Two
"How did you find Haxby Park?" Matthew addresses Mary across the dinner table, which stands just enough too high for his wheelchair as to make him look boyish and awkward, and to make her unable to return his smile. She swallows her chicken and tastes the bitterness of guilt his question stirs. She didn't take him for a walk about the grounds this afternoon as planned; instead she'd allowed Richard to ensconce her in the library to help him scour the papers for advertisements of auctions.
Or maybe it's the thought of auctions having anything to do with her that makes Mary feel a little ill.
She takes a fortifying sip of wine and replies with a nonchalant tip of her head, "Well, it has a much prettier staircase than Downton..." A sideways glance at Richard shows him to be puffing out his chest beneath his starched white shirt in such a way that she half-expects him to start preening. She can't resist adding, after another drink, "It's big. Very big. And completely empty."
Her words seem resonant even in Downton's well furnished dining room, where all the family are gathered but Sybil, who's on duty at the hospital; Granny takes her place, no doubt having invited herself over for the express purpose of hearing about the visit to Haxby. None of them says anything, leaving Richard to fill the void.
Which he does not hesitate to do. Too loudly, and with too broad a smile. Always too, with Richard. "Then we shall have to fill it up with a lot of children."
Mary flushes and can meet nobody's eyes, though of course, she realises, belatedly, they're all looking at Matthew, anyway. Poor Matthew, who's trying so hard to be happy for her even though his prospects of filling his own estate with children, or of producing even a single heir, by her or Lavinia or any other woman, are hopeless.
The burning in Mary's cheeks is from anger now. She turns to glower at Richard, certain that he said it purposely to gloat over his imagined rival-but finds that his smile has faltered and his eyes are on the utensils he's holding.
She lets out her breath; it might be a charade, but at least he has the grace to look ashamed.
His eyes flick up to hers, and his smile returns, though more restrained now than before his faux pas.
"Or host a lot of dinner parties," he says, and the tension is broken with a polite chuckle from around the table, followed by the resumed clinks and scrapes of silverware against china, and Richard only making people uncomfortable in the usual way, of talking openly about money.
"I've a meeting with the house agent first thing in the morning to discuss my offer."
"But tomorrow is Sunday," says Granny.
"I'm taking the early train back to London Monday, Lady Grantham. Sunday's my only chance." Richard chuckles, clearly having thought of a retort he finds excessively clever. "God may be able to afford a day of rest, but I can't."
"Indeed? Only you talk so much about your money I was under the impression there was nothing you couldn't afford."
Laughter dying, Richard considers Granny for a moment; then, beaten, he takes a drink and reverts his attention to Papa as Granny does her best to take a bite of chicken around her pleased smirk. Mary's own amusement at seeing her fiancé taken down a peg, however, wanes when her eyes flick to Matthew's and instead of sharing a silent laugh across the table as they would have in the old days, she finds him gazing at her sadly. Pitying her, no doubt, for having a fiancé who compels people to take him down a peg.
"I expect I'll be able to drive quite a bargain for Haxby," Richard's voice draws her out of her thoughts, "in light of all the improvements necessary to make the place liveable."
"A fair price, I should hope," says Papa, his brow heavy over the top of his wine glass, "with respect to what the Russells have been through, poor family."
Richard opens his mouth to say something no doubt uncompassionate about the poor Russells' financial state, but thankfully Mama speaks first.
"It's a shame they've taken all the furniture." She smiles at Mary. "Though what fun you'll have fitting it out to your own taste. No mother-in-laws to clash with."
"Clash is certainly the word for your colour scheme in the drawing room," mutters Granny.
Blessedly, that puts an end to any further talk of Haxby at dinner, but Edith pounces on the subject again the moment the ladies are released to go through for coffee.
"What will you do about furniture?"
"Oh, Edith, please. Why must you make it sound as if it's some salacious scandal you read about in one of Richard's papers?"
"I know what gossip I might read about you," Edith replies, but her face, twisted with spite, goes slack at the same moment as Mary feels a strong hand at her elbow.
She's told Richard a dozen times, at least, not to go through with the ladies, but this time she's grateful for his ignorance of etiquette-or his habit of ignoring it-for Edith's remark put her quite off-balance; Papa and Matthew are probably glad for it, too, though not for the same reasons.
"People are selling estates left and right, and they certainly can't fit all that furniture into their townhouses," Richard says, guiding her to the settee next to the matching armchair on which Granny perches, though Mary, recovering from the blow Edith dealt her, finds she is too full of nervous energy to sit beside him. "We've looked out a few auctions which should fit Haxby out nicely."
