AN: First of all, thank you for all the lovely reviews on The Affair. I am very grateful for every single one of them!

I will write the oneshot then, since so many of you said I should, but this is not it.

This is another AU to That American Girl, but it is a lot shorter than all of the other stories I have written in that universe, just five or six chapters, each between 1000 and 2000 words, I think.

Just in case you haven't read any of my other TAG stories:

Violet got her will and Robert did not marry Cora but the daughter of another English earl with a huge dowry. That marriage was ill-fated and produced only one child, Mary.

Cora married the Duke of Suffolk who died about five months before their only child, a boy named Sam, was born.

As this important to understand this story: Mary grew up very differently in this story as she did on the show, her relationship to her father is much more open and she hates her mother. Because of the different back story, she is a slightly (though not completely, I hope) different person and thus overcomes her scruples concerning Matthew rather easily. In this story Mary and Matthew get married sometime in 1913.

For those of you who asked: I am working on Sentimental Haste (the one where Cora doesn't lose the baby and thus Matthew isn't the heir anymore) as well, and will start to post it as soon as I have outlined the whole plot (almost done with that) and written the first four or five chapters (not so much done with that :)).

Let me know what you think about this!

Kat

P.S.: The first chapter is sort of a prologue, so even if you find this boring, please do come back for the next chapter :)

Mary, your mother is dead STOP Up to you to come for the funeral. STOP I love you, Papa

He sends the telegram quite coolly. The clerk at the post office raises his eyebrows a little, but he just shrugs his shoulders. It is not a secret that he didn't like his wife. They hated each other for thirty years. Marrying her was the biggest mistake of his life and the only good thing that ever came out of it was Mary. After Mary's birth they were told that his wife couldn't have any more children and to him that had been a blessing in disguise. He would never have son, never have a direct heir, but he didn't care, because the news that his wife had become barren had also meant that he didn't have to take her to bed anymore. He hated the act, in fact he hated is so much that in over twenty-eight years he hasn't looked at another woman.

His life centered on Mary and his estate and when his heirs Patrick and James died on the Titanic, Matthew entered his life as well. He invited Matthew and his mother to live near the Abbey in one of the houses belonging to the estate against his wife's wishes. But he never really cared about his wife, her treatment of Mary was despicable and that alone was enough to disregard her. Her treatment of him wasn't much better, but it was her attitude towards their daughter that led him to stop trying to make their marriage at least acceptable. She blamed Mary for not being able to have any more children and she told Mary that she was disappointed in her from the moment of her birth. But luckily, after having been a timid and scared child for the first seven years of her life, Mary changed, yelled back at her mother that she hated her and never wanted to see her again. That had been the first time that Mary had spoken to her mother at all, for the first four years she only ever spoke to him and then slowly opened up to her grandparents and her aunt Rosamund. The event in her life that made Mary finally yell at her mother had unfortunately been her grandfather's, his father's, unexpected death, something that Mary, he, his mother and Rosamund struggled to deal with for some time. His mother eventually moved to the Dower House and Mary had her own room there and he thinks that Mary spent more time in the Dower House than at the Abbey and he is incredibly thankful to his mother for having allowed that, for taking Mary out of the line of fire.

His wife of course wanted Mary to marry Patrick, his heir, but Mary didn't like Patrick and so both he and his mother had stopped any wedding plans from forming. His mother to this day is infinitely sorry for having bullied him into his marriage, but he can't be mad at her. Once she realized how horrible it all was, she started to help him, she helped him with Mary, she tried to keep his wife out of his hair and often did so quite successfully. They both wanted Mary to marry a man she loved and when Matthew, the new heir, entered their lives and Mary and Matthew fell head over heels for one another, it didn't matter to him that Matthew was a future Earl, it only mattered that he made Mary happy.

Mary and Matthew moved into Crawley House but that didn't stop his wife from visiting and insulting Mary, Matthew and Isobel to their faces continually. According to Isobel, his wife also always shared a few choice words about him and his mother. There was nothing to be done and Mary and Matthew took to spending quite a lot of time in London. They couldn't stay at Grantham House though, his wife liked to go there unannounced, so they usually stayed with Rosamund, who always welcomed them for as long as they liked.

Mary once told him that she was very thankful to him, her granny, her mother-in-law and her aunt for continually going out of their way to make her feel comfortable, but that she didn't feel at home anywhere, that she always felt as if on the run. In January 1914, Matthew was offered a job in New York and after some deliberation, he took the job and Mary and he moved to New York. Mary writes to him at least once a week, he had planned on visiting them for two three months stints a year, but with the outbreak of the war, that had become impossible. He hasn't seen his daughter or son-in-law since the day they left for New York more than five years ago and thus he has never met his grandchildren.

