Thanks to everyone who has been reading and reviewing! I've really enjoyed reading the comments and people's thoughts. Also another thanks to Mrstater for betaing this chapter and all her wonderful insights. This chapter was particularly difficult and she really helped me iron out the direction of some of the sections. Nothing else really to say, except if you want to hear the song that appears in this chapter you can search on youtube for Paul Whiteman's "Wonderful One."


There shall always be those infrequent and momentous turning points in a man's life, the ones which, when they occur, will render him unable to ever forget his exact position in the universe. Summer of 1914 – the smell of freshly cut grass, the latent warmth of a hand within his – an announcement of war that would lead to millions of corpses. Easter Monday, 1916 – the last of the Simnel cakes apportioned and consumed, nutty sweetness dissolving on his tongue with Daisy to his left shucking snap peas – and the first of the telegrams arrive.

Carson hands him the correspondence with as much gravity as he performs any task –"For you, Mr. Branson," in deep, theatrical tones, and then bypassess the confused chauffeur to amble on with his day. The bike messenger is already half way back down the park and unavailable for questioning as Branson unfolds the missive with a frown, reads the three succinct lines, and turns ashen.

The world's axis has just shifted – but not for anyone else, the whole of the hall continuing with their miniscule talk and duties without abeyance. Only Daisy is close enough or perceptive enough to notice the way his mind seems to be quaking, and the only one who watches him leave.

But news travels quickly in the insular habitat of manor life, and by noon everyone downstairs is whispering and wondering, gossip spreading thick as clotted cream in the corridors, and just as delicious.

"The whole city in flames."

"Well it won't be taken lying down! They'll get what's theirs, just as soon as the swaddies show up."

"I'll thank you not to speak another word on this highly inappropriate matter," Carson will be forced to say during dinner, or at least he Branson imagines it so over the untouched plate in his cottage.

And then one by one each member of the family, seemingly on an unsourced whim, the type which infects all of their decision making, declare they don't really need the use of the motor today after all.

"That errand can surely wait till tomorrow."

"I'm not very much in the mood for dinner at the Big House."

"A nice day for walking," Lady Grantham will be saying over tea, the girls all nodding along gamely, and Sybil perhaps wondering why no one ever says what they mean.

He doesn't ask permission to go down to the village that day, or the next day after, to wait impatiently in the long queue of pushing, anxious emigrants, and he is not rebuked when he comes back late into the evenings, and as silent as anyone in that house has ever heard.

Not that there is much for him to say, when all week long no one dares anything, not even a suggestion, least of all a comfort. And what could they say, he wonders. What cordial could be offered that would douse the flames that burn at this heart, and the home where it resides? And so they scuttle along their business that day, and the next day after, each face banishing his existence for the sake of its own convenience.

His social quarantine finally lifts at the end of the week, when the insurrection is put down and its perpetrators arrested, by Sybil toeing timidly into the garage, visibly afflicted – the most honest face he has seen all week, and even hers bears the creases of caution, mouth guarded like a bulwark, murmuring only a quarter of what she means.

"I read the news," she says.

He flips a page in his newspaper. "Yes."

They are silent for awhile. Then, abruptly – "Papa calls it treason!"

The words are almost thrown out: "Of course he does!" Then a retraction of sorts as he remembers himself: "I don't think you should tell me what he says," stiffly and properly as befitting his role, and he goes back to his paper.

But Sybil will have none of it. "But why not?" she asks in her most familiar way. She steps up close to him and throws up her arms. "Because he's my father? Because you work for him?" She pauses. "Because you're his driver?"

"Because it's not my concern what he thinks, and it's not your place to tell me."

"Then what is my place, if not to –?" She stops on a dime as his eyes grow earnest, willing her to submit to her usual complaint after a boring dinner: Why can't people simply say what they mean! She deviates: "I'm sorry. I didn't come here to quarrel." And then graces him with a long look from those big, beautiful eyes. "You must be upset." She looks upset. On the verge of tears, if he can think such a thing is possible. "And what I really came here to say was – I hope – I do hope – that everything is all right?" That English circumvention that so tires him has once again robbed their conversation of the specifics. "Your family?" she edges in without quite hitting the mark.

But for all that her concern is shrouded in generalities he is still thankful for it.

"They're all fine."

His response acts as a touchstone for her smile. "I'm so glad."

And she looks glad. Relieved and glad, every detail in her face an honest correspondence – and he had lied. Lied through his teeth, for they are not all fine. One of them is dead. Two more a widow and an orphan. And all the rest in mourning, frocks and suits and hats of black, the blackest of black for the murder that will forever be engraved on the record books in cold hard ink as collateral.

And he had lied, but not for the first time, nor indeed for the last, for there are a thousand truths he keeps drummed up inside, truths that he knows she does not need or want to hear. And so for now all he will say is:

"Thank you. For asking after me."

And then take her smile too close to heart, covet her close presence a little too strongly, and let the fondness in her eyes chisel more deeply into the spider cracks formed across the dam in his heart, a dwindling countdown for the truth to unleash.

