A/N Thank you, thank you for the reviews.

The below is M rated. Scenes of a sexual nature.

Any thought Anthony might have entertained that Maud would cut short their Saturday business meeting so he could, as she'd put it, 'step outside the cave' was quickly relinquished. As much as at every other meeting, she'd come to talk business. The fine tooth comb had been applied to his books, his every decision received comment, even if it was simply to declare it acceptable.

In a way, he was glad of the time to focus on something other than Edith. On the looming decision and the spindles of consequences shooting off from all the possible outcomes. He couldn't simply balance the figures, or examine the percentages, or assess the yield. There much more to lose than money.

Maud left in the early evening, telling him to remember what she said, and not the parts about the business. She'd made the next steps seem so obvious, but it was a damned difficult thing to spend years curled up in a dark cave and then convince your body to unfurl and walk into the light.

Small steps, he decided. So he went to the kitchen and brewed a proper pot of tea. Picked up two mugs and a little jug of milk. He set out a variety of biscuits on a plate and set off upstairs.

Only when he was halfway to Edith's room did he stop and examine the contents of the tray. A teapot with a chipped spout that, in his wisdom, he'd covered in a knitted yellow and orange striped cosy. The mugs had pink ribbons and bows covering their cream surface and, for some reason, he'd fanned the biscuits out like a confectionary flower. The tray, half hidden by everything on it, was covered in kittens. Kittens, for goodness sake.

Never had anyone assembled anything less seductive, less romantic or more ridiculous, in the whole history of human relationships.

Just as he decided to turn back and get wine, or gin, or abandon his attempt at catering altogether, the door to the bathroom opened and a beam of light crept across the dim hallway with him poised right at its centre.

Edith came up to the banister and looked down, "Hello."

"Hello."

"Is that tea?" She asked brightly, "Thank goodness for that." She skipped down the few stairs between them and took the tray from his hands, "I've been dying for a cuppa."

She padded up to the door to her bedroom. The oversized pyjamas she wore were a shiny silk. They caught the light at her shoulder, her elbow, the curve of her hip, the jut of a knee and, when she turned to ask him if he was coming, the vee between her breasts. Sparkling droplets of white. She was a diamond, waiting for him at the entrance to her bedroom.

Before he knew it he was inside. The door shut soundly in his wake.

"Oh hang on, hold this." She handed him the tray and started stacking the various papers and books scattered across the open bureau.

The room glowed. A fire licked in the hearth, a few pairs of socks hung over the guard, undoubtedly drying to cardboard crispness. The navy armchair played host to several woollen items, pearl buttons made orange by the reflected firelight. The bed, with light blue sheets, was made, but messy, like tempestuous seas. In the middle of it was another set of scattered papers and a laptop in a pink case. At one side of the chest of drawers an assortment of bottles was clustered, tallest at the back, smallest at the front. A little selection of jewellery crowded in a crystal dish. Next to that there was a single peach rose in a drinking glass. There was a biting flare of jealousy when he first saw it, as if must have come from a potential suitor, a rival. A rival for what, he hardly knew. He reminded himself that he'd asked her the question: she was single.

Whilst she built a fortress of papers and books on the floor beside the bureau he poured the tea. She took her mug and a biscuit and settled on the bed, legs crossed. He took the chair next to the chest of drawers; putting a safe zone of floor space between them.

She cupped the drink in her hand and took a sip, her eyes fluttered closed. He saw her throat work as the liquid dropped down. It was as though he'd given her water at the end of forty years in the desert, or a glass of Scotch at the end of a stressful Tuesday.

She opened her eyes with a look of pure satisfaction, "Perfect. Thank you."

It was a strange day indeed when a woman's enjoyment of a cup of tea he'd made caused him to blush. Then again, these were nothing, if not strange days.

He cleared his throat and didn't look at her, "You're welcome." And added after a beat, "You might as well not have milk at all, you're basically taking it black." She required only the tiniest dash. Any more than that, as Anna, and Bates and Mrs Hughes had failed to realise, and she got no enjoyment out of the drink at all.

"No, I don't think so. It's too bitter without it. The milk takes the edge off."

Not ready to talk about what they plainly had to talk about Anthony launched into another topic, "What is all of that?" He gestured in the direction of the fortress of papers.

"Research from the archive." The tone of her voice added another word at the end of the sentence: obviously.

"I thought you'd come to find the diary."

"I have."

"And you only found the first part of it on Friday."

"Yes."

He shook his head and sipped at his tea, "So again, what's that?"

"All the notes on the things I've read along the way which I've found interesting.'

"Such as?"

