Note: Thanks so much for the feedback on the last few chapters - please let me know if you're enjoying the story!

Rain begins to spatter lightly against the windscreen of the car as they approach Nottingham on the M1. Sybil yawns in the passenger seat. Richard Bacon's voice is enthusiastic as it filters out of the radio speakers. And Tom Branson clutches the steering wheel with tense fists, willing himself to relax, trying very hard to feel like he's not driving himself into the very eye of a hurricane.

Here's how all of this happened.

On a very normal Tuesday in early December, he was arguing with a whole meeting room full of speechwriters about their approach to a major statement about Britain's role in the EU, with John going full tilt as per usual, when one of the administrative assistants ducked his head through the door and passed a folded note with BRANSON scrawled on it down the row of chairs. He tried to be as unobtrusive as possible while unfolding the paper, but when he saw "Call Sybil Crawley back ASAP at work number" scribbled on the yellow page, he took the opportunity to slip out of the wholly unproductive conversation and meander back to his desk.

Dialling Sybil's extension still took some work on his part – he'd never been good with complicated telephone issues. But this time he got it right, and she answered on the third ring with a businesslike "Crawley."

"Branson," he replied, leaning his elbows on his desk blotter and cradling the receiver against his shoulder.

She laughed a little. "Wow, that was really fast. I told the assistant to say it wasn't an emergency."

"He didn't say it was. But you saved me from a truly terrible meeting, I should be thanking you." He unclasped his watch and held it up in front of his face – just after two. "So everything's good?"

"Well," she began a bit hesitantly, "I think so. My mother just rang me."

His eyebrows shot up, until he reminded himself that he was in public and needed to control his overly expressive face a bit more carefully. "What did she want?" he asked, lowering his voice.

"She just – she surprised me, she never rings my phone at work, so I didn't know it was her when I answered." He'd known that she'd been avoiding her mother's calls for weeks, and it made him a little bit anxious. It was clear to him that the Crawley family was close, this situation excepted. He worried that she was cutting herself off from them for his sake and only his sake, and he didn't want to be that wedge. Didn't a pregnant woman want to talk to her mother about things, if she were lucky enough to have a mother to speak to? "Tom?"

He'd been spacing out again. "Sorry – distracted by something here. What did she say?"

"She invited us to the big house for Christmas," Sybil said quickly, the words coming in a rush. "We don't have to go."

He frowned. "Do you want to go?"

"No. Maybe. I don't know." Her voice was soft. "But she wants to know this afternoon, because they're making plans for meals and things and they need a number."

"Sounds like they're planning a wedding or something." He winced as soon as he'd said it, her grandmother's stern command to think about marriage skating through his brain.

"Christmas is something of a production on the estate," she explained. "It's usually all of us, plus Granny and Matthew of course, and usually Aunt Rosamund and Uncle Duke."

"Your uncle is a duke? Is anyone in your family just a bricklayer or something?"

"Well, you're just a speechwriter," she joked, earning a snort from him in return. "He's not a duke, he owns a mobile phone company. His name is Marmaduke, but Mama laughs every time anyone says it because of a comic strip in America, so we've all called him just Uncle Duke since forever." She sighed. "We really don't have to go, Tom. I won't be upset."

Yes, she will be, he thought, whether she realised it then or not. "Have you ever spent a Christmas away from your family?"

There was a pause. "No."

"And you'll want to take the baby to Christmas with your family after it's born, won't you?" He imagined holding up a small child in front of a pile of presents, each one unwrapped and presented to him or her with a series of approving noises from aunts and uncles and grandparents. He imagined carrying a baby over to a Christmas tree, all sparkling with lights and tinsel and ornaments, and watching the child's eyes go round with wonder at the sight of it all.

"Yes, I think I probably will," she admitted.

"I'll be fine, Sybil. I think maybe we should go. I think maybe it would be a good idea to try to mend some fences. Maybe." He paused. "But if you don't want to go, if you don't feel up to it, I'll drag a tree into the flat and laugh at the stupid jokes in the crackers with you."

She made a soft noise at that. "You don't want to go to Belfast?"

"I never really want to go to Belfast," he replied, a bit more tightly than he'd intended. "I don't usually go for Christmas anyway. Mam and Auntie Reen have their own traditions, they don't miss me much."

"You can say that all you like, but I bet you're wrong." The silence was a bit longer. "Are you sure you wouldn't mind if we went? I mean, I don't want to just drag you up there so they can insult you again. That's not fair to you. And I don't want to go without you, either."

That made his heart flip-flop about a bit in his chest. "I have a feeling your sister's heard plenty about the things she said at that dinner," he offered. "I have a thick skin, Sybil. Well, at least metaphorically, I do."

She groaned a little. "Burn unit jokes?"

"Only the best for you, darling." He smiled against the phone.

