As always, I extend humble gratitude to all of my readers for your patience and devotion to this story. This chapter simply gushed out of me in the span of three days, and I am delighted to share it with you. I hope you enjoy it and treasure every review you take the time and effort to leave. :)
Many thanks to Cls2011 and miscreant rose for read-throughs, support and friendship! I adore you with my entire soul. :)
I do not own Downton Abbey, but I adore spending time with its characters. And with that, I shall leave you to this chapter.
It still felt odd, waking up beside another person, feeling human warmth brush against her skin with a detached familiarity, sensing the rise and fall of another chest lagging just behind her own pulse.
Sometimes his arm would be draped about her waist, at others his nose would nearly be touching her own, but usually they each kept to their sides of the bed, sleeping as they lived, together yet separate, married in name but not in flesh. His scent seemed out of place in her bedroom, somewhat medicinal yet masculine, clean and sharp, so different than the gentle aroma of powder and new life that clung to his child who lay sleeping in the room next to hers.
Theirs, she corrected herself. This was their bed. Their room. Their marriage.
Their life.
She slept fitfully these days, still adjusting to the extra presence beside her, still noticing every twitch, every snore, every catch of breath as her subconscious mind remained on alert for the cries of her son. Fatigue made adjusting to marriage more difficult, and she knew Matthew felt it, too. She would catch him awake when she would rise to tend to Christopher, would instruct him to sleep, would remind him of how much he needed his rest when her own body was crying out for that very thing with an acuteness she couldn't bring herself to verbalize.
Rest dangled mockingly just beyond her grasp, pushing her ever closer to a precipice she feared and fought with every iota of determination she could muster. She couldn't afford to crack now, not while their life together was even younger than their child, while egg-shells were strewn across their path, daring them to tread across them and deal with whatever mess ensued.
No, things had to remain calm for the time being, even if it felt as though they played out a daily masquerade, adjusting to life with both a new nurse and a part-time nanny in a location that held memories both bitter and precious to her while being utterly foreign to him.
"And this is where you lived?" he had asked upon entering the Cumberland house for the first time. "Practically alone for all those months?"
The floor beneath her feet had groaned in time with his inquiry.
"Yes," she had answered, staring at walls that had both sheltered and imprisoned. "This is our home. Mine and Christopher's."
His head had dropped to his chest, and she knew she had wounded him as she often did these days. Yet he continually instructed her to be truthful with him, to not hold back raw honesty in any sort of attempt to placate or protect. There were times she wanted to hurt him, needed to see him experience a measure of the pain she had carried, longed for him to realize just what damage his rejection had inflicted upon the marrow of her soul.
"Your home, too, now," she amended softly, feeling a catch in her ribs she pushed aside. "I hope you feel comfortable here."
Gazes met and locked, and for a moment she couldn't breathe.
"I hope you do, as well."
His voice stroked her insides, feeling like crushed velvet brushing across chaffed skin. God—his eyes—the remorse, the shame, the need for redemption that filled them to the cusp always struck her to her depths, and she had fought the urge to gather him in her arms and soothe him as she would Christopher. But he was her husband, the lover who had filled her womb with his seed, the soldier who had left her cold and naked, the man who now sought her forgiveness and love with a humility that left her knees weak.
He was Matthew. Always her Matthew, even if she feared the thought of again becoming his Mary. No, she couldn't afford that measure of abandon anymore, an absolute reliance upon arms that had released her to harsh elements after learning her secrets and stroking her nakedness. That depth of trust had maimed her more than she could admit to anyone, filling private confessions voiced to night skies and cold sheets that harbored neither judgment nor reconciliation.
But her sheets were no longer cold, not with his skin under their fabric, his breath warming their fibers, his heart pumping life into the room around her. Her bed was now warm, almost too warm for her own comfort, so odd and disconcerting, bearing the lethal allure of trust and companionship, humming the possibilities of hope and love in a throaty ostinato she tried to push from her mind.
She couldn't let herself fall in love with Matthew. Not again.
Oh, she loved him, she would always love him. It was senseless to even attempt to deny that fact to anyone, especially herself. His soul had imprinted it's thumbprint on every cell in her body before his child had quietly taken root, binding broken shards of what could have been into a life that truly should not exist.
But he did exist, soft and vibrant, pink and plump. She couldn't fathom her life without Christopher, her child born in solitude, her baby hidden away. Thank God for her small miracle society mistakenly labeled a curse.
Society knew nothing.
