Sight Line
He touched her far more frequently and far more publicly than was proper, she knew.
In the world they had built for each other in Dublin, this was not a problem.
She had blushed that first evening, when Kieran sat back in his chair and announced with a grin to the rest of the family who had gathered around to catch their first glimpse of that mysterious creature, Tom's nobleborn English bride, that he would not even be pretending to flirt with Sybil, because he'd caught them snogging in the kitchen earlier, and he'd immediately understood there was clearly no point.
Tom had given his brother a good-natured punch in his shoulder, shot a rueful grin at the rest of the Bransons and, holding her gaze with his own, asked them, "Well, can you blame me then, when she blushes so prettily?"
His mother promptly slapped him upside the head for "embarrassing the poor girl", and amid the peals of laughter that caused, Sybil overcame her unease, broke out into a smile, and began to feel at home.
But life was different here, at Downton.
He would lay his hand upon her knee, and she would rest hers on top, perhaps intertwine their fingers. Papa's eyebrows would draw together in a frown, Granny's lips would purse, Mamma's gaze would shift to her tea cup, and Mary and Edith both would shoot her a half-disapproving, half-amused look, as if to say "Really, Sybil? Here you go again."
Let them react how they like; she didn't care a jot.
Besides, the touching didn't bother her, and surely that was the most important thing, wasn't it? Besides, he had always looked at her a great deal before; he still did, at that. She had quickly therefore concluded that the touching was simply the natural evolution of the looking.
It was after the garden party, really, that she first became aware of the looking; after the confusing, elating moments in which she felt his arm against her back and then his hand, strong, steady, warm, in her own.
Those touches had made her curious. She wondered if he found them similarly intriguing; he had an inquisitive mind, after all, and she respected that, it was one of her favourite things about him.
And so she began casting what she considered to be surreptitiously inquisitive glances at him, only to find to her surprise that his gaze was already fixed on her.
She would colour then, embarrassed to have been caught out, and quickly glance away, look out the window, fake a cough, turn to a sister, fiddle with her gloves, anything to pretend not to have noticed his eyes on her.
But it became increasingly difficult to divert her attention from the words "I don't suppose..."while they chased each other so maddeningly around and around in her head, and, oh, how foolish to resent a head injury! she couldn't help but grow a little regretful that she couldn't remember more clearly what it had felt like, when he had held her in his arms and carried her away from the brawl at the Count.
How very odd it was, she had thought after those first moments of brief contact, and how inhumane it seemed, that she could count on her fingers the number of times they had touched that hadn't involved her being handed into or helped out of the motor.
How very odd it was, she had thought after their first kiss, and oh, what a kiss it had been, that a touch that felt to her to be so natural, so right, was considered such a shocking thing. To denounce a touch that made her fingers tremble as they brushed against his jaw and her heart soar as he gently pulled her closer to him as wrong and bad; well, how could that be anything but artificial?
She felt certain that he must agree: artifice was, after all, a thing they both despised.
As it turned out, she had the right of it; agree he did, for as soon as they had broken apart long enough to draw breath, he kissed her again.
And then again.
It was liberating, really, for her, too, to now be able to look at him and touch him as much as she liked. Together, they had abandoned the pretense that belonged to life at Downton. In the world they had built for each other, no longer was she forced to demurely avert her eyes.
He liked to tease her sometimes, to tell her that she had fallen in love with the back of a neck, with perhaps, on days she was very lucky indeed, an occasional hint of the base of his throat.
She would retort that at least she had had something to look at; he had fallen in love with hastily stolen glances of the back seat, and by doing so, had regularly endangered both of their lives. It was a miracle, really, that they had ever made it to this day.
It was a miracle, really, he would reply then, quietly, all the while looking at her with such love in his eyes that she felt as though she were the most powerful being in the world.
He had called her a free spirit once, but they were that, the both of them, together, and of their private rebellion, like him, she hadn't nearly had her fill.
And as long as he looked at her with that love in his eyes, as far as she was concerned, everyone else was free to disapprove of her kissing her husband's cheek in the drawing room when the men joined the ladies after dinner as much as they jolly well liked.
AN: Many thanks to all who commented so positively on my first Downton Abbey fanfic! How gratifying to have something I put together during my commute to work so well received! This is this morning's commuter-fic, a companion piece of sorts to "Life Line".