Dunking her gingersnap she explained, "Well, on Tuesday I spent the day engrossed in a set of accounts from a solicitor's household."

"Forgive me, I thought you said 'interesting'." Before she could throw a pillow at him he held up his steaming mug of tea and said, "I've only got one arm, I can't defend myself."

She put down her weapon, "It is interesting. Who wouldn't be fascinated by how much a purportedly well-to-do family in 1832 spent on beef versus candles versus ink?"

"Most of the western world." He smiled at her across his cup.

They fought for many reasons during their short acquaintance, but, for him, at least part of the reason he'd encouraged their animosity, consciously or unconsciously, was that she was magnificent in her indignation.

Spine stiffened, cheeks pinched in, eyes narrowed. She donned a whole suit of armour and then picked up a sword to skewer her enemy, "You dismiss it all far too readily. It's not just pounds, shilling and pence on a page. It tells a story about lifestyle and priorities – the health of the family, their sleeping habits, their education levels, to name but a few. Set against other sources it helps recreate the tapestry of the past. Before people bothered to read sources like that one the historians would have us believe that solicitors operated only in London and on large incomes with a captive market of litigious aristocrats. Not so. It is fascinating to learn about the world as it was." She finished off the rest of her biscuit, "You can't claim you were a little surprised, even a little interested, to find that in 1832 your little village had its own solicitor?" He shrugged and she exclaimed, "I knew it!"

He passed her the plate of biscuits and she selected a digestive which she turned in her fingers and put on the bedside table, "How was your meeting with your wife?"

"Ex-wife." He said, pointedly.

"Yes."

"Productive."

"Did you talk about –" She pursued her lips and her voice emerged a note too high, "me and – what I said?"

"Yes."

She blushed and stared intently into her tea, "Too much to hope that she might just forget about the woman who called your –" She waved her arm about, unwilling to say the word she'd been all too ready to blurt out hours earlier.

"Gentleman's usher." He offered, deadpan serious.

She snorted, "That's a new one. Well, yes, a woman who called that, a steel covered sex piston."

"I believe it was velvet covered steel sex piston."

"Right." She grimaced, "Yes. I suppose that would make someone curious."

"Perhaps if you'd uttered the phrase six weeks ago she wouldn't have been so dogmatically inquisitive. But today, she rather had it in her head that she wanted to talk, and once Maud's mind is made up it is very difficult to change."

Edith looked cross, "I like the sound of her." She said that in a tone of voice which suggested she meant the exact opposite.

"She's my best friend." He wanted to offer some comfort, perhaps he could explain the curious nature of their relationship, "We were best friends at Christ's and she was rather brilliant. And one of only a narrow selection of available woman."

"You could've walked over to Newnham."

"And cross the river?!" He guffawed and smiled, "Anyway, fifteen lady undergraduates at Christ's, Maud the best of them. If you get on well with someone and they like what you like and you bring them home to meet your family and let them see the parts of yourself that you try and conceal from the world, you convince yourself that it's Meant To Be. All the rest follows. It did, we married and, in our way, we were happy. Now I see, of course, that it wasn't right."

Abruptly he grabbed back his cup of tea from the sideboard. He needed something else to do with his mouth, something other than talking, emptying, really, his whole story onto the floor of this bedroom. This bedroom, which currently held so many of his hopes and dreams.

He shook his head, perhaps hoping he'd dislodge his sense from wherever it had hidden, "Amidst all that friendship I missed the reality of it. We were too alike, we argued and butted heads. She was – is – brighter than me at maths and economics - the things I valued and I was young and jealous. And I didn't see what now seems very obvious - that she wasn't in love with me in the way she needed to be, and I wasn't in love with her either. Maud realised though and did something about it – as I said, she is the cleverer of the two of us. Thank God, because now we have all the friendship and the plutonic –" He paused for emphasis on that word and then felt overly conceited at the notion that Edith would care, "love between us without the failing marriage."

At the end of his explanation, she was leaning back against the headboard, arms crossed, lips thinned.

Fool. She didn't need to hear any of that. Why was he boring her with the mundanities of his life? The less she knew about him, the better.

"I'm sorry." She said, unfolding her arms and staring intently at her lap.

"Why are you sorry? I'm the one droning on about my long-dead marriage."

"I'm jealous." She looked embarrassed and threw her hands in the air, "I don't know what's wrong with me. I'm not a jealous person. I mean, I used to be jealous of Mary –" She babbled on, the words racing from her mouth, tripping over one another, "but then I basically realised she was awful person and there was just no point. And why should I be jealous of Maud? I mean, she's gay, first of all. And you've said she wasn't right for you anyway and obviously you're just friends now and – oh – I'll just shut up."