Then a stretch beside her, and she watched his face grimace as blue eyes flickered open. It happened every morning, the moment when he remembered, the fractured instant when dreams of legs that worked faded into the cold reality of their bedroom.
"Good morning."
His voice was weighted and slurred, still heavy with remnants of sleep tinged with disappointment.
"Good morning," she returned, turning to look at him. "Did you sleep well?"
Some mornings she did not ask, those when his eyes remained clouded and his countenance pale.
"Fairly well," he answered, giving her a groggy smile. "No nightmares last night. That's always a bonus."
He had awakened her three times since their marriage thrashing about helplessly in a sweat, calling out names she didn't know, crying for William, for his mother, for her. Once he had screamed Lavinia's name, and her blood had pooled in her gut, leaving limbs numb and frigid and her throat parched. She had never told him of that moment and knew that she never would.
Some things in a marriage were better left hidden and unvoiced.
"I'm glad," she observed as her gaze travelled across his. "I can't fathom what it's like to be forced to relive such horrors."
For a moment, she didn't know him, crystal eyes flickering into something distant and hard, seeing a world beyond her reckoning, smelling smoke and carnage she could only imagine.
"You cried out last night," he stated, lines tightening around his lips. "Something was distressing you badly. Something to do with me."
His voice broke into his final sentence, morning's clarity settling in hard on a husband she both wanted and feared. Her mind reeled backwards into the fog of lost dreams, catching blurred remnants of their cabin, of her trudging naked through a blizzard, searching for him, crying out for him, needing him to cover her, realizing too late she was hopelessly lost and cold.
"Did I?" She forced her voice into steadiness, focused her sight onto what was tangible. "I don't remember."
"Oh," he returned, his voice barely audible. "I see."
The fact he did not believe her was apparent, but he did not press, a gesture for which she was both thankful and disappointed.
"Christopher is still asleep?" he questioned half-heartedly. "It's rather late for him, isn't it?"
"A bit," she admitted. "But he's been sleeping for longer stretches recently as he has been putting on weight. Your mother told me that was a good sign."
"And a good thing for you, as well," he stated. "You're not sleeping enough, Mary, and you work tirelessly throughout the day. I worry about you."
She sighed into the air above her.
"There's no need to worry, Matthew," she insisted. "I'm perfectly well."
"You're wearing yourself out trying to take care of Christopher," he argued, staring into the wall before clearing his throat with a grimace. "And me." He shifted uncomfortably on his arms, grunting with the effort. "There's no need for you to overtax yourself in such a manner when I have a nurse and he a nanny."
She knew the need for his own caregiver left a bitter taste in his mouth, much the same as the bile-like residue she experienced at seeing Christopher cared for by another woman.
"I'm his mother," she clarified, bristling at the mention of the efficient nanny her mother had both hired and placed on salary.
"No one denies that fact," Matthew whispered. "But Nanny Logan knows what she is doing."
"Christopher doesn't like her."
She felt childish but refused to back down, detesting the thought of another woman helping to raise her son.
"Christopher is adjusting to her," Matthew reasoned. "Give him time. You've been his primary caregiver his entire life. Of course he requires a period of transition."
"Why does he even need a nanny? Am I not an adequate mother?"
Hot tears pressed against her lids, and she fought them back in a mild panic, unwilling to break in front of him yet again.
"You are an amazing mother," he retorted, reaching out to touch her hand. The contact awakened every nerve ending she possessed, and she jumped under his fingertips, hating the pain that creased his brow at her reaction.
"I'm sorry," he breathed, cutting her insides by withdrawing his hand as he pulled back into himself.
"Don't be," she muttered, feeling as if her entire life were balanced upon shifting quicksand. "I'm just…"
Her thought shattered into fragments, her throat constricting at buried emotions battling for air.
"You're just human, Mary," he voiced for her. "And you're now married to the man who nearly ruined your life."
She wished she could dispute his assertion, but the words were trapped, bound by the knowledge that what he stated was true.
"You're also the man who gave me a son," she whispered, her eyes falling to bed sheets twisted into her fists. "We did this together, Matthew."
His chuckle bore no mirth as he slid deeper back into the covers.
"We did," he agreed. "But you didn't desert me."
She felt the sensation of ice pellets striking her skin as they had in her dream, wondering how her toes could feel so incredibly cold when still completely enfolded in warmth.
"No," she returned. "But I did keep you from your child."
It was something he never brought up, and she wondered how he could so easily glide past such a chasm in their relationship.
"You were protecting yourself and our baby," he argued, even as an edge crept into his voice.
