Scandal is upon Matthew…
This is the reworked story "Where My Heart Truly Rests" in final form. So some of this is familiar. But the chapter is completely reworked and rethought and expanded. :) I will delete the other story as it now is a part of this larger work.
XX
April 1917: Berles, France.
"Captain Crawley." The name, an accusation rather than a request, barked out by the Regimental Sergeant Major at the door. "You're to report to Major Peters immediately. His temporary office. You're to come with me now."
Matthew opened the door. The sergeant's glassy eye looked in no mood for any delay on the younger man's part.
Matthew nodded curtly and returned to the room only to retrieve his cap and great coat. He then followed the RSM outside. The rain had stopped, thank God, even so the careful work Mason had done to ensure the Captain's boots were faultlessly shined, was now ruined as the mud flecked his buckles and the leather.
"Every little bit helps." Mason had quipped earlier in the afternoon, trying to put Matthew at some ease. "Put effort in to give a good appearance and that's half the battle won; that's what Mr. Carson used to say."
Matthew, grateful, but only half listening, continued to nervously adjust his Sam Browne belt. And it was more restless action than anything else. Mason had also made a high polish of all the buttons and shined the belt.
"He's here special just for this." The sneer in the RSM's voice unmistakable. "Taken time out of his busy schedule. Get a move on."
At the sergeant's terse request to follow him, Matthew placed his Service Dress cap, not floppy as he would have worn it in the trenches, but stiff as if for parade, on his head. He pulled his arms through the great coat and put on his leather gloves. Stood up and followed the RSM out the door of his billet.
How had it all come to this?...
XX
Mary first read about "it" from Richard's newspaper. Of course. Relishing every detail, the chatty, garrulous story spoke of the young disgraced officer of The Duke of Manchester's Own and the pretty widow he used most ill. Seducing her at her weakest moment, when she had just received word of her brave husband's death on the field of battle. Heir to the Grantham estate Captain Matthew Crawley had, according to the tawdry recreation of events based on unnamed eye witnesses, cozened up to Mrs. Heyton in her hotel room (on more than one occasion according to some accounts) and ensnared her in a tête-à-tête to satisfy his own animalistic lust. Needs not slaked presumably from just visiting the blue light establishments that discreetly catered to young officers. And now he faced disciplinary charges with a possible court-martial to follow.
At first Mary hardly believed it. Then by the third straight day she was sick to death of it. Carlisle had said people were tired of war news. Wanted something to take their minds off the casualty lists. And he was giving it to them. He owed it to his readers.
"The journalists just report, Mary." He said dryly over breakfast. "I didn't invent the story." He was, as usual deep into reading every inch of his reportage.
She snorted. "But you take advantage of it to sell more of your papers." She threw down her dry toast. No appetite for such things.
"I am a newspaperman. That is what I do. I won't apologize for it. My responsibility is to investors. I need to keep my readership up."
"I thought you said you left public spirits to government propaganda. Yet here you are catering to the public's lust for scandal." Richard as editor had his hands all over this hatchet job.
"Your words," he said carefully, "not mine."
Mary tossed the paper aside in disgust. Mathew could never have done what he's accused of doing.
At least not the Matthew she knew. He had been absent from her life for over a year.
Was it possible?
She felt dirty even reading it. Even for a moment believing it.
Mary knew soldiers from the canteen acted in ways that defied convention. They were unpredictable, looked at sea one moment, demonic the next; started fights over the most trivial of matters, they were unable to sit, unable to feel anything. They tried to hide the despair. Had been drilled by their officers to say nothing about the war.
But she saw it. In how they lived in another world. One that made them shake. Made them mumble under their breath. The faraway look in their eyes that frightened her.
Could they ever come back from the hell where they had been?
And she thought of Matthew. Out there. How had he changed? Even when she was with him, in their night at Crawley House she knew him different. Harder. Bitter. Distant.
