For Ju-Dou.
The Choices We Make
You're not going to let him get away with this, Papa's words ring in her ears as Mary makes her way from the breakfast table to the telephone table in the saloon, but they are not the reason why she picks up the phone and speaks into the mouthpiece, asking the operator to put her through to London. Richard has got away with it-though what he's got away with is not what Papa thinks-and letting him do so is the price Mary must pay for a life.
And it's not too high a price. Not when Richard provides her with such ample opportunity to pay him back. She promised to find a way to compensate him for his troubles with the Bates woman, after all. Just because she's entitled to be in her future husband's debt, doesn't mean she will be, any more than she must. And won't that make him squirm? Her lips curl upward at the thought in the day's first semblance of a smile, and she hears something of Granny's perverse glee in her own voice when Richard's secretary picks up on the other end of the line.
"Yes, I'd like to speak to Sir Richard, please"
"I'm sorry, madam," the young woman replies, "but he's with one of his investors."
So much the better, Mary thinks, but she affects a tone of boredom, inspecting her fingernails in much the same manner as she had adjusted her gloves as she'd stood before the secretary's desk the day before: "Tell him Lady Mary Crawley phoned, then."
"Oh! Lady Mary, of course. In that case, one moment. Sir Richard's expecting you to ring."
"Is he?"
Mary means to tell the girl not to trouble herself-if there's one thing she never does, it's what people expect her to do, especially when people means Richard and she ought to have known he expects an admonishment for behaviour even he had to know is a breach of etiquette at any social level-but before she can the secretary adds a hasty, "May I wish you joy, Lady Mary?"
"I don't know," Mary replies. "You'll have to ask Sir Richard."
She imagines the secretary goggling, and half-wishes she was there to see it, when Richard's voice crackles over the line.
"You've seen the paper, haven't you? I know, I shouldn't have."
"If you knew, then why did you? Or don't you want to pass for a gentleman? At least for the man who's to be your father-in-law?"
She wishes she could relish the sweetness of taking him down a peg in the middle of a meeting with an investor-because she fancies Richard would be rude enough to take a personal phone call without excusing himself from his own office-but the effect is rather spoilt by having to keep her voice down and cast furtive glances about for members of her family who might come into the saloon and witness her shame of having a fiancé who requires taking down.
Worse, Richard chuckles, low and somehow rumbling through her even across hundreds of miles of telephone cables. "Surely even a gentleman is given a pass when excitement over a happy change in circumstance moves him to eschew etiquette?"
Though she knows he cannot see her, Mary arches her eyebrow, just as she would if they were speaking face-to-face. "Oh, Richard. Excitement? That's not who you are. Or who I am. At least pay me the compliment of not pretending that sentiment has anything at all to do with this."
A crackle of static, then Richard answers in a tone that makes her see, so clearly, his cold pale eyes beneath his heavy brow. "All right. But perhaps you might consider the compliment I have paid you."
While she is still puzzled into silence, he goes on, as if nothing unpleasant had occurred between them-just now or yesterday when they struck hands upon their bargain, or ever: "Now. Are you going to invite me up for the weekend, or do I have to reveal my ill-breeding again by inviting myself?"
"By all means, invite yourself," Mary replies. "You revealed your breeding long ago. It was sufficient to make the reputation stick."
"You and Papa were at your port longer than usual last night," says Mary as she strolls with Richard about the park Saturday morning. "We were at rather a loss in the drawing room."
It's the first opportunity they've had alone together since he arrived at Downton, since he secured their engagement earlier in the week-though Mary thinks opportunity may be too optimistic a word for it, her mood no doubt influenced by the grey cool weather. Honestly, she'd have preferred to put it off for longer, as she'd put off giving Richard an answer to his proposal. Though she wishes she hadn't, now; if they'd been engaged already when she'd told him about Kemal Pamuk-or even married-she'd still have Richard's protection, without him having power over her. No more than was granted by the state of holy matrimony, anyway.
She still would have had a choice.
At least she can be grateful that he makes no attempt to pretend to her family that this is any more than the convenient arrangement he'd proposed last spring. Perhaps that is what he meant by paying her a compliment. Perhaps in his world, an imbalance of power does not negate an equal partnership. He'd shaken her hand, after all, as if she were a business associate with whom he'd just made a contract, and not taken advantage of her vulnerability by pressing for kisses-or more-as he might have done.
Emboldened, she looks up at him from beneath a raised eyebrow and asks, "I suppose it's too much to hope that you've made friends?"
Richard stops walking, so that Mary must, also; she turns to look back over her shoulder at him, pleased to find him standing stiff and out of place beneath the sprawling English oak that's been here as long as her ancient family have. As he was on his first visit here, when he'd nearly sweltered in his ill-advised tweeds.