"But I never gave you the opportunity to do the right thing," she pushed back. "If I had told you…"
"Stop it, Mary."
His tone bordered on harsh, and she noticed the tremor that had returned to his hand.
"I'm sorry," he whispered raggedly, hanging his head. "Forgive me? Please?"
She nodded, sensing more hovering just beneath the surface than either of them possessed the strength to handle. Mines buried in haste now threatened three lives already balanced precariously on a ledge. Perhaps it was time to pull back.
"I'm sorry, too."
That lop-sided smile that always struck its target did so again, and she felt a line of defense disintegrate as ash into her palm.
"You don't need to be," he stated gently. "But you do need to rest."
Her eyes refused to look away from his, and he drew her in closer with the promise of something she craved with the ferocity of air.
"You cannot do everything for everyone in this household and keep a hold of your sanity and heath, Mary. Don't burden yourself with such unrealistic expectations."
The deftness with which he steered them to safer ground soothed her, and her bones relaxed somewhat back into the mattress. "No one expects you to do so, and I am not willing to watch you make yourself ill on my account when it is completely unnecessary. Let Nanny Logan do her job."
His words stung as they bored into her consciousness, logic warring with emotion just under her skin.
"But a nanny," she insisted, looking into eyes that saw too much. "Allowing her to care for him feels as if I'm abandoning my own child. I don't want Christopher to think I don't love him."
She then nearly laughed at the irony of her words, knowing if her son had been born under ideal circumstances, she would have relied tremendously upon a nanny, would have expected the woman to tend to Christopher's every need, her personal time and interaction with her own child drastically reduced to little more than daily exposure and perfunctory kisses. It was how things were done among her kind of people.
Dear God—how much she would have missed had he been born legitimate.
Gentle yawns that overtook soft cheeks and comically crinkled his nose, his particular method of burrowing into her breast after latching on to her nipple and touching her skin with tiny fists, the sensation of life passing from her body to his, a tug and release she treasured more than anything she had ever before experienced.
What were balls and galas compared to this? How could seasons and fittings ever compare to the rhythm of life as reflected in the dark eyes of her son?
"She'll never be to him what you are. You needn't worry yourself over that."
His words were gentle, his tone pure and clear.
"But he seems to be taking to her well, and that's good for all of us, I think. Don't you, Mary?"
Her spine stiffened in response.
"She doesn't know how he likes to be held and rocked," Mary insisted, feeling something being tugged out of her grasp. "How to cradle his head, how to stroke his back, how rubbing the top of his forehead helps soothe him when he's distressed."
"She's learning," Matthew sighed. "We're all learning, Mary." He paused, running fingers through his hair, clearly weighing his words. "This life is an adjustment for all of us. You especially, I daresay."
Her spine bristled, needing to lash out, seeking a release with a fire that singed bone and nerve, finding him all too convenient a target.
"You have no idea, Matthew," she insisted, her voice quavering in her larynx. "None. I know this is all a change for you, a huge change for you, and I despise the fact that you're having to adjust to a life you would have never chosen. But sometimes I feel as if this house and everyone in it are beginning to press in on me."
Silence hung between them for an uncomfortable moment.
"Just as the chair presses in on me," he finally added, his lips moving over the words even after they had been released.
Her muscles cramped painfully at his confession.
"I'm sorry," she whispered, leaning closer towards him. "It's just that I'm not used to—"
She stopped herself mid-sentence, trembling internally at the weighted knowledge washing over her.
"You're not used to what?"
She stared back at him reluctantly before closing her eyes and shaking her head.
"To sharing him," she whispered. "To sharing Christopher."
Her body shook at the admission then squeezed back into itself, her arms now bereft with the need to hold her baby. He surprised her by offering her a smile, one both genuine and tender that creased the lines of his eyes.
"Why would you be?" he questioned. A puff of air flew out her nostrils.
"At first, it was just the two of you, while he grew in your body, when you gave birth to him."
His face contorted as it always did at the knowledge that she had endured labor and delivery with only strangers in attendance.
"Until mother joined you, that is."
Her heart squeezed at the mention of Isobel, the one person from Downton she wished could have stayed, even as she knew living with both her mother-in-law and her husband would most likely prove to be restrictive.
"Even at Downton, he was primarily with you or one of his grandmothers," he continued as a soft translucence overtook his countenance. "Now you're surrounded by two new caregivers and sharing a bed with a husband you had little choice but to wed."
He paused, looking at her with something that made her ribs tingle.
"We're all basically intruders in your life, Mary. It's only natural that you would begin to feel claustrophobic."