Perjury

Thursday morning Branson wakes to a pounding in his head and a pounding on his door, a loudly barked insistence that he please come down and take an urgent call at the reception desk. The curtains are drawn, sharp pieces of sun eking their way around the edges which his maladjusted eyes have no desire to suffer prematurely, and he dresses and readies in the brownish gloom of muffled daylight.

The receptionist sweeps the floor – a polite enough distance away but still within the busybody range of earshot – when he reaches the phone and brings the receiver to his ear. As par for the course Charlie eschews any niceties, opening with, "What's the status, Tom?"

Branson frowns into the line. "They told me this was urgent."

"I'm your boss, I decide what's urgent. Now, how is everything coming along?"

Branson closes his eyes, pinches near the bridge of his nose. Unbeknownst stands the towering conflict that has taken away all perspective for his supposedly unbiased article, but –

"Without a hitch," he says.

"Good." Charlie pauses on a low grunt. "And remember to mind your budget. We're not reimbursing anything that comes out of your own pocket."

"Do you ever?"

"And hire out a photographer to snap a few pictures of Christopher, maybe at his London home – or better yet, down in Kent."

"I can do that."

"And I want you to start on with a draft as early as you can – today."

"All right, then."

"And have the whole thing finished by Saturday so we can squeeze it into the Sunday morning edition."

The last part shocks Branson out of his mindless nodding, his mouth agape. He assumes Charlie had tried to slide it in there, drop the bombshell with all his casual aplomb, as if everyone should be as unaffected by the flying shrapnel as he. "That's the first I've heard of this!"

"A change of plans," Charlie replies, a shrug in his voice.

"I won't have time for it," he argues. "That's a tall order you're asking, and all of tomorrow will be taken up by the trip out to Kent. Why not save it for Sunday the week after? What's the rush?"

"It's just the timing of it. This Sunday's when we've scheduled it in; the pages have already been cleared and we've got nothing to put in its place."

"You're not leaving me with a lot of room, here!"

"So start an outline now, and hammer in the details Friday night!" Branson hears the clamor in the background, the bang of a desk, the clatter of the fallout, and then Charlie heaving a tired sigh. "Look, Tom, you've done how many articles in a pinch? You'll do this one more, and then you'll have nothing hanging over you when you come back Monday morning." Steaming silence answers him, and he offers a consolation: "Why not consider Sunday a free day to do whatever you like?"

"Except anything that'll cost money?"

"That should go without saying," he says with a short laugh. "And you can come back early, if you like. Take a day here. We'll even pay you for it!"

For all the time he puts in they pay him a pittance as it is, and Branson, sensing he's being fed only half the story, and refusing to be mollified, mumbles a brusque reply, not quite slamming the phone but startling the receptionist who has covertly sidled up nearly next to him. He casts her, the ever present ear at the door, a wilting look, scurrying her away with visible shame as he glances at the clock – quarter to nine. He heads out for a makeshift breakfast, the nearest vendor selling the cheapest fare, a large carafe of coffee which he pours into a smudged glass provided by the hotel clerk, and by nine thirty he has begun.

He spends the next few hours going through the majority of his notes, rereading, cataloguing, annotating, rereading again, splaying them on the desk in organized layers, and then starts in on a skeletal draft. And while his penmanship under normal circumstances is good – neat and precise, lacking in flare, perhaps, but distinctive enough for recognition – as he begins parsing through the notes taken at yesterday morning's charity meeting he must squint at the wobbly script tapering off to nothing, as if he was writing without watching – or at least not watching what he was writing – and finds that only one quarter of it is usable.

After breakfast is consumed and metabolized he sustains himself through the process with the closest thing on hand, the empty calories of a slowly nursed glass of watered down scotch from the night before – hell in a bottle, or so Mam used to say while giving that rare misty-eyed look, tinged with bitterness by the moue in her mouth, as if she could taste the sour liquid on the drunk kisses of his father. She'd have mightily preferred if he and his siblings had abstained their way through life, conducted a pious avoidance of any and all of the declensions, especially the drink, any fumelike breath earning a sharp – A man takes a drink; the drink takes a drink; the drink takes the man – and the scourge of her disappointment. And while she hadn't been overjoyed by his removal to Yorkshire all those years ago, she was proud of the upward projection in her son's life; but little could she have known that he was packing off to his ruin, taken not by drink but that other influence with the power to undo a man. And whenever he visits home she looks for it, the vice that keeps him just this side of haggard, wondering what, why and how, perhaps even sometimes who, for there is never anything on his breath but the absence of the joy that used to alight every facet.

Thoughts of his mother have always been linked with food, and suddenly he becomes aware of the mewling pangs in his stomach. Another glance at the clock alerts him that it is a quarter past one. He realizes he'd skipped lunch, and with his progress almost nowhere he puts down his pen and descends back to the lobby where the receptionist still can't look him in the eye, simply hands him the phone, her nose too busy scrutinizing the guestbook. He rings up Christopher, asking him to change out their dinner meeting for a lunch so he can spend the evening hours, his best hours, working, and they are just settled into his club's dining room, first bite of roast lamb in Branson's mouth when Christopher gets a museful gleam in his eyes.