"You're jealous." The words were reverent, joyful, as if they were other words entirely – you're happy – you're mine – you're pregnant. Who knew a declaration of jealousy could mean so much? Far from shunning him, she made him feel wanted, desired, even a little cherished. His chest puffed slightly. Gingerly, he moved from his chair to sit on the corner of the bed.

"No need to sound so gleeful about it!"

"You've no need to be jealous."

"I'm not the only one in this room with an irrational jealousy problem – you were jealous of Thomas!"

"I was not!" She crooked an eyebrow, "Okay. A little. Stop looking at me like that! Fine! I wanted to kill him with my bare hands." Or, hand.

"So, what conclusions did your brilliantly clever ex-wife come to on the topic of you and I and your velvet rod?"

"Steel sex piston."

"Whatever!"

A half untruth emerged, "She didn't express an opinion. She forced me to confront some realities and then berated me about the hotel's books for three hours."

"All right." She leant forwards and tilted her head, the bed bowed a little between them and he tipped slightly towards her, "What conclusions did you come to?"

The cup he was drinking from didn't contain sand but suddenly his mouth was dry. He traced his tongue along the ridges in the roof and the backs of his teeth. Words were rising within. A steam train driving through him at full pelt, but there was a wall at the back of his throat; an impossible lump to push them around.

There was such power in her. So much joy and intelligence, he could see see it brimming in her eyes and cresting on the flick of her lip and over the quirk of a cheekbone. He gaped, he knew he did. Marvelling, admiring and then, like always, despairing.

The remnants of his tea shook in the mug. That treacherous, rebellious bit of his brain, small and ugly, hunched in the darkened recesses, crawled out to assert itself, choosing, as ever, the worst possible moment. It was too much. He couldn't look at her any more. She was dazzling, blinding, like sun reflecting on snow, or the white light of a HGV and the blaring of a horn.

He pushed away from the bed and retreated to the chair. The cushion let out a sad wheeze. Bent over, he concentrated on breathing in a steady rhythm.

"Sir Anthony?" She asked.

"I can't do this Edith." The words made him calm, and, at the same time, unbearably irritated. He was a coward.

"I have a feeling that you're not talking about sitting here, drinking tea and eating biscuits with me." He sighed, "I don't want to press you, or to try and convince you, or make you feel bad. But, do you mind if I ask why?"

His breathing levelled out. He braved a glance and found he could manage that, so he sat back and looked squarely at her. Her half smile was full of comfort.

She was a brand new star, just burst to life and he was one long dead, travelling light on one last trip through the universe. If he did this, he'd be syphoning off some of her magnificence for himself, gleaning away slivers of her brilliance. A temporary measure to return to who he once was: a man of the City amidst shining skyscrapers, whose Father wasn't dead and whose body hadn't given up.

He swallowed and searched for a way of expressing it. The words sounded pathetic when they emerged, "It would be like theft."

She looked surprised at that and flipped her legs out from beneath her body and walked to the fireplace, grasping the mantel.

"Theft?" She asked.

"Yes. Taking without giving anything in return."

She blinked, "So you're saying it would be rape."

"I beg your pardon?"

"Well, theft of sex is rape, isn't it? This wouldn't be that Sir Anthony, not in any respect. I want this. I want you. I hope you will get something out of the experience, but that's not why I am asking for it." She repeated herself deliberately and slowly, "I - want - you."

Lost for words. He hadn't properly understood the phrase before, always being a man of some considerable verbosity. He might not find the right words, but the absence of any, at all, hadn't been an issue. Not now. Language alluded him. Perhaps he could manage a grunt, or a cough, a splutter. But a response? Fully formed? To explain that he wanted her like he had never wanted any woman, but – but – but – they were fools for their desire. He was terrified; she'd be disappointed and he'd be destroyed. And yet, he still wanted. For all the fear, the wanting didn't go away.

"Look," she said, "I won't beg. I was done begging for sex a long time ago and I'm not going to start again now. If you want this, we can do it."

He scoffed at that, he couldn't help it, "You've had to beg for sex?"

"No. Not exactly, but I have chased after men who didn't really want me and pretended to be something I wasn't to make them like me. I'm done with that. I've been myself with you, I think, on the whole, and either that's enough, or it isn't."

Men required this woman to be someone different? Idiots, the lot of them.

She went back to the side of the bed and picked up her mug of tea. She enclosed it in the cocoon of her fingers and brought her mouth to the rim, eyes cast down, the steam rendering her skin in dewy pink tones.

It was quite something, desire. He'd forgotten the slow, rolling potency of it, coating everything like thick treacly molasses.

