Chapter IV.
Ripon station was rather more crowded than usual, people scrambling to get home or leave for another, only a few days up to Christmas.
The London train had just come to a stop and people were exiting, minding their steps on the icy, snow covered platform.
Sybil craned her neck for the car, wondering who might be there to pick them up.
Hoping, perhaps more so than wondering.
It was Taylor, their old chauffeur, who greeted them next to his Lordship's car.
Sybil bit down hard on her lower lip. He wasn't here.
"Get in, Sybil. Go on. We're cold!" Rosamund chided, pushing her niece into the backseat of the large vehicle.
They had to drive slowly, due to the bad weather conditions. "Aye, it'll get worse over the season, they say." Taylor replied when Evelyn enquired about the snow. „Well, good thing we'll all be warm and cosy at home." commented he.
Matthew winced and glared for a second. Home. It was his home, not Napier's.
"Matthew, are you alright?" Sybil whispered, sitting right across from him.
He blushed, having been caught in his stream of uncharitable thoughts.
"I'm perfectly fine, thank you." he said, trying to sound gentle, when he didn't feel like it in the slightest.
How come he had agreed to this? Well, that was not quite the way to put it.
He hadn't agreed to anything - No, he had been the one to suggest it.
What devil had possessed him to ask Napier?
He knew that he was always welcome at the Downton Abbey, no doubt about it, but he had tried to avoid visiting in the past. However, when Napier had announced one evening that he would spend Christmas at Downton, Matthew had flipped a little.
"I can't wait to see Mary again, it's been too long without her! But we'll have all Christmas to make up for it." Evelyn had boasted a few days before departure at a gathering for officers in London.
They were just playing pool and upon hearing this, Matthew thrust the cue so hard, three balls were flying off the table.
Evelyn and his friend Lord Stockbridge snickered.
"You never were good at this game, Crawley." Stockbridge quipped as Matthew scrambled to collect the balls, and himself. He felt mildly sick.
"Will you be a large party at Downton this season?" Stockbridge wondered idly, addressing Evelyn.
"No, no...just family. I've been meaning to ask Lady Sybil if she doesn't want to accompany me. I'd say she deserves the break after slaving away at that hospital all year. She meant to stay here with her aunt, which doesn't sound too cheerful." Napier shook his head vaguely.
Matthew was fuming silently. He knew it was silly, but he could not fight the notion that Napier was acting as if he owned his entire family. And Mary.
"I'm sure Lady Sybil would like that. In fact, I've been thinking about going to Downton myself over the holidays." The words had burst from Matthew before he knew it.
Evelyn looked politely amused and Stockbridge asked shrewdly,
"Now that you mention it, Crawley, we've been wondering why you should never visit there, seen as the estate is entailed to you."
Matthew shrugged. "I've been busy. There's a war going on, if you haven't noticed, gentlemen."
He said with a sarcastic smile. They all laughed bitterly at his bad joke, and the horrid truth in it.
"Hear, hear." Evelyn said darkly, toasting him with his glass of brandy.
Matthew grabbed his own and took a hearty sip.
"Well, I would be delighted if you'd join me, Captain Crawley. You and your charming fiancée. I shall cable Lord Grantham tomorrow to ask if they would mind some more company. They will be thrilled, I'm sure." Napier announced, smiling benignly at his future cousin-in-law.
Matthew grimaced and threw back the last of his drink, satisfied and terrified at the same time.
He felt the same way in the car now, slowly edging nearer and nearer to the estate that would be his one day, and the woman who never would be.
The thought was still as painful today as it had been when she had first broken his heart.
It still felt like sharp stab in the chest, like a cold fist that coiled around his heart. Holding onto it. No question about whose fist it was, pale and soft...
These thoughts were dangerous, he knew, but it served just as well to steel himself against what was still to come.
Spending all of Christmas in one house with the woman he loved, the man she was going to marry, the woman he had agreed to marry and the family he did not want to let down.
Taken all of this together, it seemed like the single most self-destructive act he had committed in a while.
And he's been to war, for God's sake.
"Oh there! I can see it!" Lavinia exclaimed, pointing a gloved finger at a dark shape in the distance, hard to make out in the snowy whirls outside.
Sybil eyed Matthew's fiancée with slight distaste. Of course she had only got to know her a week ago, and sometimes people improve on closer acquaintance. But Sybil still could not shake the feeling that Lavinia was not as sweet and naive as she made out to be.
What will Granny will say to this woman who would inherit her title one day. Will it really come to that? It all seemed so terribly wrong.
Sybil's eyes wandered over to Matthew again, who looked as if he were in pain.
She would have to find a quiet minute to examine him properly later on.
It could not be shell shock, he'd been perfectly composed in London only yesterday.
Either he was sickening or something was eating him up from the inside...
"Here we are." Taylor announced, slowing the car to a halt at the front entrance to the great house.