Hope & Despair
My contribution to the EAST Alliance. This modern take on things involves my own fictional detective DI Frank Lyle. Anthony is in London when he sees an engagement notice between Edith & Gregson in the paper. He realises he can't lose her after all but his attempt to rescue her is far from straightforward.
Chapter 1
Anthony Strallan was relaxing in the British Legion. He was pretty much living at his club in London these days. Yorkshire held far too many painful memories for him, especially after he had walked out on his wedding to Lady Edith Crawley. The story of the jilting had been splashed all over the media and the Internet and it seemed he could not hide from it. The spiteful comments he endured and the fact that some women even spat in his face for what he had done, believing it to be the best thing for Edith. At least he did not feel the prejudice here because many men, young and not so young, had left relationships they had had before the Afghan conflict because the war had changed them in ways that could never be reversed.
Anthony bitterly regretted what he had done. He had loved her deeply, she had inflamed desire in him that he had not felt since his marriage to Maud, his first wife who had tragically died of cervical cancer which had been too far advanced when detected to enable either chemo or radiotherapy to have any effect. Maud had liked a simple life and one without discomfort, which meant she had never attended for any of her recommended cervical smear tests. He knew that she had bitterly regretted this and her Macmillan nurse had said surely it was better to have had a few seconds discomfort than to have to endure cancer. Anthony had been very angry with Maud over this because she might still be here otherwise. They had never managed to have children. Maud had miscarried once and after that failed to fall pregnant again. The pain over Maud's death had receded and when he had met Edith he had dared to hope, although he had never felt he deserved her, even before he got injured. That pain was still raw, made worse by the fact that so many so called friends had forsaken him.
During his and Edith's brief courtship Anthony had befriended Tom Branson, Edith's brother-in-law. Since Tom had more freedom, being able to drive, he had kept Anthony abreast of developments after he left Yorkshire. Tom and Sybil had met when the taxi she was in had broken down and the driver had had to call the RAC. Tom was an RAC patrolman and there had been an instant spark between them. They had married soon after, much to the consternation of Sybil's family, who were still in the naive belief that the aristocracy would live forever but Downton was already an English Heritage site and the Crawley family lived in the part that was not on view to the general public.
Sybil and Tom had really hoped that it would work out between Edith and Sir Anthony because they could see that Edith genuinely loved him and felt she was not good enough for him. They had shed many tears with Edith when Anthony had walked out on the wedding. But they had been supportive to her, which was way more than the rest of the family had offered. Edith had been grateful for someone to talk to.
About three months after the non wedding Edith ahd taken up writing and now worked for a London newspaper. She had brought an apartment in London although her grandmother Violet had argued that, with the arrival of email, (The very mention of which had caused Violet's lip to curl in derision bordering on horror) surely she could just send her work in but Edith had said that one needed to live where one worked in order that her writing should be authentic. Violet had acquiesced and Edith and Sybil could tell she rued the day when age of majority legally changed to eighteen because it gave parents three years less in which to exert control over wayward youngsters.
In London Edith had taken up with her editor, Michael Gregson. She did not love him and Anthony was never far from her thoughts. Gregson's wife was mentally unstable so he remained with her out of the sense of duty instilled in him by his late father but he felt it would do him no harm if he found a woman to have a bit of fun with in the meantime. Unfortunately for him Edith was his choice but she was less willing to acceded to his carnal desires.
Michael Gregson did not know that, for Edith, there was only one man whose bed she would consent to share but she considered he was lost to her forever so she had vowed not to get involved romantically with anyone else.
Neither Edith nor Anthony had any idea that very soon the wind of change would begin to blow from a newer far fresher direction.