He heard the shuffling of feet and the raising of voices long before he actually registered what was going on. The cell he was being kept in was close to the main entrance of the gaol, but he was trying so hard to forget about his surroundings, to concentrate on the idea of walking out alive and sane, that it took him a moment to return to reality.
It had been more than a week since he'd been grabbed by the collar and dragged into an RIC vehicle on Kildare Street. At first he'd been angry, old instincts flaring up, spurring him on to hurl insults and fight. But things were different now – he had a family now. He was a husband and a father. He had responsibilities now. Fighting like a man possessed was no longer the best option, even if it would have been immensely gratifying in the moment.
So he said nothing. He hadn't spoken since.
He'd known why he'd been picked up almost immediately – it had to be the story about the army trucks, full of IRA prisoners, taunting civilians with crude "Bomb Us Now" signs slapped on their sides. The piece had been anonymous – all of his stories were, for all sorts of important reasons – but it was searing, and it had gained major attention when his brother-in-law had picked it up and re-published it in one of his most widely read London tabloids. They'd talked about it on the floor of the Commons, for Christ's sake.
It was only a matter of time until they figured out that he was the anonymous correspondent. He'd been surprised, actually, that it had taken them as long as it did to track him down and toss him in a cell. But he wasn't going to help incriminate himself or anyone else, so he kept quiet, even when his forehead was slammed against a table, even when he was so hungry and thirsty that he thought he might scream. He gritted his teeth, thought of his wife, thought of his daughter, and kept quiet. He knew he was lucky he hasn't been shot yet. He wondered how much longer they were going to wait.
The sound of a decidedly familiar female voice sliced through his reverie. It couldn't be – but he shifted over to the heavy iron bars and craned his head so he could see just a sliver of the entrance, and it was. Her dark hair was coiffed in an intricate way that he hadn't seen since they'd last been in Yorkshire, topped by an elaborate hat. The coat was one he thought he'd seen her wear before they'd decided to run away together, though the fit was different now. She was slight, gaunt even, depleted from carrying and nursing his baby. He felt his insides twist. She shouldn't be anywhere near here.
"I told you," he heard her say, her voice picking up an edge of impatience. "My name is Lady Sybil Branson. You're holding my husband here on false charges."
"I'm sorry, milady," one of the policemen replied, condescension dripping from his words.
"No, I'm terribly sorry to have to journey to this part of the city at such an inconvenient hour," she said smoothly. Good lord, was that his wife or her grandmother speaking? "I've spoken to my contacts at the war office in London. My father is the Earl of Grantham, and Lord Derby is my godfather. I have letters from both." She rummaged in her pocketbook. "Here you are."
"Mr Branson has been here for ten days," the gaoler replied. "I wonder why your ladyship has taken so long to come and retrieve him."
He can only imagine how long she's been scrambling, desperate, trying first to figure out where he was and then how to get him back. For the first two days, all he could imagine was her face when he didn't come home that evening, wondering if he'd been killed or wounded, or maybe even if he'd left her. She had to know he wouldn't, couldn't, ever do that to her, not to either of them.
"I'm sorry, milady, but I can't just release a prisoner," the officer said with a smirk. "Not even for a former War Secretary's goddaughter, if that's indeed who you are."
"It is indeed who I am," she replied tartly. "You can examine my passport if you like. I would not misrepresent myself to a servant of the Crown."
He heard a chair scraping against the floor. "Regardless."
"I also have a letter from Sir Richard Carlisle," she continued, her voice unruffled. "We learned that you suspect Tom wrote a rather incendiary piece for one of his papers criticizing military efforts here. He writes to assure you that my husband was not the author of that article." She held out another envelope, soft hands encased in silk gloves.
As the sound of ripping and unfolding paper echoed, he saw her lean slightly against a wall, her other hand ghosting reflexively over her now-vacant belly. He'd always hated the British in power in Ireland, always, but perhaps never more than now for failing to offer a chair to his clearly exhausted wife. Bastards.
"We'll have to wait until morning at least," one of them sighed, folding up Carlisle's letter.
"I'm afraid that's unacceptable," Sybil replied archly, her back stiffening. "He has been kept here long enough, and who knows how much longer things will be delayed. We're planning to travel to England with our daughter shortly, and I won't leave him behind." She paused. "You know, I'd really hate to have to take this much further. I can't imagine your supervisors would be pleased if they discovered your unwillingness to treat the son-in-law of a peer with the dignity he should be afforded."
"If you'll wait a moment, milady, I need to make a telephone call," the same man responded.
