A/N: This is my take on THE scene in the 5x07 preview. I set off to write something short and fluffy involving making out and perhaps I have succeeded... but as I wrote, I found I had more and more issues with the scene and with the behaviour of both Charles and Mary in 5x06 and what could lead to this kiss and what the fall out would be. Honestly, the more complicated the characters become and the more difficult it is to resolve their relationship, the more interesting it becomes so I have really loved writing this, but it's not quite what I set out to do. I hope you enjoy it anyway!
Title comes from the song "Lady Come Down" featured in the 2002 film of The Importance of Being Earnest:
True love is but a woman's toy
They never know their lover's pain
And I who loved as loves a boy
Must love in vain
"The important question," said Mabel during the interval of The Importance of Being Earnest as they all stood around the lobby with glasses of wine, "is am I Gwendolen or Cecily?"
"Cecily surely," said Mary, who saw herself as more of a Gwendolen.
"And yet you spend so much more time in the country."
"My German is appalling."
"So is hers!"
"Ladies," interrupted Charles with a laugh and a glint in his eye, "you would both make excellent heroines in any Wildean comedy but perhaps it will help you to decide if I were to say that I have always fancied myself an Algie."
"You mean you enjoy foisting yourself on people's hospitality unannounced and striking up flirtations in inappropriate quarters?" said Tony with an attempt at levity that did not quite succeed in concealing his general irritation with how the evening was going so far.
"Charles knows himself too well!" commented Mabel with a sidelong glance at Mary.
"Well, if I am to be Jack," continued Tony, looking more pleased as he considered the matter further, "then I should think it was obvious: Mary must be Gwendolen, which is just what you wanted!"
Charles, Mary and Mabel concealed a sigh, almost as one being. The bell rang to signal the end of the interval.
Somehow, as they re-entered the auditorium, the seating arrangements changed. Mabel found herself on the end, with Tony between her and Mary instead of keeping the two lovers apart as they had managed at the beginning.
"The second act is my favourite!" exclaimed Mabel, laying a hand on Tony's arm as they sat down and forcing his attention to her.
Charles leaned in close to Mary and murmured in her ear, "For what it's worth, I think you'd make a lovely Cecily."
She wriggled and sat up straighter. "I don't care who I am so long as it is not Miss Prism. Edith can have her."
Tony heard part of her speech and turned from Mabel. "Mary as Miss Prism? That's absurd!"
"Shh, the curtain's going up," said Mary, inching away from him.
Even so, Charles leaned even closer to her and whispered, his breath hot on her ear, "Tony's not biting. We'll have to try something different."
"What do you suggest?" she murmured back out of the corner of her mouth, her eyes on the stage.
"Shhhh!" hissed Tony in her other ear, as a very blonde and buxom Cecily dressed in heavy Edwardian clothes declared that German wasn't at all a becoming language.
Charles looked away and tapped his finger against his programme. "I'll think of something," he breathed so quietly that Mary barely heard him.
By the time the curtain came down on three happy fictional couples at the end of Act Three the two couples in the stalls had progressed no further in resolving their own affairs. They stood up and the ladies put on their hats and began to inch out of their row.
"Well, Mary," began Tony.
"Oh! I seem to have dropped my glove!" exclaimed Mabel. "Tony, be a lamb and help me look; the lighting is so bad and I can't tell where it's gone."
Without waiting for a response, she dived down among the seats and Tony was too chivalrous not to offer his assistance.
Mary met Charles' eye briefly before following him swiftly along their row and out into the flood of people leaving the auditorium.
"That was well done by Mabel," he commented as their pace naturally slowed as the crowd thickened near the doors, his shoulder bumping hers.
"Very," replied Mary drily. She pulled on her gloves with a sharp movement and suddenly burst out, "I really cannot take much more of Tony."
In the lobby, the crowd thinned as the audience went in different directions to find other members of their parties or a cab. As if by common consent, Mary and Charles took up a position out of the way to wait for Tony and Mabel.
Charles looked at her sympathetically and with something more than sympathy in his expression that she did not care to analyse. Staring out across the lobby at the door from which Tony would emerge any second, she continued bitterly, "Never mind whether I led him on or not because I have done nothing I am ashamed of, but I have told him that I do not want to marry him on more than one occasion. Why can't he accept it?"
Her companion did not reply and Mary sighed. Perhaps Mabel would have declared her passionate love to him on the floor of row H by this point and Tony would have fallen into her arms, but that was all too likely the sort of romantic fantasy that-
"Kiss me."
Mary's head swung round to face Charles. "What?" Her eyes automatically flicked down to his lips and back and her heart gave a treacherous leap, even as rationally she disbelieved what she had heard.
"Kiss me," he repeated more urgently and Mary sucked in a breath to answer – what? But before she could formulate anything to say, unable to look away from his dark eyes, steadily looking into hers, he had taken her gently by the upper arms, cried, "Now!" and pressed his lips to hers, just as a new stream of people came out into the lobby.
