Downton July Fanfic Bonanza!

1st July prompt: "Novel"

Set in early spring 1920.

Edith smiled innocently at Stewart, saying "Please don't worry announcing me, Stewart. I know my way."

Anthony's butler looked mildly shocked, but bowed his head in acquiescence. It was something she had never done before, but had imagined doing many times.

She wanted to catch him unawares. She longed to know what he got up to in that library of his when he was alone, what he looked like when he didn't think she was watching him. She waited until Stewart had left the hall; quietly she then turned the door handle.

He was sitting in his usual armchair by the fireplace. Dressed in a very proper tweed three-piece suit and plain tie, as ever, he was reading a book. He was so engrossed that he didn't hear her silently enter. She managed to creep close enough to him to realise that he was weeping. Sir Anthony Strallan, pillar of the county, the model of propriety, was crying over a novel. What book might move him so, she wondered. She moved forward one more step, her foot found the one and only creaky floorboard, and Anthony's watery blue eyes snapped up to meet hers.

"Lady Edith! I'm so sorry, I…I didn't hear you announced." He tried to wipe his eyes surreptitiously, but she moved closer to him still.

"Please don't worry. I…I'm afraid I told Stewart not to bother. We are friends enough for that, aren't we?"

He sighed, and she could read his thoughts. "Of course, of course" he answered politely, meaning that he didn't know how to convince this insistent young woman that he was not good enough, not young enough for someone as lovely as her.

Edith's eyes strayed to the book he had placed on the seat behind him. It was Tess of the d'Urbervilles. Her breath hitched; he noticed that she had noticed, and he had to explain.

"Forgive a foolish, sentimental, old man. Every time I read Tess, I am more struck by the arrogance of the men in her life. She didn't deserve them."

When she looked back on it years later, she remembered that moment as the first time she truly fell in love with Sir Anthony. A man born and raised in Victorian times, but who sympathised with Tess just as fully as Hardy did himself. A man moved to tears by a work of literature that he'd read many times before. Yes, she'd loved him before the War, and meeting him again at Granny's had been such a shock, and such a pleasure. But there is a difference between loving someone, and falling in love with them.

Instinctively, she laid her hand gently on his bad arm. They both stopped breathing, as he looked at her hand, then up at her face, as he recognised love in her eyes, and knew he was lost.