American Cousin Chapter 7 Master of the House

It's a rough draft but I wanted to post to get feedback. Hope someone enjoys it and offers criticism.

It was a nice luncheon. Mrs. Crawley was a gracious hostess and Mary and Edith were getting on. Edith was still in a vulnerable state following her failed wedding and not even Mary could chide her as she usually did. Mary had gone so far as to encourage Edith in meeting with the London editor she had written to. With Sybil still in the hospital but on the mend, Cora and the rest of them were too exhausted and relieved to be tense.

However, sometime between Constance passing Violet a splash of milk for her tea and putting a lump of sugar in her own, the door to the dinning room opened. That was where the pleasantness ended.

"Everyone get up. We're leaving," the earl said.

It was a pompous display when he actually demanded the group leave a house that was not his own and humiliated Ethel as she brought in the tray. The whole thing was really just a continuum of the past two years: cold superiority, a lack of compassion, and something Constance found particularly unforgivable, a lack of self-awareness. Did this man have no idea how ridiculous he was, going on about the maid's "bastard" child, with what Constance knew about him?

The one silver lining was the solidarity the women had shown. No one had so much as inched their chairs backwards.

This was it. She'd been silent so far, giving him rope after rope, every one longer than the last. Constance might be able to accept all these instances separately. The kiss with the maid had surprised her but what was one kiss in thirty years of marriage? She had never been married; she could hardly judge.

The insistence on listening to Tapsell might be rationalized as a father being afraid of listening to Clarkson, who had after all, been mistaken about the severity of Matthew's war injury. But it was obvious something was wrong with Sybil. She called her husband Branson.

Robert's rejection of anything but an Anglican baptism for his granddaughter might be seen as...traditionalism? Constance told herself all this over and over again. Except Violet hadn't brought up resistance to the child being Catholic. She knew her rightful place and respected Tom's. She had sent Sybil and Tom the money to come to Mary's wedding. "I wanted my granddaughter and her husband here for this occasion," she had said. Violet's oft biting tongue still spoke with love. No, there were no more excuses to be given to Robert.

Constance left Crawley House with her aunt, cousins, and Violet in the late afternoon. She was calm. Waiting until Cora, Edith, and Mary had gone upstairs to change their clothes, Constance walked to the library. Robert always could be found there at this time of day. She did not knock.

"That was quite a performance."

Robert looked up from his desk. Seeing it was his niece, he exhaled and turned back to the papers in front of him. "Not now if you please Constance, it has been a trying day."

Constance took another step into the room and closed the door behind her. "It's been a trying series of days for all us. " She made sure to speak slow and collected. "If you keep this going you are going to lose Sybil."

He looked back at her.

"She loves you. Very much. But if you do not show her and her husband respect, she will leave and not come back."

Robert sat up straighter in his chair. "Baptizing the child a Catholic, challenging me on every turn. Branson is trying to drive her apart from her family." Constance looked at him and could tell he meant every word. Robert Crawley truly believed all these things. He believed that his youngest daughter had ruined her life in a fit a juvenile rebellion. He believed that his son-in-law was inferior by virtue of the fact that Tom did not think himself inferior to the Earl of Grantham.

"Robert, if Tom wanted Sybil to turn from you he would have just told her the truth." The earl's eyebrows raised themselves. "You didn't think anyone knew? That you tried to pay him to leave her." Constance was emboldened. The hairs on the back of her neck and arms were standing up but her voice was steady. "That you were screwing around with the new maid while my aunt was dying upstairs." Robert's eyes widened at that one, both in surprise, and something else, fear. "If he wanted to win once and for all he could have just told Sybil what a weak bastard her father is."

Not having a counterargument at the ready, the earl referred back to a defense he had used before. "I will not be spoken to like this in my own house." He was standing now, he and Constance only a few steps from each other.

"Which is paid for with my grandfather's money and will inevitably be managed by an office I oversee. I will speak how I like. The next time you want to put me in my place, remember yours: my tenant." There was heavy silence for several moments. "You're mortified to introduce someone who works for a living as your son-in-law? Working class money never bothered you when it saved your estate. You want to shame a woman for sacrificing herself to feed her son? You married a virtual stranger for her money. Now, I'm not a judgmental person, but I can't abide by misplaced self-righteousness. You actually think that what separates you from Ethel Parks is honor? You're a whore."

Lord Grantham was practically shaking now. He was a mass of outrage and humiliation; he had lost this one.

She knew she should stop. What realistic good could come of this? But she remembered Cora sitting beside Sybil's hospital bed, You're my baby, you know? You'll always be my baby. Sybil had suffocated under her father's control and Cora now suffocated in her fear. Constance would speak.

"I am curious though. How much did you try to give him? How much did you think she was worth?"

The door of the library creaked. Mrs. Hughes' face was stoic, giving no sign that she had heard anything. Constance couldn't be sure but she was past caring.

"Pardon me, Your Lordship, but Mr. Crawley said he had an appointment to review some of the estate matters," said the housekeeper.

Constance turned. "That's alright Mrs. Hughes, I was just leaving." She smiled at the older woman and walked past her into the hallway.