Just as Tom was staring out the window of his room at the Grantham Arms and contemplating the turn his life had taken so too was Sybil. However, unlike Tom she hadn't woken in a strange room with all her possessions tucked into two battered suitcases. No, Sybil had woken in the familiar surroundings of the room she had called her own since she had left the Downton nursery.
Rising from her bed, she automatically reached for her blue flowered silk robe laying in its customary position across the bottom of the bed. It was still early but faint sun light filtered through the space where the curtains had not been pulled tightly shut so as to admit some of the cool night air. She padded over to the window and pulled back the curtains revealing a sky brightened by the first golden rays of the rising sun. With the curtains fully opened the cool morning air quickly moved through the open window causing Sybil to pull her silk robe closed across her chest.
It had been a long time since Sybil lazily lounged in bed before rising to dress and start her day. Standing in front of her bedroom window, Sybil glanced back at the unmade bed thinking that it was the idleness of those years that led to her discontentment. For a while she had masked that discontentment in an interest in politics and women's rights but it was the war that had changed everything for her culminating in this new path she was embarking on.
She clearly remembered the conversation which seemed like a lifetime ago she had had with cousin Isobel regarding her feelings of helplessness, of wasting her life while the men she knew, men she had grown up with, had danced with her at her coming out ball as well as the balls of her friends, were sacrificing theirs in the war.
"You've been a tremendous help with the concert."
"I don't mean selling programs or finding prizes for the tombola. I want to do a real job, real work."
At that time she could never have imagined how that conversation would change her life. With her nursing she had found something that finally gave her life a purpose and a sense of being useful. When the war ended Sybil realized she couldn't go back to her previous life. Having become used to the hustle and bustle of those war years, she was now enveloped in a restlessness brought about from the sheer idleness of her days. Walking with Edith through rooms no longer serving convalescing soldiers but put back as they had been before the war with no remaining traces as to their use these past few years, she had told her sister she now knew what it was like to work. To have a full day. To be tired in a good way. I don't want to start dress fittings or paying calls or standing behind the guns.
Sybil turned her head from the bed to the view out her window and her eyes were immediately drawn across the wide expanse of lawn to the folly reminiscent of an ancient Greek temple. She smiled remembering the comforting warmth of Tom's arms around her.
She was so proud of the way Tom had stood up to her father. Never wavering. Never cowering. While she might have faltered for a moment, especially with Granny in the room, she had taken strength from the way he so strongly voiced you've asked me to come and I've come. Together they had faced her family.
She hadn't planned on heading for the folly when she had walked out of the drawing room last night, she only knew that she wanted to get far away from the house. She hadn't uttered a word as she led Tom across the lawn. It was only upon reaching the moonlit folly that she allowed herself to express the anger bubbling inside her.
As she paced up and down the floor of the folly, the words of her father stoked her anger. Tom reached out and stopped her pacing. Wrapping his arms around her, he pulled her in close so that her head rested on his chest as he caressed her hair.
"We knew it wouldn't be easy Sybil" he softly replied.
"But … but I thought … I…" Sybil mumbled as she tried to gather her thoughts.
"It was such a surprise for them love" Tom continued. He had thought Sybil was too optimistic in thinking her family, at least her mother and sisters, would readily accept him but he kept those thoughts to himself. "Maybe tomorrow when they've had some time to think about it they won't be so harsh."
"At least Mama and Granny were interested in hearing our plans" Sybil countered "although Papa didn't even listen. He … he was…"
"Your father is set in his ways. It will take some time for him to see me as something other than a chauffeur or as his servant."
As they continued to talk, she found his Irish lilt comforting and with his hand gently rubbing her back she could feel her anger slowly seeping away.
They had stayed sitting on the floor of the folly, their legs dangling over the edge, his arm around her waist and her head leaning against his chest, for what seemed like hours. Eventually their conversation had gone from what had happened in the drawing room to their plans for the next few days. He had talked about their crossing over to Ireland and even in the moonlight she could tell his eyes were lit with excitement of the thought of returning to his native country. She had asked again about his mother and siblings and his home but he said they'd have plenty of time on the boat to talk about that.
Finally they sat in silence, still holding on to each other, their fingers entwined with each other's and Sybil thought she had never felt more at peace.
Now standing here at her bedroom window, Sybil thought of how long she had denied her feelings for Tom. There had been a time, a long time, when she would have admitted he was her friend, probably the closest friend she had ever had, but that was all. Somehow their conversations on women's rights and politics had evolved into a friendship between two people from diverse worlds.
Although she had some inkling of Tom's feelings for her, she wasn't oblivious to the way Tom's eyes would gaze at her with longing, she was surprised that he had chosen York as the scene to reveal the depth of his feelings for her. By that time she too had some feelings of something beyond pure friendship but wouldn't have described it as anything like love. Not that she really had any idea of what love was for her contact with men had been limited to her one and only season.
But in York when Tom had laid bare his feelings, Sybil couldn't respond in kind. She was already in turmoil over her decision to go to nursing school. She was leaving home for the first time and stepping into a world far removed from her upbringing. Yet she knew that she needed him to be there when she returned, she needed him as a voice of reason and encouragement, she needed him as a friend.
Even when she had finally admitted to herself that she loved him, she didn't run to him immediately and accept his proposal. She had to be sure that she could leave the life in which she had been raised. More importantly she had to be sure she could leave her family if it came to that.
You're asking me to give my whole world and everyone in it.
And that's too high a price to pay?
It is a high price. I love my parents and my sisters.
After last night, it seemed that now she would be giving up her whole world. Was she really so naïve in thinking that her family would accept her decision to marry Tom?
Sybil's reverie was broken by the sounds of grumbling from her stomach. She chuckled wondering how she could be hungry after so much emotional turmoil but then realized how little she had eaten at dinner in anticipation of Tom's arrival later that evening in the drawing room.
She turned away from the bedroom window and looked around the room that would be hers for only a few more days. Her parents and sisters had always said the room was bright and sunny like her but as she looked about she saw so little that gave any indication of her personality or the person she had become. Other than some framed photographs and a few trinkets like the carved ivory elephant that her father had given her or the porcelain music box shaped like a carousel that was a gift from Grandpapa Levinson, the room was furnished like the rest of Downton with furniture, paintings and ornamental vases that had been in the Crawley family for generations.
How different would be her and Tom's flat she thought. There'll be a wall with bookcases filled with books we've actually read and ... Sybil's stomach grumbled louder causing her to stop her daydreaming and get dressed.
She paused momentarily with her hand on the bedroom doorknob. Taking a deep breath she braced herself to face whatever waited for her in the dining room. She hadn't seen any of her family since she had left the drawing room last night with Tom.
But if Sybil could have seen into the future she would have seen that it wasn't what awaited her downstairs at breakfast she need fear but rather that sometimes life takes unexpected, even unwanted, and sometimes cruel, turns.
A/N: As always thanks for the reviews - they keep me writing.