Things after that were a blur. The bars were yanked open, rough hands gripped his upper arms, and he was hauled under bright lights. He felt Sybil's gentle touch on his face, and then the cold air hit him as they stumbled down the stairs toward a waiting car. He barely registered the sight of his cousin Eamon dressed in his old chauffeur's uniform, before the younger man helped first Sybil and then him into the back of a car.
"Where are you hurt?" she demanded, tossing her hat to the floor and peeling off her gloves as the car sped away from the gaol. "Where, Tom?"
He just shook his head, coughed, tested his vocal cords a little. "I don't know," he rasped out, spluttering a bit. His head was spinning, and his tongue felt thick. The car moved swiftly through the Dublin streets. Sybil smelled clean and lovely, and her hands on his arms and his face were smooth and cool. "I'm so sorry," he muttered. "I'm so sorry, love."
"Stop," she hissed, still searching him for injuries. He winced when she pressed a little at the bruise on his forehead, but he didn't cry out. She slumped back against the seat, exhaling softly, covering her face with her hand. "Jesus," she whispered.
He didn't know what to say, felt tears springing to his eyes, felt the thick rasp of his throat. He fumbled on the seat for her hand, squeezed it once, closed his eyes. He didn't open them up again until he felt the car jerk to a halt – Eamon clearly needed a refresher course on breaking – in front of their little row house.
"Oh, thank Jesus Christ, Tommy," his mother exclaimed as they stepped inside. His mother was enveloping him in a crushing embrace, mumbling Gaedhilge words of thanks and relief in his ear, and Eamon was muttering something about returning the uniform later, but his eyes were on his wife as she carefully removed her coat, her eyes soft but somehow vacant.
"Sybil," he started, but she shook her head vigorously and held up a hand.
"I don't feel well. I'll check on the baby, and then I'm going to go and lie down," she said. "Let your mother feed you."
He started to follow her, but his mother steered him into the small kitchen and ushered him into a chair. "Give the girl a moment," she chided. "You know she's barely slept in more than a week, what with you gone and that baby of yours keeping her up morning and night. The poor thing's exhausted."
He folded his arms on the tabletop and let his head fall to rest on them. "What a bloody nightmare, Mam."
"Language." The reprimand was softer than it had been when he was a boy. He lifted his head when he heard a soup bowl placed before him. "Here, eat this. Slowly now. Surely they didn't feed you much there."
"No," he said. "And I was so sick at my stomach I could barely swallow anything anyway."
He ate as slowly as he could make himself. His mother smiled sadly and reached out to grasp the hand that wasn't clutching the spoon like a lifeline. "We were all so afraid, Tommy. When you didn't come home, and then there was no word at all…"
He slurped down the broth in measured portions. "I was afraid she'd think I'd run off on them."
"She thought you were lying dead in the street somewhere. We all did." She squeezed his hand. "But you weren't, thank God. I could see it in her eyes, she was trying to figure out what in the world she was going to do if they'd killed you. Baby only just born, in a strange country in wartime…"
His groan was involuntary, and he let the spoon clatter against the bowl. "Should have seen her with those policemen," he said. "You'd have thought she was the Countess of Grantham herself. How in the world did she get all those letters so fast?"
His mother actually smirked. "I know I thought you were out of your mind to marry a posh English girl, my love, but you should have seen her. She got on the telephone to Sir Richard in London and tore the poor man to shreds. He and her sister did all the rest. Well, except the clothes and the car. We found the dress and the gloves at a second-hand shop, can you believe it?" She sighed a little. "I just thank the heavens above that it actually worked."
"It was surreal. All of it," he said, shaking his head. "I don't know. I don't know what to do now."
She stood and busied herself with the kettle on the stove. "Go take a bath, for starters. You're ripe as a melon, dear. And then go and kiss your daughter and comfort your wife." She poured herself a generous cup of tea. "Eamon's going to take me back home in the morning, so I'll tidy up down here and have a bit of a kip on the sofa."
"Thanks, Mam." He leaned in and kissed her quickly on the cheek before carefully scaling the stairs to the bathroom and soaking for a good while in a scalding hot bath.
His skin was bright red by the time he emerged, but he finally felt almost like himself again. Wrapping a towel around his waist, he quickly shuffled across the hallway and quietly opened the door to the bedroom.
It was dark and cold. He frowned as he took in the empty bed, but then a slight creak from the armchair by the fireplace caught his attention. Trying to make as little a disturbance as possible, he pulled on his pyjama trousers before moving over to the barely-burning fire.
