Thanks, as always, to everyone who has read, reviewed and followed The Holiday. I always enjoy hearing people's thoughts, so please keep sending reviews! Big thanks also to everyone who has recommended The Holiday on Tumblr.
Now, after Sybil and Tom's love fest, we're back with Mary and Matthew, who will be taking things considerably slower. As always, they are a bit more of a challenge for me to write in present day, so this is a bit on the short side. Enjoy!
Mary
Mary took a deep breath, walked through the door, stopped just as she had crossed the threshold and immediately ran back outside. This had been going on for the last five minutes, and Mary was getting angrier and angrier at herself the longer it went. Usually, she was so sure of what she wanted. She couldn't really make heads or tails of why she was turning into such an indecisive, dithering fool.
A proper schoolgirl, for heaven's sake.
Actually, she knew why. A few hours ago, when Mary had decided that she would, in fact, stay in London one more night and join Matthew for dinner, she felt certain, both of herself and of the decision. But now that she was here outside Jasper's, she was crumbling, and Mary did not like the feeling.
It was the suit.
On her first attempt to walk in, Mary spotted Matthew easily. He was standing over his table, toward the back of the restaurant, as the server removed the extra place settings and poured his water. Once the server had finished, Matthew sat down, unbuttoning his jacket in the process. Mary saw it clear as day—he was wearing a waistcoat. Mr. Matthew Crawley was wearing a three-piece suit. A bloody three-piece suit.
The perfectly perfect perfection of the whole thing sent her running back into the street. Matthew had once again set her off balance without even trying, without even knowing, really. It wasn't just about his clothes—although, he was wearing that suit very nicely. It was the fact that he met Mary's expectations, exceeded them even, when for Mary the whole point of expectations was to protect herself from men by setting them impossibly high. Nobody was supposed to actually reach them, certainly not a lawyer who shared her last name and lived in Dublin.
If she had walked in and he'd been wearing anything else, she would have easily kept her cool and judged him and last night's encounter on her own terms. But no, he had to go and wear the exact right thing and he had to look so good doing it that she didn't know which end was up. How is a girl supposed to make any rational decisions when he is looking like that? But she was here, and she wanted to see him, talk to him. By God, she was going to go in or die trying.
Mary took one more deep breath and went for the door again. Whether or not she was going to wimp out this time became a moot point when he looked up to the door just as she was walking through it. Their eyes met, and his smile, the very same that had put her off balance last night, gave her confidence, and she strode through the floor as if there had never been a doubt in her mind.
He stood—of course, he did—as she approached the table and moved to pull out the chair next to him. Mary realized then that the server she'd seen when spying on Matthew and his waistcoat a few minutes earlier had left not one place setting but two. She smiled at his confidence. She liked it.
He didn't seem surprised to see her there, and she once again marveled at what an even keel he seemed to keep at all times.
"Your timing is perfect," he said. "I haven't ordered the wine yet."
"Good," she replied, settling in, now feeling more like herself. "I would hate for you to have chosen something I didn't like, like rosé. Please don't tell me you drink that because if you do we can never be friends."
"Well, if I did drink it, you can be sure I would never admit to it now."
"No one should admit to it," she said, making him laugh. She liked doing that.
After a minute or so of perusing her menu, she noticed him looking at her strangely, making her wonder whether he really hadn't been surprised by her appearance.
"I was wondering how long it was going to take you to finally decide to come in and sit down," he said finally, with a mischievous smile.
Brilliant. "You saw that, did you?" So he wasn't surprised because he'd seen her. Worse, he'd seen her indecision. Mary didn't blush, of course. She never did that, but she rolled her eyes at herself and didn't bother hiding it. Why bother when he had already seen a greater embarrassment.
Seemingly eager to put her at ease, he gave her a small smile and said, "I considered not telling you, but then, I didn't want to start dinner under false pretenses."
She laughed, in spite of herself. "Well, I do appreciate that." And she did. If anything, Mary was truly at ease now. "It seems as if I am doomed to be not at my best with you."
"Mary," he said, "Let me assure you that nothing in my impression of you suggests that you are ever anything except at your best."
He was flirting, she knew, but there was a sincerity behind his words that made Mary feel good.
"You're good at giving compliments," she said, which made him smile a bit bashfully. "And I was obviously right this morning because you do clean up nicely."
They held each other's gaze for a moment then went back to their menus.
Looking over at him out of the corner of her eye, Mary realized that part of what had discombobulated her so much coming into the restaurant was the fact that this was her first ever first date with a man she'd already slept with. And yes, she did think it was a date. Why else would he have asked her to dinner? Matthew didn't strike her as someone who played those are-we-or-aren't-we games.
Mary was being honest with him when she had told him this morning that she had never slept with anyone she had just met. The act itself hadn't freaked her out. The decision had been rash and out of character for her, sure, but she didn't regret making it. She had enjoyed herself—boy, had she—and this morning, when she believed that their parting was going to be the last of it, she was actually looking forward to having a pleasant memory.
