Disclaimer: I don't own Downton Abbey.
1890
Sunlight streamed through the narrow window, casting a pallid rectangle on the floorboards. Dustmites danced in the early morning glow, incandescent in their fervor. The smell of perfume lingered in the upholstery, and she inhaled deeply, as if to breathe the atmosphere into her very bones. The scent mingled with that emanating from the half-drunk bottle on the dressing table, and, for the first time in her life, and during this, the briefest of moments, she almost felt beautiful.
But beauty was and is a temporal thing. The only constant, in this life and in any other, was obligation, and so it was that, sighing, she peeled the sheets away from her body, and sat up, ushering in the inevitable headache. The sun passed behind a cloud as she brushed a resigned hand over her face, sweeping a stray hair back into place, and she was plain once more. A servant, that was all. Devoted. Inconsequential. Swinging her legs out from under her, she began to retrieve her hastily discarded clothing, silently cursing herself for not taking better care of the few things she was permitted to own. As she buttoned her ancient, sturdy blouse; pretty, in its way, but unremarkable; as she dressed up in the costume of her every day life, so she got into character, into the role she had been allotted in some divine idea of a joke. The farm girl, the servant, the rich man's crutch. A woman, yes, but never a lady.
She couldn't bring herself to be irritated by the ladder she found in her stocking; merely ran a finger along it, a faint echo of the previous evening's touch, and felt nothing but empty. Immune. Impenetrable. She crept to the door, but turned back as she did, allowing herself a final glance at the figure in the bed. Now here was a true thing of beauty. Raven hair spilling across the pillow; creamy skin spread evenly over impossible limbs that claimed more than their fair share of the mattress. Eyes, shut now, but, when opened, clear blue, and yet inscrutable, like lakes frozen over. The church bells chimed the hour, and she smiled, for she was not yet to know that she would come sorely to regret this moment, not today perhaps, and not tomorrow, either, but for the rest of her life, regardless.