But still Matthew. Tender in his love making, she would never think him otherwise. Never ruin the one precious memory she had of him. She unconsciously felt her belly. She had never told him about their child. He deserved to be told. One day, she kept saying, one day when the war is over she would get him aside and reveal everything.
But not yet. His war was still being fought. She did not want to trouble his already fragile mind with more.
But now this. He had been with another woman.
And Richard could not be more gleeful about this turn of events. She was sure he believed it would turn her against Matthew forever. That he had thrown her over for another. The wife of his best friend no less. And treated her in the same filthy manner he had treated Mary. That was the cover, the accounting Richard maintained. And this, this dishonor only seemed to confirm his version of events.
Mary despaired.
She refused to believe it. Knew Matthew's character better than anyone. Richard wanted him to be a cad and a bounder. A middle class upstart who had no real sense of gentlemanlike behavior around women.
"The war did such things to some men." He and Robert would intone self-righteously, over drinks when they thought Mary did not hear.
Utter nonsense. For Mary knew. Knew he had been with no other woman before her. They had revealed as such to each other in the wee hours of the morning when they held each other close and he stroked her naked form. He had laughed when he admitted it.
"I had some opportunities…" he had said. His hand stopped, lazily resting inside the curve of her hip.
"But…" She encouraged.
"…I should say I was waiting for the right woman." He whispered playfully in her ear.
"You should…." She languidly drawled in return, moving her face up to his. Kissed his lower lip with her teeth.
His deep blue eyes pierced her own, dilated from erotic arousal. "…and so I did. I'm glad I waited for you. For this." His own lips then surrounded to her own.
She could still feel the pressure of that kiss.
He would never be capable of the accusations made against him. War or no war, she knew Matthew. He would never violate a woman's honor. There must be more to this story.
But she kept such matters to herself. As she had kept the truth about their night together private. And maybe that had been the wrong decision. In keeping things to herself, she had let others make assumptions. Conjecture that Matthew had taken advantage of her, as if she was some child straight out of the nursery who was too innocent to realize how she had been dishonored. Thinking it was love when it was lust. He had overpowered her. Used her. And left her.
Her father had been visiting the day the scandal broke in the papers. He had arrived from York just in time for breakfast before a meeting in London with the Quartermaster General. Cora was staying with her daughter for a few days. Mary had left the room to take a telephone call.
"Thank God Mary dodged a bullet there." He had said triumphantly to Cora before throwing down the paper. Mary, in the doorway, turned and fled the room. Her father's smugness was too much for her to bear.
She needed to tell him the truth. She had let events play out far too long. Had let Matthew bear the brunt of their mutual… their mutual what? Shame? No… their decision to share the love they felt with their bodies as well as their souls.
What was the shame in that?
She had pulled herself through the grief of losing their child. From her fear of discovery.
Now, as the war dragged on and life was precious, she needed to do something about it. To right wrongs.
Matthew had taken on the entire blame for their night. Had accepted Robert's wrath. His exile from Downton. He did that for Mary. He had accepted her marriage to another man as the price paid for his guilt.
And then, in taking on that guilt, they lost each other. He had moved on. Had lived his life without her. And she the same.
And now he was in need.
She would help Matthew even as he slipped away from her. She didn't understand the events surrounding this affair –if even that was what it was—but in time he would explain, and she would listen.
Isn't that what love is all about?
XX
Matthew's mind was adrift. When had it all become a blur? The hell of the Somme, he determined grimly. That day, July 1, 1916 when the lies had all become apparent. Nothing accomplished. Unless you count the almost 20,000 men dead. At that point, as all rained chaos and blood around him, he became numb. No longer innocent. No longer the person he was.
He and Simon had railed in private against the generals. The newspapers. The bishops of the church and their own government. Not that the talk went beyond their dugout. Such talk was insubordination and not permissible in front of the men.
