Caveat emptor: this is AU post-War, with bitter Mary, fluff, unreasonable seduction, and unreasonable good fortune for all. Blatant disregard for historical development of property law in Britain.
M/M fans, if you somehow haven't yet discovered the LJ community mmmondaymadness, go check it out. The writers are really, incredibly talented, and I credit them with inspiring me to breaking my eight-year dry spell on fic.
SYBIL LOVES BRANSON
It is a fact universally snickered at that a single woman in possession of a good fortune must not have meant to keep it. Mary could remember, vaguely, her own tossing off of some witticism to the opposite effect, from a time when she had still been an admirer of Aunt Rosamund and the hard independence of good sterling. But she did not really recall how it went anymore.
Partial severance: it was, as Granny was fond of saying, the one good thing that had come of the war. Just a third of her mother's well-tended dowry was enough to leave Mary fabulously wealthy, and the rest of the family secure if not altogether proud. But while Papa and the others had all acted so beholden to Matthew afterward, Mary had merely felt shamed and somewhat dissatisfied. She supposed it was rather vile and entitled of her.
Perhaps bitterness played a role as well. She could not help noticing how both her sisters, once wallflowers to Mary's glittering Helen, were now so happily paired off. Always expecting that Sybil would be too full of ideas to marry a man of their class, Mary had nervously watched her sister's forbidden romance with the chauffeur, expecting tragedy. As Fate would have it, Branson had made himself an ace pilot, a recipient of the Victoria Cross, and was now standing for election to the Commons with fair hope of a win. He was a local hero writ large, and even Papa was showing signs of loosening his resolve.
And as for Edith—from her spot on the bench Mary gazed peevishly over the familiar, friendly grounds, at the low hillock where she had once spoiled all her sister's pains toward becoming a Strallan. This evening saw it crowned with a white trellis, overladen with ivy and pungent bridal blooms. All around milled the dullest people her sister and new brother-in-law could summon, the mass of them cooing and admiring of everything, from the rather fashionably titillating choice of an evening reception, to Edith's moderately daring handkerchief-hemmed-dress. Truly, now that she had her estate and modest title, Edith had to an alarming extent reinvented herself as moderately daring. Mary was certain that she would always just miss grasping taste.
But that observation remained little palliative for the trials at hand. Everyone seemed so insufferably happy for Edith, who Mary was certain had never been happy for anyone else. It made her ill. One look at her father's beaming approval over breakfast and Mary had taken to bed for most of the day. Even now she could not bear the polite noises and obsequious comments floating about the wedding party, and a hot flush rose up in her throat at the way Edith's silly giddiness turned smirking whenever she caught Mary's eye. No, it was much better to stand aside, for once, and watch the revelry wear itself out, from the shelter of the old low trees at the crest of the hill.
She settled into the bench with a low sigh, and could not keep her eyes from fluttering shut as she allowed herself to relax against the hard slats. How tired it all made her, these days. She often forgot that she had ever felt differently… how she might agree with her cousin now, were he to mention again his frustration with so many of those tedious trappings that made the life of her kind into what it was.
A twig snapped and Mary's eyes flew open as she twisted around. "Is someone there?"
The shadowy figure stepped forward a little, so that she could almost make him out in the half-light. "Only me, my lady."
"My goodness, Carson, you gave me a fright."
Restrainedly, he smiled –or she thought he smiled—in the dimness. "Pardon me, Lady Mary; it was not my wish to disturb your solitude. I am here to inform you that someone is asking for you whom you may not wish to see. He is just returned from New York."
She froze. From New York. Instantly her heatbeat quickened, battering away inside her. "Is that so? Then I trust your judgment, Carson; I imagine I would prefer to continue alone."
"If you will excuse my saying so, Lady Mary, my judgment would rather lie in the opposite direction..." The old butler hesitated for a moment. " It seems to me that some encounters may be unpleasant, but—salutary, in the grander scheme. And it is a long crossing from America," he said blandly.
For a moment Mary was silent.
"Very well, Carson. You may show him to me."
"Very good, my lady."
Mary smiled tightly at him as he bowed his assent and left. A surge of relief, as well as a disappointment, had overtaken her as she endorsed what she initially thought was Carson's suggestion, to leave well enough alone. Now that she had changed her mind, she wanted desperately some thing with which to distract herself. Strange it was, how roughly four years of waiting for an audience or an explanation could reduce itself, so very quickly, to a mere four minutes—how that itself seemed both too short and too long.