He stood. He would go to her and kiss her on those warm lips. This very minute. He'd lay her down on the blue bed and do precisely what she'd asked and what he wanted. This instant. This very instant.

Instead, dumbly, stupidly, he just stood there, rooted to the floor in front of his chair. Paralysed by the very thing that made him want to move so damned much.

She arched an eyebrow and replaced the drink on its coaster.

She was literally shiny in the silky pyjamas, lit by the firelight and the dim Tiffany lamps. A new ten pence piece. He'd tarnish her, make her dull. He put his hand on the back of his neck, rubbed at his aching muscles. He looked at the hinges of the door and then over to the handle. Leaving would be so easy. And what a relief it would be, to be on the other side of that door. To choose the path already taken. The one he knew; on the map he'd charted.

Edith drew her bottom lip between her teeth. She looked at him expectantly and in slow increments the expectation drained from her eyes. They were left empty and resigned.

Eventually, with a sigh and a shake of the head, she said, "Perhaps we should call it a night then, Sir Anthony?"

She walked across the bedroom. The left leg of her pyjamas was tucked into a ridiculous fluffy pink sock. She'd only accomplished half the task with the other, haphazard fabric fell about her ankle. The collar exposed the slender lines of her neck as she moved and dipped into the promising darkness just above her breasts.

Life is short, be careful it doesn't pass you by.

It was so easy, in the end, to step into the unknown.

"I think you'd better call me Anthony."

She reached for the door and replied fiercely, "I think it's perhaps best that I don't."

"I don't think I can go to bed with someone who calls me Sir Anthony."

Her head spun quickly, she looked a delicious combination of startled and stern, "Please just say what you mean."

"If you still want to, I'd like to have sex with you, Miss Crawley."

She smiled and blushed, even though this had all been her idea and she'd been utterly bold in it, "Edith. Call me Edith."

They stood, each smiling at the other, dopey eyed. Bookends with no books.

"What now?" He asked.

"Oh, that's a romantic question."

"I never promised romance." That word trailed off into nothingness as his eyes traced the path of her hands. They came to the front of his shirt, pulled it from the top of his trousers and turned to each of the buttons in turn until he was quite undone.

She fanned out her fingers across his stomach and then over his rib cage, "you're so substantial."

"I – er, I – thank you?"

"Broad too. I never thought much about the broadness of a man, but gosh, it's nice." As she spoke she traced her index finger from one side of his chest to the other. The tip was warm and left a wake of rippling sensation which rolled over him. "And hairy." She pushed her hand into his chest hair and tugged a little. All sense must truly have fled from his head because it was possibly the single most erotic moment of his entire life. He whimpered and she kissed him.

Together they pulled his shirt off his shoulders and away. With clashing fingers and thumbs, she undid his belt and he worked on his fly. Delicately trying to manage it around his insistent erection whilst keeping his lips somewhat proximate to Edith's.

She murmured eagerly against his mouth, "Anthony, I want you."

"You have me." Her fingers stilled at that and he tried to make light of it, "Or you will, you're about to. Let me get out of these trousers." Finally, he was down to his boxers.

Without any grace he managed to shuck out of his trousers and pulled off his shoes and socks too. When he looked up Edith was undoing her pyjama top. He swallowed, his Adam's apple working up and down his throat. The side of her mouth kicked up and she pushed the silk from her shoulders. It floated down her arms and landed with a shush upon the floor.

Little teardrop breasts, she had. Peaked with light pink nipples. Anthony had imagined them a thousand times over. They were not what he'd dreamt, and yet, they were perfect.

"They're small." She whispered.

He fit his hand over her left breast and found it fit neatly in his palm, "They're exactly right."

"For your hand?"

Glancing up at her face, which was no small feat given what was available to look at below that, he smiled, "for me."

He brushed a thumb over the nipple and she moaned her pleasure into a kiss on the lobe of his ear.

"The other one, please." She pleaded.

He was already making the move of his own volition - an embarrassment of riches, her body, and he wanted to explore them all. She was boneless, lolling and listing further into him with each caress. Soft thigh pushing against his erection, arms linked around his neck.

God, he wanted to drive her mad, to make her forget herself, "I wish -" He bit the word out and pinched a nipple – she shuddered against him - "I had two hands."

She spoke, hot and urgent into the space beneath his ear, "you have a mouth."

His knees nearly buckled at that, both because it had quite escaped him that he had at his disposal another means of exploring all she was offering, and because of the implication of the statement.

You have a mouth: use it.

"Edith, can we go to the bed?" She nodded her ascent into the curve of his neck.