He could hear her trying to stifle small sobs as he quickly stoked the flames, feeling warmth flooding the room almost instantly. When he turned to her, curled up in the chair as best she could with the blanket-wrapped baby curled in her arms, he felt sick all over again. Her face was swollen, eyes red and puffy, teeth chattering in the cold. The silk dress she'd worn before was hanging off the wardrobe door, and she was just in her chemise, one strap dangling off her shoulder as she fed their daughter.
"You're freezing, love," he said, grabbing a blanket from the foot of the bed and tucking it about her shoulders. She said nothing as he wrapped one hand around her upper arm, rubbing softly to try to warm her, just closed her eyes and pushed back against the chair.
He touched their daughter's soft cheek carefully, then brushed at the little bit of dark hair that spiraled atop her small head. She suckled noisily – "eats as loud as you do, Tommy," his mother had teased when the baby was only a few days old. Sybil's hair, his eyes and ears, Sybil's mouth and nose. Their little Moira – goddess of fate, daughter of an oracle – she'd needed a name to match with her mother's, he had insisted. "My Irish baby," Sybil had called her fondly, teasingly, before she was born.
He was so engrossed in his daughter that he nearly missed his wife's words. "You've lost weight. Did your mother make you something?" she asked, sniffling a bit in the process.
"She did," he confirmed. "Have you eaten?"
"Earlier. Not hungry now."
"We're going to have to keep up your strength – this greedy girl will get the best of you if we don't." He kissed her on the cheek, and when she smiled faintly in response, he sat down on the floor at her feet, resting his temple against her knee.
"I thought you were dead." Her words were without preamble, her voice small.
He sighed. "Couple times I thought they might just shoot me and have it over with."
"Couldn't keep your mouth shut?" She reached down to push his damp hair off his forehead, and he nearly purred.
"Wouldn't open it." He wrapped his fingers around the arch of one of her slim feet, rubbing softly. "Made 'em mad, I think."
She hummed a bit, thoughtfully, making soft noises at the baby. "Haven't seen some of these things since we were in Yorkshire last," he said.
"It all felt so wrong." She shifted Moira in her arms as the child pulled away from her breast. "I walked away from all that, but no matter where I am, no matter when, it's always there in the background. People let me have so much more just because of where and how I was born. All I could think about were the nurses at the Mater whose sweethearts had to sit in their cells for months or never came home at all. That they could never have done what I did."
He was silent, and she shifted restlessly. "I don't mean that I wish I hadn't gone to fetch you, Tom. I'd be Lady Sybil every day for the rest of my life if that's what it took to make sure you were safe."
"I know that," he assured her. "I was born poor in Ireland, you were born rich in England. Neither of us can be blamed for that."
"I'm not thinking clearly," she rasped. "I just don't like pretending that I believe I'm worth more than other people." She sighed and fidgeted with the strap of her chemise. "I'm so glad you're all right."
Rising up on his knees, he gathered both of his girls into his arms, breathing in the sweet smell of Sybil's dark hair as she buried her face against his neck. "I love you," he murmured. "My brave, wonderful darling."
"No," she replied, lifting her head. "No." She pressed her mouth hard against his.
They kissed for a long while, until the baby began to fuss quietly between them, struggling to sleep. He let Sybil lean back into the armchair as he gathered Moira up into his arms, swaying her slightly and rubbing her back. He felt his heart jump a little as he breathed in her familiar baby smell. Soon enough her little eyes were closing soundly enough that he could lay her in her cradle.
"You're good with her."
He shuffled over to her, and as he smoothed back her hair from her face, felt his fingers catch in the pins and curls. "Come here," he urged, standing and helping her to her feet. "I'll play maid, milady."
"Stop it," she muttered, shaking her head. "Don't be silly about that."
"I think sometimes about the night in that inn, the night that your sisters stopped us," he said softly, steering her over to the bed where he could sit behind her. He kissed her shoulder. "When I helped you take your hair down. Do you remember?"
"Of course I do," she replied, leaning back against him. "You nearly pulled all of my hair out of my scalp."
He nudged her shoulder in mock outrage. "Ah, come now."
The hints of a bemused smile ghosted over her lips. "I remember that everything after that felt different. Everything felt so new. You'd kissed me already, but you'd never been so close."
She shivered a little as his fingers nimbly worked through her hair, discarding the pins on the table beside the bed and rubbing gently at her scalp. Her long, dark curls tumbled down about her shoulders, and he pressed his face against them. It was hard to believe that only hours before he'd been convinced he'd never see her again, let alone kiss her, touch her.
She scooted away from him and into their bed, snuggling under the thick blankets meant to protect them from the Irish January air. He stoked the fire a bit before sliding in beside her.