George was born in October 1914 and Lizzie in January 1917. Mary of course sends pictures regularly and he thinks the children are very cute and he would like to meet them very much. He actually had a crossing booked for February, but then the Spanish Flu broke out on his estate and he couldn't very well leave. His wife caught the disease about a week ago and succumbed to it last night, on April 8th 1919, 30 years and 18 days after their wedding.

He still feels as if he was in a daze. He wears black of course, but he doesn't mourn his wife. When Patrick and James had died, his mother said that she wasn't sorry about James and he just isn't sorry about his wife. And after all, what are you supposed to feel when a person you hated for thirty years dies and is therefore out of your life?

He has left the arrangements of the funeral to Travis and the undertakers, he will attend the service of course and accept all the condolences given to him and he will try to not seem too unfeeling, although it will be hard for him.

Papa, won't come. STOP Not in condition to STOP Will send letter STOP I love you, Mary.

He has to smile at the telegram; he knows what 'not in condition to' means. It means that his little girl is pregnant again. He is very happy for her and Matthew, he knows they wanted a third child and he is sure that they are wonderful parents. Mary had been a little worried when she was pregnant for the first time about being able to care for a child, but three months after arriving in New York she met the Dowager Duchess of Suffolk. He had heard of her before, but he is sure to never have met her. The Dowager Duchess was one of the buccaneers that came to England to marry into the English aristocracy and she apparently returned to the New World once her son, the Duke of Suffolk had grown up. The Duchess and Mary struck up a friendship and she helped Mary through the pregnancy and the first trying years of motherhood. Whenever Mary mentions her in her letters, and she mentions her in almost every letter, he thinks that should he ever meet the woman, he should thank her profusely.

The service for the funeral is as those services always are, although as far as he is able to take in, nobody cries. Hardly any of the people in the village have turned out for the service, but he isn't surprised by that. His wife was too aloof, too arrogant to be popular with the servants, the tenants or the people in the village.

The third day after the funeral he contemplates not to put on his mourning clothes for the first time, but he thinks that he has to be in mourning for six months or he would cause too much gossip. When he has breakfast by himself Carson brings him a letter from Mary.

Dear Papa,

This is the letter I promised. I won't tell you that I am sorry about my mother dying, because I can't feel sorry about it. Remember how Granny said that she wasn't sorry about James when he died on the Titanic? That is how I feel now. It feels weird, but that is the way it is and Matthew and the Duchess both say it is alright to feel the way I do.

How are you? I suppose you are not too sad.

I am sure that you already guessed it from the telegram; I have the best of news for you. Matthew and I are going to have another baby. It makes us so happy.

We would both like to invite you to come here and stay with us for as long as you like. George and Lizzie ask about their Grandpapa almost every day and Matthew and I both miss you very much. So please do come over here. Just let us know when you will arrive and we will pick you up.

Mary

P.S.: Nobody here knows that your wife has recently died.

The letter makes him smile, especially the post scriptum. His daughter knows him rather well and he misses her and Matthew too, so he enquires about the next available crossing and books it for three days later.

He offers Isobel to go with him, she has never seen their grandchildren either after all and he knows that she misses Matthew and Mary just as much as he misses them. He asks her during a dinner at the Abbey at which Dr. Clarkson is also a guest and when Isobel looks at Dr. Clarkson unsurely and the man looks as if he was begging her to stay, he says "Or maybe you should stay here. Have dinner here from time to time, give the servants something to do. Maybe you could invite a guest occasionally."

After dinner, when he is alone with Dr. Clarkson, the doctor asks him "So you would give me your blessings?"

"Of course I would."

"What about Mr. Crawley?"

"I doubt he'd have any objections."

He is sure that when he comes back, Isobel will at least be engaged, if not married and he is very happy for her. Isobel has become one of his best friends, they always got along rather well, but they became much better friends once their children had moved to New York together. Isobel has been alone for far too long and he is sure that Dr. Clarkson is the right man for her and he certainly doesn't want to be in their way by insisting on Isobel accompanying him to New York.

So he only takes Bates, his valet, with him. The man seemed rather eager to go and said something about being happy to see Anna again and thus they are off.

After the first night on the ship he tells Bates to forgo the mourning clothes and to return to normal clothing.

"I suppose the mourning period was rather brief for you your lordship."

"It was nonexistent. I am sorry to say it, but that's the way it is."