Happy Christmas!

Okay, so I figured out why Edward was SO peculiar and affected. I've been watching Downton Abbey like a mad woman to get ready for the third season (which airs on January 6).

And if you're a Downton fan, you must find a clip of the crossover parody of Downton Abbey and Breaking Bad. Freaking hilarious. Thomas, the beautiful gay but wicked footman, breaks open a tea bag to snort it. Lord Grantham comes in sporting a goatee and says, "Soon Downton Abbey will be kicking it with mad b_s and benjamins." It's just...brilliant.

Hey, thanks very much for the reviews and encouragement! I'll take you all with milk and sugar, please.


EPOV

I kicked the toe of my shoe into the dirt, remembering Esme's so-called rescue. "Oh, whip me, Carlisle," I mocked under my breath, resenting the memory of how impressed Carlisle had been with her self-sacrificing attitude.

What he wasn't considering was how I'd spent the whole night making her contrite...which hadn't been easy. Where was the gratitude? Instead of thanking me, Carlisle intended on spanking me. How fair was that?

Yeah, I'd told Esme he wasn't going to. That was in a hasty fit of concern for my father, who was panicking at her suggestion. Now I was starting to rethink my position.

The point is, during all of this chaos, I was thinking of Carlisle first. He ought to know that.

My father had told me to wait here, so I presumed he wasn't averse to my spying in on his study.

"Why are you suddenly feeling so overprotective of Edward?" Carlisle was asking. "I don't mistreat him." He was sitting on his desk, one leg dangling, arms crossed defensively.

"I don't know. He just looks so adorable in his suspenders," Esme gushed from her seat in front of him. "You mustn't be so hard on him. He's just a baby."

"I don't think I am. I don't think Edward thinks that I am."

"But you strike him..." she trailed off.

"I call it discipline. I give him consequences so that he will learn and do better." Carlisle looked down; he didn't like it any more than I did. "How did you know?"

"Edward told me." Esme stood up and rubbed his arm. Carlisle said nothing, but he noted the trace scent of seawater on her skin. "That's why I think that I need consequences too. I mean we've designated these roles to play and all that. Edward and I are your charges—brother and sister—and you are our guardian—"

"Edward was like a brother to me. A companion. He's since—being so young—taken to being my son, and I'm responsible for him. But you, Esme, are my equal. My mate. My lover."

"Who has behaved very badly." She held his gaze.

"Yes, well. I mentioned buying an island a moment ago. Perhaps we ought to consider finding an island to live on for a while. Just until this...trouble passes."

Esme shook her head. "Edward likes it here. I won't make him leave, and I know you want him with us as much as I do. Besides, what you do for him seems to work. He doesn't go around bumping people off or committing acts of piracy."

"No..." he faltered.

"Then do it."

Carlisle straightened with force. "You don't know what you're asking!" he said loudly, suddenly animated. "What happens in here with Edward is...a...necessary evil. It being necessary doesn't make it good. It is deserved, I will admit—"

"I deserve it," Esme countered firmly.

"You don't understand how I've tried everything else with him. I don't want to hurt him. I don't want to be my father! That tyrant—" Carlisle abruptly lost his zeal. "I don't want to be like your brute of a husband either."

"You're not. You're nothing like either of those men. I'm sorry, Carlisle. I don't mean to upset you. I'm just...hoping to mend this." The mood in the study shifted with her gentle tone.

"What did you have in mind, dear?" My father, his head still bowed, cast his eyes up at her and smiled.

"Well...my father wasn't anything like Charles. He was a good man, who treated his wife with consideration and kindness. And he loved children. He played with us and told stories and sang. But you didn't cross him...or you ended up with a red behind."

I heard Carlisle chuckle. "And did that ever happen to you?"

"Maybe once or twice." She winked. "He took you out to the barn—so mother couldn't hear you crying—and when you came back, you couldn't sit for the rest of the day. He had a hard hand...and it was big, too." She had taken Carlisle's wrist in her fingers and was flipping his hand, front to back, judging its potential for harming naughty children.

"That sounds like a charming upbringing," he said, trying not to sound sarcastic, "but it's not so quaint what happens between me and Edward...even when he looks so adorable in his suspenders."

"Oh, and his hair. All those cowlicks..."

"Yes, so adorable."

My father was beginning to change his mind about the whole brother-sister pretense. When Esme gave her speech and basically told us off and bossed him, he thought he understood then that she was my mother. All this Edward-is-so-darling chat was backing that conclusion.

"Look, we need to figure out what to do with the swag out in the yard," Carlisle insisted.

"Mm," she hummed, uninterested in that quandary. "What does happen between you and Edward?"

"You want me to show you?" he asked, one side of his mouth curling.

Oh, God. He was flirting. How...disturbing.

"I think so. To defer any further unruliness. Oh, but isn't Edward in the yard?"

"I'll tell him to bugger off," he replied distractedly.

She let him take her wrist and twist it gently behind her back. Then, with a guiding hand on her opposite elbow, he steered her to the face of the desk. Reaching from behind Esme, he stretched his arm across to the other side, opened the top drawer, pulled out the coil of leather, and set it on the table surface, where it would be at her eye level.