It had been a long time since she had cried before him on the lawn. Mary endeavored to forget it entirely. She had long given up wishing for what was impossible, but she might still hope now that he could be present again, a friend to the family and reliable, if only for Papa's sake—not that distant, alien stranger who answered no questions but haunted them all.
The quickest eternity seemed to pass as she waited, before she caught his voice in the near distance.
"Thank you, Carson; I believe I can manage now."
She remained facing stubbornly away as she heard his footteps disturb the leaves. From the sound of it he seemed very close. And then he was upon her.
"How well you sequester yourself, Cousin Mary. I feared to find you slaying monsters again."
Her preparations had done her no good. She started, mouth open for a moment with no words; it took a second to reclaim the old elegance and careless coquetry. "Cousin Matthew. We had not been told that you were coming!" she said at last, wearing her society insincerity like a shield.
Evidently he had the same idea as he smiled tightly in reply. "Nor had I, but apparently Sir Anthony knew all about it when he saw me in the village yesterday morning," he said, nodding in the direction of the gaiety. Through his smile Mary could see the grimace, but did not particularly mind. Friendliness, even false, was still a better place to start.
He wet his lips and pursed them as he continued. "I hope your father does not misunderstand my secrecy. I had only come to remove a few of my books from Crawley House, and hoped to pass unnoticed; it seemed a poor reason to raise the alarum."
"Of course not," said Mary pleasantly. "I suppose you have only just arrived. I am sure that if you talk to Papa later this evening—"
"Really, Mary, if it's all the same to you, I'd rather not." It came out sharp—perhaps sharper than intended, for he continued in a slightly more conciliatory tone. "I would not wish to give him the wrong impression, is all."
"No, I beg your pardon," said Mary coldly. Well, they had made quick work of friendliness. "But it has occurred to a man as clever as you, I am sure, that your presence can hardly escape Papa's notice tonight. Surely half the party is aware of it by now."
He glanced sidelong at her. "Really. Then they are all still so obsessed with me here?" he said distastefully. "I thought I'd made it clear that I'm none of their business anymore."
Mary bit her tongue in indignation but found it no help. "None of—! Forgive me, Matthew. The vast majority of our neighbors are guilty of longer memories than yours."
He might her with a cold stare. "Such is attention born of meddling boredom, I suppose, or else old outrage at my introduction. I can't imagine any reason otherwise. It's terribly inconvenient for everyone, I think you'll agree," he finished with a flippant little smirk.
"Convenience! Oh lord, Matthew, you always only saw the two square meters before your nose! Ten or twenty households still live in the cottages you fixed. You cannot stay here as Papa's protegé for two years and then just expect to be let go because suddenly it is your fancy!" Suddenly Mary felt very bright, very righteous. "You say you'll have nothing to do with us, but your mother still lives in the village, and helps in the hospital. Naturally Papa refuses to contact the next cousin who would be heir. Even Granny is in dudgeon. Who would have thought, that after you acquitted yourself so well in the war, that without a single acknowledgement of our hopes and prayers you should then spend the next half year galloping around the globe without a word, except through the most unsatisfyingly icy letters about matters quite unrelated to your position! Have you thought what it looks like? What is anyone to think?"
He looked at her disbelievingly. "Mary, I didn't want to marry you and I didn't want to have anything to do with Downton anymore. I believe I've made it perfectly clear—to anyone who wished to listen. I think I've discharged my duties your family quite nicely." He paused. "What about the severance, for God's sake? Are we so modern these days that it comes as a trifle?"
He met her furious glare, lifting his chin slightly, a hard smile that did not suit him crossing his face. "I believe I can finally say that I have made you a rich woman, Cousin Mary. I owe you nothing, now, if I ever did."
Mary stood abruptly. "Good evening, Cousin Matthew," she said, in a voice which was low and frigid with anger, and unsteady with weariness and more traitorous emotions she had fought to control.
She turned and was halfway down the path before she felt his hand at her elbow.
"Mary!"
Immediately she froze, and was ashamed for it.
He bent his head to look into her downcast face with a familiar intensity. "Mary, I will not pretend that the past never happened. I know now that I shall never again believe that you could lose yourself so fully as to love me, and that was a blow. And it is not one I wanted to revisit. But chance has brought me here now, so can we not part as—as friends? Be undemanding, pleasant acquaintances for a few hours tonight, for the good of all?"
