21. The Trap
The midnight blue 1911 Renault rounds the corner of the lane into the drive, a shock of colour against the unbroken grey layer of ice that covers gravel, grass, cedar and sky. At the sight of the automobile,, the members of the Crawley family sigh and mutter in relief; their exhalations of breath form steam in the air as they cease bouncing on their toes or huddling in on themselves against the wind or chafing hands to rub the warmth back into them, to form a receiving line.
Mary inhales the crisp air to steady herself, one corner of her mouth quirking upward as a line read in some novel or other-Austen, she thinks-awakens in a corner of her mind where it's lain dormant for years: A man must have a very good opinion of himself when he asks people to leave their own fireside, and encounter such a day as this, for the sake of coming to see him. Richard, of course, did not ask for his arrival at Downton to be heralded so formally, but Mama insisted-against Papa's protests-that it is of vital importance that they welcome their Christmas guest properly, especially since his last tardy, not to mention unplanned, arrival relegated him to taking a solitary luncheon in the library. In any case, Mary has no doubt he will be pleased to be the recipient of such a fuss-that is, if the five idle, shivering creatures who await him are not more responsible for a frosty reception than the weather.
Mama, at least, flashes a smile warm enough to heat a room as Richard disembarks the vehicle. She steps out of line, hand extended to shake his gloved one as the other sweeps his hat off to reveal slightly dishevelled hair, fairer than usual for the pomade having been worn off. As Mary last saw when she raked her fingers through it in her candlelit bedroom.
"Welcome to Downton, Sir Richard," Mama says. "How festive your red scarf is."
"Thank you, Lady Grantham." He glances down at the scarf that peeks out from between the lapels of his black woollen greatcoat, one pale eyebrow arching as if he has forgotten what he is wearing. "It was a Christmas gift-rather appropriately."
It is a handsome scarf, Mary observes: deep red in a nouveau floral motif. Bold and modern, like him, and his eyes appear brighter in contrast to the rich hue. She regrets not taking longer in Liberty to peruse the selection of men's scarves before purchasing the peacock feather print in a state of pique. Though she is still piqued, isn't she?
"Is that a Liberty print?" Edith's question is seemingly innocuous, but she darts a sharp glance in Mary's direction.
"I believe Lady Rutland said so, yes," Richard answers.
Mary bites the insides of her cheeks as her gaze narrows on the scarf, no longer admiring. Was that Diana's idea, too? Did she advise Lady Rutland to buy Richard a scarf before making the same suggestion to Mary? Or was it the other way around? Was she the victim of Diana's flighty absent-mindedness, or of one of her infamous pranks? In either case, the joke is on Mary.
And she is not amused.
"Well it's white tie for dinner and midnight mass, not red scarf," Papa says in a thin voice through an even thinner smile, giving Richard's hand the very briefest of pumps that may still be considered polite, "Carson's just rung the dressing gong."
"I'd have been here earlier," Richard says as they all go in through the door Carson holds, "but the ice…"
"Oh, we had such a dreadful time returning from London last week," Mama says. "And Rosamund got held up when she came the day before yesterday. I can't remember a December with so much ice."
"Did Gwen make it to her parents' all right?" Sybil asks. "She wrote she'd be travelling with you."
"Not with you, in your first class compartment, I hope?" Papa regards Richard as he would an errant kitchen boy and not a man his own age, and likely soon to be a peer.
Richard glances away as Thomas takes his hat and helps him off with his coat. He looks more annoyed than affronted, thankfully, but his reply to Papa is measured. "In third, naturally. Miss Dawson paid her own way. And her father was already at the station when we arrived," he adds with an indulgent smile for Sybil.
"You're pen friends with a servant now?" Edith scoffs.
"With a secretary," Sybil corrects, tilting her chin upward. "And at least I've got friends who write to me."
For a moment Edith splutters, then she says, "I had a letter the other day. From Diana Manners."
