To Love and To Cherish

Neither Downton Abbey nor its characters belong to me. Unfortunately. But Edith and Anthony have taken up residence in my brain! I'm hoping if I write them a story they might leave me in peace.

Set a year after the drama of 3.03. Lady Edith is living and working in London when a chance encounter changes the course of her life- or perhaps merely puts it back on track. Story was planned after the airing of 3.03 and before the airing of 3.05 so I imagine it will be completely AU before too long.


I.

"…till death us do part…"

Lady Edith Crawley stepped inside Abrams and Howard Solicitors and out of a heavy burst of London rain.

It was lunchtime and the offices were quiet.

Thanks, in part, to cousin Matthew, although he claimed to have had no hand in the matter, she had been working as a legal secretary at the firm for close to six months. It was longer than that since she had escaped from Downton Abbey, but life in London living under the same roof as her Aunt Rosamund had proven to be almost as much of a trial as life at home. It had become imperative to find a little extra independence.

She knew her parents were still deciding whether or not they should disown her for shaming the family with paid employment. She doubted her grandmother would ever recover.

Edith stripped off her gloves and patted her damp hair as she climbed the stairs to her desk. The low murmur of voices could be heard coming from inside Mr Howard's office.

A frown clouded Edith's face. It was unusual for one of the partners to be working at this time of day. Her curiosity was piqued, but also her annoyance. More than anything she had hoped to sit quietly at her desk for the remainder of her lunch and work on her new article for The Times. It was going to be a piece on the NUWSS rally being held the next day.

Sighing softly to herself, she strolled into the little private cloakroom that was used by the secretaries. She shrugged off her coat and inspected her reflection in a mirror that hung on the wall. Her hairdo had faired much better than expected, and if the absentminded smile that tried tugging at her lips didn't entirely reach her eyes, well, she had long stopped noticing.

"-and you're quite sure about this?"

"Quite sure."

Edith jumped, and dropped her coat on the floor. She held her breath. It was a trick of her ears. It had to be. But that didn't stop her sinking further into the cloakroom, so as to be unseen by the gentlemen exiting Mr Howard's office.

"Why don't you at least come around for dinner tonight? Kathleen would love to see you."

"No, no, thank you, but no, I have an early train to catch in the morning."

"To Scotland?"

Edith hugged her arms to her chest as something unspoken passed between the men. She pressed her hand tight against her mouth for fear she would betray herself.

It was not- it could not be- and yet that voice.

"It will not take me long to finalise things, Sir Anthony. Why don't you stay in London until then?"

"No, truly, I cannot."

Edith sank back into the coat rack. Pain splintered through her entire body, pain that made it impossible to follow anymore of the conversation. The voices soon faded away as the gentlemen descended the stairs. The second this fact registered in Edith's mind she ran from the cloakroom and across the secretaries' work area to look out of the window.

Her breath came in unsteady gasps as she stared down onto the street. She caught just the barest glimpse of his retreating form before he was lost in the rain.

It was twelve months, almost, since Edith had consigned herself to a life of spinsterhood. Twelve months of slowly trying to put the fragile pieces of her heart back together. She hadn't realised just how very precariously they were set. How the whisper of his voice and the glimpse of his shadow would undo her completely.

She forced herself to return to her desk. Slow, wooden steps had her seated in her usual position a second before Mr Howard returned from saying his farewells.

"Miss Crawley!"

Edith had dropped the title of 'lady' in her professional life. Just one more fact that had almost caused her grandmother an apoplexy. Even now, Edith herself was still getting used to her new name. She hoped that Mr Howard would think that this was the reason why she didn't immediately lift her head to answer his surprised greeting.

"Mr Howard," she nodded, once she thought she was in command of her emotions. "Can I help you?"

"How long-!" The portly gentleman coughed and a blank mask settled over his features. "I thought I told you to treat yourself to a long lunch today? You were meeting your chap from the newspaper, I understood?"

"Yes, I- I did meet him." Edith nodded, numbly. It seemed like a lifetime ago that she had sat in a bustling London restaurant making deliberately light conversation with the editor of The Times. "He had an appointment with a Member of Parliament this afternoon."

"I see."

Mr Howard hesitated. Edith was just slowly beginning to realise why. Why her taciturn employer had been in such a rush to have her take her lunch out of the office that day. Why he had been so forceful in his insistence that she take her time and not hurry back to work.

She wasn't supposed to know about his meeting with Sir Anthony.

And that didn't make any sense at all.

Edith had been careful to conceal as much of her past as possible. None of her new acquaintances should have had the slightest reason to even imagine that an encounter between her and Sir Anthony Strallan should be avoided at all costs.

Which made her start to wonder if there were other critical morsels of information that were being concealed from her.

