A/N: I really appreciated everyone's feedback on the last chapter. Reviews always make my day.
I believe this is the chapter so many of you have been anticipating, so let me know what you think.
Anna calmed down considerably on the walk home from the house. By unspoken agreement, they did not discuss what had occurred in the corridor with Green.
Bates walked slowly on the path to the cottage, hanging back a few steps behind Anna as she unlocked the front door and entered their home. She began lighting the space of their sitting room. He hung up his coat and hat with deliberate care before following her into the kitchen where she'd began to prepare their evening tea, a nightly ritual.
"I find myself confused about something," he addressed her casually as he took a seat at the table. "Perhaps you can help me."
"I will if I can," she answered, looking at him nervously over her shoulder.
"Why would someone confess to doing something they didn't do?" Bates asked.
Anna stiffened at the question. Putting the kettle on the stove to boil, she turned back to him before answering, "You would know better than I. After all, you went to prison for a theft you did not commit. Why did you confess to Vera's crime?"
He shrugged. After considering for a moment, he said, "I suppose I did it out of guilt and a sense of responsibility."
"Well, there you have it," Anna stated. More quietly, she added, "And I'm sure you wanted to protect her."
"Yes, I did," Bates admitted. "That was my duty as her husband, to protect her."
"If only she'd been as good at protecting you," Anna said dryly.
"A wife has no duty to protect her husband."
Anna's brow wrinkled in surprise at his statement and she responded sharply, "Of course she does."
He stood up from the table and approached her. Anna looked at him with trepidation, but she did not back away. "I would never ask you to protect me, Anna."
Clearly confused, she said, "You wouldn't have to ask me. I would protect you with my life if I had to."
He took in a sharp breath at the raw emotion in her voice. Moving a step closer to her, he inquired, "You love me that much?"
"Of course I do."
"You love me enough to die for me?" Bates asked, mentally willing her to say 'no,' to deny that level of commitment. Even a healthy amount of hesitation would lighten his heart. He did not want to believe she would sacrifice so much of herself, not for him. She'd already given up so much...
Anna watched him, her expression betraying uncertainty as to why he was asking these questions or why he had moved so close to her. "Yes, I do," she said, without guile or an ounce of untruthfulness.
He sighed.
"I believe you."
She nodded, looking from him back to the stove. But as she took the opportunity to escape his heated gaze, he added, "What I don't believe is that the woman who just professed to give her life for mine would ever be unfaithful to me. Not willingly."
Anna froze.
"I already explained..." she began in a calm, emotionless voice, "I made a terrible mistake."
"No, I am the one who was mistaken."
"You don't understand-" she began, but Bates cut her off.
"Green forced you, didn't he?"
Anna did not respond. She did not look at him. She did not move a muscle.
Her eyes Bates were focused on some empty piece of space. He finally realized as he saw her shudder violently that she was in the midst of a flashback. He placed a gentle hand on her shoulder, and the touch was enough to jar her back into the present. But one look at her husband left her dissolving into tears.
She moved back towards him and without conscious thought, he wrapped his arms protectively around her. Bates held her as she cried, great tearful sobs painful in both their anguish and intensity.
"Oh, my darling," he whispered.
Anna told him everything.
She described the events of that night - the true events - with broad strokes and few details, unwilling to let her nightmares spread to him. But after lying to him and hiding the truth for months, she was finally able to unburden herself and tell him everything else. Her unending guilt. Her fear of Green which bled into her interactions with him. Her nightmares and waking moments of terror. The process left her feeling strangely cleansed, as though by keeping the truth from him for so long she'd perpetuated her own shame over the events of that night.
He reacted differently than she anticipated. Anna expected him to stiffen with rage and go after Green at that very moment as it appeared he would do earlier in the evening. But he treated her tenderly, almost reverently, the tears in his eyes mirroring those in her own.
He still loved her. Anna knew he would, considering how easily he'd forgiven her for her feigned infidelity. Having long ago decided that if he could stand to be with her if she'd willingly been with another man, she knew he would not leave her for it happening unwillingly. But she took reassurance in his response.
"Why didn't you tell me?" Bates pleaded, his voice full of emotion. "Why did you let me believe you'd been unfaithful?"
Pensively, Anna answered after a moment, "I didn't intend to lie, not at first. I didn't want you to know at all because... because I was so ashamed. I couldn't stand for you to know. But also, I worried... I thought you'd murder him and be found out and hanged. When you made mention of adultery, I thought it would be easier for you to believe and for you to live with."
He sighed with pained understanding. "You thought I wouldn't kill him if I believed you'd been in the wrong."
"Yes." She bit her lip slightly before continuing. "I knew it would hurt you. And I'm so sorry for that, I am. But I couldn't risk your future."