"Did you know when you invited me that your father meant to dress me down for not speaking with him before we announced our engagement?"
"That was entirely your own doing," Mary replies, walking on. "The inviting, the announcing...I did try to warn you."
She glances back to see if he has followed her. He hasn't; in fact, he's taken off his hat and leant back against the tree as if he means to linger there a while, even though the clouds are rolling in thicker and darker. With a sigh she stops and faces him again, one of her hands resting on the back of the bench beneath a low-sweeping bough whose leaves whisper in the wind that smells faintly of distant rain.
"I can't imagine you took it lying down," she says.
"Never."
Richard smirks, and though Mary would love nothing better than not to give him the satisfaction of her curiosity, the deepening of his dimples, she finds, is irresistible.
"What did you say to him?"
"Much the same as what I told you." Pushing off the tree with his shoulder, Richard puts his hat on once more and slips his hands into his trouser pockets; but as he saunters toward her, the intensity with which his clear eyes holds hers belies his relaxed posture. "That by announcing our engagement without asking his permission to marry you I meant no disrespect to him, but rather to compliment you."
"How?"
"By acknowledging that you don't belong to any man to be given away. Who you marry is your choice, Mary, and yours alone."
"Which, of course, is why you're blackmailing me into marrying you."
"I never said that."
Richard's eyes, suddenly, are not the only feature on his face that appear hard, and despite the difference in their height not being very great, Mary feels that he looms over her. Even so, she's more surprised at his reaction than scared of it, more intrigued than intimidated. Why should Richard be angry for her pointing out the truth?
Unless somehow, in his mind, it is not the truth?
"Do you really wish to test me?" he asks, his voice scarcely louder than a whisper.
As he draws long slow breath through his nose, the corner of his mouth quirks upward; as the sun breaks through the clouds, the rest of his face relaxes, too. But Mary's pulse begins to race even eyes dart from his smirk down to his hand as it settles on her hip.
"Anyway, my dear, if you are still in any doubt as to whether you want this, I think I can persuade you."
Richard's words are a warm breath on her cheek, and he brushes his lips so lightly across it that at first she doesn't realise that he is kissing her until his mouth grazes her own. She stands rigid, anticipating the possessive grasp of his fingers digging into her tip as tightly as she clutches the back of the bench, drawing her body flush against his. But his touch is as light as the brush of his lips, the kiss surprisingly more chaste than even the one she shared with Matthew so long ago in the dining room; he lingers without asserting himself over her, perhaps waiting for her to return his kiss, before he at last draws back and reaches into the inner pocket of his jacket.
"Or if not with that, then perhaps with this?"
He draws out a small velvet box that can only have come from a jeweller's.
"Dear me," Mary says as he opens it and reveals a-predictably-vulgar diamond which somehow glints even though the sun is once more obscured by clouds, in an overly ornate platinum setting. "An engagement ring."
"They're all the rage now, I'm told," Richard says, taking her hand, "even-"
"By whom?" Mary pulls her hand away from him as he starts to peel off her glove to put the hideous thing on her finger. "The same person who told you tweed was suitable clothing for long walks in the country?"
"-even for aristocratic ladies," Richard finishes, his lips pale as he goes red in the face.
"That's the only kind of lady there is. Perhaps if it was an old family jewel-"
"My family haven't any jewels, old or otherwise. You know that perfectly well." There is a break of frustration in his voice that makes Mary wonder whether he hadn't sincerely hoped to please her with his gift.
"I'm sorry," she says, almost meaning it, though she can't possibly let on. "But I wouldn't be seen dead wearing that in decent society."
A wedding band won't be so bad, but that...She looks away from the ring in distaste, wondering whether a scarlet K for Kemal embroidered on her breast wouldn't be less humiliating than this symbol of to whom she's bound.
"You would if I put it on your cold dead finger for your funeral," Richard says, petulantly, but he claps the case shut; the snapcarries the finality of a nail in a coffin, Mary thinks, and then rolls her eyes at her own melodramatics.
Richard appraises her evenly as he slips the box back into his pocket. "Forgive me if I'm mistaken, but aren't you marrying me for my money? My new money?"
"That doesn't mean I want to wear it."
"You plan to go about naked, then?"
She turns away from his sneer before he can see her blush, but when she is sure her face is cool, she looks over her shoulder again. "I'm only considering the compliment you've paid me, Richard. Of letting me make my own choices."
He's still standing there with his mouth hanging open when the rain starts to fall, while Mary hurries up to the house, considering the far more important choice he gave her today, and the one she made:
The choice to hurt him.