"Well, Christ. Okay, I suppose we should do, then. It's going to have to happen eventually."

"Let's not talk about it like we're being marched to the guillotine," he advised. "Why expect the worst?"

She laughed a little. "You have met these people, haven't you?"

They went back and forth about whether or not they would take the train or drive up to Yorkshire, until he convinced her that he really didn't mind springing for a hired car and that he loved to drive. "And besides, I've made the drive between Leeds and London loads of times."

"I know, it's just the extra expense," she said, sitting in the living room, folding a basket of her clean laundry. "And I don't mind taking the train, it's not bad at all. I've done that loads of times."

He shrugged. "It's not that much money. We can split it if you're really bothered by me paying for it."

"That can be my Christmas gift from you," she suggested.

He snorted. "Not bloody likely. I've already got your Christmas present."

This was a lie. He was completely flummoxed about what he should get her. Each gift he'd thought of seemed too fraught with meaning, too pedestrian, or too extravagant. More than once he'd found himself standing in a shop, staring at some beautiful trinket, and then changing his mind and walking back out, frustrated that he couldn't find a thing that said what he wanted it to – I do care about you, so much, but I don't want to frighten you away or trap you in a life you don't want. Not many greeting cards seemed to convey that particular sentiment.

Her eyes got huge, and she looked terrified. "Can I ask you something?" she murmured urgently.

"Er, yes, of course. Are you all right?"

"Don't be offended."

He frowned. "Okay..."

"I really, really hope you haven't bought me an engagement ring."

"What?"

"You haven't, have you?" She clutched a folded T-shirt to her chest.

"No. Why would I have done that?"

"I don't know. I just – I know that some people think that's what you're supposed to do when you're having a baby – I know Papa and Mama probably want that – but I just don't think that we..." She lets her voice trail off, biting at her lower lip.

"I wasn't going to ask you to marry me." He shakes his head. "That makes me sound like a giant prick, doesn't it? 'Please, bear my child, but for God's sake, don't expect me to make an honest woman of you.'"

She rolled her eyes. "You don't sound like that." She sighed. "I don't want to get married. I'm not sure I ever want to get married."

"Okay, noted."

She dropped her head in her hands. "Oh, hell, I shouldn't even have said anything."

His heart started beating faster and faster. "I mean, Christ, Sybil, it's not as if I don't—"

She stood up quickly, gathering up the folded clothes and the basket. "Forget it. Let's forget we said anything about it."

Two days before they were scheduled to leave, Sybil had an appointment for a check-up and invited him to come along. "It's a routine scan," she explained. "They want most women to come in about this time to have things looked over."

He clutched her hand tightly as they headed into the Portland. She'd gone over a long list of reasons why she was going with a private hospital rather than the NHS in the cab on the way over, and he had a feeling she was trying to justify her choice to herself as much as to him – he didn't care. They could afford it, and she should have what she thought would be right, he'd explained, which had sent her into thoughtful silence.

As they made their way inside, he looked around warily for camera lenses – they'd won an initial victory in their PCC case, but Matthew had cautioned that there were plenty of loopholes that could still be exploited by photographers and editors looking for a big payday.

"You're supposed to switch off your mobile," she murmured as she rooted about in her handbag to try to find her phone. He realised that he didn't switch his off when he'd been with her after the accident, and he hoped that he hadn't made some poor sod's ventilator give out.

They were ushered into an exam room, where he sat on a moulded plastic chair in the corner while Sybil perched on an exam table. Her feet swung back and forth gently as a nurse wrapped a blood pressure cuff around her bicep and made it squeeze tight. Measuring, asking questions, offering advice – and then before he knew it, he was sitting beside her, and they were watching their baby on a fuzzy grey screen once more, only this time Sybil laughed a little each time the wee thing flipped and kicked.

"Everything looks perfectly on target. Do you want to know the baby's sex?" the sonographer asked, examining the ultrasound image carefully as she passed the wand over Sybil's abdomen.

He didn't know what to say to that, so he merely nodded at Sybil's hesitant "yes."

The technician made some quiet sounds as she searched the image. "Ah, yes, there we are." She turned to them and offered a small smile. "It's a little boy. Congratulations."

A son. A son. He shook his head a little and looked down at Sybil, who was still watching the image with rapt attention. He wondered for a moment if this is what Danny Branson felt like when he'd emerged, male, from his mother's womb. A baby boy – a little being who might look like you and might sound like you and might be like you – or might not be any of those at all. A little creature that you were supposed to teach to be a man, whatever that meant. Danny Branson hadn't taught him anything at all, save that violent political demonstrations weren't really a brilliant idea. He'd become a man all on his own. What lessons should he be passing down, when he couldn't recall ever being given any himself?

The machine was soon switched off, and they were sent on their merry way with a new set of pictures in hand. "I think my mother will want one of these," Sybil said in the cab on the way home. "Her grandchild. Her grandson. Good lord." Indeed.