It was too unexpected, too forceful and far too public for Mary to do anything other than freeze with displeasure. There were people who would see them; after all the care she went to over Liverpool, was she to be ruined because of this one kiss she had not asked for in a London theatre? And behind this conscious thought, was a flash of anger and hurt: this was not how she had wanted him to kiss her.
But for all the force of the kiss and his intention behind it, his hands rested very lightly on her arms and his lips were soft and somehow it was so very much him that even if the kiss was unwelcome, somehow she found herself accepting it. She did not push him away at least.
Then - "Mary!" in tones of outrage, and Charles stepped back from her, slowly and purposefully, letting his hands drop to his sides, his expression studiously neutral.
Her face was still frozen in the expression of shock she had worn when he had given that heated order to kiss him, but now it was Tony she was facing, with Mabel Lane Fox a step behind him, her hand clasped over her mouth to stifle her laughter and her eyes bright with amusement and approval.
"This is just the kind of nonsense I'd expect from you, Blake," said Tony, taking a step forward before changing his mind about going any further. He clutched his hat in both hands as if he might use it as a weapon. "but I thought better of you, Mary. I stuck up for you!"
Mary swallowed and managed to unfreeze. She spread her hands and shrugged. "I don't know why you're surprised, Tony. It seems this is who I am," she finished coldly, glancing at Charles as she spoke.
Tony looked as if he wanted to punch someone but was not sure whom to start with. Charles looked at the floor and Mabel bit her lip, her shoulders shaking.
"I wish you joy of her," muttered Lord Gillingham eventually. "Excuse me."
He pushed past them and round the corner out of sight. Presently Charles looked up and smiled at the two ladies. "Well, I think that went rather-"
"No," interrupted Mary. "Don't speak."
He fell silent with a chastened look. Mabel drew a deep breath. "I won't ask you to see me home, Charles. I can find a cab perfectly well myself. Goodnight, Mary." As she sashayed past them, she touched Mary's arm briefly and smiled at her, a sudden, unexpected smile of female solidarity that Mary was still too surprised to return but nevertheless felt warmed by.
After she left, the silence fell again, for the rest of the audience had gone by now as well. Mary was not sure she had ever been so angry in all her life. It was the kind of anger that had arisen so abruptly and forcefully that she felt it might spill out of her in some unexpected way if she dared to open her mouth. It was the anger of hurt and betrayal and some indescribable passion that was welling up within her uncontrollably, the longer she stood perfectly still, clutching her handbag, under the clock in this luxurious, red velvet theatre lobby.
"If you're going to say something, you'd better get on with it," said Charles Blake eventually, eyeing her, for once without a trace of a smirk on his face.
Mary found she could not look at him, not without remembering the imprint his fingers had made on her arm or the strangely familiar touch of his lips against hers.
"I prefer to kiss in private," she said eventually, forcing herself to meet his eyes.
His eyebrows shot up. "So do I." He tapped his fingers against his leg restlessly a moment. "But you have to admit it did the trick."
She lifted one shoulder and lowered it in a kind of acknowledgement that he was right. "Poor Tony."
Now he took a step towards her and spoke with more energy though still quietly. "So it's 'poor Tony' now, is it? Good God, Mary, you'd drive any man to distraction!"
"Then get out, Charles! Go to hell!" she cried suddenly, astonishing herself.
He blinked but did not move away from her. "For you, gladly! And back again, if you asked me. I would have thought I'd have proved myself by now though."
"Proved yourself?" She glared at him. "Is this all a game to you? Do you think my reputation is a game?"
"Do you?"
"Don't do this, Charles!" she snapped. "You don't have the right."
"Don't I? Mary, I have fought you and fought with you and I have loved you too and now I have done what you wanted and rid you of Tony Gillingham – we have rid you of Tony Gillingham. You're a free woman now."
She drew a deep breath. "You give me too much credit. The initiative was all yours."
"You pushed me to it; don't play coy, Mary. You've led me on as much as you led him on. Oh Charles, I really cannot take much more..."
Mary raised her arm, sure in that moment that she would actually strike him but he caught her wrist and stopped her.
"You told me," she said, trying to keep her voice even, "that you were not the type to die of a broken heart. You plotted with me and helped me and you did not make love to me so I am not sure what made you think you could kiss me like that."
Charles lowered his hand and her arm with it, though he did not let go, and peered at her, his eyes bright with intelligence. "Is it the fact that I kissed you that offends you so much or the fact that I kissed you badly and for all the wrong reasons?"
Her eyes flickered warily across his face. "Those are your words, not mine."
"I think they're true words and so do you." He sighed and moved half a step away from her, enough to give her her own space. "Mary, you know why I did it. You know that it worked. As for the rest – I'm sorry." He hesitated, looked away and half smiled before turning back to her. "But I'm afraid I'd be lying if I said I regretted it."