And so they followed orders. Ironic that, Matthew concluded as he marched slightly behind the RSM, for here he was about to be brought up on disciplinary charges.
Not, he reminded himself bitterly, not... though for cowardice. That he could never be accused of. No… not that… he had killed his fair share of the enemy. He had accepted their fucking orders and followed them to the fucking letter. Had even won a medal for it.
Maybe that's what he should be accused of. Of following orders he knew to be the height of stupidity.
And murdered his own men.
But that wasn't the charge. Instead it was for the giving in to anguish. In the act of loving. In the sharing of grief.
Did he deserve it? Were the charges true?
He had disciplined his mind against love. He had determined to forget that emotion. Love, sentiment, feeling alive—these were things that existed in that other time, the time before the war. Before the mud. The death. The stench. When happiness seemed in his grasp. Then the war happened. Then he happened. He became a different person. The kind of person that had taken Mary as a lover even as he knew such action was inappropriate. Not because of some outmoded social convention, but because he was no longer the man she thought he was.
And that was unforgiveable. Maybe he was the kind of man that took out his baser needs on the women around him? Maybe that was what happened with Mary. With Margaret. And he's fooling himself to believe it was otherwise. That it was deeper. More meaningful. Between two people that shared something special.
Maybe he was just weak.
Mary had found him so. Wounded in mind and spirit. He had not fought for her. He had been too late. And she had gotten on with her life in the wake of the disgrace he had brought upon her.
She would not want him back.
Especially now. He was outside the bounds of society.
Sex among soldiers and locals was a taboo subject to the army.
Not that it did not go on every day. Everyone just looked the other way as the brothels did a roaring trade business in Boulogne and other cities populated with transient soldiers.
That was different he was told.
What he did was different. This was not a simple money for sex transaction, but one where he forced himself on another. This was not some French tart, but an officer's wife. And it wasn't in a dirty back room, but a hotel frequented by generals and allied diplomats. Lord Kitchener had made it clear in August 1914 that the men must entirely resist temptation and avoid any intimacy. That the officers must be proper examples. The very picture of propriety, decorum, and strength of mind. Matthew had allowed his discipline to falter. And in this war, that was unforgivable. Without discipline the men, already fragile in mind and spirit, would weaken. And order would collapse. The war would be lost.
Or so the argument went.
And for those reasons, he was to be made an example of. "Standards, Crawley" he had been told when the charges were first read, "Standards must be maintained." The whiff of disapproval on the breath of the unknown, overly pious captain who was the first to talk to him.
The previous night Matthew spent time researching. He had, as his legal training kicked in, looked up punishment for his supposed crime in the Army Act and Field Service Regulation manual. The disciplinary action, depending on evidence and leniency, varied from reprimand, severe reprimand, admonition, to cashiering.
"God help me." He muttered to himself when he had read that the night before. "Cashiered?" Kicked out. Summarily dismissed from the service without rank and then automatically re-conscripted as a private. So out and back in without privilege of rank. But with the humiliation of guilt. The stain of abuse for not censoring his own lust.
But that's not how it was at all. He had let himself slip only once. When the caress of a woman's touch crept across his face and he was lost. Lost to sensations he thought had long abandoned his mind and his body.
War does not allow for softness. And now he must pay the piper.
Simon had died. And he and Margaret had found their own response to grief. Maybe it was wrong. In the eyes of others. But not to them.
How do you explain that to your commanding officer?
How do you explain it to the dead? To Simon? This haunted Matthew. A spectre of a ghost, sitting in the corner of his room. Simon's left eyebrow arched in mocking judgement. Tell me he seemed to be saying. You made love to my wife. Excuse that, if you please.
The self-loathing portion of his psyche plagued him with that spectre.
Would Simon understand? Or accuse him of taking advantage? Or of trying to pitifully help in the worse possible of ways. That he felt sorry for Margaret?
It was none of those things.
Matthew and Margaret had talked it out in the hours that followed - and came to the same conclusion.
