Note: Thanks everyone! Seriously, I really appreciate your reviews and follows and favorites! So awesome! Glad you're enjoying the story! Here is Chapter 10.
Disclaimer: I don't Downton Abbey. Obviously.
Chapter Ten
Sybil rose very early, long before the breakfast hour, with shadowy dreams echoing in her mind. She rubbed her eyes and sat up in bed, trying to catch the wispy nighttime visitors that were fading away.
Whatever she had dreamed, Sybil felt warm, cozy, safe, and very loved. She felt energy surge and then grabbed the book she'd been reading last night, Northanger Abbey, and turned on her lamp. Catherine Morland was far too naive for Sybil's tastes, but still, the scene where Catherine was in her room at Northanger Abbey and her candle went out always gave Sybil delicious chills.
And she quite liked Henry Tilney. Maybe not as much as she enjoyed the sensibility of Mr. Knightley or everything about Frederick Wentworth, but Henry Tilney was witty and fun and kind. He was an altogether enjoyable hero.
Who was her hero? Was there one out there, just for her?
Even as she read further on, Sybil mentally scoffed. A hero just for her! Her creed was to not need a hero, but an equal, if she chose to marry. And she was quite determined to see that marriage was a choice. Though how could it not be, with the war on? So many men, dead. Men her age and younger, dying in horrendous ways.
Sybil read more of Catherine Morland, determined to not be as naive in the face of reality as Jane Austen's young heroine.
Breakfast brought a letter from Mary, a pleasant surprise, and Sybil eagerly read it.
Mary was at Cliveden, an estate in the countryside of the Midlands. She wrote of long walks, dancing until dawn, and meeting interesting people. She had sat for a portrait for one of the guests, an artist, dressed in a "ridiculous costume full of lacy loops and a very large hat." She didn't mention anybody in particular, except to archly observe that "relations have apparently soured between the Turner-Gowers. What's the phrase about 'marry in haste' again?"
Sybil shook her head. Mary was at ease with that sort of life. Even in wartime, Mary was going to long house parties. Why couldn't Sybil feel as comfortable living the life she'd been raised to? When had she started to want more than a life of parties, shooting, dresses, house parties, and dances?
She went down to the garage after breakfast as usual, only to find Branson and the car absent. She felt disappointed. She didn't have anything in particular to pester Branson about, but talking to him grounded her. Even though, when she first started making these visits, her conversation was largely about the strife between her sisters and what she thought were problems (upper class problems, that is) Branson always listened with patience and cracking wit. He could debate and give opinions and even, once in a while, sound advice.
He was rather like Henry Tilney in that way. Not quite old enough to be Mr. Knightley, not so wayward to be Edmund Bertram, not a Wentworth. Branson was not like either of the men of Sense and Sensibility and he was not Mr. Darcy. Sybil knew a few men like Mr. Darcy, ones who take their station in life far too seriously. She didn't know why Darcy was considered the archetypal romantic hero. He didn't appeal to her in the least.
Henry Tilney. Henry Tilney had come to love Catherine Morland, seeing the good and true in her.
Sybil sat down hard on the bench in the garage, feeling heat rush into her cheeks. She was definitely blushing.
Henry Tilney fell for Catherine. Branson had some of Henry's qualities. Catherine was naive, but Sybil, though she loathed to admit it, did share some qualities with Miss Morland.
Henry and Catherine grew to love each other.
Sybil buried her face in her hands.
She liked Branson. She liked him. That's what all that thinking he was kind (which he was) and intelligent (which he was) and handsome (yes, that, too) had come from in the past few weeks! Oh, lord!
Sybil's stomach churned.
# # #
A girl in her position, Sybil reasoned as she sat in the backseat of the car as Branson drove her to the hospital, either developed crushes on boys she'd met through family, friends, or the Season, on boys turned into men she had grown up with, or had crushes on the male servants. It was an utterly innocent, silly sort of fleeting regard. Sybil remembered, when she was much younger, a footman who caught her eye in particular. She thought him very handsome in his suit and tails and his smile had been gleaming and made his whole face light up.
But then the footman had left Downton and Sybil forgot about him.
A crush on her chauffeur would not be extinguished quite so easily. For one thing, she and Branson were actually friends and had been since soon after his arrival three years ago. If she was suddenly shy around him, he would notice.
She didn't only like to look at him. The green uniform fit him well. Sybil had seen him out of it once, on one of his half days off, and the plain brown suit had been a bit jarring.
