As I Have Loved You
Summary: "No man can regret loving, as I have loved you." He'd spoken the words before he truly understood both the profoundness of her love and what it might mean if he ever lost it. If he ever lost her. Sequel to "No Man Can Regret Loving"
Rating: M for sexual situations
Disclaimer: I don't own Downton Abbey or these characters.
A/N: This is the sequel to my story "No Man Can Regret Loving." You really need to read it to understand this. Go ahead, I'll wait... :) Okay, if you're ready to press on, this story picks up where the last one left off, roughly around the end of S2 and beginning of S3. Unlike No Man, this story will be rated M and contain sexual situations (starting next chapter). But this is not a fluff-filled sequel. There will be angst, which is no surprise for anyone familiar with my writing. I plan to update once a week or so.
As always, I greatly appreciate reviews.
"No man can regret loving, as I have loved you."
He'd spoken the words before he knew the true meaning of regret, before he truly understood both the profoundness of her love and what it might mean if he ever lost it. If he ever lost her.
She glowed like an angel, the softness of her skin ephemeral in the darkness. He had seen her this way once before, on the precipice of his own death, and in that interminable moment, she'd held out her hand to him - an invitation home.
But now her fingers were not outstretched, nor did her gaze remain on him. Rather, she looked down at a bundle in her arms. She held a child - their child.
Bates woke with a start. The dream stayed in his memory long after most others might have faded, perhaps because he'd had it before: every night in the three day span since his marriage to Anna. Each morning he was abruptly pulled from a dream in which he saw her, an otherworldly being, holding a baby.
The dream terrified him in a way he could not describe. Thankfully, Anna was not there to see his initial reactions each morning. He was alone in his room at Downton.
But the apparition which plagued him in his nighttime hours was a reminder that he was not a madman. He had lived this life before. Somehow, something had transported him back in time to the months before he first came to Downton and met Anna. The part of him which ruminated on that detail suggested that it had everything to do with the last hours of that life, the manner in which he'd departed from the world - or had attempted to, at least.
Anna died trying to give birth to their first and only child, a circumstance which stayed at the edge of his consciousness like a ghostly figure at the corner of one's vision. Some days, he could move past it, finding joy and happiness where he could. But other days, it still stayed with him, bathing him in guilt and remorse which could never truly be eased, only ignored.
At the time, it had been much worse. Her death pulled him under like the rip current of the strongest tide. There was no meaning in anything without Anna, without the child she'd struggled so valiantly to bring into the world. And to think that he had been the one responsible for her death-
Bates shook his head and sat up from the thin single bed. Anna would chastise him if she knew he still tortured himself with such thoughts. But the pasttime was a difficult one to set aside. And now that he'd found happiness again, it seemed to penetrate even his dreams. Perhaps it was not only that Anna's memory plagued his sleeping hours in the form of a ghostly figure. Perhaps it was a reminder of a past he could not repeat, not at any cost.
But the Anna of this time loved him as fiercely as the woman he'd known before. When he could reconcile the two women in his mind, they became two sides to the same coin - his soulmate, if such a concept existed.
Getting dressed and heading down to breakfast, he allowed himself a smile as he thought about seeing her there, waiting for him.
Bates had not the money to afford a true honeymoon, but Anna did not seem to mind. Instead, they had been spending the days off allotted to them after their wedding fixing up the cottage Lord Grantham was able to procure. Bates was unsure whether he was relieved or disappointed that it was not the same cottage as before. This one was of a similar age and design, but the layout was different. Every room was on the first floor with no stairs to contend with, and Bates found that he much preferred not having to make such a trek every day. His knee gave him less trouble than it once had, but stairs had never been enjoyable.
Taking to married life with enthusiasm and youthful exuberance, Anna worked circles around him in an effort to make their new space habitable. She was ready for them to at least move into their bedroom, but Bates hesitated.
Once they moved in, it would be expected that they consummate this new marriage. Unlike before, Anna had not managed for them to have a room to themselves at the Abbey, so they had not yet enjoyed a true wedding night. Thankfully, time was not of the essence because he was not being investigated by the police for murder, but it did make Anna rather purposeful in her desire to fix their situation.
