Sybil's waiting in the library, looking out the window onto the soggy grounds of the Abbey. The rain has been falling for hours and the window pane has steamed up with condensation. She has a dress appointment in Ripon that she's been putting off, but her mother insists she must have her new frocks now because the summer season is fast approaching. She runs her hand against the blue of the glass and looks to see if Branson has pulled up the car.
It will be the first time since the Count that she will be allowed on a drive without a chaperone, without Edith complaining at her side or Mary pretending to be coldly indifferent toward the things she cares about most passionately, which often means Matthew. They are free to do as they please without having to watch their sister as though she is still a child.
As for Sybil, she feels as though she's been carrying stones in her pockets for weeks, and only now has the weight been lifted. She wonders if Branson feels the same. They've hardly had the chance to speak, and when they do it's another mouthed apology for the guilt and responsibility they feel about what happened.
Life isn't quiet, though. There has been much to gossip about—not the least of which is of "the great matter" and Matthew and Mary's almost-engagement—but she misses talking of politics and progress, and she feels the stagnation of conversation pooling in her heart. When she tries to start a conversation with her sisters, Mary humors while Edith dismisses, and even sweet Anna, in whom she sometimes confides, offers only mild agreement as not to rock the boat.
Only Branson has dared to cross that line, to engage with her as no one of her class or of his will. Sybil is still young—only 18—but she understands now what it means to be treated as an equal, and it's like the first taste of cool, sweet water after a year in dessert. She only wants more.
There's a gentle knock on the door, and suddenly there he is, a grin on his face so bright that she forgets that it's raining.
"Lady Sybil," he says, his Irish lilt rolling out like the notes of a song. "The car is ready."
She takes his arm and the blush blossoms on the roses of her cheek. As she does she casts one more glance outside, not knowing yet that one day she will be married in the garden that lies just beyond the window, that her future bridegroom is the man now at her arm, and that he will ask her to marry him first, and ask her father for his blessing second, because no man ever possesses Sybil Crawley, and her permission is the only one he needs. Anything else is simply courtesy.
And as they cross into the hallway and Carson opens an umbrella to cover her as she walks out into the storm, she also doesn't yet know what trouble the future will bring—two long and deadly wars, the continued fight for women's rights; a bloody Sunday in Dublin—nor how out of the ashes a new future will rise, a future that includes two beautiful, dark-haired children named Ava and Michael, who will not know their father as a chauffeur but as an MP, and their mother not as just a lady in a fine house, but as a force to be reckoned with, a fiery advocate for women and workers.
But that is later. This is now. Sybil deposits herself safely in the backseat of the car. And when Branson is in the driver's seat and is pulling them out on to the main road, she leans forward and touches his shoulder.
"Yes, Milady?" he asks, tilting his head back so that she can see the clear blue of his eyes.
And she says, because she can, "Let's take the long way today, shall we?"
[the end]