Bates sighed. "My future..." he repeated as though finding new understanding in the words. Shaking his head, he observed, "I should have realized it sooner. The bruises on your face that night..."
"I didn't want you to know," Anna stated, attempting to absolve him of guilt.
She wished he would look at her and meet her gaze. She wished she could find a way to reach him, to offer him some comfort. But he stared at the floor of their home, his mind clearly reeling as he processed her motives.
"Because you were protecting me," he stated, hating the idea even as he voiced it.
"Yes."
"With more than your life," he whispered softly, mostly to himself. "With your reputation, with your mental state and well being."
Apparently overwhelmed by this new understanding, Bates began to shake. Anna reached out a hand to touch him and he recoiled as though she'd burned him. Dejected, she let her hand drop to her side.
"Would you have really left me?" he asked.
Anna answered slowly. "Yes."
"And what of divorce?"
Imagining an existence lived separate and apart from him was impossible. Her life truly would be over. But she could do it if she had to, Anna believed. If it spared his suffering and ultimately his life, she'd give up every bit of peace and happiness afforded to her in the world. For all his talk of being unworthy of her, she was the one who did not deserve him, not in the end.
"If that's what you had wanted," she affirmed quietly.
She'd have left him. She'd have let him divorce her.
Bates let out a tightly held breath in a short gasp, his expression betraying utter anguish. "You were innocent in all of this," he said, his voice barely above a whisper. "And yet you painted yourself as an adulterer... you would have let me divorce you as an adulterer... to keep me from doing something rash that might lead me to imprisonment."
Anna did not dispute him, but she clarified softly, "To execution. They'd not have spared you a second time."
Bates grimaced as though he'd been struck and let out another pained sigh.
"Did you really believe I would act so recklessly?" Thinking back to how he'd reacted at the sight of Green speaking to her in the hall, he answered himself, "Of course you did, to go through all this..."
She knew him better than he knew himself sometimes.
"I knew you'd feel obligated to avenge me," Anna explained. "I could live with you despising me - even divorcing me - for being unfaithful to you. But I couldn't be responsible for you returning to prison. Or worse..."
"But after what you endured, to shoulder that burden..."
Her brow furrowing, Anna countered forcefully, "But you didn't make it a burden. You were always so forgiving and kind. You could have spent these past months punishing me, making me work to regain your trust and your love. I wouldn't have blamed you if you had. I deserve nothing less. But you didn't."
Finally, he looked at her, forcing his eyes to lock with hers. He could see the shadows there, a deep well of pain and despair at having to keep her secret, the guilt which could never properly be unburdened.
"You didn't deserve to be treated so," Bates seethed, his voice filled with great emotion. "I could feel that in my heart, that you were innocent of any wrongs."
"You are equally innocent," she told him, "and I don't want you blaming yourself."
She reached out and took his hands in hers, and he could not force himself to pull away. Her touch was as necessary as breathing.
"I should have protected you-"
"You had no way to know," Anna countered.
"And I should have realized you were lying about what happened."
Her chest rose and fell as she breathed in several times before responding to him. "You are not at fault for my deception," she stated. "And you are not at fault for what that man did. If you must cast blame, then put it on me. You tried to warn me he was no good, and I didn't listen to you. I even took his side over yours..."
Her voice cut out and Bates remembered the incident with the card game. It seemed so long ago now, a lifetime. He shook his head slowly as he said, "You are not to blame, Anna."
She swallowed back a fresh wave of tears before nodding, momentarily accepting his statement.
"Neither are you," she told him. "And I won't see you tear yourself to pieces over it either."
Bates looked away, the tears in his eyes finding their way out onto his cheeks. Suppressing the deep need to dissolve into sobs at the thought of Anna hurt so, he said to her, "I wish you'd told me the truth in the beginning."
"I wanted to," Anna said quietly, sadly. "I was just so afraid for you."
"You thought I couldn't control my murderous impulses if I knew the truth," he noted aloud, his voice sarcastic and hurt.
She looked away, embarrassed at his classification of her actions. "It wasn't like that."
"Then what was it like?" he asked. "What about me is so violent and impulsive that I could not control my rage upon finding out?"
When she did not respond for several moments, Bates sighed heavily. But before he could speak, she answered, "Could you really go about things as though nothing had happened? Could you see him at Downton without saying a word? Tomorrow morning, will you be able to sit across from him at breakfast?"
He certainly could not. It took all his restraint to stop from marching back up to the house and murdering Green in his bed. But Anna had endured it. She'd sat down to breakfast next to the valet the morning after the concert, the morning after he'd...
Anna had done endured that for him, to protect him. But could he obey her wishes to do the same?