Something gave inside her at the accuracy of his assessment.
"It's odd," she volunteered. "When I was pregnant with him, I would have given anything for company. The solitude was stifling."
He nodded wordlessly.
"I do understand that," he muttered. "Even when I was surrounded by men and activity in the trenches, there were times I felt horribly alone. Especially at night."
She caught her breath, unwilling to shatter any observance he shared with her from his life at the front. These confidences were few and far between, and she wondered if voicing them cut into his emotional fabric the way his desertion had shredded her own.
"It was rarely quiet, you know," he continued, his gaze fixed on something beyond her perception. "But when it was, the stillness was absolute. And terrifying. Worse than the noise of gunfire or explosions."
She swallowed stiffly, noting beads of sweat surfacing just above his lips.
"It was at those moments, when it was so quiet and menacing that I felt it," he voiced, his tone simultaneously distant and intimate. "Loneliness so paralyzing I couldn't breathe."
How well she knew the sensation.
"One night I nearly broke my bedroom window," she offered. "I felt so alone, and my body was agitated." How often had her limbs felt the need to walk, to kick, to run for no logical reason while her child grew large in her womb? "I wanted to hit something, to break something so badly, and I pounded on the glass until my knuckles bled."
Breaths mingled in shared sentiment above bodies reclined but alert.
"No one could hear me," she concluded, feeling the weight of that moment once more. "And that terrified me."
His hand reached for hers again, cooler than it had been before, still shaking in the aftermath of the tremor. She laid hers atop his, hearing a hissed exhale escape his lips.
"That's when I would write to you."
Oh, God.
Her heart paused and then thudded into her head, her world spinning off-kilter as her body lay immobile.
"When it was silent, when no one else could see. I would light a candle and sit in my corner." He paused, clearing his throat self-consciously. "And I would write everything I couldn't speak."
His arm clenched under her touch, his face contorting at his body's rebellion as her stomach began to work itself into knots.
"You were the person who kept me sane, Mary," he confessed raggedly. "I spoke to you so many times from that hell-hole, apologized over and over to you for my behavior, held you as close as I could with mere pen and parchment."
He stopped to breathe and to gauge her reaction.
"When mother's letter arrived informing me that you had gone to America, I actually considered desertion in favor of procuring direct passage to New York. I worked out scenario after scenario of how I would find you, what I would say, and I wrote it all down, deluding myself into believing that I would be given a second chance I didn't deserve."
His confession tickled her pores, instigating a skitter up vertebrae that made her shiver.
"As much as I detest this chair, as much as I crave a body that functions as a man's body should, there are moments I can't help but wonder."
She stared at his features, feeling a connection to him she hadn't experienced since she had bared her body to his caress.
"What?" she whispered as his fingers curled around her own.
"If I'd have this."
He squeezed her hand, and she let him without flinching.
"If I'd be your husband," he continued. "If I'd even know my son." He swallowed with effort, fighting back tears with a determination radiating into her arm. "And if I had to choose between an existence with legs lived apart from you or the life I have now, I'd choose this, Mary. Chair and all, it wouldn't matter. I'd choose you and Christopher. Every time."
Her eyes filled within seconds, her mind and soul wrapped soundly in this admission that bound a wound with deep roots. Wetness marked her cheeks, and she let the tears come, feeling something wash clean she hadn't realized was stained. Her free hand moved to his cheek, even damper than her own, and one of her own tears dripped on to his face as hurt mingled with hurt in a moment of shared healing.
Her lips then shook as they moved to his cheek, touching him haltingly, tasting the salt of his soul, absorbing his private confessions. He gripped her hand, her arm, her back, pulling her body flush with his, holding her to him even closer than when he had entered her flesh.
His mouth feathered against her forehead, and a part of her was lost in this man who was a necessary to her life as the heart thudding painfully against her ribs.
"I don't deserve you, Mary," he spoke into her hair, caressing its silken texture, passing over where it had knotted in sleep. "But I don't think I could go on living without you."
His words held her to him with gentle ties of worn linen.
"And I don't deserve Christopher," she replied, hearing her own voice resound against his chest. "But the mere thought of life without him…"
She choked on what was left unsaid.
Fingers calloused from war lifted her chin towards his gaze, and they saw each other in a manner new to them both. Survivors, limping and scarred, existing with injuries inflicted upon them by others and by their own hands, but survivors nonetheless.
"Then perhaps this is better," he mused, his eyes still moist and full of so much. And for the first time since she had set eyes on him as the mother of his child, she believed every word that he uttered.