Love to all! Thank you so very much for sticking with me and our pair. I started this story as a bit of therapy, I think. And here we are, last day with the therapists! Go Team!
This is the last chapter. A sort of epilogue, really. It pains me to let these two go. But I did swear that I would have this done before the third season/series aired here in the states.
In my mind I heard the word 'computer' where you read 'typewriter' below. :)
Thanks to dancesabove for the talent and the time.
"Anthony? Anthony!" The tone was lightly complaining. He looked up from the typewriter at last. "Come walk with me," his wife said. "Or maybe we could go for a drive..."
He smiled suspiciously and pushed his chair back from the table. "And sit on the running board, like we used to?" he teased. "Or something a little more..."
"Anthony!" she scolded. "You know, I'm the one who recommended that typewriter, all those years ago. I can see to it that it disappears."
"Oh, darling," he said, in a tone so conciliatory that she came over to kiss him on the head. "You were very, very happy with me this morning. I hate to see that stop." He smiled at her and raised his eyebrows in a way that invited her to remember the sleepy love-making she had initiated.
.
It had been just barely light out when she had placed her arm across him and pulled closer, only half awake. With his encouragement she had moved atop him. Her elbows took her weight then, and her hair fell to tickle his neck.
"Will you, Edith?" he'd asked, his voice still heavy with sleep. "Will you make love to me?"
.
Standing there and replaying all of that, she pulled in close to him as he looked up at her, her hip snug against his shoulder. The way she petted at him seemed to signal that she doubted there would be any interruption.
"Where are the children?" Anthony asked at last, his voice a happy, intimate whisper.
"Outside," she answered, motioning toward the window.
From their spot by the desk they could look out on the wide expanse of lawn. In the distance there were three figures. Two small; one fully grown. "The children could have a proper nanny if we were in London," he mused. "We needn't have them running about after Joseph, constructing windmills and rebuilding engines."
"The windmills were your idea," she reminded him.
"Ah. Point taken. But do you see my point?"
"I'm not sure I do." She showed him that she had set aside her request that he come for a walk or a drive by settling herself in his lap.
He helped her get comfortable there, even looping his arm around her and kissing her quickly.
"The point is London. We are spending more time there than I thought we would, with your schooling over. But do we want to spend more time there?" he said at last.
"You are worried about the children?"
He thought it was sarcasm and opened his mouth to complain. But she silenced him with her fingers to his lips and said softly, "They shan't be building windmills anymore if we spend all our time in town. And is that what we want? Is that what you mean?"
"Yes... although there is also the overall fear that I let them run wild when we are here."
"I won't have you shoulder the blame for that one. Certainly, as their mother, everyone blames me," she quipped.
"I was just so happy when Elizabeth was born," he said, by way of explaining how he came to be so easily wrapped around his daughter's finger. "And then to have a son…" He was a little emotional over the whole thing. "Even now. I can't say no to them."
"We have all noticed. You don't say no to me, either."
"But I have worried. Am I depriving you of something more that you've wanted? To run a place like this? To act more the lady of the manor, with your house parties?"
"I've never thought that alone would satisfy. Never expected..."
"Oh, dear God, that reminds me! A message came." Anthony worked to pat at his pockets, but with her in his lap and only the one hand, he was having no luck finding it.
Not even waiting to see if he would be able to produce the paper, Edith put her hand first in one of his pockets and then in another.
"You have to stop that," he chided amiably as he grabbed her wrist. "You do know that you have the children doing that now - rifling through my pockets whether I am capable of retrieving something myself or not." Edith snickered a little as he continued to feign scolding her. "Your mother has found this quite distressing when she has witnessed it," her husband said, trying not to lapse into laughter himself. "And I am beginning to feel I am being assailed by second-rate pickpockets."
"Poor Anthony," Edith murmured as she leaned down to kiss him. "Put your hands in my pockets and we will call it even."
It surprised them no end when the door to the study began to open.
Being long accustomed to the couple's loving distraction (for lack of a better phrase), Lawrence was used to entering a room at a glacial pace and with excessive noise.
Still the pair did not manage to get Edith to her feet before Mary was announced.
"No. Don't tell me. You had a bit of a funny turn and fell into his lap," the elder woman said, only pretending to be appalled. "After years of that happening, you should likely ask Dr. Clarkson what causes it."
"We have it narrowed down to one or two likely causes," Anthony said as he pretended to straighten up his desk.
"Really," Mary answered with a well-timed roll of her eyes. "I could narrow it to one. Now, tell me you received Mother's invitation to dinner, and I will leave you to it. I wouldn't barge in, but dear Mama is worried about the short notice and asked that I check with you."
"It's here somewhere," Edith replied. She eyed Anthony's pockets and stepped closer to him again, as if to start her search of his person anew.
"I'll find it." The man's words were quite obviously a warning to his wife that she should keep her hands off him.
"Yes, do, Anthony," Mary teased. "Or I'll let my niece and nephew know that you've misplaced it, and they will turn your pockets out next."
Although Edith and Anthony had grown accustomed to a more genial and accepting Mary, they were fairly paralyzed by that comment.
"Oh, good heavens, what faces! Do recover so you can write this down. This Sunday. After church. Bring the children, so that the cousins can play havoc with Carson and Mrs. Hughes downstairs."
And as a laughing Mary walked for the door, she heard Edith exclaim, "Now, where might I find a pencil...?"
And the less-than-serious protestation, "Don't you dare, woman!"