"I don't know if we're even truly married yet," she fretted.
"Of course we are," Bates responded. But then, in his mind, he'd been married to her since nearly the first day they'd met.
She wanted to say more, he could tell, but she pressed her lips together and ducked her head shyly.
While Anna was clearly looking forward to it, the thought of intimacy with his new bride frightened Bates. His recurring dream did not help matters. Even though he knew the accepted methods in such matters - and indeed had employed them to great effect during his marriage to Vera - he still questioned the wisdom of making love with his wife. What would he do if Anna became with child by accident?
He could not face the possibility of her dying again. The very suggestion tore at his insides and left him dizzy with terror every time it entered his mind. Her life was far more precious than any passing desire they might feel to be together.
But Anna obviously had other notions.
"I was thinking we could collect our things tomorrow," she said as they walked back up to the house in the evening, before darkness had fallen. They had spent most of the daylight hours putting the cottage to rights. "It shouldn't be more than a couple of trips, but we could ask to borrow the car for an hour to make it go faster. I doubt his Lordship would mind."
"But the cottage isn't ready," Bates said nervously.
"It nearly is," she responded. "We've finished painting and cleaning the bedroom. The kitchen still needs some work but we have our meals at the house anyway."
"But the parlor..." he began, reaching for another excuse.
Anna glanced over at him as they walked, and in the moonlight he could make out her confused expression mix with amusement. "Only needs new curtains to be hung and our possessions set out. But we cannot do that until we've brought them down from the house."
Her questioning smile reminded him that he would only be delaying the inevitable. They were married now and would live together as husband and wife eventually. Whether it happened the next day or in ten days would not be of much import.
Finding no reasonable means to refuse her, Bates acquiesced and the next day saw them moving into the mostly completed cottage. Anna appeared nearly giddy with the change of their location, and he reminded himself that their home was the first space which was entirely hers. Before the cottage, she had lived at Downton, sharing a room with another maid. Before that she'd worked as a tweenie in the north, which he imagined gave her even less personal space, and as a girl she'd likely slept in a room with her sister. Moving to their home was an act of independence for her, one he could not cheapen.
They spent the day finishing up in the parlor, hanging curtains and arranging books and dishes. Bates hung up his clothing in the wardrobe in their bedroom, taking care to make note of extra items he would need to buy from the village. Some fresh starch, perhaps, and extra hangers. Beside his shirts and coats hung Anna's uniforms, their drab wardrobe intermingling more than they themselves had done since being wed. But as he glanced back at the bed in the middle of their room, he realized with a feeling of dread that state would not be for long.
They ate a bit of dinner Mrs. Patmore had prepared and sent home with them before taking tea in the parlor. Bates pulled out a book to read as Anna worked on some mending, but he could not concentrate. She glanced at him often, he could see out of the periphery of his vision, her body straight and obviously alert with excitement.
There could be no more putting it off, putting her off. They had been married for four days and still had ventured no further than the passionate kiss she'd pulled him into that afternoon as she put the finishing touches on the new curtains. And Bates could not deny that he desired his wife. She was beautiful and perfect in every way, as daft as that sounded even in the privacy of his own mind. He already knew how she would feel beneath his fingers, her soft flesh filling his hands and mouth as his ministrations elicited sweetly unintelligible murmurs of pleasure. Just indulging in such memories made him heady with anticipation of what they might share that evening, but he also quaked with fear.
The very act of that type of intimacy was designed for the conception of children, and that was precisely what he did not want.
When the time came, he was more nervous than she, and Anna could tell.
"I'm the one who should be blushing, Mister Bates," she told him as they walked down the hallway to their bedroom. She'd taken his hand to lead him, and he followed slowly, as though marching to his doom.
But he could not countenance ruining this experience for her with his own worries.
"You have no reason to blush," he informed her. "You're an incredibly beautiful and sensual woman, Anna."
They stood facing each other, the door to their room closed behind them. The inevitability of what was about to happen left him fairly trembling, but he was determined to give Anna as much chance at a real life as he could manage. If he took care and kept control, she need not give up anything more than he had already asked of her.
"I feel the same about you," she said softly, looking up to meet his eyes as she stepped closer to him.
TBC