"Auctions?"
"Yes, Granny, auctions." Mary does her best to sound appalled with her grandmother's lack of knowledge, but fears her own prejudice against the idea creeps into her tone. "Gatherings where things are sold to the highest bidder."
"I know what an auction is, my dear." Granny's pale blue eyes fix on Richard. "What I do not know is how any person would go to one in good taste. One rather thinks of vultures."
"Coffee, Sir Richard?" asks Carson, and as Richard takes a cup and saucer from the butler, he looks up at Mary, uncertainty etched on his features as she's only seen it once before, the first weekend he came up to Downton dressed for a shoot instead of a walk.
"We could buy new instead," he offers, but Granny balks at that, too, giving a cough that sounds distinctly like the words middle class.
"What would you prefer we do, Granny?" asks Mary. "Sleep on the bare floor?"
She makes the mistake of glancing at Richard, whose look of confusion gives way to a smirk which makes her think of the remark he'd made at Haxby about sharing a bed, and at dinner about having a lot of children to fill up the house. Heat prickles at the neckline of her gown, creeping up her neck and into her cheeks as she remembers the warmth of Richard's hands cupping her face and his mouth covering hers and the balustrade solid against her back as he kissed her, deepening crimson as her gown as-of course-the men choose that precise moment to join them for coffee, Matthew's eyes haunting her from across the room as Carson wheels him in. Her coffee tastes even more bitter as his gaze stirs up her guilt at not keeping her promise to hurry back from Haxby and keep him company, at thinking of adding new chapters to her life's story when the covers seems to have been clapped shut on Matthew's before his book can be completely written.
"Will you wait to marry until the work's finished on the house?" Mama's broad American drawl is an unwelcome interruption of her musings; she could not have chosen a more inappropriate question to ask had she been privy to Mary's thoughts.
"We haven't discussed a date yet," Mary replies, not for the first time since their engagement announcement ran in the paper.
She means to brush the question aside, but she's not thinking on her feet-Matthew has turned his attention to Edith and Papa-and Richard won't be brushed off. Not now. Not when he's at the brink of buying a house for her. For them.
"I think the work can be finished by spring," he says, "if I really crack the whip. And I'm quite good at that."
Granny's fingers curl dangerously around the pommel of her cane, boring the tip so hard it seems likely she'll impale the carpet, and possibly the floorboards beneath it. "Auctions, whips...are you a newspaper man, Sir Richard, or a slave driver?"
"I won't deny I've acquired that reputation," Richard admits with a chuckle, looking for all the world as if Granny paid him a compliment-the arrogant great idiot.
"Slavery went out of fashion centuries ago."
"That's rather hyperbolic, Mama, don't you think?" interjects Papa, without a great deal of conviction, the conversation between Granny and Richard having drifted across the drawing room to him.
Once more Mary's eyes meets Matthew's, her heart skipping a beat to see them glowing with life as they have not since he was brought injured to Downton, clearly amused by the sparring match between her fiancé and her grandmother. Is he, too, thinking of his early days among her family, when his work as a solicitor evinced a similar scandalised reaction from Granny? Does he remember when she asked, What's a weekend?
"But a work ethic didn't," argues Richard, which, incredibly, seems to be the very last thing Granny expected him to do. "If it makes you feel any better, Lady Grantham, I hold myself to the same standard as anyone in my employ."
"It doesn't."
Richard drains his coffee cup and sets it on the side table behind Mary, then reaches for her hand, the touch of his warm fingers drawing her-unwillingly-from the cool, restive blue of Matthew's eyes. He tugs at her hand, too, indicating he'd like for her to sit beside him, and she's too weary to resist.
"What do you think, darling?" Richard asks, grinning at her. "Shall we make it a spring wedding so I can be a real April gentleman? Or would you prefer to be a June bride?"
She'd prefer to be Matthew's bride, or no one's at all. Even if Richard is being sweet and sentimental and every romantic cliché she never believed him capable of. Is it an act? Or had his fashionable aloofness been the act? I've waited two years for this, he'd said. I know what sort of story I'd like it to be.
"I can't think about that right now," Mary says, her clammy hand slipping easily from his grasp as she gets to her feet again. "Excuse me, I think I'd like to go to bed. It's been quite a day."
As she hurries from the room, she hears Richard make his excuses, too, then his heavier treads behind her as he follows her out into the hall. She quickens her pace, all but running as she tries to match her footfalls to the tempo of her racing heart, expecting Richard to catch up to her, to actually catch her in his arms.