They had come together to stop the aching loneliness. To forget. A blissful moment of forgetting. About the war. About their loss.
It had been heady. Exhilarating. A world unto themselves. Skin touching. Bodies coupled. Intoxicating like alcohol without the need to drink.
Except the cold hangover that was their loss was still there. Still raw. Still bleeding.
Matthew had heard of Simon's death from Major Godson, the man in charge of the machine gun conversion course he and Heyton were attending in the spring of 1917. The change of pace had been just what the two men needed. Away from the front lines, they would spend a couple of months learning about the new battalion, get their transfer to lead new companies using the revamped weapon, and be promoted majors with some leave time due. The utter failure of the Somme had finally brought home the message that the British army needed to update its weaponry. While it was not lost upon either man that this was yet another massive weapon of mass attrition, they hoped at the very least it would bring the war to a swifter end.
"All in all a most welcome respite." Simon had concluded. And it brought Margaret to Berles. She had been still at GHQ in Montreuil sur Mer but came for a few days to see her husband. The three of them had spent all their free time together. Matthew had accompanied Simon and Margaret to a musical evening at a local magistrate's home. The long days of training and learning made easier by leisurely late night suppers and good conversation.
And then Simon was posted first. As the senior officer Major Simon Heyton left Berles and took up his post as commander of a divisional machine gun company in Arras.
He was killed a day later. A sniper got him.
A good man dead. Another stupid casualty of this endless war.
Matthew went to see Margaret. Not to tell her, thank God. That was done by others. But to share her grief. To merely be. Be with her. With the other someone who knew him best. Who had loved him as much.
He knocked on her door. Thinking nothing. A mind bereft. She had let him in. No words needed between them. Sat down. Bone chilled cold. He started shaking. She crept a hand close to his face.
Touched him.
He turned. Saw the same reflected pain.
Their world narrowed and became one.
Had he kissed her first? Or she? Neither could remember. Just that their lips touched and the pressure of touch felt good. Felt alive. No other thought existed but to continue the sensation. To its inevitable end. They were lost to each other.
Matthew woke hours later. Margaret's warm body was next to him. Still asleep. They had talked some during the night. Came to understand that all was well between them.
Yet doubts crept into his mind.
He had to leave. Could not be seen in a woman's private room overnight. That would just make everything worse.
So he kissed her cheek, dressed, and left the hotel room. It was still dark when he stumbled back to his billet, showered, and fell into a fitful sleep. The day's drill went by in a blur. Then it was done.
Matthew turned his steps back towards Margaret's hotel. He had to see her. To apologize? To continue their liaison? Part of his body wanted to continue. The part that longed to feel a woman's softness again.
Matthew knew he was prone to bouts of strangling self-pity. It was a dark place where he let out his own self-doubts, his belief in his own inadequacies. His guilt. Sometimes it suffocated him. In inaction and doubt. The war had taught him that was an indulgence he could no longer afford.
Now he felt it overtake him again.
Knocked on her door once again. Margaret opened it immediately, as if she had been waiting all day for his rapping.
He took off his cap and walked in. "Hello." She closed the door. He took her hand.
"I…." He hung his head. No idea how to start.
She was ever more practical. "Let's go sit and talk, shall we."
He nodded. She did not let go of his hand.
"I don't even know where to start… " He began. "What happened…."
Margaret's soft hazel eyes met his own. "Happened." She said. "It's just between us."
"I'm not even supposed to be here. Not alone with a married woman." The formal repercussions were only now entering his fogged mind.
"I'm no longer married." She said flatly.
Matthew's strangled breath made her grip his hand tighter. "That's even worse."
"I don't intend to tell anyone." Her eyes had closed in pain. The memories came and went in flashes of happiness and grief. She hardly knew if she was alive herself at times.
"Matthew, can you hold me again?" She asked. And he gathered her in his arms. Buried his face in her chignon. She was shivering.