He whispered directions while he manipulated her body. "I bend him over to rest on top the desk."

Uh, there is no resting in that position, Esme, let me tell you.

Carlisle glided a hand from her back, over the curve of her seat, and down her thigh.

"Such a mean man," Esme purred.

"I'll show you mean, Esme Cullen. Steal something on my watch again..."

I tried to tune out when he got to the bit about undressing. Gah! I thought I would gag. Talk about cruel. I wished he had spanked me, instead of leaving me to endure this shameful exhibition.

I wasn't sure if I was allowed to leave the property (he hadn't specifically told me to "bugger off"), so I crawled into the boat. Something about the cramped cabin did make you want to curl up in the fetal position, so that was what I did.

"This is what you get when you misbehave," Carlisle was saying, as I pointlessly covered my ears.

"I'll never do it again," Esme moaned.

One thing was certain—I must get these suspenders off.

CPOV

I hadn't meant to keep Edward out of the house all day.

"You sure did show her, Carlisle," Edward told me when I met him outside at nightfall.

"Shut your face," I said crossly. Feeling sorry for my rudeness, I softened my voice. "Will you help me, Edward? We need to return this beauty to the harbor where it belongs. It's not damaged is it?"

It took the two of us shouldering the vessel together to carry it back to the quay, Edward at the bow and me at the stern. Esme must have been extremely powerful to have transported it all those miles by land without help.

Edward continued to chatter on our way to the bay.

"It's just that—um, don't you think you ought to reconsider her proposition? I mean, do you really think she learned her lesson? I can read her mind, and let me tell you, there's not a lot of forethought going into this."

I let him go on acting like a complete cur, not saying a word. Why should I when he was so certain he was right in this situation? He ignored my annoyance and continued.

"I'm not a cur, Carlisle. And of course I'm right. I know you have doubts about her reformation." He smirked, looking back over his shoulder at me. "And I know what you think. About everything. When you see a misbehaving child, you say to yourself, Give him to me for four minutes, and I'll stop all that nonsense once and for all. That's what's going on in your head. I can see through the benevolent physician's pacifist surface."

"Maybe so. I don't act on those thoughts, however, and Esme's not a child. Your reasoning is deficient."

"She's a newborn vampire. It's kind of the same. And you do act on those thoughts when I misbehave. So what's the big deal? Esme needs a good spanking, and you happen to be just the man to give it to her. If you don't, what's going to stop her from turning into a bearcat that you can't control?"

"I'm not doing it, Edward. She's my wife, not my property. Let's leave it at that."

Immediately he caught my hypocrisy. "I must be your property then," he said with humor.

"You know what I meant."

"How could you do that to me, Carlisle? Especially when I'm so adorable." He looked back at me again and batted his eyelashes.

I rolled my eyes. He was so incorrigible at times.

"It goes over here," the boy said.

"Where?"

"Starboard side." He crooked his head at the empty space up ahead by the docks.

"Ah," I hesitated.

"I told you to leave your trench coat at home, Carlisle. You look swell. Really you do. But you don't always have to be a dandy."

I sighed. I didn't want to get my clothes wet. "Can we do this without getting in the water? What if we toss it?"

Edward agreed to try with me. I counted off in my head. Ready, steady, go... We pitched the boat over our heads like a paper airplane and watched it sail elegantly through the air. When it landed in the water, however, it created two colossal waves on either side and all the boats bobbed and knocked against each other. I had to run about 50 meters back from the shore to keep my shoes from getting wet.

I thrust a knuckle under my nose but could not help the laughter that shook me. Edward, arms clutched around his gut, leaned into me as he laughed. Finally I slapped at his back with the back of my hand. "We need to get out of here. You just caused a tsunami."

"What do you mean me?" he stuttered in between guffaws. "It was your idea!"

We noticed a torchlight throwing its beams at the still sloshing bay and took off at full speed in the direction of home.

"We should have tied it," I called to Edward. "Should we go back?"

"Nah, the port authority will take care of it."

"I don't have any rope anyway," I said, shrugging.

"Speaking of rope... Why don't we go ahead with the hanging?" Edward asked when we had slowed. "It won't hurt her..."

"Oh, you would like that wouldn't you?" I couldn't help but grin. My histrionic lad.

"You think it's funny too," he teased. "Can't you just picture it?"

I reached out quickly and smacked his left buttock. Edward's leg came up and he hopped a couple of steps, rubbing his haunch.

"Ow! I let you do that," he huffed.

"Mm-hmm," I half-heartedly agreed. It was my turn to smirk.

We were about a kilometer from home, when we heard an unfamiliar sound. Well, it wasn't unknown—we knew very well what it was. In spite of that, we were unused to hearing it in the forest and it confused us momentarily.

The sound was a baby crying.

There was another noise too—another crying.

It was Esme.

"Is that what I think it is?" I must have asked silently.

Edward confirmed, eyes tight. "It's hungry," he whispered.

I cursed. "Bloody hell."


Keep calm and carry on. )