"I- I just got back," she said, for Mr Howard was still watching her. She adopted the vacant smile that had served her through much of her life at Downton. "You've just finished meeting with a client?" she asked innocently, unwilling to raise suspicion. "I thought I heard a gentleman leaving while I was in the cloakroom?"

Mr Howard's relief was palpable.

"Indeed yes, the family are very old valued clients." Mr Howard stepped away from Edith's desk. He was almost talking to himself as he made his way back to his office. "And so you didn't see- but of course you didn't-" He turned back to Edith just before disappearing. "I shall be working for an hour and then going out to meet another client. Please see that I'm not disturbed, Miss Crawley."

"Of course, sir."

Edith's brittle smile slipped from her face as soon as she was alone. A glance at the clock told her that she had five minutes to compose herself before everyone else returned for the afternoon. Five minutes before the office became a bustling hive of activity.

Five minutes was not nearly long enough.

"Oh dear, did lunch not go well?"

Rose and Margaret came over as soon as they returned and saw Edith's drawn complexion and distant expression.

"Why should lunch not have gone well?"

"Darling, you look ghastly! What did he say to you?"

I can't do this…

Edith clamped her hands under the desk to conceal the way they trembled. She wasn't going to remember!

"Truly, lunch was a very pleasant, very normal affair," she persisted, fighting to summon a smile. "I simply-"

"Ladies! I don't believe we employ you to talk. Haven't you work to do?"

Edith had never in her life been more pleased to see strict old Mr Abrams. She settled down to her typing, and studiously avoided catching the eye of either of the other secretaries.

At least she tried to settle down to her typing. She couldn't focus. It was hardly surprising. As hard as she had tried to blot that day from her memory, moments of perfect happiness destroyed kept flashing to the forefront of her mind.

Good lord, she thought she was over all this!

Well, 'over' in the sense that she had locked away that part of her heart, consigning the memory of Sir Anthony Strallan to a deeply hidden, almost forgotten corner of her soul.

What had he been doing here anyway? Edith asked herself, as she stabbed at the keys of her typewriter.

She lifted her head to stare at Mr Howard's office door. An appointment. That was what he had called his meeting. With a client. So Anthony. Sir Anthony, she corrected herself savagely. He had come on business. And so there would be paperwork, records pertaining to that business inside Mr Howard's office.

It would be beneath her to snoop.

It would be something banal and trivial.

It would cost her job if she was discovered.

But perhaps, if she just peeked, that would be enough, enough to contain this strange compulsion that she could feel starting to seize her. Because it scared her, what she was feeling, so much more than what she was remembering.

Edith's opportunity arrived half an hour after Mr Howard left for his afternoon meeting. Mr Abrams laid some papers on her desk.

"I'd like a copy of these made for Mr Howard, Miss Crawley."

"Of course, sir."

She had never typed so quickly in all her life. The document was littered with mistakes. She would be reprimanded severely for her inattention, but all that mattered to her in this moment was having an excuse to enter Mr Howard's office and look for Sir Anthony's file.

She stood. Her heart was drumming a tattoo in her chest. She rubbed her damp hands on her skirt before she picked up the papers and crossed the short distance to the office door. She fumbled clumsily with the handle, sure that every other eye in the room was on her. A guilty glance over her shoulder told her she was wrong. Rose was gazing idly out of the window and Margaret was chatting to one of the junior solicitors.

Relieved, for the moment at least, Edith finally managed to slip inside Mr Howard's office. She closed the door carefully and walked over to his desk. It was empty. Her stomach dropped. She had expected to find the last file that he had been working on left in plain sight.

She eyed the heavy mahogany drawers of his desk. Did she dare? Best not to think about it too deeply, she decided, pulling open one drawer, then another, and another. There. Almost hidden under a clutter of old papers, as though it had been deliberately buried, lay what she was looking for.

She opened the file without stopping to take a breath, but gave a visible start at the document's heading.

LAST WILL AND TESTAMENT

Sir Anthony Phillip Strallan, Bt.

Edith started to put the papers away. She shouldn't- she really shouldn't- but then, not halfway down the page, she saw it. Her name. And then of course, she couldn't possibly stop reading.

Her blood ran hot and then cold. Her eyes widened. Her breath laboured. How dare he? How dare he! There were other papers. Scraps of detail. A London address. She slapped the file shut. Shaking with the knowledge of what she had just learned.

She replaced the file in its hiding place, though its contents were now etched at the forefront of her mind. Her movements were stilted, controlled, as though she was afraid she might shatter at any moment if she didn't repress what she was feeling. That was how she emerged from Mr Howard's office and made her way back to her desk.

"Good grief, are you all right?" Rose hurried over and leaned across Edith's desk. "You're so pale!"

"I'm fine," she insisted, because really, pretending that she was fine was what she had been forced to do for the majority of her life.