A/N: Sorry for the angst. It does get a little bit angsty for a while, I'm afraid, so thanks for sticking with it. Would you expect anything less from Matthew and Mary? Sometimes I just want to lock them in a room so they can talk everything out! Oh wait. I can do that! Repeatedly! Except they refuse to cooperate. I guess they're not quite ready for their happy ever after. Turns out Matthew and Mary can both be a little stubborn...and a little (or a lot) conflicted. Read on:


Chapter 11: Are You a Creature of Duty?

Early and then Late August1919

There is a thought that haunts Matthew. It is his constant companion. Isn't this better.

Lavinia had said those words to him on her deathbed. She'd meant it as a consolation, but it has become almost entirely the opposite.

The night before she leaves for Dublin, Mary asks him about Lavinia. They are in the bedroom on the third floor of the Abbey, which Matthew has started thinking of as 'their' room. He'd received a letter from Mr. Swire that afternoon, and from the sound of it, he isn't doing very well. As a result, Matthew has been thinking about Lavinia, and though Mary is able to distract him for a while, she keeps creeping back in.

"Do you -" Mary asks hesitantly. "Do you want to talk about her?"

"About Lavinia?"

"Sometimes, you leave me," she says. "Even when we're here, in bed. I can only imagine you're thinking of her."

"I'm so sorry. Sometimes it just sneaks up on me. But I hope you know, I would never...not during."

"Oh, I know," Mary says reassuringly. "Can I ask you something? Did you ever do - this - with her?"

"With Lavinia?" Matthew nearly laughs at the thought. "No," he says."Not hardly."

"Didn't you want to?"

"Well, yes. But not like this. We're different. I can't explain it, Mary."

"You don't really have to," she says, lifting her head to look at him. "We are different."

Matthew is skeptical.

"It seems to me," Mary explains, "that you and I have something that we just can't have with anyone else. I'll marry Richard soon and one day you'll marry some bright young thing-"

"Mary-" he interjects.

"Well, won't you? And besides, it's better this way. Really."

Instead of arguing with her, Matthew sits up and starts to get dressed. Mary sighs and does the same.

Better this way is just Mary's version of Isn't this better? Matthew feels more trapped than ever.

While she's gone, Matthew goes to the cemetery. He's been there a few times since Lavinia's funeral, always alone, but not since he and Mary started their affair. He should have been more prepared for the overwhelming guilt he feels as he approaches Lavinia's grave. 'Affair' is such a salacious word. It makes him feel worse than he already does. He thinks about Lavinia, on the last day of her life, talking about how she wasn't meant to be his wife, or to be a countess. He knows she was trying to break things off, and he knows he wouldn't have let her. What he doesn't know is if that would have been the right decision. As usual, her words come back to torture him: "Isn't this better? You won't have to make a hard decision."

But he can't be with Mary either, so it's not really a hard decision at all. After what happened, he deserves this torture, this unhappiness.

Does Mary still love him? He thinks she must do, or else she would never have even considered sharing her bed with him. But there's still a part of her that's closed off to him. He supposes it's the same part that he's closed off to her. Every time he leaves Mary, the memory of Lavinia descends, choking him.

Isn't this better?

He has to stop seeing Mary. He can't expect her to share his heart with a dead woman. What he and Mary have now is more than Matthew deserves, but she should at least have a chance at happiness, he thinks, even if that means giving her up to Richard Carlisle. As for himself, Matthew thinks he will never marry. Maybe years from now, after Mary is settled at Haxby, he'll find someone who wants children and a position but won't intrude on his life or his heart, so that he can do his duty by Downton.

"Are you a creature of duty?" Mary had asked him this question once. Of course he is. He doesn't know how to be anything else. That's why he is in this wretched position. He feels a duty to Lavinia. He promised to love her and he broke that promise, and because of that she died. After all the tragedy they've been through, it would be unfair for him to sit back and let the title go extinct.

Maybe he will have a son and Mary will have a daughter, and they will match them up to fix the mess they've made of fate. Mary might never be the Countess of Grantham, but maybe her descendents will have a chance.

He thinks of the day he met Lavinia, when he had been in London on leave. She'd been the antithesis of Mary, and he found her charming and refreshing. She'd never stopped being that person. It was Matthew who changed, when he came back to Downton, back to Mary. He had let Lavinia down.

Isn't this better?

It isn't.