His hand on her wrist had shifted and somehow it was her hand he was holding now and his thumb skirted over her knuckles, distracting her attention from his words and making her mind feel fuzzy, making her forget that she was angry.
"And yet it was such a bad kiss..."
"I'll have to do better next time. If you'll let me."
Mary's heart flipped over, and her eyes flickered downwards again, but she pursed her lips, refusing to smile. "You could certainly do with the practice."
He tilted his head and narrowed his eyes, trying to read her. Then, very deliberately he placed his hat on his head to free up his other hand and cupped her cheek with it. He smiled slowly. "I was telling the truth before, Mary. I'm not the type to die of a broken heart; nobody is these days. Not even Tony would go that far, even for you." His thumb brushed over her cheek. "But don't think for a moment that just because I don't go in for big, meaningless romantic gestures I don't love you. I do very much and, my God, I have done ever since you smeared mud across my face that night at Downton."
His eyes crinkled into a rueful, self-deprecating smile as if he could not help it and Mary ducked her head. "Careful, Charles, or you will find yourself making a big romantic gesture without meaning to."
"Like this?" he queried too innocently. Before she could draw breath, he had tugged her hands and pulled her round the corner and into a stairwell, hidden from the lone theatre attendant who was locking up the ticket desk. Then his mouth was on hers and she reached for him as if drowning, pulling him close to her as he pushed her back against the wall, his body pressed tightly against hers so she could feel the full weight of him, deliciously warm and firm in contrast to the cool hardness of the wall behind her. His hands moulded her to him, every caress entwining them more closely together and she clung to him, angry and forceful and pliant and sensual all at once.
They parted eventually as they had to, breathing hard, still almost indecently interlocked in each other's arms. Mary had even caught one foot round his ankle. He twisted a strand of her short hair, gave it a light tug and raised his eyebrows, his gaze hot.
"Any improvement, milady?"
Mary took a deep breath to regulate her breathing and decided to ignore the question; he was quite smug enough already. "Just because I've kissed you, don't think I'm going to take you to Liverpool for a week."
He pretended to consider the matter. "I can think of better places to go. Edinburgh's pleasant at this time of year. Dublin, if you can stand the ferry. Penzance for the art-"
She would go with him to all of them one after the other if he continued to press his leg between hers in that infuriating way. Instead she ran her hands down his shoulders to his chest and gently pushed him away. "I'm perfectly serious, Charles. I haven't agreed to marry you and-"
"I haven't asked you!" He held her hands loosely between them and grinned at her though his expression was serious.
This stopped her in mid flow and he swayed forward to kiss the surprise away. "I won't ask until I'm sure you'll say yes."
"What if-" She stopped. "That might take a long time."
"Then we shall have many pleasant interludes in theatre lobbies and other equally delightful places and I shall remain breathless from suspense. Never forget, Mary, that the very essence of romance is uncertainty!"
She searched his face, considering the man in front of her. "I'm afraid I can't do that."
"Can't do what?"
She twisted her head, briefly pressing her eyes shut, and stepped away from him with a wrench. "Have pleasant interludes in theatre lobbies."
"Are you saying that you didn't enjoy this one?" he asked with real anxiety.
"Don't fish, Charles. No. You want something from me which I can't give you, not now anyway. And what you're suggesting..." She finally met his eyes. "It's not fair on either of us."
He reached for her again. "I can take care of myself, Mary."
She longed to kiss the corner of his mouth where his lips turned up in an oddly appealing mixture of supplication and self-confidence. Instead, she adjusted her hat and said coolly, "I'm not that sort of woman, Charles. I thought perhaps I was but I don't think I am after all. I think, perhaps, it would be better if we do not see each other again."
"Mary!"
"Not for a little while, anyway," she added, unable to help relenting at the real hurt in his expression.
All the same, she held her hand out and was glad to see that it was steady. "Goodbye, Charles."
He did not take the offered hand. "Let me at least see you home."
"If Mabel can find a cab for herself so can I."
For a moment he held her gaze, trying to understand her rejection, trying to understand whether this was just one more twist in their ongoing battle that he knew he would one day win (they would one day win together) or if she really intended never to see him again, never to kiss him again. And how could he give her up after tonight? Finally, he shrugged and forced a smile as he took her hand in a firm grip and squeezed it.
She smiled faintly at him, admiring and resenting him in equal measure. She pulled her hand away in a single businesslike movement and walked away, ignoring the lingering tingle of warmth in her fingers.
Charles watched her leave and rallied, unable to let her have the last word when it came to it. He took two rapid steps forward and called suddenly, "You know - this is only the end of Act One!"
Mary stopped and half turned around. "And how many acts are there?"
"Oh, as many as you want. Your choice, Mary!"
She angled her head so that he could not see her raise her eyebrows and smile as she walked out of the lobby.
Thanks for reading! As always, your comments are much appreciated. :)