"I do find it rather strange, though, your connection to Lady Sybil. I'm always hearing how small a place the world is, but I never imagined." A lofty hand raises his wineglass, whirlpooling the liquid inside. "You knew her before the war, yes?"

Branson puts down his fork, the thought of eating suddenly unappetizing. Lady Sybil. She is Christopher's favorite topic of conversation, and though Branson will never be inured to the casual use of her name, the long and chronically aching years have at least calloused over the most vulnerable parts of his features.

"Yes. I left my old post in Ireland and came to Downton in 1913."

"I have wondered..." he drawls. Christopher's face usually contains a kind of easy pliability, but it softens even more, as shapeless clouds in its dreaminess. "Tell me, what was she like as a young woman?"

Branson keeps a level stare. Indignation would be uncalled for, but he can't help himself:

"She's still young."

But Christopher appears to be in particularly fine form, an unrufflable mood, and he simply smiles, takes a sip, savors, and swallows. "You're right, of course. A younger woman, then. And I only ask because I have a few recollections I want expounded on, if you're able?" Branson nods. "I remember hearing some rounds of gossip back when I was a young man." He laughs. "A younger man. This was before I met her, of course. Something about pantaloons in the drawing room...?"

Branson tries, but his mouth begins to tug. "Well, there it is. You've got your answer. She once wore pantaloons to dinner. She would sneak out of the house. She was...unpredictable." He shakes his head with a loose sort of laughter. "She liked to test limits, especially her parents'." He shrugs. He's lost this round, and lets go of the evidently fond smile. "She was fun."

"That's exactly how I pictured her. Full of life and fire, and always getting into a bit of mischief, I imagine?" And Branson loses his smile, because Christopher's eyes lacquer over as if he is imagining at this very moment – Sybil, perhaps, spicing up the halls of his own dull country seat.

He looks off to the side. "The truth is I really shouldn't be talking about it."

"I suppose you're right. Discretion, yes? The hallmark of the good servant." He tips his glass. "And I suppose of the good reporter as well."

"Well, that all depends on the context," he replies, pleased at finally having a conversation he can sink his teeth into. "We want the truth to out but we don't want to do any harm in the process, at least where it's undeserved. We want to protect where we can, and sometimes that means hiding certain bits of information."

"Well. I shall give you full marks for both your occupations – I couldn't do it. I wouldn't be able to live a life of facade, always dealing with half-truths."

"Maybe. But half the truth is better than none, and it's still not quite like lying."

"Define a lie?" Christopher's head tilts, his eyes alive. "The obvious, of course, it to speak what is untrue. But there is also what goes unsaid, those lies of omission."

And perhaps it is only Branson's mind taking a turn for the fanciful – But do his eyes pierce? Does his face grow drawn in a silent reprimand? Branson has no idea what type of conclusions the man has made concerning his reporter and his Lady, if he has sensed that he is being fed only half the story, the thousand truths that Branson has omitted: How he had arrived to an empty room, vanquished and distraught, no one waiting up for him to ease his distress save half a bottle of cheap scotch. How he spends his nights trying to forget that she is not married, and he not even attached, drinking himself to sleep. How for the last seven years he's felt ripped in half, every step he takes dragging the past like heavy chains behind him.

He leaves lunch shaken, and tries to reopen his mind into getting the bare bones of his draft fleshed out. The desk in the hotel is quite small, but comfortable enough for one. Compact yet suitable – his preference – the overly large having the penchant to unnerve him. And the hall outside is noisy. Babies wailing. The thud of feet flying up and down the floorboards. Loud and boorish, a distraction for some but for him a natural barricade that he has come over the desultory years to rely upon, to crave, more and louder - enough to rival the big bands on opening night.

A small desk in a busy hotel – he could very well be back in his Dublin office for all the requirements of productivity, and yet half a minute cannot go by without his thoughts rabbit trailing, the last words over lunch springing back into his mind:

"Lady Sybil's coming with us?"

Christopher stops, then looks confused, for he'd uttered that small and inconsequential factoid a good two minutes before, when he had begun rattling off about tomorrow's sojourn to his estate. "You don't mind, do you? She's never been so I've asked her to join us. And seeing as how you two are already acquainted..." His eyes grow wary in their concern. "You don't mind?"

Branson shrugs, lips to his glass. "Why would I mind?"

So long it's been. So much there is to talk about. He once feared he would never get the chance, and now chance has smiled upon him, proffered him this gift in the hands of the enemy.

But no – Christopher is not his enemy. He's no longer a claimant to her affection, any court of law would have judged him unfit for the role when he fled in fit of pique over seven years ago. And so he's made his bed and he can no longer continue to let her into it, for if she conquers this – his work, his passion – his last battle ground standing after so many years of loss – it might occur to him with every jotted sentence that he's writing out a modern day fairy tale for his prince, that in time he'll claim his princess and take her back to his castle, the one he's visiting tomorrow, to fawn and compliment and wish him well in life, his Sybil at his side.

