A/N - This is a bit behind the times - it deals with events between 2.07 and 2.08. Its taken me a long time to pluck up the courage to publish my first fan fic, so please be gentle!

"Do you need any money for the room?" Lady Mary demanded of him.

"No thank you, Milady," he sighed, defeated.

Branson closed the door after them and sank onto the bed, resigned. This was it, then. The end. She'd made her choice when it mattered and she hadn't chosen him. She'd gone with them, and he was left sitting on the musty bed of the nameless roadside inn. He'd known from the beginning, of course, that she wasn't coming with him out of love. His feelings for her were in no way reciprocated. To Sybil, Branson was just an escape route. That was all. A ticket, to use her words. A way of rejecting the post-war monotony of her upper-class life. No; bells didn't chime when Lady Sybil Crawley's eyes alighted on her chauffeur. No girlish blushes or silly excuses for clandestine meetings. No; to Sybil he was just a way out; a means to an end. And yet he'd taken that. He'd grab at anything which meant he could be with her. Idiotically, he'd thought that if he could just get her away from them, just marry her and get her on a boat to Ireland, that would be his chance to entice love out of convenience. Surely she would grow to love him, if she knew how much he idolised her? Surely given time her feelings would grow?

Damn fool.

He should have known that they would come for her. And any idiot could see that she would go back with them, come to that. If he'd have been thinking straight earlier he would have hidden them somewhere off the road, but logical thought seemed to elude him when it came to her. And so they had found her, and she had gone with them without a backward glance. All her talk of staying true to him meant nothing. He could see that, blind as he was. He could see that as soon as her sisters had had their say, any tentative hold he had over her would be broken and she would be lost to him completely.

So, yes. He would return the car tomorrow. And then he would go. Leave her to her family, and the opulence of her everyday life. Leave her to make her escape some other way. He'd be damned if he'd be her ticket.

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They'd managed to sneak back quite easily, Sybil reflected. Anna had lead them in through the servants' entrance, and Mary had left her at her door after more assurances that she wasn't about to run off again.

Left alone, she tried to think through her next steps. She had promised Tom that she would be true to him, and that was one promise she was definitely going to keep. There was no way she was giving up on him now. As soon as her sisters had burst through the door at the inn, however, she'd known that she was going to go back. If she was being honest with herself, she'd known even before then, in the car on the journey from Downton. While Tom had beamed with pleasure and anticipation, full of plans for their future, she'd been thinking about the past. About the family she was giving up. The family she loved almost as much as she loved Tom.

She knew the only way forward was to bring Papa round. She had to convince him that her marrying the chauffeur was the best thing for her. Marrying the chauffeur. Even to her it sounded like something out of one of Mama's novels. But she had to do it. Simply had to. Tom was the only thing that was right for her. She needed to marry him. But she needed her family to be on her side too. While she knew that Tom was her ticket out of Downton, that alone would never have persuaded her to part from them. That wasn't enough. But it was enough that she loved him. That she knew to be simple fact. She loved him with all her heart, and she wouldn't be separated from him.

So yes. When he returned the car tomorrow, she would go to him and they would make plans. They would make her family accept them and then they would begin their new life. Together.

A/N - Much more to come, taking us up to the end of series 2. Please review - but remember I'm new, so be gentle but honest. Thanks, SummerSeven. x