When it was over, they lay together on the backseat, hearts pounding and pulses racing, and Branson wiped away her tears. Her mewls of pain had almost been his undoing, and he would have given away to take that pain away and erase what he'd done to her, but there was no going back now. He'd been gentle and patient and her whimpers had eventually given away to pleasure; then she'd clutched at his back with all the ferocity of her love for him – he still couldn't believe she loved him – and welcomed him deep inside her, and Branson had been able to do little more than marvel at the beauty of Lady Sybil Crawley as she came gloriously apart underneath him.
And now they lay, in the darkened, midnight silence, listening to the wind outside the garage and the beating of their own hearts. If he was being a sentimental sod he'd say he could hear their hearts beating as one, but he kept those words to himself and imagined them instead, as Sybil drew his head to rest against the warmth of her breast. Branson wished, more than anything, he could have given her better than a blanket draped across the leather seats and his jacket as a head rest. Lady Sybil deserved a bed; she deserved to be worshipped on a bed by a gentleman with soft, smooth hands, not by a chauffeur with clumsy fingers on the backseat of a car, her father's car at that.
But she hadn't seemed to mind, and Branson would do all again, no matter what the risk. He'd give his all and everything to this girl – this woman; she'd never be a girl to him again – if only she'd allow it, but they both knew better than to dream of a future together. There was none, and even this didn't change that cold, hard fact. He was a socialist, not a radical, and there was no little cottage in Ireland and curly haired children for a Lady and a chauffeur.
"What are you thinking?"
There was no point telling her the truth; he knew she was thinking exactly the same thing as he, knew it in the way her arms held him as if she never wanted to let go.
"You m'lady, an' how much I love you."
She giggled, light and soft and brushed his hair from his eyes. "Sybil, silly." Her eyes sparkled in the dark. She practically glowed with affection and an eerie sort of beauty, something unworldly. "I think you've earned the right to call me Sybil."
"You mean all I had to do to bridge the class divide was get you on the backseat of my car?" Branson flashed a wide, teasing smile. "And here I thought it was all about perseverance and hard work."
Sybil chuckled and tightened her arms around him, drawing him close to brush her lips against his. It made Branson giddy, and his heart full of love. "If only women's rights were that simple."
They smiled at each other in the darkness and settled back into peaceful silence. It was a joke between them now, as familiar as breathing – he was her radical socialist and she, his brilliant, beautiful suffragette. There would be no future for them, but they would always have this night. The smell of leather and of her would persist in his mind for as long as he had air in his lungs. He'd never ask the same of her, but she'd give it all the same, no matter how many seasons or suitors came her way.
He held his suffragette tighter and closed his eyes, and dreamed of the life together they'd never have.