Chapter IX.

It was almost midnight.

The Ladies were already tucked into bed, while the Gentlemen were still up discussing recent developments and current affairs.

Matthew felt exhausted and restless at the same time. He had been secretly been hoping they would join the women again at some point, but Robert and Evelyn were so engulfed in their politics that they quite forgot the time.

He knew that Lavinia would be put out with him for not saying goodnight.

The shameful truth was, he only desired to see one face again before he went to sleep. And it wasn't his fiancées.

He wondered at Napier, showing no such inclination. Matthew's hand closed tighter around his glass of brandy. Finally, the clock chimed.

"Ah, twelve already..." Robert turned halfway in his chair. "Heavens, we've been talking all evening." Robert looked at Matthew while he said this.

Ironically, Matthew thought, for he had been the opposite of chatty in the past few hours.

There was something more in Robert's gaze, though. Something inquisitive and impatient. And even though it did not seem hostile, Matthew felt unsettled by it.

"Actually, during dinner, I had the idea of showing you something...but I would not bring it up in front of the Ladies."

Both Evelyn and Matthew looked surprised for an instant, then intrigued. "What is it?"

Robert hesitated, still unsure whether it would be prudent or even a good idea to show them.

"It's too late now. I'll show you another time." he veered off quickly, again into Matthew's direction, getting up as if this settled the matter.

They parted at the first landing. Evelyn and Matthew turning right into the Bachelor's corridor and Robert heading left for Cora.

Being away from Downton for such a long period of time, Matthew had forgotten how ridiculously serious the servants took their job.

Molesley, who had come over with Isobel for Christmas he guessed, dutifully followed them up the stairs. As did Holborn, Napier's valet. Both servants looked bleary-eyed. They must have stayed up and waited until this late hour.

"Sorry about that, Molesley. You should have gone to bed, instead of waiting up. I could have managed on my own..." Matthew began, but noticed the look of offended pride on Molesley's face.

He smiled apologetically and the valet looked appeased.

"I'm sure you could have, Sir." he muttered sleepily as he helped Matthew out of his attire.

When he was alone again, Matthew opened the covers and crawled inside in his underwear.

He simply wasn't used to sleeping in anything but his uniform at this stage and for some reason, he had the urge to feel the soft, silken touch of the fine bedlinen on his skin. The sensation of a clean, soft bed was so rare these days that he relished it.

Even though he felt exhausted from the stress of the day, sleep would not come to him. It was too quiet for one who was used to sleeping through the sounds of shelling and granates. Matthew closed his eyes with a frustrated sigh and opened them a second later in alarm.

Behind his mind's eye, he had seen it again. White flashes, red flashes. A thousand faces of death, of mangled corpses, drowning in their own blood. Cold sweat broke out on his back and forehead.

It did not happen very often, mainly when he was not active, when his brain relaxed.

And all he could do then was to allow another surpressed, a more potent image to appear in his mind. The thought of her alone could drown out the cries and chase away the horrifying images. So he conjured her.

Mary. Sitting on their bench outside. Laughing into her napkin at the dinner table. Dancing at Sybil's ball. Sparkling brown eyes. Rosy lips, parted invitingly, the taste of strawberries. And freckles. Freckles. So many freckles, he wanted to count them like the stars on a clear night sky...

Matthew knew that it should, it ought to be Lavinia's face that would chase away the horrors of war. But it wasn't. It never was. The guilt he felt about this had gradually ceased with time.

Lavinia had known what she took on when she accepted his proposal. He had never lied to her on that account, making it clear from the beginning that he was still reeling from a previous attachement. She had brushed it off, insisting that time would put it in the past. Matthew had not corrected her then, hoping at the time, that she might be right.

But time had nothing to do with it. Nor distance. It had no power to dimish what he knew to be his one great love. During his first two years at the front, Matthew had been secretly hoping that Mary was waiting for him, imagining that she might have loved him enough after all, that he could still come back to her when the war was over.

All that flew out of the window, however, in 1916. Shortly after the Somme, he had seen fit to contact some of his lawyer colleagues in London, in need of a specialist's help. He'd wanted to draw up his own last will and testament, but alas the entail made it rather more complicated and so he was referred to an elder solicitor, who had more experience with such complex cases.

Reginald Swire had studied at the same law school as himself and he quickly felt at home with him. At the same time of his visit, there had been another guest to the Swire house, an old acquaintance of Swire's politician brother. Matthew remembered the day as if it were yesterday.

They sat in the parlour, having tea. Sir Richard Carlisle, owner of six newspapers, and a million pound industry behind it, had just returned from a most pleasant visit at Clevedon.

There, he tells them, he met the most charming young Lady. Witty, sharp and fearless, he had described her. Beautiful too of course.

When Lavinia asked after her name, Matthew's tea cup rattled so loudly he had to put it down.

Lady Mary Crawley, who, Carlisle was not shy to say, appeared to take a great interest in him as a person. In fact, he was invited to stay at her father's estate in Yorkshire in one week's time.

The next day, before his departure, Matthew had proposed to Lavinia and she had accepted it.

No, he did not blame Mary. Nor did he regret asking Lavinia. He was fond of her, and she had been there for him on that fateful day, when all his illusions and hopes for the future had crashed down around him. He had needed her affection, her admiration and her willingness to take him for what he was. Nothing more, nothing less. There may not be so much passion in his feelings for Lavinia, but where had all his passion led him in the past? Not into a blissful marriage, that's for sure.

Having someone so sweet and kind waiting for you at home certainly did make it easier to bear the burden of this war. And before last April, Matthew had been almost able to imagine himself to be cured from his devotion to Mary. It must have been the greatest act of self-deception in history.

Matthew felt sick for a moment and turned onto his side. The window was illuminated by the half moon.

Oh God, he should never have come back to this place. Never.

And what had he been thinking, proposing to a girl he had only known a week? Lavinia was a lovely girl, she deserved a man who loved her with his whole heart, who thought of her at night, and not of another! A man who loved and desired another woman was not a proper husband, he was a scoundrel and he betrayed her with his heart already! It was betrayal to even think of Mary!

Matthew moaned quietly and turned around, facing away from the moon and its taunting eyes, looking down at him accusingly, as if he were the greatest fool that it had ever cast its milky light on.

Time to stop being a fool right here and right now, he though viciously as he finally closed his eyes.

Mary was engaged to marry Napier, to be the wife of an Earl's son. That's how it was always meant to be and he was meant to marry a sweet good-natured middle-class girl. Everything was settled as it ought to be.

What right did he have to question it all now, at two in the morning, after three years of war and separation?

What right did he have to wish for things to have been different?

They never would have been. Mary never loved him.

All she cared about was the preservation of her status and money, lots of money. His love did not matter to her. Perhaps she did not even truly love Napier and he was only a means to, like he himself had been at one time.

Really, he ought to pity the man, not envy him!

With a final groan, Matthew punched his pillow into a satisfactory form and thrust his head impatiently onto it.

At any rate, he concluded, he was lucky if he survived the coming months. He ought to concentrate all his thoughts on that, and not on a woman who probably did not even care if he lived or died.

Matthew slowly drifted off under a feeling of trying to wrench something out of his own chest. And to no avail.

Like clockwork, the nightmares of the trenches transformed into scenes from last night. Sitting at the dinner table, watching her intently, until her eyes found his and the scene froze...

He woke up the next morning, grim but rested, with no recollection of his dreams whatsoever.