~ . ~ . ~

Matthew sits at his desk in his office in Ripon on a Monday morning late in August, unable to concentrate. He knows Mary has been back from London since before the weekend, but she hasn't made any attempt to contact him.

He misses her.

He knows he shouldn't. This is a temporary arrangement, nothing more. He loves Mary, of course he does. He has done for years. These weeks they've had together have been more than he could have ever hoped for, but she's still going to marry Carlisle.

He doesn't know how he'll ever be able to give her up. At some point he'll have to do it, but not yet. He's felt more alive these past two months than he has since before he was injured in the war.

She has Carlisle, and he can't betray Lavinia more than he has already. It's a total cock up. He has no idea what he's going to do.

Later that afternoon, as Matthew is getting ready to leave, his assistant brings him a telegram that turns out to be from Mary. The secret telegram business - he doesn't know how she managed it - is a joke they'd made up earlier in the summer. It is a code, and it means she wants him to meet her in their room at Downton the next afternoon.

He sneaks in by the usual route - quietly through the back, skipping the trick stair and then doubling back through the servants' quarters. When he enters the room, she is waiting for him. He walks over to her and into her arms. "I missed you," he says, and she replies, "I don't want to talk," and kisses him. They come together frantically, quickly, silently. How can I ever give her up, he thinks, for what must be the hundredth time this week.

She gets up almost immediately after they're finished. "I have to go," she says, getting dressed. "Mama is expecting me today, but I've told her I'm having lunch with you tomorrow."

"You're having lunch with me tomorrow?" He doesn't remember making plans.

"Thank you," she replies, kissing him and heading for the door. "I'd be delighted. I'll meet you at your office at noon." She gives him one last glance as she leaves, shutting the door behind her.

The next day, he takes her to eat at a hotel a few blocks away from his office. They make small talk, and when he asks her to tell him about Sybil's wedding, he thinks he sees a look of wistfulness pass over her eyes. She tells him funny stories about Branson (she calls him Tom, Matthew notes) and Edith. No, he can't imagine Lady Edith Crawley drunk and dancing, and then suddenly he can, and he laughs along with Mary. He definitely sees her eyes cloud over this time, but he doesn't say anything about it.

Instead, Matthew asks her about Branson. He finds it interesting that she calls him Tom already. He always liked the man, but he expected Mary to be a little more reticent about welcoming him into the family and accepting him as an equal.

"You should have seen her, Matthew," she says when he tells her this. "She was so happy. They all love her. She's made a life there. And Tom is part of that. I'm not sure I'll ever be able to think of him as my brother, but if calling him Tom makes it more likely that Sybil will get to come back to Downton, I'll do it."

"You don't think less of him because he was a chauffeur?"

"No, I don't think so, not anymore. Of course Sybil's life might have been easier if she'd fallen for someone a little higher up the social ladder - " Matthew quirks one eye at her, and she puts her hand up. "It's true and don't deny it. Tell me you haven't seen enough of the aristocracy in the last six years to know I'm right."

"Alright," he says, laughing, "I'll give you that."

"The way I see it, though," she continues, "Tom was really very honorable about the whole thing. He didn't pressure her...or seduce her." She looks at Matthew as if she expects him to say something about their own behavior, but he stays silent.

"And when they did run away," she says, "he didn't fight or prevent her from coming back."

"It seems he loves her just as much as she loves him," Matthew acknowledges.

Mary blinks and looks at Matthew directly. "It must be nice to marry the man you love," she says.

There's absolutely nothing Matthew can say to that, and they sit in awkward silence for a few minutes longer until he makes a point of looking at his watch, saying he should get back to work.

They are still silent on their walk back to Matthew's office. About a block away from his building, Mary takes his arm and leads him down an alley.

"Matthew, we can't see each other anymore," she says without much pretense once they're alone.

Matthew is taken aback. He hadn't expected her to be so direct about it, and certainly not here in Ripon in the middle of the day. "What do you mean?" he asks, but of course he knows.

"We have to put an end to this."

He doesn't disagree with her. Even after the nice time they'd had the day before, Matthew thinks about how he'd told himself the same thing on Monday. He sighs. "I know."

They start back toward the street.

"Mary -" he starts as they approach the building where his office is.

"Yes?" She looks at him kindly, almost remorsefully. He knows how hard this is for her, how hard it will be for both of them.

"Thank you," he says.

"For what?"

"Just for...for this. For you. These past few weeks have been wonderful. Thank you," he says again, and before she can reply, he opens the door and goes inside.