hear these simple words so much today! And they never came… Instead, she still could feel the sting of Matthew's terrible declaration – We are cursed, you and I – and the weight of his accusing eyes. In spite of her love for him, she could not help but revolt a little at the thought he intended to make her share the load of his guilt and poor choices. However, she could not deny there was some truth in this declaration: her own poor choices since the Pamuk incident had caused much grief to the people around her, Matthew, Anna, Bates…She did not deserve to be happy with Matthew, he was right. She even did not deserve Richard, the blackmailing newspaper man and the nonchalant pianist.

"I am a lost cause," she murmured the same way she had uttered similar words to her mother.

The complaint did not escape her fiancé's attention. The soothing hand stopped its movement at once and she felt him catch her shoulder firmly as he stepped back to stare at her in disbelief.

"Beg your pardon?" he replied sharply. "Tell me I didn't quite hear that nonsense." His Scottish accent became heavier with each uttered word.

"You heard Matthew at the funeral!" she answered feebly. "It is because of us that…"

"Enough!" he barked, his eyes angry and sad at the same time, before walking to the chair where he had laid his suit coat. When he offered her the garment, he commented in calmer tone: "Good thing you didn't change into your nightgown yet. Let's have a walk, shall we?" Then he made sure she had wrapped his coat around her shoulders, took her hand and led her outside, lighting another cigarette on their way out.

Walking in the middle of the night with her heels was an awkward matter, and she had to cling to Richard's arm to keep her footing. He, on the other hand, seemed comfortable with the moonlight and eluded the traps of the road easily. Night birds and other animals gave a strange life to the woods surrounding them, but Richard paid them no mind whereas she could not help but look right and left, alerted as she was by the merest sound. A few minutes passed, and she became accustomed to the darkness at last, and stopped tripping with every other step she made. She still clung to his arm, but only because Richard's proximity made her feel warm. A few minutes more passed by, and the sounds of the woods lost their worrying quality and, rather unexpectedly, Mary began to enjoy the surreal atmosphere. They soon reached the confines of Downton, then walked past the deserted village, finally stopping in the graveyard by the church.

Without hesitating, Richard led her through the tombs to the most recent ones. It was too dark to decipher the names and the dates, but she could easily visualize them, recognize them, even.

Young men she barely knew who died as soon as August 1914 or as late as November 1918.

Entire families wiped out when the flu had reached Downton last summer or, more recently, in the past days.

William.

Lavinia…

"These are lost causes, Mary," Richard broke the silence at last, his voice soft, tender almost. "You are alive. You still have a future." He paused, taking a shaky breath as the memory of a past conversation with Michael came back to him. "You're young. You survived the damn flu, your mother as well. You can't give up; on the contrary, you should count your blessings, and move on."

He had pronounced the last few words more harshly than he intended, but the hell with that. The emotions of the day and the beers he had drunk in the kitchen caused him to reveal much more about himself than he was comfortable with. He went on anyway in soft voice as he took her limp hands:

"I know I counted mine today."

Was it the tone he had used? The words? Mary's head snapped back up and she considered him as if she looked at his face for the very first time.

"It was never a business arrangement." It was not a question.

He shook his head, even she barely could distinguish the movement in the darkness.

"Why me?" This was a question, and an unexpected one at that.

"Why not you?" he shot back, unable to form a coherent answer. When did they start about his damn feelings by the way?

"Why?" she insisted, her voice quivering with self-doubt.

"Here we are," Richard thought as he considered the figure in front of him. For all her pride and snob demeanor, Mary really thought she was a lost cause…

"Because you make me curious," he answered as trustfully as he could. "You are a puzzle and I'll need a lifetime to solve it, that's why I want to marry you. The fact that you're beautiful is an added bonus," he deadpanned. Then, more seriously, he concluded, "And, for some unknown reason, I'm happy when I'm around you."

"Richard, I…" He could hear the confusion in her voice. "I didn't realize… I am…"

"An idiot, and so am I," he finished for her. Goodness, he hated this kind of conversation. The sooner it was over, the better he was. He never liked express himself with words, which was quite the paradox considering his job. "We make quite the pair, don't you think?" Richard concluded, anxious to put an end to a situation in which he feared he had revealed too much. His tongue always had been sharp to insult or threaten people, however, he always had been more at ease with physical demonstration as a mode of expression of his passions or affections. So he lit one last cigarette, wrapped his arm around her shivering shoulders, and led her on the way back to Downton in a comfortable silence.