The last of the scotch is gone, and Branson looks down to his draft. There on that small, comfortable desk lie the fruits of his labor: six pages of writing, but only a smattering of paragraphs that bear any hint of his assignment. The rest of it – long, dribbling sentences with no beginning and no end, verses on the cruelty undying love. Spare sketches of her face at midnight, in the light of an upcoming country day.

And thinks that tomorrow lightning had better strike him with inspiration, or it may as well strike him dead, and he's not sure which fate he hopes for as he shuts off the lights and climbs fully clothed into bed.


The party convenes upon the Friday morning rush hour at King's Cross and, true to his word, Christopher has paid for her fare.

His brown trilby moves like a fish out of water amidst the sea of drab commuter fedoras, a splash of the opulent striding eagerly towards her. "Lady Sybil! As promised!" He delivers with fanfare. "Your ticket!" he cries, and her heart does stop for a beat at the transporting words, her eyes sweeping askance to see if the one standing a few paces beyond has overheard them, and in his unblinking gaze, cast intentionally towards her, she believes she can hear him thinking aloud – he is your ticket.

But she is not boarding a train to a new life. Rather, she will admit, she boards it to canvass out a possible future, one which bears a disconcerting resemblance to her past, that ancient lifestyle she has tried and failed to outgrow with the comprehension that her sense of self, those youthful yearnings for adventure, had been quashed somewhere in between tickets and promises.

Closure.

A sharp whistle punctuates the thought, and then she hears Gloria, the fourth in their party – "my second visit to the estate" – mentioned to Branson who nods with an interested smile. "I'm something of an orphan, you see. My parents have abandoned me in service to their Country – Hong Kong for the next two years!" Gloria laughs and casts her a smile which she returns without hesitance. "But Sybil and Christopher have determined to take me in. And who could ask for a better pair of caretakers?"

They board the train, all of them cramming into a private car in first class. Christopher sits beside her; the other two sit opposite, the large gap erecting a sort of natural partition between. The interior is a trifle stuffy with summer's humidity in full swing, but the train whistle blows and the wheels turn, the movement invigorates her and Christopher's company has always been pleasant. And for the first half of the journey she is enrapt by his sole conversation, has hardly even noticed the way Gloria fawns shamelessly over Branson, or their prolonged and easy discourse. How quickly his smiles come when they are directed at her, or how she chatters with becoming laughter in her eyes. How well they seem to get on.

"Lady Sybil?" She turns to Christopher. She cannot remember the last word he said, or how long ago he had said it. "Yes!" she says, an answer and a question both, a meager attempt to cover.

Christopher does not appear fooled. "I was asking after tomorrow's rally. Were you planning on attending?"

"I believe so. I don't have any other plans, and I promised –"

"And I'm going with her!" Gloria interjects with a shrieking laugh. She turns to Branson. "Sybil's taken me under her wing, you see, thinks I've got the makings of a real suffragette!" She holds her head up high, chin out, a little smirk of triumph at play. She is young, only a few years past her debut, and for some reason seems to esteem Sybil's regard. A creature of the times, she had shorn her hair six months ago out of a defiant zeal after a row with her parents, a wild tuft of blonde that does not very much suit her. But her posture does it justice, the careless way she maneuvers her long joints and limbs, sharp elbows and a pair of sinewy legs that she crosses with a lazy sort of confidence.

"Does she?" Branson asks, his face turned towards Gloria but his eyes on her, and so she can't make out for whom his small, amused smile is intended.

Sybil smiles tightly, clenching a fistful of green-checkered fabric in her lap. "She does." After that initial, palpitating meeting she hoped the worst was done with. And though now proven wrong and smarting for her naiveté, after so many years she has at least learned to cloak her wounds with the bandages of indifference. "Or she would, if she didn't keep skipping out on doing the work of a suffragette."

"It was only twice," Gloria says, whipping her head towards Branson. She grins. "And of course she's never let me forget it!"

"The only two times you ever committed, yes?" Christopher says with a slight chuckle.

She tosses her back her head with a laugh. "Well now I've been caught! But I won't disappoint you this time, Sybil – I shall be there."

Sybil relaxes her smile and her grip. Still just a baby, she thinks, then feels guilty for it, admonishes herself that she is beginning to sound just like Mary, and then feels guilty for that. "Gloria is a very great help at the hospital," she says to Branson. "Really, she's there as often as I am, and the children love her. But she is not an early riser." She cocks an eyebrow. "Nine o'clock, Gloria. And wear something practical. It'll be a long morning on our feet."

"Well, you know me, so you know I won't make any promises." She gives a cheeky grin to her side-partner. "If I'm to be fashionably late I may as well look fashionable while doing it."

"But I don't think practical has to mean ugly," he replies. "Or unfashionable," he adds, with a nod towards Sybil, gussied up in a wide brimmed hat and a pair of sturdy walking shoes. "Wouldn't you say so, Lady Sybil?"

Please don't make fun of me. Sybil stops up her throat, swallows before saying, "Are you asking me if I think my outfit is ugly?" with an upturned nose. She receives a budding satisfaction in his creeping smile, and his mouth opens to say more. But he is balked by an outburst from Gloria:

"Of course it's not!" She bats at his arm. "Sybil always dresses rather well – she's very modern."