She raised her face to him with a look of disbelief. "Undemanding? Is that what you are after?" She felt suddenly contemptuous. She had wanted much the same thing earlier this night, but now it suddenly seemed to so obviously the wrong thing, a cheap sham and a pointless one. "Matthew, I may be cold and insincere, but I have never been bland, and I do not think I will become so simply for your peace of mind!" Suddenly something else occurred to her. "And why should you want a pleasant acquaintance of me, in any case? There it is again—you say with such conviction that you are leaving all of this, but you act as if you mean to stay. You keep your mother in the village, you ignore Granny's demands for some clear position, and you send books to Sybil for Christmas—!"
He gaped at that last, flushing slightly. "Don't be absurd, Mary; we are not all so heartless as you are. One ought to encourage her mind. She is still my cousin."
She barely felt his sting. "Yes, as much as you, by blood, are still Papa's heir! Say what you want about friendship and encouraging the cultivation of the mind, Matthew, but it seems terribly clear to me that in nursing your hurts you want to leave all of this behind, but that you cannot bear to whenever the moment is nigh. You hover over us like some sort of dark angel, and nobody can persuade anyone to move forward in this family, not so long as Papa still hopes that Sybil might succeed where I failed!"
Mary stopped, chest heaving. There had not been many tears in her history, but she felt perilously near it again. She watched him look away, down, purse his lips, up again at her for a moment, and then to the party. She felt like a child. She could not stop herself.
"Sybil loves Branson!"
Matthew stared, bewildered by her outburst. "I—I fail to see how that—"
He stopped and the night air, still vaguely warm from the clement summer, seemed to fall in heavy layers between them, like so many bolts of grassy velvet.
Mary's eyes burned. She lowered her head and turned and began to walk quickly, face pale with shame. She was at the house almost before she realized it. She thought she heard something—her name being called, even—but she would not allow herself to look back now. She really was very silly. How little she let herself know about what she really wanted, and how devastating and humiliating when it finally revealed itself!
She was almost at the house when she saw Sybil running out of it, flushed and lovely, her hair beginning to fall out of its pretty knot. She tried to turn away.
It was too late. "Mary! What are you doing out here?" said Sybil, bright-eyed, laughing, filled with energy and good thoughts for the world. She was such a cliché of joyous, youthful beauty, thought Mary in her fresh misery, trying not to be jealous.
"I—I'm not feeling well," she said quickly, not meeting Sybil's gaze. She was afraid to look back. "Headache."
"Goodness, Mary, but it's only eleven o'clock! Have you been feeling all right? It's your second headache today!" Fine brows wrinkled with concern over Sybil's blue eyes, limpid and shining where Mary's were dark.
She took Mary's arm with a businesslike manner. "Come, I'll walk you back inside, and then I'll come bring up some tea," she said.
Mary managed a weak smile, wishing for anything but her beloved youngest sister's company just then. "Oh, Sybil, there is really no need…you'd better go see to Edith, or people will talk with both sisters missing—"
"Nonsense. Please spare me," said Sybil, wrinkling her nose. "Edith is a dear but she is so plumped up on admiration tonight that she'll like it better if there's nobody to share. I mean to visit the kitchens anyway. And you'll like it better than if I were to send Anna." She tugged Mary through the doors.
Mary blinked and followed. When had Sybil grown so perceptive of everything? And so terribly commanding?
Sybil left her at the top of the stairs, and Mary went into her room. Sybil was right, though, thought Mary: It was such a relief not to have the judgmental eyes of outsiders on her. She crossed to a window in her room, resting her fingers on the panes as she had been told not to do as a child. Far away, the lights of the revelry still twinkled on the lawn. Something rose and clenched inside of her and, for a brief moment, although she knew it was foolish, she thought she might despair of ever being happy again, as her sisters were, and as she thought she might one day be, in those several glorious, long-ago months.
She turned away from the window and undressed herself as best she could, slipping into nightclothes and burying herself under the covers—strange how sometimes, it reminded her of shame and unhappiness, still—and picking up the book at the top of the small stack beside her. Of late she had grown rather fond of Milton.
O then at last relent: is there no place
Left for repentence, none for pardon left?
None left but by submission, and that word
Disdain forbids me, and my dread of shame…
She barely looked up at the quiet tapping on her door. "Come in, of course," she said. She hoped that Sybil, in keeping with this new vein of perceptiveness, would leave soon and not pry too deep.