They stayed that way until she recovered. "Thank you." And they kissed. A light, glancing kiss eyes opened.
"Will you stay with me again?" She could not bear being alone when the shadows spoke to her. "Not…" She said with the first attempt of a smile, "not like last night. That was special. That was ours. Just because I'm afraid of the dark right now."
"Of course." He said, warmth flooding his voice.
And so he did. Some of it spent in the chair next to the bed. He read her favorite Jane Austen until she fell asleep. And then he dozed in the chair until her arm drew him upon the bed. And he slept soundly under the cover she put atop him.
The next day followed much the same. It was to be her last night in Berles. She was to return to England and Simon's parents. Her own were dead, but there were distant relatives in America and there she imagined, was her future.
She told as much to Matthew when he arrived around 7pm.
He burst out with, "Maybe we should get married." He had said, out of what? A sense of obligation? Of gentlemanlike behavior. "I … am alone." He swallowed hard. "I don't like thinking of you being alone as well."
"Oh you dear dear man." She responded. "Thank you. But no. No Matthew."
He looked somewhat surprised, halfway relieved. Then embarrassed by that relief. "Why not?"
"Do I look like someone in need of marrying a man in love with someone else?" Her eyebrow quirked up, just like another intelligent woman he knew.
He thrust his head between his hands and groaned. "I've fucked up everything." An embittered, guttural laugh emerging from the back of his throat. "She doesn't want me. She married to get away from me."
"To a man she loves?" Margaret asked.
"No." He was confident about that response at least. "She could not possibly love him." He spat the next words out. "She had to marry, to escape a potential disgrace." He looked shamed faced over at her. "A disgrace I brought on her."
"Then you must do something to rectify it. Are you going to fight for her?" She asked.
Matthew could only give her a bewildered look.
Ironically Margaret was gaining strength. "Matthew. You helped me. We helped each other. Now let me help you. You must do all you can with the time you have left to find happiness. Otherwise there's been no point to all this."
He could only nod acknowledgement. He had nothing to give her. Mary. He seemed only the shell of the man he once was. Simon's loss was just another blow. One he'll get over soon enough he reckoned.
The war brought such losses every day. His was no different.
Margaret offered him a glass of sherry. He accepted it, sipping slowly.
"I would need to get her alone. Away from her husband. From Robert as well." He downed the glass. Thinking, gaining confidence. "Maybe if we could just talk…."
Margaret nodded encouragingly. He needed a purpose. Beyond the war. "Tell her what's in your heart." She said quietly. "And I think you'll find hers much the same."
He leaned forward in his seat. "I want to believe that so much." He put the glass down. "I've got to go back to my billet. Mason is packing. We're off tomorrow to take up my post."
"And I'm to go to Dorchester." She said, hugging herself to keep out the chill that overtook her body.
"We'll keep in touch?" He asked. Hugging her lightly. "Can I have the Heyton's address? When I'm next in England I will visit as well."
"Of course."
And they left it at that.
Neither knew that Matthew's visits to her hotel room had been clocked by more than one serving officer of the machine gun course. Curious at first, the more he visited the more suspicious they became. Eventually one mentioned it to another who told the aide-de-camp who felt he had to inform the adjutant of the odd behavior of one Captain Matthew Crawley visiting late at night and leaving early in the morning the rooms of the recently widowed Margaret Heyton.
And so the charges were brought. And Matthew's posting was suspended until his punishment was accorded.
XX
So a week later, Matthew found himself taking this walk of shame to the temporary quarters set up by the adjutant of the Duke of Manchester's Own.
He and the sergeant arrived at Peters' office door. The sergeant opened it swiftly, announced Crawley's presence, saluted and stepped back.
Captain Matthew Crawley snapped to full attention. Saluted, called out his name and rank and presence. And waited. Eyes front. Glazed over. An unreality settling in around him.
Peters, head bowed with some reading glasses poised on the tip of his nose, slowly looked up.