He got the idea for her gift that evening while she was sitting at the table writing a report for a training session scheduled ahead of the trip to Africa she was going to miss. She'd decided that she'd stop working six weeks before the baby was born, and she'd commented that she didn't think they would have cleared her to go whether she felt able or not. He'd watched her work for nearly an hour, chewing absentmindedly on the end of her pencil as she went over the required information. Postponement seemed to be the key word – take your dreams, tie them up neatly in a package with a bow, and quietly shelve them, not forever, but for now.

There was a bit of research involved, but it turned out that the most difficult part of actually procuring the present was getting out of the flat unnoticed. They were leaving for Yorkshire in a matter of hours, really, and there were a thousand small tasks to do around home before they could leave. He'd cleaned, laundered, arranged, and packed, and he was left with precious little time for the errand.

Finally, the afternoon before they were going to leave, Sybil had a small breakdown as she realised that none of her dresses fit properly anymore, and she'd have nothing to wear for Christmas dinner. (Apparently they "dressed" for the occasion – "Granny likes tradition" – and she'd gone through his entire wardrobe before settling on a few items of clothing that would pass muster for the event.)

"I have to go get something else," she said, sitting down heavily on the edge of the bed.

"Okay," he replied, folding a shirt carefully and setting it in his suitcase.

She nodded, standing again. "I won't be that long."

"Oh, don't worry," he said. "I've got a few last-minute things to do, too. We could just meet back here for dinner later on."

She squinted at him a bit suspiciously. "Okay."

"I'll bring something back."

She nodded and headed out, calling her goodbye back over her shoulder.

The shop was almost closing, but he managed to get in just before they locked the door. The distracted shop assistant handed over a heavy box with a nod, the register beeping wearily as Tom's card was approved. Fitting it into the boot of the hired car with their luggage was a feat in and of itself the next morning, but it was tucked away safe and sound by the time they headed north on the M1.

Sybil yawns again and rubs at her belly as the rain begins to fall more regularly. "Can we make a stop? I need to pee again."

He's feeling impatient to just get there already – if he's going to be metaphorically bludgeoned again by her family, he wants to get it over with as quickly as possible. "Are you sure? We just stopped an hour ago."

"Your son is pressing on my bladder," she says firmly, and that shuts him up entirely.

Finding a space in the car park at the services is a little maddening, but just when he's almost ready to drop her off at the door and just circle until she comes back out, he snags a spot close to the entrance. Sybil's up and out of the car, hurrying toward the toilets, as soon as he shuts off the engine. He follows her in, shivering a little in the cold, spattering rain.

He's in line to get a coffee when she emerges, joining him in the queue. "Better?" he asks.

"Much," she confirms, yawning again. "Lord. I'm going to fall asleep at the table tonight."

"Best not do that," he says. "Why don't you just sleep in the car the rest of the way up?"

She shakes her head, leaning against his arm. "I wouldn't be very good company asleep."

He pulls her close to his side as they shuffle forward. "I'll be fine. Promise."

When the barista hands over his coffee, Sybil tugs on the sleeve of his coat. "One sip? Please?"

He raises an eyebrow. "Naughty." But he hands over the cup and watches as she swallows down a single gulp, her eyes closing in pleasure.

"God, I miss that."

"No more. Here, you can sleep, but I need the caffeine."

As they walk back to the car, he notices a small group of people staring at them, sees a single mobile raised, surely taking a snap. "Head down," he advises, turning his own face away from the sparse crowd.

"Oh, hell," Sybil mutters, hurrying with him toward the car and shielding her face with her hand as they drive away. "What are we going to do when we're trying to corral a screaming toddler and people start taking pictures?"

"Wait for the cover stories about what horrible parents we are, I suppose," he says gruffly, steering the car back on to the motorway.

She just sighs at that and squeezes his free hand. "We're not going to be horrible parents. We're probably not going to win any awards, but surely we won't fuck him up too badly."

He snorts. "Let's hope not." He turns on the wipers again, trying to clear the windscreen. "At the very least, I can promise you never to build a bomb in the kitchen."

"Fair enough. I promise never to run for political office." She fidgets and presses a hand against the growing swell of her tummy. "And now he's restless. One sip of caffeine and the kid's going insane." She presses his palm to the same spot and waits. "Still nothing?"

"Nope, not yet," he says. "The book you brought home from work said it's still probably too early for that."

She nods, leaning back in her seat. "Now I'm wide awake."

He glances over at her. "Tell me about Downton again. The place has how many bedrooms?"

"At least fifty. Mama found a new one last year when she was looking for one of the dogs."

"But I assume I'll be sleeping in a tent on the lawn anyway?"

"Probably." She smiles softly. "I'll bring you a blanket if you get too cold."

"Very hospitable."

"I do try."