Author's note - a one-shot of Edith after the wedding-that-was-not-to-be. I do not own Downton Abbey or any of its characters - I just like to play with them as JF seems to have abandoned all hope for Andith.
Alone.
Was this how it was always going to be? Was she so unlovable? As a child she had accepted that she was the odd one out. The outcast. Not as pretty as Mary. Not as good or affectionate as Sybil. She was Edith; middle child, forgotten child. She has almost resigned herself to a life as a useful spinster. She had never been a great success – even after her season as a debutante the nicest thing her mother had managed to say to her was that she had been very helpful.
Not that she blamed her parents. They already had one spectacular child, who had had three proposals before the end of her season and had finally settled for a countess' coronet, and one truly beautiful child who no-one could fail to love. Edith was meant to be the reliable one. The one who looked after them in their old age. Unloved and alone.
That was what she had always thought at least. Until that one brief, shining moment where a future seemed possible. Not quite the knight in shining armour she had imagined but hers all the same. Lady Edith Strallan, a husband, a home a future and even a match her parents couldn't disapprove of. Or so she had thought. What had been acceptable for Mary, somehow wasn't acceptable for her. Although she knew why her mother had been so keen to marry Mary off as quickly as possible, she still considered Anthony a catch. She would have a title, a house which, whilst not as grand as Downton, was perfectly wonderful in her eyes, and the position to be a force for good in the county.
Yet thanks to her family's intervention, for reasons she couldn't fathom as hard as she tried, she had been forced to watch helplessly as her fiancé, and her future, made an undignified exit back down the aisle without so much as a backward glance.
She didn't understand. She couldn't understand. Not her family's attitude, not her fiance's actions and not the unfathomable reason why she was so incapable of being loved.
But now was not the time to sit and dwell on this. She, after all, was a useful spinster. And spinsters got up for breakfast.