Sybil remains unimpressed, and Mary smiles at the observation that her little sister's expression is almost a mirror of one known to cross her face. But the expression slips from her mouth as she catches Richard watching her intently.
"Darling," Mama says, clutching at Papa's sleeve in her desperation to regain control of the conversation, "have you heard from Matthew and Cousin Isobel? I wonder if the ice gave them a great deal of trouble. They went up this morning, you know," she adds, for Richard's benefit.
"Matthew did phone," Papa says. "I asked him to let me know if they made it in all right." To Mary's ears, his voice softens as he speaks of the one member of his family he approves of at the moment-though it could also be the working of her rather biased imagination, she acknowledges, Papa's stiff demeanour returning as he address to Richard. "The Crawleys are to spend Christmas with Miss Swire and her father. Though I expect you knew, being such great a great friend of Mr Swire?"
"I haven't spoken to Reggie since we were all here in November," Richard replies, tugging his leather gloves off his long fingers. "Though I'd have thought the heir would want to see his future home in all the splendour of the season."
"He'll have plenty of time for that, won't he?" Mary says, "When it's his house?"
"I believe he'd have liked to," Papa says, ignoring her attempt at needling him in favour of keeping his pointed stare on Richard, "but he was being sensitive to his fiancée."
The jab does not, of course, touch Richard, who has no idea any of them knows Miss Swire was his source for the Marconi scandal. Indeed, he seems to have no thought of himself at all now, his eyes seeking Mary's, intense with sympathy and a familiar expression that recalls an earlier conversation with him about Matthew's bride-to-be: She won't be half the countess you would.
She really will be, if I'm great with child. Mary feels her lips twitch in response to her own bitter joke; the lines of Richard's forehead arch upward and his mouth lilts in a smile of question, asking to share in her private amusement. She wishes he could. She imagines his hand at the small of her back, the brush of his chin against her temple as he leans in to hear her, the rumble of his chuckle, as well as his response: That's not exactly what I meant when I said there is more to you than that.
What did he mean? He never said what he thought she could be, if not the Countess of Grantham. His newspaper baroness, if his intention to marry her was genuine. Though it seems she will be the mother to his heir first. Does the sequence of events matter to him? Does it affect his plans? Or is this the only end there is for her-to bear children for some important man, regardless of his class?
He's watching her closely again, that shrewd journalistic gaze scrutinising her from head to toe. Thinking about sex, as he told her at Fortnum's? Or noticing something different about her?
Would it be so bad if he did? Anna says she should tell him about the baby; Mama says she must. And just a moment ago she imagined laughing with him over it.
Before he has a chance to notice, and before she can consider it further, she turns from him. "It's high time I dressed for dinner."
It's only a temporary escape; when she descends the staircase again three-quarters of an hour later, the beaded train of her gown caught up in one hand to keep it out of the way of her heels, her step falters when she spies Richard already waiting for the family, framed in one of the stone archways of the saloon. At first she's a little surprised that he took no time to rest after his journey, but then it occurs to her that Richard is not accustomed to leisure, and his later than expected arrival may have made him doubly aware of being punctually dressed for dinner.
She takes a moment to observe him from her vantage point on the staircase. Even turned away from her, the patch where his hair thins in back in plain view, accentuated by its shine under the lights of the Christmas tree as he gazes up at it, he cuts a dashing figure. Though more intriguing, perhaps, is the study in contrasts he presents: dressed impeccably for the formal occasion in white tie and tails, but one shoulder leant casually against the pillar, arms akimbo with his hands tucked into his pockets in that characteristic self-conscious stance.
Mary remains rooted to her step for a moment, half-admiring him, half-contemplating whether she ought to take advantage of this private moment to tell him her secret-or to turn and bolt back upstairs so she won't have a private moment with him-when he turns partway around to look up at her, his face belying no trace of surprise at her being there.
"Is this the new gown?" he asks. "The Lady Duff Gordon creation that caused such a stir among the Ladies Crawley?"
"Not my first choice," Mary replies, "but it'll do, I think."