She raises a shoulder. "I try."

"And you succeed," Christopher says with a warm smile.

"Mostly." Gloria points a finger across. "But you still won't wear lipstick!"

Sybil laughs. "There are some trends that aren't meant to be followed." She appeases Gloria's blooming pout with a raised hand. "At least by me."

"Well, I don't see the harm in it." She leans into Branson, plumping her lips. "Tell me, Mr. Branson, what do you think of my shade? – and be honest!"

Once upon a time he had confessed to Sybil that he did not like makeup. Now it's, "I think it suits you," and a smile.

The conversations retreat as Christopher reclaims her attention and Gloria laughs again near Branson's ear. Young and silly – but she blows away dullness in the car with that winsome laugh, whitewashes the dark paneling with her vibrancy. And had she ever been such a bright young thing? Sybil wonders to herself, looking on with envy.


The train takes another hour to reach Tonbridge. Christopher's chauffeur stands waiting for them at the station, and it jars Branson to think that this is the first time he will be driven about by an actual, liveried chauffeur – a testament, perhaps, to how far he has come, though underwritten with the acute depressor that as a chauffeur he had seen her every day, and as Tom Branson, Reporter, he sees her never.

The four of them clamor into the plush seats, Sybil and Christopher beside each other once again, as if conjoined, and from there drive east into the countryside, half an hour until they pull into Camsbury's park gates, and after the butler allows them entrance through the fortress of a door, Christopher points up to the ferocious chandelier which dwarfs the rest of the foyer.

"That was installed in the 16th century."

"Impressive," Branson replies. His first thought is that there's no good reason it hasn't been torn down by the 20th, save for those antiquated allegiances to tradition. But the remainder of his strictures go unsung, evaporating in a flash of cotton twill against his hand – Sybil brushing too closely beside him, intent on reaching a blown glass vase displayed on a console on the far wall.

"White roses!" She twists her head over her shoulder to smile at Christopher, then leans forward into them. "Were these just cut today?"

Christopher saunters over to her, his hands laced behind his back. "I telephoned the request in this morning. I remembered how much you liked them and hoped it would make for a nice welcome."

"They're lovely. Thank you." She leans down to smell them again. "And so thoughtful," she murmurs into the petals.

He does not think his memory has slipped so much to disremember that afternoon she had told him she disliked the austerity of arrangements, that she would vastly prefer a simple potted daisy. But he can't be certain, not after all this time, and not with Gloria whispering in his ear: "Oh, just look at them! Isn't it marvelous?"

The housekeeper descends in a flurry of petticoated skirt. She gives a mighty greeting to her intermittent master, then recites for everyone's benefit the day's arrangements. They have a full itinerary awaiting them, the first order of business a tour of the home, followed by a cold lunch.

"This is, after all, a work trip," Christopher tells the rest with a nod towards Branson.

"I don't know about all of you," Gloria says, "but I am not here for work."

"Then what are you here for?" Sybil asks. Branson watches her keenly. He thinks it might be a jab. He tries not to think it is a jab for his sake, though he will not deny the spreading warmth in his heart at the unthought conjecture.

But Sybil deflates his rising hopes with a smile, and Gloria's ensuing mirthful laughter snuffs it out altogether. "The company, silly!" Gloris cries, and then the ladies link arms, moving off together.

Christopher and he walk side by side down the corridors, peeking their heads inside pre-selected rooms, inspecting the prize antiques, hard backed and knobby chairs from the time of the Conqueror, faded Elizabethan tapestries. "These days the house is rarely lived in." Christopher says this as if it were a tragedy. "With father and me living almost exclusively in London, I sometimes fear we neglect our duty here."

Dutiful is not a word Branson would ever use in conjunction with the inanimate. People and lives, blood and tears, these are what incur his sense of duty. Yet the sentiment does not go unappreciated: "But you manage to keep it up," he replies. They are in the gallery, heads tilted upwards to behold the Lord Sheffields of yore.

"I do what I can from a distance. But the house and grounds are primarily maintained by my steward, and there can never be a proper substitute for the oversight of an owner."

They eventually come underneath a portrait in full-length. "My grandfather," Christopher says, pointing to the balding, pompous looking gentleman, a typical subject for the pasquinades published in Branson's paper. But whatever their look, they must have done something right, Branson concedes. The place still stands erect through the vertigoes of its life, all four hundred years of them, within the last ten outfitted with all the modern accouterments: gas powered stoves, central air, en suite bathrooms in the family wing.

Christopher explains all of the upgrades with enthusiasm, but though contemporary in amenities the decor is still very much Victorian, that apprehension of too much lace and ceremony.

"I'll admit it needs a woman's touch," he has the gall to say in one outdated parlor. Branson notices Sybil's back straighten in her refractory way, anticipates the fiery reproach.

"It's rather ghastly, I won't deny it," she says, Gloria at her elbow and whispering too loudly:

"It needs all the help it can get. And never too soon to be getting ideas!" which elicits from Sybil an unfathomable smile.