Unfortunately for Mary and her best laid plans, the memory was a little too vivid, and all day she couldn't stop herself from thinking about him. And once she started thinking about his invitation as a first date, she tried to fit the situation into one of the boxes she compartmentalized her life into. Only, there was no box for first date with previous sex partner. Neither was there a box for first date with someone who'd seen her after one Evelyn Napier had made her look like a fool and made her feel even worse. All those rules about being coy went out the window. What is the point of being coy when he's seen you at your most vulnerable. When he's seen you naked.
But sitting here now, she didn't feel discombobulated. For all the ways Matthew put Mary on edge, there were so many more in which he set her at ease. She didn't know what was going to happen, and for once in her life it was a confortable feeling. She would spend time with Matthew, if that's what he wanted too, until he was gone, and then let fate decide. If it turned out that all he was going to be was a memory, she might as well make it a longer and better one.
She didn't know how long she had been musing to herself like this when she caught his eyes on her. Before she had a chance to excuse herself, he spoke first.
"So we've established that rosé is out of the question. What would you like to drink?"
"A mean red."
"Mean?"
"Sure."
He had a questioning, but not unkind expression on his face. "What exactly is a mean red?"
"Something that will get my attention. People usually say 'a nice red,' but isn't 'nice' the word we use when we're talking about something that's easily overlooked?"
"I certainly hope that's not how you look at men."
"Oh?"
"If I'm supposed to be mean to you in order for your to find me interesting, then I'm afraid we're not going to have a successful courtship."
She raised her eyebrows at him playfully. "This is a courtship?"
"Isn't it?" he challenged back.
She held his gaze for a moment then laughed. "It is. I apologize for that, actually. Believe it or not I am determined not to be coy with you."
"Not that this is a complaint, but why not?"
"Well, I was quite direct last night, wasn't I, and that took us in a positive direction."
He smiled widely. "Mean red it is."
Mary couldn't help but smile back. It was easy to like him. That was disconcerting in its own way. In her entire life, nobody had ever told her that it could be easy.
Once they had ordered their wine—a robust Spanish tempranillo—and ordered their dinner, Mary and Matthew fell into an easy conversation about Mary's upbringing at Downton, Matthew's in Manchester, Matthew's days at Cambridge and Mary's at Oxford, their jobs and their families. Matthew's background seemed to Mary to be ever so slightly less worldly, less distinguished and less privileged than most of the men who populated her social circle, the one so carefully built around her and her sisters by their parents. And yet so much greater was he as a man. She could see that truth so clearly as she could see him sitting in front of her.
For whatever reason, in that moment, she thought of Sybil, so obviously unhappy for so long trying to will herself into loving one of these men and making herself miserable for it. Mary suddenly wished she had fought harder for her sister against her parents' well-meaning but misguided meddling. Wasn't Mary, with her lofty expectations, what others saw as high self-regard, merely shielding herself from the same romantic fate that Sybil had resigned herself to for too long? Who was Larry Grey to Matthew Crawley or even to Matthew's friend, someone Mary had never met but who she would speak for now merely on the knowledge that Matthew held him in high regard?
She remembered the happiness she heard in Sybil's voice last night and ventured a question about it to Matthew.
"How do you think Sybil and your friend are getting on? I know I mentioned it last night, but she seemed to like him very much, and Sybil's not one to be so effusive about strangers."
"She called me this afternoon, actually?"
This surprised Mary. "Was she all right?"
"I think so," Matthew said, though his face had something of a confused air. "I wasn't exactly clear on what happened, but she called to ask if anything had been troubling him, which I'm afraid to say in Tom's case is a bit of loaded question. He had a rough go of it just after university, when his novel was published. I'm not sure whether he talked about it with Sybil, since he usually doesn't like talking about it with anyone, but she sounded very concerned. In any case, she seemed to have figured things out by the end of the phone call, though I'm not sure what I said that would have helped."
"He's written a novel, has he? Sybil's quite the romantic when it comes to writing and literature, so I'm sure she likes that about him. What's the name of his book?"
"The Radical Chauffer."
"You're kidding!" Matthew could have said The Bible and Mary would not have been more shocked.
"Do you know it? Few people outside of our friends and family have heard of it."
"Know it? Sybil never stops talking about it. It's her favorite book," Mary responded. Still in a little bit of shock, it occurred to her that the joke she had made about Sybil moving to Dublin might have been prophetic. She also felt the urge to call Sybil and say what nobody had told her, "I've just discovered this, darling, and I thought you should know. Apparently, liking someone doesn't have to hard. In fact, it should be easy."
This knowledge about Sybil delighted Matthew, and it made Mary happy to have been the one to deliver it. From there, the conversation veered to best friends and sisters and family and coincidences and fate and, even though it was just a first date, how it is that people fall in love, for surely, they agreed, that was happening in his flat a sea away, to the most impulsive and passionate people each of them knew. Neither Matthew nor Mary would have claimed to be in love just then, not yet, but both reveled in the warm feeling of possibility.