The door opened and then closed again. "Mary." It was little more than a whisper.
At the timber of the voice she looked up in alarm, and then cried out. "Good god! Matthew!" She clutched at the covers, her unbound hair falling forward as the book tumbled from her hands. "What do you mean by being here?" she hissed.
"I—" For a moment he watched her slack-jawed, before blinking vigorously and looking away. "Pardon me, Cousin Mary, I had not thought to find you—"
"I cannot imagine what you could possibly have intended to find. If you—if you think—" Mary shook her head furiously, unable to say what it was that he must not think. "You must leave, now."
His brows took on that mulish cast. "No, I—I do not think I shall, Mary. I am sorry. I am afraid you must hear me out this time."
Her heart thudded harder and she glared at him for it. "Sybil could be here any minute. This is an excellent way of ruining me, Matthew, I am not owed that!"
He ignored her. "What you said, that Sybil loves—Branson. Is that true?" His expression was of curiosity, but inscrutable further.
"I cannot speak to that," said Mary at last, guardedly. "What is it to you?" She could help herself from the question no more than she could the blood that was rising to her neck.
He ignored the question, but left the door, against which he had been pressing himself, and stepped forward awkwardly into the center of her room. He spied the book atop her covers and leaned forward and picked it up, careful to touch nothing else around it.
"Milton," he said with surprise. "I suppose you are fond of Eve."
What was he on about, talking about books in her bedroom during her sister's wedding reception, and herself entirely indecent? "Certainly not. I prefer Satan."
For a moment he looked surprised, then amused. "I suppose you would."
She was indignant at the insinuation. "Would I! I was not aware I was so obvious."
"Well, it makes fine sense. You have, both, such vain and vaunting characters—sure of your superiority; with intense, but vague ambition; and wholly horrified of shame and embarassment…" He paused and looked thoughtfully at her.
She fought not to blush under his gaze. "Do you mind?" she said acerbically, to cover it all.
Matthew stepped closer and gazed at her still more intently, causing her to draw back involuntarily. "Yes," he said, after a moment's consideration, as if surprised at himself.
"And no, you are never obvious. You are completely incomprehensible to me, Mary—except when I remember how extraordinarily you detest the emotion of embarassment. That, at least, is one sign which I can trust when I see it…"
Mary felt herself flush a deeper pink and broke his gaze, staring hard into the room's farthest corner. Lightheadedly, she realized that she could feel faint stirrings of air in his every exhale. He was much too close. She fought and gained control over her breathing.
"I'm afraid this tableau looks terribly improper, Matthew."
He only smiled wryly. "Funny, I was sure you never cared about such things."
"I sent only Sybil to fetch tea; she should have been back already. We will be discovered—and this time I should be well and truly ruined!"
"It's only Sybil." He shrugged and did not seem to notice her slip of the tongue. "No matter. And besides, I should only need to marry you, and then I daresay none would object," he said lightly.
She was torn between rebuking his latter assumption and questioning his first impulse. Instead, she managed a moderately scornful laugh. "How uncharacteristically magnanimous, Cousin Matthew. I thought you were so sure that you could not marry someone whom you would never trust enough to love!"
She dared a glance at him—there was an odd, determined gleam in his eyes, something like fear and recklessness all at once.
"Perhaps, Mary. But I recall that is not precisely what I said."
He leaned forward, one hand on the side of her bed, and she moved back still more, until she was pressed against the headboard, unconsciously raising a hand across her chest as she frowned and tried to remember his exact phrase. What had it been—trust, love—? She strained herself to focus, but she could feel the heat from him and the scent that came off him in thin drifts, dusty and woody and a slightly smoky-sweet—
"You said that—" she began softly.
"Stop, Mary, before I lose my nerve," he said firmly, and bent down and pressed his lips to hers.
After a brief eternity they pulled back.
"Thank God for your jealousy," said Matthew, a little breathless, eyes sparkling.
"Oh, spare me," Mary said, with mock bad temper, and pulled him down for another kiss.
She hoped that Sybil would soon be back with the tea.
-fin-
1. Hat tip to JA, surely Mary's least favorite author.
2. And to JM, whom she probably only pretended to enjoy.
3. And to JF, who owns everything.
I wrote another half-page of smut but axed it for now because I need to go to sleep. Let me know if you want a continuation; maybe we'll see.
Apologies for what, I'm sure, are copious historical inaccuracies.