"Stand at ease." He drawled out. Matthew stood down and took his cap off. Only then could he look his officer in the eye.
Peters returned the look with a wearied, tired gaze. Disappointment? Or the general ennui all the soldiers were feeling until the big spring push of 1918 in a few months? Matthew could not tell.
"We're both here Crawley," Peters started in… and then gestured in jaded frustration to the younger man, "Sit down."
Matthew looked positively miserable. A small pang of pity crossed Peter's face.
Matthew swallowed some bile and did so. Was this a good thing? Not being made to stand during the interrogation?
Was it even going to be an interrogation? Or would that follow at the trial?
Oh God. A trial… No his mind rebelled. Please God let this be settled outside of any court procedure.
He knew minor disciplinary actions were usually settled within the regiment. Usually with docking of pay, or field detention, or at worse military detention. Perhaps a demotion? How would his mother take a demotion? He had not let his mind go to Isobel and the disappointment she must feel. Yet another apology to make.
Matthew eased himself uncomfortably into the hard backed chair. His eyes, tired and glassy, reflected those of his second in command.
Neither really wanted to be here.
Maybe it could be settled within the regiment. "Crawley." The older man started in again. "The potential charges against you are quite serious. Gross indecency, behaving in a scandalous manner unbecoming the character of an officer and a gentleman."
The baldness of those words struck Matthew as if slapped across the face. Was it really as bad as that? He knew the regulations. But the context, the essence was missing.
Had he really become that person? Peters knew better. His steely gaze eyeing the younger man sitting straight in the chair before him. He had known Crawley since 1915 when he had asked he sing with the company at the train station before shipping out. There had been some girl there with him hadn't there? He had become a good officer. A good leader of men. A good man.
Peters continued. "I want to settle this without any kind of disciplinary hearing." Matthew's audible relief came out in a huff of air. "But…." And his eyes met Matthew's across the table. "I will need your cooperation. You must, in essence, confess. Otherwise I will be forced to take further action."
Matthew's eyes grew wild and large. "Confess…?" His voice, so normally robust and commanding barking out orders to his men, became quiet and subdued. He would never confess. Such a thing was impossible. What was done was done in the utmost privacy. He would never betray her.
"You were seen, Crawley." Peters own voice terse, unrelenting. "Seen leaving a brother officer widow's hotel room." Here he paused. Matthew looked up. "Seen leaving on more than one occasion I might add."
Matthew's head twisted to the side and he flinched. "Damn…." Matthew's lips curled as he began to understand.
He still started to evade when Peters voice became decisive and hard.
"Dammit is right, man. What were you thinking? Heyton's only been dead a few days. The news had barely been delivered to his wife when you went to see her. Presumably to take advantage…"
Matthew's head jerked up at that accusation. His eyes narrowed. He started to deny the charge….
Peters would brook no opposition from Matthew. His words became relentless "…in the worst tradition of the army. Taking advantage of a widow. A grieving widow. Pretending to be a concerned fellow officer. This will not go down well."
Matthew's hands started to shake. He bit his lip to keep it from quaking. He pinched his upper lip to try to keep the memories from filtering through his mind. Margaret's soft body under his own. He placing quick kisses up and down her torso.
Oh he was fucked alright. The charge was true. He was guilty.
Would word of his scandal get back to England via the inevitable rumor mill of returning soldiers? To Mary? Through the tasteless words of her press baron husband?
He groaned miserably.
"Is that the story you want to get out? Or you could confess and I'll do my best to be lenient." Peters leaned forward. Tried to talk sense into the younger man.
Matthew tried to defend himself quietly. "I cannot do that." Hoarse with emotion. "It was private between us."
"Simon would not want this for you." Peters said.
"What?" Matthew couldn't believe the adjutant invoked Heyton's name. He gulped and tried to draw breath but none would come. "I loved him like my brother."