Afterwards they sup on lounge chairs in an airy drawing room facing west made picturesque by the wall of large, rectangular windows. When the meal concludes they spend a moment to digest and dawdle. He smokes a cigarette while reclining in his chair, aware of Sybil fondling the collection of frames sitting on the sofa table as Christopher introduces her to the faces.

Gloria reappears suddenly. He had not noticed she was missing.

"Gloria?" Christopher's frame pops up from where it was stooping. "What have you got there?"

"Now, don't be cross, but I've been snooping." She walks to the corner of the room while presenting a thin, unmarked disc. "I'd no idea you actually owned records, Christopher. This silly thing is always sitting here empty, doing nothing but collecting dust." She blows on the spotless gramophone for good effect before lodging in the record and lowering the needle. The music scratches to a start, low, muted brass swelling to diapason as Gloria's eyes round with joy and surprise. "Paul Whiteman! I never would have thought if of you, Christopher!"

He chuckles. "And what have you thought of me?"

"Oh, something stuffy and old. Vivaldi. Mozart." She laughs as if she had made a great joke. "I had the most horrid music instructor – he said I was a lost cause and then quit without notice. Mama believed him and so never hired another." She begins moving towards Branson, swaying on the balls of her feet – "Do you know the words?" – lightly singing when the melody repeats:

Awake or sleeping
My heart's in your keeping
And calling to you soft and low

He shakes his head. "I've never heard this song." He has heard this song a hundred times, a favorite in every pub. And he wonders when the lies learned to slip so easily, when he had stopped saying what he means.

Christopher resumes his conversation with Sybil. They speak low and intimately, as if unmindful of those who watch them.

My wonderful one
How my arms ache to hold, dear
To cuddle and fold you to me

Gloria's voice is passable and not unpleasant, but she hovers too close. A dime a dozen had been Branson's preeminent thought, and then he had chastised himself for being unfair, as she had been wont to do in the past, determining to make the effort for her sake, which he feels he may have outperformed – not that it matters when she has eyes for only one.

Gloria tugs on his arm. Her exuberance is trying. "Come, Mr. Branson! Won't you dance with me?"

He does not submit to budge and lets his arm slip through her grasp, shaking his head again. "I don't dance." That one is true, and a small part of him hopes he is proving to be a disappointment, his perfunctory rejections, the way he is looking past her to where Christopher has once again spoken to Sybil in a way that earns her smile, pulling her away towards the northern door. And she led along willingly, with compliancy and a timid blush. And what has become of the rebellious youngest daughter, the nightingale that could not be caged? Who is this smiling, proper creature? This Lady?

"Don't be silly. Everyone dances!"

He won't dawdle on the condemning probability that he was the hand that clipped her wings, simply takes a drag, one deep with resignation as he lets them go, lets them disappear together, her laughter echoing from somewhere beyond the door, and Gloria humming through the words she can't remember as she finishes the final verse:

There's none like you, I adore you
My life I'll live for you,
Oh, my wonderful, wonderful one


The sun is at its peak by the time they drive out to tour a few of the more successful farms. Christopher excitedly points out machinery and throws out bewildering jargon with gusto, and afterwards they stroll along the outer perimeter of the park to inspect the newly refurbished cottages. From their vantage point they can view the fullness of Camsbury, all of its lush nine thousand acres, more sprawling than Downton and a touch less imposing. Instead of sharp spires which puncture the sky and are prone to make one prepare for battle, the high rooftops slope downward in creation of an inviting aspect.

Sybil breathes in the clear sky and wide open spaces that can make one believe anything is possible if you simply run fast enough. She used to feel this way back at Downton, back before the war, when the isolation felt as a kind of freedom, a facade of privacy where nothing could be seen and therefore nothing judged.

Now everything feels judged, the men lagging behind and privy to any word or deed, each of her faculties alive to the eyes at her back, of Branson walking with his notebook out as Christopher talks him through the history of the lands and title, which she strains to hear over Gloria's prattle.

"The Barony was bestowed by Edward the fourth, to the first Baron Sheffield."

"Bravery in the war of Roses?"

"Close." She wonders if that is amusement she hears in Christopher's voice. "Exemplary service by way of tax collection."

"You're right. It is close. If they can't kill you with the sword then they'll do it with parchment."

She bites her lip with a smile. She does not need to wonder over what she hears in Branson's voice. Years ago she was fluent in all the intonations heard within, and like muscle memory, the longer she is in his presence, flexing her ears to the graceful patterns in his speech, the more she becomes attuned to every nuance, the more it begins to feel like 1919 – and had their minds ever once existed in such harmonious accord? It seems impossible to think so now, even more impossible to think that anything might remain of their former perfect pitch.

But she's learned to be wary of impossibilities. She's not here for a resurrection, she's here for facts, to observe, to determine – to find closure – and through it to decide her future. A private word may be just the final nail she needs to bury the past, and her chance, or perhaps mischance, arrives with the photographer Branson had hired from Tonbridge, a large camera case in one hand and a tripod balancing on the shoulder opposite.

