May 1914
Late spring, and he can feel his knee easing. Perhaps it was from the sun, warming his body, heating him through the black of his trousers, or maybe it was simply being released from the damp and cold of a Yorkshire winter.
Before he came Downton, he'd more likely be found sitting reading a book than not, for he is a voracious reader: from treatises on military history to the latest from the lady novelists. Indiscriminate, Anna called him, cheekily and with affection.
Ah, Anna. For Anna, he'd put away the book, and has, many times. For Anna, on his, no, their half-day off this month, you could hear the crunch of gravel as he made his way down the drive. Slowly, but with determination.
It was a secret. The kind of secret two people share while living under a roof with thirty others.
The kind of secret that is forged first in looks and glances. And when looks and glances are held too long, the kind of secret where they now sit side by side, (not looking, not glancing) as has become their habit. The kind of secret where fingers will be intertwined underneath the dining table. A few seconds of contentment.
The kind of secret where fingers intertwined soon ceases to be enough. It becomes the kind of secret where, in narrow halls and doorways, one brushes against the other, closer and lingering for longer than precisely necessary.
(The kind of secret everyone else knows, too.)
And so, he limps down the drive. She will leave ten minutes after, full of breezy talk about visiting her mother and father and sisters and brother in Easingwold. Knowing looks and not a few smirks will follow her.
It only takes a few minutes for her to catch him up. And, until they open the gate that leads to the forest and further, down to the Swale, they will pretend to each other that he is going to the bookstore in Ripon, and she to her Sunday lunch with her family.
She moves ahead of him, into the trees. It must be the nascent summer, for she is full of mischief today, his Anna, her dark eyes sparkling. She quickly unpins her hat, shaking her hair loose. She is lissome, young, graceful, and all for him. He is nearly undone.