A Marriage Based on Love: Chapter 1
This is an AU I've thought about maybe a bit in the past, but never truly considered it until today. Sooooo here it is.
August 1913
She didn't know what had compelled her to write to him. She had met him at some ball or another a couple of years ago, and ran into him frequently enough for him to stutter out his question of permission to write to her. Perhaps she had found it endearing at the time, perhaps she hadn't. Regardless of what she thought then, it had played no role in her dismissal of him after his ill-fated visit to Downton with his diplomat friend, whom she had taken as a lover, which had resulted in his death in her bed. If Evelyn had his suspicions, she hoped that he had kept them to himself.
Yet her mother's revelation the night before that awful dinner with Anthony Strallan made her doubt his up until now gentlemanly, if not dull, nature. If he hadn't started the rumors in London, who had? She wasn't about to marry Sir Anthony Strallan no matter what her prospects were, and Cousin Matthew—
No, things could never be that desperate.
The rational thing to do was probably to neither confirm nor deny the rumors, but if Mary Crawley was consistently anything, it wasn't rational. She needed to know if her friend—for that is what he had been, at least until now—had anything to do with the story apparently circulating London that she was not virtuous.
So when Evelyn Napier returned home from his desk at the Foreign Office, he was surprised at the single letter in the evening post that his butler Byrne handed him, written in her hand. "T-thank you," he managed to get out after staring at it as if it were some ancient relic for the first few seconds, then immediately took off toward the study which was technically his father's, but since he lived in Grimsby the whole year as it reminded him of his dear departed wife, Evelyn had taken it as his own.
Sinking into the chair at the mahogany desk, his trembling hands opened the letter and his dark blue eyes read it once, twice, and then a third time just to convince himself that she had written to him, after nearly a year since that visit. Of course her mother had left the invitation open, asking him if they would see him again, but he had refused on the basis that his intentions were marriage and he would not marry a woman that didn't love him. He knew how these things worked. Had he stayed, they would have expected the two of them to marry, and although he was sure that she would get many more offers if she had not accepted him, which, if she had, would have purely been on the basis of her parents' influence and likely never his qualities—which was why he could never subject her to that. Oh, he would have tried to do everything he could to make her happy, but too often than not people like them were stuck in marriages of convenience, and he never wanted his wife to feel that.
Hence why he was marrying Sarah Semphill. He had met her at a ball a few months before, and had proposed a few days ago, and she had accepted. She was charming, she liked Trollope ( which was always a plus ), she took avid interest in his work—in him—and loved him. She had been unafraid to say it as well, he recalled walking in Kensington Gardens with her and she had told him, quite boldly, how she felt. He had not known what to say.
It was a terrible feeling to be loved and yet not be able to say that you loved that person back. Nothing should have stopped him from saying the words genuinely. He had of course told her that he loved her back, but to him the words fell flat. Did he really? He hated himself for realizing that he doubted the words more than the actual doubting itself.
Sarah was perfect, in the sense that he should feel lucky—that he was lucky—to have found her because he realized that he didn't want much out of life, just a job he enjoyed ( because contrary to many of his peers he felt it necessary to do something constructive with his life until he inherited ), a stable home, and a wife that he adored and who loved him back. He had adored Sarah, initially, because they had common ground. He enjoyed her company—and was that not important when searching for a companion for the next forty, fifty years of his life?
But then that god-awful letter arrived that caused him to doubt everything he thought he had felt for the past several weeks.
Why and how could any one person have this much power over him? Yes, he had had a crush on her—a terrible crush—from the moment he had first seen her at her debutante ball, and he had refrained from asking her to dance initially because of how fascinated he had been. It had taken a shove—verbal and physical—from an Oxford friend to get him to ask her for a dance.
Up until Mary his experiences with women had been introductions to Lady such-and-such or the Honorable Miss this-or-that at some function or another. Nameless faces that he forgot, or once in a while one he found stunning but didn't notice him. And why should any of them have? He worked, for the Foreign Office, mainly in London though he had been abroad a few times. Of course none of them wanted to hear of his travels, so there was that. His idea of fun was reading a novel or writing a poem just after supper, or a hunt—none of which were enough to interest her. He couldn't very well mold who he was around whatever her ideas of dashing were, so he had pushed himself to move on, even with the realization that yes, he had loved her. He had loved how different she was, how spirited. He loved her often biting sense of humor in spite of his own mild-mannered nature, he loved how she had sent him her copy of Pride and Prejudice in exchange for his The Warden, he loved that she had been the only one to make him smile after his mother's death…
He loved Mary Crawley and it would be the end of him.
He rubbed his temples as he read the letter a final time.
Dear Mr. Napier,
I am in London for a few days beginning Sunday next. I will be staying at my Aunt Rosamund's house in Eaton Square, and I've talked it over with her and would like to ask you to dinner. I know that we parted on less than ideal terms, and would very much like to remedy that.
Sincerely,
Mary Crawley
The first thing he had noticed was the glaring formality beginning with the use of his title—Mr. Napier—instead of his first name, which they had somehow drifted into using, mutually, for the past year at least. Of course never in front of anyone, but in their letters at least…and now that had changed. Was she angry at him? It was understandable. He had brought great difficulty on her house, what with Kemal's death. It was unfortunate and inexplicable, but still, he felt that it would not have happened—at least not there—if he had not brought him. He wanted to make it up to her and her parents in some way, if he could, but there was nothing he could think of that he could do.
Why then, was she asking him to dinner? There was no need for her to offer him an olive branch—he felt nothing that was not amicable toward her. Did she truly miss their correspondence—miss him? He had not seen fit to write because he figured that she didn't want to hear from him again…
He wanted with all his heart to accept the invitation. But even though the engagement still wasn't announced, it didn't feel right…
But surely, she only would have invited him for a reason? He didn't flatter himself by thinking she thought that they were a possibility, but he wondered nonetheless what this was all about. So perhaps against his better judgment, he wrote back:
My Dear Lady Mary,
I would be very glad to join you and your aunt for dinner Sunday next. I too am deeply sorry to have parted on such circumstances, and I do hope that they will not be an impediment to our continuing friendship. I await seeing you then.
Yours,
Evelyn Napier