He obliges Gloria the group photo she begs him for, then teaches everyone the importance of perspective and lighting, trooping them out to a sloping ledge over which he positions Christopher, the backdrop of the house set to good advantage to his back, the slanting sun in his face. The remaining trio watch from a distance, and after a few minutes Gloria loudly announces that she won't tolerate being excluded from the excitement of a real live photo-shoot, and willingly embraces the pinnacle of the day's heat, high-stepping over the grass as she clutches down on her white cloche hat.

And so three becomes two, and they are left to themselves, yards enough away to hear only the occasional burst of high laughter drifting from Gloria, conspicuous under their copse of trees that provide shade from the sweltering sun.

For a long while they do nothing but stand and watch. Movement seems hazardous, to say nothing of words, the space and silence between them fraught, and not only for the occasional backwards looks and glances, the waves as those of small children beckoning an audience. Custom dictates he speak first, and she grows more anxious with every silent second, and when she worries that the lack of their interaction has reached such a length so as to be construed as noteworthy, he finally speaks.

"So your Foundling Hospital?"

She looks up to him with a jolt, uttering the first thing that tackles her brain. "It's not mine."

He seems pleased with her response, at least he smiles when he says, "To hear Christopher talk, it is."

"He's been known to exaggerate." She looks into the ground, resisting the urge to bite her lip. Then she lifts her head back up with a decisive snap. "Well, what about it?"

He shrugs. "What do you do there? And when do you do it? Why is it so special to you?"

"You really are a reporter now, aren't you?" She gives in to the urge and nips a small part of her lower lip, aware of his keen eyes assessing her. "All right. I spend most of my free time volunteering there – about every morning on the weekdays, sometimes the weekends as well. I help with administration, mostly, but I do hands on work with the children as often as I can. I'm not on the board – not yet –"

"Planning the invasion already? You always were ambitious."

"Now you're exaggerating."

They are silent for awhile. Then: "And what do you think about this move to the country?"

"I'm not sure there's anything to think about it." He's never been inscrutable, or subtle, and she casts his smirking face a knowing look. "Not everything has to be an argument, you know."

"I'm not trying to make it an argument. I just want to know where you got the notion to move this century old London establishment out into the wild, saving them from the evils of the city, and all of that."

"I don't know about evils..." She narrows her eyes, mulling over her reply. "But the country is far safer than London. And cheaper." She shrugs. "Those are simple facts."

"Safety is a good consideration. But there are others."

"Such as...?"

"Experience. Knowledge. Culture. Those are the things any person needs for a fulfilling life."

"But we're not speaking of persons, in a general sense, we're talking about children, who have already suffered enough for one lifetime. They'll have the rest of their lives for your so-called experience, so why not let them have a time of rest and security before they're thrust out into the world?" She takes a few breaths to calm herself, beat back the throbbing blood. She has not gotten so worked up in years. Then with a collected voice: "It's been a well considered move to provide the children with a better quality of life, and I'm not sure why you're so cynical about it all."

"I'm not." He shifts his weight to the other foot, leaning in. "Look, take them out of the city and you take them away from connections they may need for the future, unless one sleepy village can find jobs for them all." And for a moment she can glimpse that same old earnestness that used to set her on fire, before the spark in his eyes submerges again under the jaded veneer. "That's a simple fact," he says with almost a snap.

A swift half turn and she's facing out towards the photo session, mouth pinched, ending their conversation, for despite all of what once was which hums about him, she's beginning to truly see and hear the discord of what is new and different, the eagerness turned to bitterness, the ideals over ripened, rotted to cynicism.

And though her mind bends towards the thought she won't let herself dwell on how large a part she played in effecting those changes, persuading herself of his contentment with life – after all:

"I've read some of your work, you know."

His eyes looked stunned, whether for what she said or that she is still talking to him at all, she can't say, the rest of his face passive. "Have you?"

"Yes." She looks down at her hands, tapping her fingertips together. "Some of it's very good."

He laughs. "And the rest of it?"

One thing which she will never tell him: the rest of it is very, very good. "You've done very well for yourself."

He shrugs. "I've done all right."

Silence invades as the photo session seems wrap up, and she decides it's high time for some kind of ending.

"When are you leaving?" she asks.

"I was supposed go Monday but there's been a change of plans. Sunday morning is likely." The traveling sun has beaten a path to the pair, and he holds his hand over his forehead in a makeshift brim. "They'll be sure to get a lot of good pictures, with Camsbury in the background, sparkling like that."

"Well, it's a lovely day for it. And it's a lovely house."

"So you like it, then?"

"Camsbury?" He nods. "It's a bit more modernized than Downton, but not as impressive. But then these houses are mostly all the same."

"But do you like it?"

She hesitates long enough to give the impression of consideration. "There's no reason for me not to. And Christopher was very good to invite me." Her eyes narrow. "Why? Do you not like it?"

He smiles. "I hate it."

"That doesn't surprise me. But as a guest of Christopher I find it rather unkind to speak so ill of his home."

