NB - I don't own Downton Abbey or any of it's characters. Please don't sue me, I'm poor!
Lady Mary Crawley sat outside on a bench, her back to Downton Abbey, watching the fields turn a hazy orange in the looming sunset. Without realising, she was caressing her stomach, where the first bump of early pregnancy was beginning to protrude from under her clothes. It wasn't recognizable to anyone yet, the clothes Anna had picked out made sure that it was well hidden, her little secret, for the moment anyway. As much as Mary liked being pregnant, the idea of told to lie around in bed all day struck her as monumentally dull.
This child would be her third with Charles Blake.
It had been 6 years since her darling Matthew had died, and six since her miracle boy had been born. 5 years since she married Charles Blake in a modest ceremony at Downton. Thinking back on it, Mary laughed at what her old self would have thought of the quiet marriage they had had. In retrospect, she didn't care. The real reason was that she didn't want any memories of her wedding to Matthew to resurface and potentially change her mind whilst she married Charles.
In the five following years Mary had bore two girls, now aged 4 and 2. The elder had been called Lady Alice Caroline Crawley, and the younger Lady Grace Violet Crawley - to honour the late Dowager Grantham, who had passed in the spring before Grace's birth.
Out in the fields before her Mary watched her family run around after each other, playing what seemed to be an game crossed between cricket and stuck-in-the-mud. Alice and Grace worshipped their older half-brother, but somehow Mary always felt sorry for her son. There always seemed to be a glint of sadness in his eye when his half-siblings ran up screaming "Papa" at his step-father when he visited the nursery. Mary had vowed to give George the best upbringing she could possibly muster on her own, and any day the family spent together revolved around his desire to visit the pigs or see the ducks. For the moment, the girls didn't mind, and for now, when he was chasing his half sisters around a tree, everything seemed perfect to Mary.
Rubbing her hands over her stomach, Mary sighed happily. She hadn't found the right time to tell Charles of the new addition to their rapidly expanding family yet, but she knew he would be just as happy as she was about bringing another bundle of joy into the world.
Lost in thought of what to call the baby depending on the gender, Mary didn't realise George had arrived until he was attempting to climb into her lap.
"George!" She said with a start as she pulled him up into a hig. "I thought you were playing?"
"I was." The six-year-old shrugged "But now I am not." His answers were full of six-year-old wisdom. For a while they watched the rest of the family play.
"Do you not want to play?" Mary asked after witnessing Grace stumble over her own two-year-old feet one too many times.
"I'm tired Mama, I don't feel so good." George said, his big blue eyes - exact replicas of matthews - looking up into her dark ones sheepishly.
"Tired huh?" Mary replied. She was used to George vying for her attention, often pulling out the sick card. "We best call for Nanny to get you ready for bed then?"
"No! No, no no!" George insisted "I do not want to go to bed! I want -" He was cut off by his own hacking cough. Mary pulled out her handkerchief and held it up to George's mouth. He had been coughing up phlegm recently, but Doctor Clarkson said it was nothing, and she had no reason not to believe him.
"Still got that cough then?" MAry asked as she folded away the phlegm covered handkerchief. George nodded somberly.
"Sometimes it's hard to breathe." He said quietly.
"Don't worry George, if something was wrong Doctor Clarkson would have spotted it by now. He said you only had a cold my dear." She held his little hand in hers, which felt a little hot, but Mary assumed that was because he had been running.
When Charles carried their two girls over, Mary took them all back to the nursery for tea. In the back of her mind she thought that maybe George did look a little bit worse for wear, but her subconscious told her that Doctor Clarkson wold have told her if something was up and that she had to trust the doctor.