Every fibre of him was exhausted, and he'd intended just to curl his body around hers and let sleep take him. But she turned to him, soft hands against his abdomen and warm lips against his throat. "I love you," she whispered hoarsely. "I love you."
They hadn't made love since before Moira was born, in that last laughing month, when Sybil had insisted that she'd heard it would help bring on labour. Now both of them were less full, bodies slacker, but he had never thought her more beautiful than when she sat up and pulled her chemise over her head, baring flesh that he thought might never be his to see and touch again.
They were a little awkward, a little unpracticed, and his mind slipped back once more to two years earlier, when they were fumbling together as they learned each other's bodies, when he struggled to slake his overwhelming desire for her without scaring her, without hurting her. Those early days when he'd shyly ask if he could have her, scarcely able to catch his breath when he made her come, seemed so far away and yet so near.
Now he was over her, body hovering above hers as it hadn't since the last long, slow days of the summer, her arms twining loosely about his neck and shoulders as she kissed him, slow and deep. As he sank into her, he groaned, only to be met by a playful hush from his wife and a hand over his mouth. "Don't wake her," she admonished with a glint in her eye.
He nipped at her hand. "You feel so good," he whispered through her fingers. "I can't help it."
She reached down and pulled the blankets up over their heads as they began to move together. Ensconced in the warm darkness, he felt like she was enveloping him completely, like he was melting into her. He closed his eyes and tucked his face against her neck, letting her skin absorb the sounds he couldn't hold back. She sifted her fingers through his hair, stroked his back – but when she cried out and reached down to grasp at his bum, he couldn't hold himself back any longer, grunting her name as he found release. They stayed locked together in their embrace for a long while. Eventually Sybil peeled back the blankets and kissed his temple, his forehead, the tip of his nose.
Afterward he let himself drift a little, half waking and half sleeping, one arm slung across her hips, nose nuzzling at her shoulder. She shifted slightly, kissing him gently.
"What happens now?"
He blinked. "With the paper, d'you mean?"
"I suppose so." She was quiet. "I don't know if I'm allowed to ask you to stop. I don't know what I'm supposed to do. I don't really think I want you to stop."
"I don't think I can stop, no matter what. I couldn't be here and not tell the truth about what I see out my own window."
She laced her fingers through his. "I know. But I don't want you to go to prison. I don't want you to be killed. I want you to stay with me."
He groaned, pressing his cheek to her shoulder. "Christ. I know."
"This was easier before, wasn't it?"
"When I was the chauffeur and Ireland was far away?"
She squirmed. "No. When we were just two and not three."
He thought for a moment. "It was easier, maybe, but I don't think it was better." He looked for a long while at Moira, slumbering quietly in her cradle. "I want to take you both back to England."
"No."
"Your parents are right. It isn't safe here for you. Not for my wife, not for my child. And word will get out about who you are, after what you had to say tonight." He swallowed hard. "I won't let you be a target. You could be kidnapped, held as collateral, God, even worse than that. I'd die if anything happened to you, you know that."
"I won't leave you. We'll be where you are. How would it be better to have you in the midst of this when I'm so far away that I can't find you, can't help you?"
He heard the tight, frantic edge in her voice and stroked her hair, trying to reassure her. "If things don't get any better, I think we should just consider it. That's all."
"I don't want her to grow up at Downton. That's no life at all for a little girl. Moira's going to go to school, and then to university if she wants. She's going to be smart and her father's never going to try to marry her off to the stupid son of a viscount or a tycoon looking for a way into Burke's."
"It doesn't have to be Downton. What about London? Manchester? Just somewhere that you'd both be safe, please, Sybil."
"And you'd stay here without us, let them murder you next time?"
His breath caught in his throat. Words he never, ever thought he'd say crossed his lips. "I'll go with you. I promise. The two of you are more important to me than this war."
He hugged her tighter. She made a noise in the back of her throat and burrowed deeper down into her pillow. "I married you for better or for worse. This is just the worse. It'll be better again," she murmured. "But I'll go where you go, Tom. You know that."
His head was spinning, aching, and he felt tears coming to his eyes again, so he just held her close for a long while, letting her hold him close. She always did have a strange way of smoothing off his rough edges.
Half asleep, he whispered, "Ma mhuirnín?"
"Hm?" she replied sleepily.
"Is Lord Derby really your godfather?"
"Yes, one of them," came back the reply. "Why wouldn't he be?"
Her life never ceased to amaze him. "Nothing, no reason."
"Sleep," she commanded, letting her head drop down to rest on his chest.
Her words – it'll be better … I won't leave you – echoed in his brain as he finally let his eyes slip shut, finding real sleep for the first time in days.
finis