With a sigh, he pointed out feebly, "We can call the police."
"So he can argue that I never refused him, that I wanted it?" Anna demanded, growing more upset. "He will publically paint me as an adulterer and any witness they call at trial will say how friendly I was to him. They won't believe me, and in the end they'll let him go. And everyone will know."
Having very little luck with the justice system, Bates found himself unable to argue with her logic. Going to the police would mean a very public and potentially reputation-damaging trial. Even if Green were found guilty, the shadows cast on both the Crawleys and Lord Gillingham's family would be considerable. And that said nothing of the destruction such a case would do to Anna's reputation. His murder conviction had already made the two of them infamous, and even more negative attention might necessitate them being released from Lord Grantham's service.
"What did he say to you earlier, on the stairs?" Bates asked.
Anna shook her head, unwilling to divulge the information. He sighed.
"I won't let him get away with this, Anna What he did to you... that can't go unpunished."
"You can't go after him," she warned, fear beginning to choke her. "They'll arrest you and put you away again."
"Only if I'm caught," Bates stated, his mind already working through the problem of how to get at Green undetected.
Frowning, Anna lamented, "But you will be caught. I don't care what you learned in prison. You can't hope to get away with murder and escape the notice of the police."
"It wouldn't be murder," he said absently. "It would be justice."
He looked at his wife to see her shaking, her arms wrapped around her body as though to ward off some terrible chill. Her lower lip quivered out of control. "This is why I didn't want to tell you," she said.
"Anna..."
"No, listen to me," she said harshly, the panic turning her voice hoarse as she addressed him. "I won't watch them take you to prison again. I won't. I was willing to give you up to keep that from happening, and I still am. You have to let this go. You have to, John, or our marriage is over."
He cocked his head slightly to one side, confused over her statement.
Clarifying, she declared without hesitation, "If you kill Green, if you harm him at all, I will leave you."
Her ultimatum momentarily silenced him. But a moment later, his anger rose up and he demanded, "You care for this man's life so much you would threaten to end our marriage?"
Anna's eyes widened slightly at the question, and her eyes filled with renewed tears. "I care for you that much," was her retort, swiftly followed by the impassioned statement, "and yes, I would end our marriage to keep the man I love more than life itself from being hanged for a crime committed in my name."
After a long pause, Bates began, "But what he did to you..."
"It doesn't matter," Anna responded instantly. "All that matters is you... you and me, our life together."
Somehow, her trembling had only increased such that she was now shaking like a leaf in a windstorm as she stood unsteadily before him. But beyond her petite frame and small statute, Bates suddenly took notice of the squareness of her shoulders and the straightness of her back. Despite her distress at the situation - and he could not blame her for being upset - she had no qualms about standing up to him.
"Anna," he said with a sigh, reaching out hand to cup her cheeks in his hands. Bates expected her to flinch, but she did not move away as his long, nimble fingers ran along the sides of her face, tracing the stray wisps of hair just in front of her ears. "I won't do anything to jeopardize our future together," he assured her.
Nodding, Anna briefly closed her eyes, and as she did so, the accumulated tears were forced out to stream down her face. Touching her delicately, he wiped the moisture away with his thumbs before leaning forward to press his lips against hers. The kiss was slow and chaste, more a declaration of love than a desperate cry for passion. Anna leaned into him, her hands finding their way along his forearms to his elbows and then migrating down his body to rest on his hips.
But he did not end with the press of their lips. Bates moved on to kiss her forehead, and then her cheeks, followed closely by delicate, butterfly touches of his lips to her eyelids. She waited, patiently anticipated where he might kiss her next.
He surprised Anna by kissing the edge of her mouth, and the unexpected pressure caused her to smile despite herself. From there he moved to her opposite temple, and after that back to her lips. Peeking open her eyes, she saw him watching her intently, his eyes focused on hers.
"You know I love you," he said in a deep and rough voice that sent chills down her spine.
"I know," Anna answered. "I love you, too. So much."
"I promise to do as you ask, but I won't let him hurt you again," Bates told her. "If he so much as comes near you..."
She nodded slightly.
"I know." Her voice echoed slightly in the small space of their home.
"You cannot ask me to stand by and do nothing."
Anna shivered at the steel in his voice, but she did not pull away from him. "He'll be gone soon," she assured him. "And we can go on with our lives."
He could tell she did not believe her own hopeful words. As she slept in the shelter of his arms that night, no longer separated from him by secrets and lies, Bates turned over the situation in his mind. He would resist the urge to deal with Green so long as the man stayed away from Anna. For her, he could keep his temper in check. But nothing would stop him if the valet did not toe the line. And based on his experience with Green, he would not have to wait long before the man gave him a reason to end him once and for all.
TBC