"Well I'm not a very kind person. Not like you." He points his chin out. "Or him." He pats at his breast pocket, then reaches inside. Two minutes later he is smoking, another three before he asks, "So do you like it?"

She digs her toe into the ground, as if stamping out something small and unpleasant.

"I'm not sure what you want me to say, exactly."

"It's just a question. Yes or no will do."

A shell begins hardening in her throat, filling with resentment or fear, the obsession that lies in between. "And why have you a right to know, to even ask?" She swallows down hard, stares at him with dry, pained eyes. "You're being awfully pushy, considering."

"I'm sorry." He looks genuinely repentant, arms and hands open to her. "I don't want to make you cross. I only –"

"Only what?"

"I just want to know how you're getting on." And then he looks at her, that longing, broken-eyed look, the look flush with indwelling devotion, and it flashes again, that bit of something, that brief flicker of overwhelming regret – that something she saw at the gala when they had first spoken. And then just like at the gala:

"So there you see it, Camsbury in all its glory!" Christopher's near voice comes upon them loudly, rapidly, sending the last of her emotions scattering. "Tell me: How does it compare to Downton?"

"It's smaller," Branson blurts out. Sybil freezes and stares, as if he has just shattered a wall of glass. "Sorry! Of course he was asking you," he says with a nod towards Sybil, and then with a wave of his hand he seems to have dismissed himself, striding longer and faster till he has left them far behind without a caring or backwards glance.

"It's not very much smaller," Sybil says. Her heart pains with every beat, stomach twisted. "But Downton is rather large, even for its kind." The rote words tumble out easily, yet infinitely more difficult is the task of watching him walk farther and farther ahead, at last coming to stop where Gloria stands heckling the photographer, and who quickly latches on to him.

Christopher inhales a deep breath. "I shall never tire of air in Kent. I presume you must have similar feelings towards Yorkshire. How do you take to country life?"

"I know it. I'm comfortable with it. But I haven't lived in Yorkshire for so long." Not since Branson had lived there, with a girl who used to be her, a girl he once knew but can no longer recognize.

Christopher charges into detail after detail about the further changes he wishes to enact, the life he wishes to make here for himself, etc. She bobs her head with every word, smiling all the way through, for she has perfected the look, after many years of practice, her smile growing more brittle year by year as the plaster hardens.

And yonder all she can see is Branson laughing with Gloria, laughing with ease as one with a guiltless conscious, as if they hadn't just stood trial together. She wonders how it is possible, for guilt has become such a mainstay in her existence, one emotion among many that have tightly wound themselves into the knotted clump that is her feelings. And no matter how often or hard or meticulously she picks and pulls, seven years and counting, the threads have yet to untangle.

She decides it's time to stop being gentle. If she's to clear a path for the rest of her life she'll need to do it not with prodding but with explosives.

"Christopher?"

His stream of chatter dams to a halt. "Yes?"

"Only I was thinking... would you like to take tea with us tomorrow?"

He looks surprised. "At Grantham Place?

"Where else?"

Now he looks pleasantly surprised. "And Lady Mary won't mind?"

"I'm free to invite whoever I like. And I'd like to invite you." She gives him a shy smile. "She wants to meet you, actually."

"So my reputation precedes me?"

"In some circles, it might. At Grantham Place it certainly does."

"Well." He smiles like a cat that's got the cream, clasping his hands behind his back. She's made her catch, and it will be up to her not to throw the fish back. "Then I hope I won't prove a disappointment."

And she hopes that she won't either.


After three knocks with no response, Mary opens the door.

"Sybil? Are you awake?"

"Yes." She is at the vanity, facing the mirror, hands set into her lap.

Mary eases down onto the bed and begins inspecting the end of her braid. "So. How was it?"

"A day in the country. What's there to tell?"

"Were you able to find what you were looking for?"

"Closure, you mean? Yes. I think I have."

"And?"

"And...he's going to leave on Sunday. And I won't ever see him again."

Mary's teeth begin to flash, the satisfied "good" nearly pushed through them; but then Sybil turns away from the mirror and meets her gaze, on her face not the solace of peace but the weariness of surrender.

Something small and painful stirs within Mary. It's not the broad strokes of agony she had felt during the war, and she realizes that six years of undisturbed happiness with Matthew has made her complacent, dulled her intuition to the turmoil in others. And with the help of a measured pause, her sharp mind slices to the core, revealing that her stirrings are not ones of guilt – never guilt – but empathy, her new sonar for an age when she no longer has the advantage of homology

She walks over and kneels beside Sybil's chair, looking up into her face. "And is that what you want?"

"It's what's going to happen." It's been years since Mary has heard her voice so true, or so lifeless. "We're different people now, Mary. He's moved on. And I..."

"And you?"

"And I'm happy for him."

She withdraws to think for a moment, then looks intently into her sister. "And what of Christopher?"

"Christopher?" Sybil turns back towards the mirror, speaking as though to convince the image of herself. "Tomorrow Christopher is coming to tea."


As always thank you so much for reading! I'm sure this is not what most of you were hoping for, but the path can't be too easy for our babies and it will be worth it in the end (I hope, lol)!