AN: Ok, wow. Thank you, thank you, everyone, for your amazing feedback. You are all so lovely! I don't know what to say except that this first-time fic writer is very grateful.
As for the story. I keep wanting to get to the action-ier fun stuff, only to discover there are so many problems these two have to discuss first that the show left unexamined! So bear with me for the therapy session – let's just say they have a lot of issues.
3. Fantasy
Temporarily blinded by the light flooding into the corridor, Mary and Richard paused for moment as their eyes adjusted. Slowly the world outside the door came into focus; Mary noted from the peeling floral wallpaper that this room had yet to be touched by Richard's builders.
He approached the door and pushed it open further, examining the squeaky hinges with a look of amazement. "If only I'd known the history of the house I bought," he mused. "The original owner certainly went to great lengths to keep his love a secret."
"Perhaps it would have been better," Mary posited, "if he had just come out and admitted it, saving himself all the trouble of his machinations."
"Perhaps all the trouble he took to conceal his desires only affirmed how deeply-held they really were."
He was still in the doorway, and Mary had to squeeze past him to get to the outer room. As she brushed against him, he stilled her with a gentle touch to her arm.
"Theodore sounds like a cad," Richard murmured, and they both knew he was not talking about Mr. Russell.
"He was a bit of a Machiavelli," Mary replied softly, her gaze fixated on the starched collar of his white shirt. "But at least he put up a good fight for what he wanted. I suppose that has to matter."
Bringing his free hand up to caress her cheek, his thumb settled under her chin and he tilted Mary's face to look at him.
"The only thing that matters is if he won."
He kissed her, gently at first but with increasing force as she began to kiss him back. The narrowness of the corridor and his hand on her arm meant that she could not wrap her arms around her neck as she wanted to, so she settled them around his waist instead, bringing them closer together than they had been in a long time. She missed the intimacy; the secret embraces in the garden and the stolen kisses in the hall, two years of wanting him in spite of herself and he always willing to indulge her passion.
She had never thought of them as two people in love – far from it. But she could not deny their mutual attraction, and regardless of whether they were shouting or laughing, she rarely refused his advances. It was all quite innocent; they had little time truly alone, and even then, she reserved her sharp tongue for barbed comments. But once in a while, when one of them had said something so abhorrent that silence was the only response, or when he stopped mid-sentence to look at her in the sunlight, all she wanted in the world was his touch, and he was happy to oblige.
He reveled in their kiss a beat longer before breaking away. Richard always seemed to pull back at exactly the moment Mary needed him the most desperately. Ever the manipulator, he had years' more experience controlling his desire than she, and Mary was certain it was his way of having fun with her.
Annoyed, confused, frustrated – all her usual emotions when Richard was around – she pushed past him into the bedroom.
Sensing the moment had passed, Richard returned to the subject of her guided tour. "Did you ever consider, as you weaved this fantastic tale for all the little children of Haxby, that perhaps the real explanation for the corridor is far more mundane?"
"What would that be?" Mary asked, taking in the sight of the forgotten room, with its tarnished chandelier and faded curtains.
"Judging from the copious amount of wine, I would say old Theo had a drinking problem that he did not want his wife to know about."
"And the stairs up to the bedroom?"
"So he wouldn't be seen on the main staircase searching for his midnight brandy."
"Well, that may be the factual explanation, but don't you prefer the romantic lie?" she asked dreamily, still in her tour guide voice.
"Never," Richard said earnestly. Then he paused for a second, cocking his head to the side as he appraised her. "But you do, don't you?"
Once again, they were no longer talking about Theodore.
"For someone cold and careful, you have a surprising inclination towards the imaginary."
Mary had no idea what he was talking about, so she looked out the window at the snow dotting the lawn that stretched along the drive as far as the eye could see. They really were isolated out here – no phone, no people for miles. Should she be concerned, she wondered, alone with him in such a mercurial mood? Or perhaps it was he who should worry; she was feeling equally erratic from her mixed up feelings and lack of sleep.
"Wasn't that what happened between us? You came to prefer the ghost of Captain Crawley to me?"
"What ghost? He was flesh and blood. Much as I am," she replied, hoping the allusion to the physical would throw him off his train of thought.
Richard was not so easily deterred. "You were not in love with the crippled soldier that returned from the war, the one who couldn't walk, couldn't dance with you, the one who wouldn't even declare himself to you because he was engaged to someone else. You were in love with the idea of him. The reality was unavailable to you in every way, yet you adored the spectral version that existed in your mind."
"It is possible to love someone from afar, even if they are out of your reach," she said, turning from the window to face him. Intending to wound, she added: "I expect you know something about that."
"It is possible, yes," he said, ignoring the jab, "so long as you don't fictionalize them completely. Crawley could do no wrong in your eyes! That's not love, that is... fantasy."
"Because he is not as flawed as you are, you've demoted him from human being to figment of my imagination?"
"Because he wasn't there."
He paused, his arms hanging open at his sides in a gesture of incomprehension, and Mary could see that he was genuinely hurt by the recollection of the whole situation.
"Of course he was always hanging about on the periphery," he added, "a constant annoyance." A quick turn of phrase, and Mary was relieved he was back to anger. She was comfortable with an angry Richard. A hurt one she did not know what to do with.
