A chance at happiness
Summary: A heart-to-heart between Sir Richard and Miss Lavinia Swire, I imagine during Matthew's last leave before Amiens, 1918. The fifth instalment in my little Downtonverse.
A/n: Thanks everyone for reading my stories and thanks to the ones, who review and to whom I can't express my gratefulness for their kind and often helpful words.
"Daunting, isn't?"
He spoke from the doorway and walked up to her in the family ancestral portrait gallery. He noticed her shivering with a spark of satisfaction. She was still afraid of him. Funny, how she was the only one in this family, who was truly aware of what he was capable of. Silently they looked at the portrait of Henry George Frederick Crawley, 5th Earl of Grantham, 1848-1890. They saw an imposing man, used to get his own way, rigid, Victorian through and through. He sported huge whiskers, the height of fashion and male beauty at his time. His blue eyes were piercing, asking what kind of person are you? Are you worthy of being here in my house? He stood ramrod straight against a table next to a plush chair, the same table and chair that still stood a few metres away from them. The background of his portrait showed the same pictures still hanging in the same places almost thirty years later.
Nothing had changed.
Nothing ever would.
"What is?" He knew she would eventually swallow his bait.
"The prospect you might own all this one day."
She was silent.
"It is good, that Matthew Crawley will be a good deal longer a lawyer than an earl, that is if he pulls through the war in one piece, physically... and mentally." He kept taunting her.
"Of course he will."
"Of course." There was the hint of mockery, she had been waiting for. "And then what?"
"We will settle in London, I presume, to be close to my father."
"Not Manchester or Downton?"
"No, not Downton. Not here. It's not our time yet."
"I bought Haxby for Mary."
"So you did."
"She needs a stately home, a second Downton Abbey, if you will. She's been raised to be a countess. She will never be any good at being anything but that. So I let her be mistress of her own kingdom. It will make her happy."
"And you? Will it make you happy?"
She turned fully to him for the first time.
He chuckled.
"How romantic you young folks are, always talking of the moon and June. My happiness has nothing to do with Haxby Park. My kingdom exists on paper, though it is much more solid and real than this."
His encompassing gesture relayed his true meaning beyond this immediate room – the abbey, the grounds and ultimately all that it entailed.
"How do you mean?"
"War. When this is over, regardless whether we will have won or lost, the time for grand families and resplendent houses will be over, too, and a new era will come. An era for entrepreneurial men like me. We will be the new masters, the rulers of the world. Class distinction, nobility, even convention and the like will mean nothing. Our success will be our authorisation. And men like Lord Grantham will mean nothing, remnants of a glorious time gone by. Exhibits in a museum called Downton Abbey, Skelton Park, maybe even Buckingham Palace."
She gasped and turned to step up to one of the large windows to create some distance between them. She looked out, trying to calm her frantically beating heart. How much she loathed this man, who only saw himself, his immeasurable ambition and ways how to manipulate the feelings of everyone around him. To think she would never be free of his vile presence, poisoning the very air around him! He was the snake in the paradise she worked hard to build for Matthew and herself. How could Mary stand him? Did she value him so much that she blinded herself against the faults of Sir Richard Carlisle? It was beyond her understanding, even more so since Mary knew of her past dealings with his man.
She straightened up a bit, when her eyes fell on two people coming nearer from the stables – Mary and Matthew. They had gone riding right after luncheon and the shadows of the trees creeping closer to the abbey spoke of the approaching time for tea. How long had she been standing in front of the man's portrait whose strange entail had made Matthew heir against his will and her a future countess, that is if they got married? She loved him so much, she wouldn't mind marrying him now, eloping with him even this very minute, but she understood how impossible this was considering not only his position, but also Matthew's reluctance to finalise anything before the end of the war. He told her he didn't want to jinx himself by planning for a future. He wanted to put his life on hold for now and pick up where he left it before the war had broken out, whatever that meant. She sensed Matthew hadn't told her all what happened during his time in Downton and he needn't to. Just looking at him and Mary told her. And every time the picture they drew for her got clearer, because unlike Mary she wasn't blind to either man.
She watched them coming closer and now she could read their faces. They were laughing and Matthew gestured animatedly, while Mary smilingly punched slightly his arm. She felt his presence directly behind her.
"Do you ride?"
"You know, I don't. And neither do you."
There was no verbal acknowledgement.
"Isn't it most peculiar of him to spend the last afternoon of his leave in the presence of his cousin instead of his fiancée?"
The sun was low enough to let them see their faces reflected in the window pane. His showed a discontent frown, hers showed acceptance.
"I imagine he wants to spend his last day in the presence of the people he loves most."
"How very telling, don't you think?"
"You know they're close."
"Very. Did you know they were on the cusp of being engaged by August '14?"
She stiffened.
"You find me surprised, but far less than you hoped."
She steadily met his gaze in the window pane.
"Touché."
"You know she loves him. Everyone but he knows it." She turned tables on him.
"So she does. But that alters nothing for us. I've invested far too much by now to let her slip away. Eventually Mary will marry me, because I can and will give her what she needs, that is financial security and a position and she will give me what I want, a refined wife and an heir to my own, hard won kingdom."
She shivered.
"You make it sound like an investment transaction."
"Because that's what marriage is about. At least a good one. An investment into the future with an eye on equity and expected revenue. Mary is refreshingly practical and unsentimental in that aspect, no matter her feelings for her cousin. She knows and accepts he might not make it and she knows and accepts he chose and needs you. Under circumstances I'm her best option."
She laughed ruefully before she turned to leave the room and walk down to greet him and join her fiancé for tea.
"Do you really believe that? You know a lot about business, but remarkably little about women. Don't you know we reliably chose love over money? The moment Matthew calls, she will come running, with no regard to you or me. He chose and needs me, yes, at least for now, but he loves her. And if he could just admit the truth, then all four of us might have a chance at finding happiness."
Ende