"And he would understand if you had to explain." Peters knew that any relationship with Margaret would have been consensual. Out of some misguided grief. He needed Crawley to say something.
Matthew said inflexibly, "I will take whatever punishment you dole out. But I will say nothing."
Peters coldly nodded and dismissed him.
The next day Matthew had his answer. He was to be formally reprimanded. A letter of such put in his record. And there would be no leave awarded and no promotion to major. He would, however, not be cashiered or brought to court martial. Instead he was to report to Arras to take up Heyton's position as machine gun company commander.
Matthew crumpled the letter in his fingers. Dead man's shoes once again. But at least the story would die a natural death in the newspapers. Everyone would move on.
And he would find a way to get back to England. To see Mary. To start to heal their wounded hearts.
XX
Mary paced the library floor at Downton. She had heard through the military grapevine of Matthew's punishment. A slap on the wrist, Robert had called it in disgust.
Mary tried to reason with her father but he was in no mood. He had others things to deal with, they'd talk later. And he left the library.
She continued to pace.
Carson entered to clear away the tea. A desperate shortage of footmen meant he had to do some of the more menial of tasks. But anything for the war effort.
"Lady Mary." He said to the woman wearing a path in the hearth rug.
"Can I ask you a question, Carson? Have you ever felt your life was somehow…slipping away? And there was nothing you could do to stop it?"
"I think everyone feels that at one time or another." He stopped his task.
"Everything seems golden one minute and ashes the next. I find it most unfair. I felt I understood what it was to be happy. Now I know that I won't be." Her gaze drifted off towards the window.
"Don't say that my lady. You're very young still. Don't raise the white flag quite yet." He walked over to be closer.
"I don't feel young. This war has taken its toll on all of us." Mary's arms gripped tight around her waist, a defensive posture.
"You're strong. You'll face whatever crisis with your head high. We're all on your side."
Mary smiled. "Thank you. You've always been so kind to me. When I was a little girl and tried to run away. You let me go, knowing just as well that I'd be back."
"You were always scamping about." He remembered the child's tender kiss on his cheek. She had ever been his favorite. "And you're never down for long."
Mary closes her eyes. Wipes a tear that formed at the corner. "Of course. You know me too well."
"I know you have spirit. That's what counts. It will see you through these difficult times." Carson knew a little of the reasons she married that odious upstart Carlisle. And also knew that she still held affection for the now doubly disgraced heir. "If I may say my lady…."
"Yes?"
"Tell him you still love him, let him know. Then if he's killed—and he may be—you won't be sorry. But if you don't tell him, you could regret it all your life long."
"And what about my husband?" Mary said stiffly, trying to appear as if she cared about him.
Carson scoffs politely. "Sir Richard doesn't deserve you. If I am out of my place, tell me so. But I feel as if there are lingering affections in another direction? Am I wrong to believe that?"
Mary shook her head. "No you are not wrong." So softly he could hardy hear her.
"Then the next time he is on leave. You must take the opportunity. It might not be open to you again." He had lived through many wars. Had seem much grief. He did not want that for Mary.
"I must say I'm glad I am your favourite. You've bucked up my confidence enormously." And she did feel better.
"You'll rally my lady." Carson said. "It's always darkest right before dawn."
He carried the tea tray away. Mary remained quietly in the library. The dawn seemed ever so far away.
XX
I hope I did my best to explain this sequence of events. Matthew and Mary's lives seem quite distant and apart right now. Please tell me what you think. I know some folks might not feel so warm towards Margaret for example…yet I love her as a character. I tried to make her flesh and blood with real emotions and not just a cardboard figure to be used for plot. Please tell me I did her justice. She might just have one more role to play in bringing our MM back together. Mary will find out more about the scandal in the next chapter. And the affect it has on her will change her and Matthew's life. Will she forgive him? How will they join forces to rid their lives of Carlisle? These are the plot points I'll be taking up next…
