AU. Set at no particular point, Cora and Miss O'Brien have gone to London.
Nightdress folded in her arms, Miss O'Brien knocked on the bedroom door.
"Come in," came the reply without much hesitation.
Entering the room, Lady Grantham, she saw, was perched demurely at the foot of the bed. She said perched, there was something restless in the way she was sitting- as if she were uneasy- despite looking drained at the same time. Hearing the door however, she looked up and sat a little straighter.
"Ah, O'Brien."
Sarah walked around the bed to the side and placed the nightdress on the sheet.
"Did your Ladyship have a nice dinner?"
The countess turned a little to respond. Her eyes looked messy and dark somehow, dark round the edges and rather dangerous despite the docile expression that Sarah had caught a glimpse of before her mistress blinked heavily.
"Yes, yes thank you. But I must say, I'm rather grateful that Rosamond finally saw fit to go home."
Sarah snorted as loudly as couldn't be counted as impertinent at that; like most of the population of Downton, she found his Lordship's sister more trouble than she was worth and thought it a frightful bore that her Ladyship had to entertain her while in London- even when she was there alone.
"You'd almost think she didn't like her own house," she remarked dryly, "All the time she spends around here."
Thankfully, this drew a small smile of approval from her mistress: evidently she wasn't in the mood to defend her husband's tiresome relatives at the moment.
"Quite."
She bowed her head again, though it was still turned and was remarkably quiet and still for a moment. This was quite different from the norm; usually Sarah was hard-pressed to get a word in edgeways and she looked up from sorting the bedsheets to look closely at her mistress again. In this light, the darkness around her eyes was quite pronounced and Sarah finally realised what it was: Lady Grantham had been crying.
"My lady, is everything all right?"
Her Ladyship gave a half-hearted sniff.
"Yes, O'Brien, yes. Everything's perfectly all right."
She wasn't sure if she had even expected her to believe her. Taking a moment's pause, she wondered how best to approach her without appearing too deliberately forward.
"My Lady, I'm not Mrs Hughes. I won't think any worse of you or try to give you a pep-talk."
Her Ladyship sniffed amusement.
"You're rather unkind to poor Mrs Hughes sometimes, you know," she remarked gently.
Sarah, never one to respond to reprimands that were anything less than physical threats, all but ignored the remark; raising her eyebrow slightly and hoping that it serve as a reminder that her question hadn't yet been answered. Her Ladyship, too seemed to realise that this was the case and seemed to see little point in withholding the truth. She looked distracted for a moment, then:
"It's just... Rosamond. She knows that...that... well- I suppose you of all people must know too- Robert and I haven't exactly been getting on too well at the minute."
Sarah nodded, that wasn't exactly brand new information.
"And Rosamond, well she can be rather snide at the best of times, but when she's being pointedly so it's just... not what I needed."
She trailed off, looking rather hopelessly up at Sarah. It had been years since she had found herself trying to exercise a sympathetic smile and it felt quite odd.
"Anyway," the Countess smiled rather sadly, shuffling her way off the bed and standing gingerly, "Taking all of that into account, aside from Rosamond I suppose I'm better off here than I would be at home. Less to contend with."
She closed her eyes as Sarah stood before her to undo the buttons at her neck.
"Nice of his Lordship to let you have Grantham house for some time in London," she remarked, hoping her involuntary dryness wasn't to obvious.
The laugh that the countess let out in reply verged on bitter.
"It keeps me out of his hair," she corrected.
Sarah untied the band at her waist and she seemed to expel a sigh of relief as she raised her arms so that the dress could be lifted off her.
"Can we not talk about him?" she asked, suddenly sharp.
"Not if you don't want to, my lady," Sarah replied, arranging the dress and looking in the wardrobe for a hanger.
Lady Grantham was paler even than she usually was, her dark hair contrasting heavily with the white of her skin. There was something exhausted, shattered about her as she stood by her bed in her corset and under-skirt; something odd. Something beautiful. Bloody hell, Sarah thought, depositing the dress on the rail; she must also be exhausted, deliriously so to be thinking...-
"O'Brien, sorry to hurry you, but can you get me out of this corset please, I think it might be making me light-headed."
No, no she wasn't delirious. The countess's weary, tense form was almost emitting a glow when she turned back to her, peering cautiously at her. Haltingly, she moved behind her to unloosen the first fastening. As soon as it was undone, her Ladyship seemed infinitely more relaxed; exhaling as deeply as the garment allowed her to. Bleedin' hell; she was beautiful. Perhaps it had always been the case and it was only now that it was practically smacking her in the face.
Positioned as she was, the cool radiating from her mistress's neck could almost touch her nose. She closed her own eyes, wondering if her breathing was too conspicuously heavy. Perhaps it was, although her fingers still lingered on the ties, her Ladyship seemed oblivious to the fact that Sarah was far too still for the corset to be being undone.
Feeling the motion of it, rather than deciding to, Sarah felt her head bow until her lips rested on the corner of her mistress's neck and kissed it gently. Her Ladyship said nothing. The silence was momentarily dismal, panic hazed at the back of her head and it occurred to her that if she continued to unlace the corset there was a possibility that she could pretend that nothing had happened. Her fingers fumbled a little as she progressed; her Ladyship seeming to breathe more heavily as each fastening was released. Finally, the garment was undone and Sarah carefully drew it away from her body, turning to place it on the bed.
Her Ladyship had turned to face her and she gulped a little. The expression she wore had an air of danger; it struck her as odd that the time she went too far it was in a way that she would have never ever in a million years expected to. But now, it was obvious: she could love Lady Grantham better than his Lordship could.
"Thank you, O'Brien."
Well, they were the wrong words for a start; not the ones she was expecting. Much less was she the hand, at her own neck, fiddling with her own buttons. She looked in surprise from the hand to Lady Grantham's face; the dangerous expression had morphed into something more curious than that, something she couldn't quite put a word to. She was quite dumbstruck for more than a one moment.
And then, of all the absurd things that had happened in her career, her mistress kissed her.
I've never written for this pairing before and so have probably done it quite badly. Please tell me what you think of it.