"But he was not actually courting you," he continued. "He did none of the things I did for you. Yet I always felt like I was being compared to him; or rather, what you imagined he would do in whatever circumstance we were in. Do you know what that's like? Your every action measured against some sort of ideal that no real person could live up to?"
Did she ever. 'Welcome to the life of an upper class woman in England,' she wanted to exclaim! But never in her wildest imagination did she conceive that Richard felt restricted by similar circumstances. Not brash, calculating Richard, who never allowed anyone the upper hand; who could, and would, flaunt the most basic conventions. He, of all people, was free of expectations – Mary attributed much of his success to that very fact. To come from nothing meant there was no one you could disappoint. And it was easier to break the mold if you knew what it felt like to have nothing to lose.
It saddened her that she had been the cause of his awakening from such an impudent dream. He had found in her someone he did not want to disappoint, and suddenly, there was something dear enough to him that would go to any lengths to keep. Had it really been she who introduced him to the awful idea of impossible expectations? Mary would not wish that kind of restriction, the kind she lived, on anyone, especially someone so magnificently unbound. If she had come to think of him as a lion in a cage, she realized that she had never questioned whether the animal had once been free.
Yet he never wanted her to be free, she thought resentfully. She held no illusions that his feminist inclinations extended to his own wife – no, he expected her to belong to him. She could vote, or drive, or smoke, or defy whatever convention she liked, but she doubted she could disregard him. 'Don't ever cross me,' he had told her. At least he was clear – life with Richard would be trading one set of boundaries for another. The question, she supposed, was which did she prefer? Or rather, which could she most turn to her own advantage?
"I know that ideal or reality, Matthew would not threaten me," She pointed out. "He would not coerce me into marriage."
"No, he wouldn't, would he?" Richard readily agreed. "He wouldn't marry you at all."
They stood staring at each other in silence.
After a long pause, Mary slowly recovered her wits. It was remarkable how they could still hurt each other. "He behaved honorably. I don't expect you to understand."
"Ah, that honor again," he replied, nodding. "Honorable intentions rarely turn out well. And what did it get you? What did it get Lavinia? Did that honor do one bit of good for anybody, except for elevating the self-esteem of young Captain Crawley himself?"
Richard had managed, somehow, to tap into the exact line of reasoning that had been in her head ever since he left. Or perhaps it was his way of thinking that had infiltrated her mind, a frightening idea. But the fact that they had each independently come to the same conclusion was telling – was she really beginning to favor the unscrupulous pirate over the virtuous knight? That the answer was certainly 'yes' scared her – it almost seemed for a moment that she was trying to talk herself into the idea that wrong was right. And that whatever circular logic Richard used to justify his actions was starting to influence hers as well.
"You don't have to convince me," Mary told him frankly. "It's true. Matthew's behavior has been above reproach, at least when it comes to me."
"Well I wouldn't go that far."
"He never said a word out of place, he never tried to take me away from you outright. Until the very end…"
"No, he wouldn't, would he?" Richard paused. "That does not surprise me at all. Because honorable people do not steal other people's fiancés. He may insidiously poison your mind against me -"
"He was happy I was marrying you and moving on with my life!"
"He was happy to stand on the sidelines, wearing a veneer of unselfishness, all the while presenting himself as the 'nicer' alternative to me." Richard's self-awareness always caught Mary off-guard. She sometimes thought only she was capable of such cognizance in a world blind to its own faults. And that kind of mindfulness was a quality in others she prized most highly, knowing just how rare it was.
"But of course, you were free to choose," he continued. "And then when it comes down to it, to whom does your allegiance go? The corrupt interloper, or your kind, gentle cousin?"
"I think you are taking who Matthew is and turning it against him," Mary said. Although she had done the same thing herself with Richard, she thought but declined to state aloud.
"I am trying to show you the neat little paradigm he set up. If he is the nice alternative, then I must be the opposite in that black and white universe we began to inhabit."
"He wasn't setting up anything – he was recovering from his ordeal, and planning his wedding -"
"Then explain how you two came to romp around like naughty schoolchildren making mischief for no other reason than the fact that you could. And I was cast as the schoolmaster you had to defy."
She couldn't explain it; her reasons were beyond words at this point, and she doubted he would understand even if she tried. "Perhaps you did that to yourself," she said with a shrug.
"Crawley was manipulating you just as much as I was."
"So you admit it?" she asked incredulously.
"Of course I admit it," Richard said with a snort. "That's what love is, isn't it?"
"Manipulation and deceit. Charming."
A small part of her appreciated the candor. Not a lot of people were as honest with her as he was. But it was only a small part.
Richard gestured to the secret passage door. "It's building secret tunnels. It's going to any ridiculous lengths –"
Mary interrupted him, unwilling to hear what she assumed was another seductive lie. "I wish I could believe you. But I don't." She walked to the panel-covered door secret passage and shut it. "I thought we decided this was a tunnel for smuggling liquor, not an elaborate excuse for a love affair."
"Oh, keep your romantic fantasy if you like," he conceded. "At least your version makes a better headline."
A compromise! If she was becoming less rigid in her outlook, then Richard was apparently attempting to meet her halfway. Or almost. He approached her, on his way to the door – apparently they were done with this room. Threading her arm though his, she wondered, "What would our headline be?"
"Corrupt newspaperman and icy aristocrat uncover secrets in old mansion?" he proposed with a gleam in his eye.
"The house's secrets," Mary asked, "or their own?"