Branson stopped in front of the hospital. "Have a good day," he said.
"Thank you," Sybil said. She hopped out of the car.
Her thoughts of Branson drifted away as she took in the sight in front of the hospital.
An ambulance was parked outside and Dr. Clarkson and Cousin Isobel stood by it.
"Good morning," Sybil said to them, peering into ambulance. Two orderlies stood by, taking a man lying on a board between them. "New men?"
"This is just the start," Cousin Isobel said. "We're expecting twenty more today." She smiled at Sybil, kindly. "Go inside to the head nurse. She'll need all the help she can come by today."
Sybil nodded and marched into the cottage hospital.
# # #
Tom was in the garage, tightening something in the Renualt's engine, when he heard footsteps. He glanced up to see Lady Edith.
"Good morning," he said. "Have you come for your lesson? Just give me one moment..."
Lady Edith smiled. "Yes, my lesson and the printer in Ripon called to say that the programs for the concert are ready. Would you mind taking me to pick them up?"
"Not at all," he said, wiping his hands on a rag. "Let me finish this. I'm nearly done."
"Of course," Edith said with a bob of her head. Tom fixed his attention on the valve and the wrench. Satisfied that it was tight enough, he wiped his hands again, closed the hood, and started the car. He listened to the engine. Good, good. Sounded fixed.
"I think we ought to practice pulling in and out," Branson said. "Then more road work. Maybe on a real road instead of one on the estate."
Edith grinned in pleasure. "Do you think I'm ready for it?"
She wasn't really. She was still shaky on the road and in the car, but no one learned how to drive properly without obstacles. So he said, "Just to get you used to the idea of driving where there are other cars, my lady."
Branson took his place on the passenger's side and Edith in the driver's seat. She double de-clutched well, took the steering wheel in her hands, and made certain that her feet were in their proper place by the pedals. She slowly put her feet on the gas and the car rolled out of the garage, vee-rr-yy slowly.
"Good," Branson said. "Now lean right. Let's get her up the drive."
Edith turned the steering wheel to the right, the car moving correspondingly, then she sped up a little as she drove up the sloped drive away from the garage.
"Not too fast," Branson instructed.
"Why are machines always female?"
"What do you mean?"
"Well, you call the car a 'her.' Why is that?"
Branson frowned. "Just convention, I guess."
"Hmm. Sybil wouldn't approve," Edith said. "Shall I turn left now?"
"Yes." Lady Edith made the turn smoothly, though very slowly. Still, Branson felt rather proud. She was improving. She was doing what she wanted to do and learning what she wanted to learn. Lady Mary had better watch out. She might be thought more beautiful and elegant, but Branson was willing to bet that Lady Edith would grow to be ever more interesting.
# # #
The head nurse asked Sybil to help settle the new men, who came in all sorts of conditions. She helped the nurses cut away the men's old clothes, often dirty and sometimes infested with lice. She brought fresh clothing for each man, fetched water and soap to wash them, then took down their particulars, such as injuries, what treatment they'd had, what medicine they'd been given already as the nurse dictated to her.
"Moving on," Nurse Porter said as they finished with one man and went to see to the one in the bed next to him. Sybil turned to a new page in the notebook she was writing in. "Ready, Miss Crawley?"
"Ready."
"Good." Nurse Porter bent to look at the tag that had been attached to the soldier. "Lieutenant Raymond William Kendall of the Duke of Manchester's Own."
Sybil scribbled the rank, name, and unit down. The Duke of Manchester's Own! That was Matthew's regiment!
"Shell and shrapnel injury to the left arm and leg. Lower left leg amputated in field hospital in France. Given morphine."
Sybil noted it down. Nurse Porter frowned, staring at Lieutenant Kendall.
"Nurse Porter?" Sybil asked. Nurse Porter shook her head.
"Thank you, Miss Crawley." The nurse shook her head again. "He's so young. It's so very sad."
Sybil peered over at the soldier lying on the white sheets. His face was haggard and he was sleeping the sleep of morphine, but yes, he looked young, in his most early twenties, perhaps.
Sybil felt sorrow, the deepest she'd ever felt before. And in the face of so many injured and wounded men, all coming back to England from the war in France, Sybil wondered if they, too, felt powerless before the rage of the war. They must feel so. And if they felt powerless and hopeless, how were they ever going to win and end the war?