But he doesn't. He doesn't even call out to her until her hand alights on the ornately carved finial of the banister.
"I've done it again, haven't I, Mary?" he says, stepping into the circle of lamplight at the bottom of the stairs. "Said or done something I shouldn't?"
A strand of sandy hair has broken free of the pomade and falls over his forehead, making him look as he faces her from the other side of the staircase strangely like a suppliant schoolboy, though he must be Papa's age, or near to it. Somehow, taking in these details-or perhaps having withdrawn from Matthew, his voice no longer audible even though the drawing room door stands ajar-restores Mary's sense of clarity.
"I can't decide if it's worse that you're either pretending to be so oblivious," Mary says, "or that you really are. Surely you noticed how uncomfortable you made everyone with your talk of Haxby and our marriage?"
"I couldn't help myself. It's just that I got rather carried away by the excitement of today. Walking through our future home with you...I suppose it's made me a bit sentimental thinking about our wedding...our children...I'm very happy." He raises his hand, allowing it to hover for a moment over hers where it rests on the finial, before covering it with his own. "You made me very happy today."
He draws her hand upward to his lips, his eyes never leaving hers as he bestows such delicate kisses on her knuckles that she curses her black silk gloves she hasn't yet bothered to remove. But then his other hand clamps around it, too; his gaze darkens, and when he speaks again his voice is as rough as his touch.
"I thought I'd made you happy today, too."
If she had been happy-and she isn't at all sure she had-she's not about to own to it now; though she doesn't dare deny it, either, or attempt to struggle in his vice-like grasp.
"It's cruel to flaunt our happiness in front of Matthew."
In perhaps the most astonishing moment of a day that seems to have brought endless surprises, Richard releases her.
"It's very tragic, of course, what happened to Captain Crawley," he says, rubbing his chin, "though if you ask me, he's made himself rather unhappier than he must be by breaking it off with Miss Swire. He might not have everything I will, but he could have a wife to grow old with in this house. Which," he adds, drawing out the word, "I don't think I need to remind you, should have been yours."
Years have passed since Mary resigned herself to not inheriting Downton, yet Richard's words, so deliberately chosen and carefully aimed, find a place buried down deep that's still raw. He knows her well-and yet not well enough to see that it's not Matthew for whom she harbours resentment for the entailment. The realisation makes her feel less vulnerable, more able to look Richard in the eye and fight back.
"Matthew put Lavinia's happiness above his own. You wouldn't know anything about that, would you?"
She turns from him, placing her foot on the first step of the red-carpeted staircase.
"I know enough about it to see he'd have let you go, too," Richard's voice arrests her ascent without his even having to touch her.
Mary wishes she could hate him for saying it, but she can't even find it in her to be angry at him, no more than she can be angry at Matthew for being the future Earl of Grantham and master of Downton. The thought has niggled at the back of her own mind ever since Matthew sent Lavinia away, but she's pushed it back as she pushed Matthew's wheelchair through the grounds, desperate to believe that she is different, more adequate, more needed than Lavinia.
But she's not.
And the dark-panelled walls and dim lights of Downton have never seemed more confining, more oppressive to her than they do in this moment.
Richard brushes his fingers across her cheekbone, and she flinches, or shivers, or perhaps both.
"That chapter of your book's finished, Mary. Time to start another one."
"I kissed you, didn't I?"
He lifts an eyebrow. "You kissed Mr Pamuk, as well," he says, as gentle as it is cruel; his hand opens over Mary's cheek, his thumb scuffing over her mouth, coaxing her lips slightly apart as her breath hitches. "A kiss can mean a lot of things."
It's unnecessary for Richard to tilt her face up toward his as she arches up to meet him in spite of herself. His mouth is hard on hers at first, but then he yields with a shuddering breath against her when her hand goes up to rest on his neck, her silk glove stroking the bare skin above his collar where she can feel the frantic beating of his pulse in his throat. His hands cup her face and draw her further in to him as he deepens the kiss, bringing them impossibly close, and Mary thinks how he needs her. Matthew may not, but Richard does. If only as a foot in the door to good society or a teacher of etiquette, which at least would be something, but it's more than that.
He wants her, as well as needs her, or he'd shake her hand or give her a peck on the cheek and not kiss her like this. And isn't wanting to be wanted what got her in this situation to begin with? What more can she ask for but that her future husband deem her a helper suitable, in every way?
What meaning does he draw from her kiss? she wonders, and no sooner does the question flit through her mind than Richard presses his lips once more to hers and draws back, regarding her with a gleam in his eye.
"That one tells me you like stories with a little sex in them."