Richard slips his hands out of his pockets as he crosses the hall to her, extending one up toward her as he stops at the foot of the stairs. For a moment she hesitates to let him assist her, bunching her dress' lace overlay in both satin-gloved fists, before uncurling the fingers of one hand and placing it in his. It's been so long since she felt the familiar largeness of his grasp, and the strength of it...She draws in a sharp breath, conscious as her breasts heave of their new fullness-and of their tenderness beneath her corset, which Anna laced with caution. Is it because Richard notices, too, that his Adam's apple rolls down his throat as he swallows?
"It seems an error that worked out in your favour," he says, his voice a little huskier than in the previous moment. "Is it similar to the original dress?"
"It was white." She waits for the flash of recognition in Richard's eyes before drawing her hand from his grasp and brushing past him into the saloon. "You've spotted the Christmas tree, I see?"
"I should be phoning Miss Fields to schedule an appointment with an optician if I'd missed it." Richard's longer stride carries him easily to her side, the tension dissipating; they stand in the archway together, and for a moment Mary can almost believe they are back in the folly. Before they committed their folly. "This is Downton tradition?"
"I think the sheer scale of the thing is more a Cora tradition."
They both turn at Aunt Rosamund's tones, crisp as a winter wind and the tap of Granny's cane on the marble floor as the pair enter the hall; behind them, Mary glimpses Thomas and Carson carrying off their fur coats.
"But what else is to be expected from a person whose country grows those unnaturally large trees?" Granny says.
Instinctively, Mary looks up to meet Richard's amused gaze; the twitching in his cheek reveals his struggle not to go so far as to laugh at Granny.
"Now, Mama," says Rosamund, "let's be fair in our criticism. Even Cora has never attempted to bring in a California Redwood."
"And anything smaller than this would be dwarfed by the space, surely?" Richard says. "Out of proportion?"
"At last," Mama drawls, coming down the stairs, "someone who shares my sensibilities."
Richard's grin falters as he inclines his head toward Granny, who tells him, "I wouldn't take that as a compliment."
"It's a splendid tree, Lady Grantham," he says, straightening as Mama joins their growing group. "I've never seen baubles quite like these."
"Thank you. My mother sent a number of them with me from America for my first Christmas here as a bride."
"The gaudy ones," Granny mutters.
"They've been in your family a long time, then?" Richard asks.
Mama nods, but Granny's deadpan undercuts the effusion. "I suppose to an American, twenty or thirty years are something of a legacy."
"Mother gave me a legacy of Christmas being the most magical season of the year," Mama replies, not dissuaded, and it is Granny who deflates, foiled.
Mary can only look on like a spectator at a tennis match; in light of recent events she can scarcely believe they are really going on as if it's Christmas as usual at Downton. Though a part of her wants to remark that if the plan is to convince Richard to marry her at once, it's perhaps best not to show him a normal Christmas.
Even if she really intended to voice the thought, Mama leaves her no opportunity, inquiring of their guest with interest, "Was your mother that way, Sir Richard?"
"No..." Richard draws out the word, his thumbs hooking over his trouser pockets again as he continues, "Christmases in the Carlisle household were simple affairs. My brother and I did convince her to let us have a small tree once, but her complaints about all the extra sweeping she had to do because of the dropped pine needles took some of the shine off the experience."
"Perhaps a tradition best left to those who employ housemaids," Granny says.
Mary winces a little at the dig, but Richard's hands slide out from his pockets as he takes up the discussion of his working-class roots.
"Indeed. We did make snowflakes and paper chains from leftover newspapers Dad brought home from the press."
"We used to make paper chains!" cries Sybil, fluttering down the stairs like a red and gold butterfly in a rose garden in her new Christmas frock, Edith following sedately behind in her envying green. "Nanny taught us to make them, and we hung them all around the nursery. Mary, do you remember when Edith accidentally spilled paste in your hair?"
"I was never under the impression that was an accident," Aunt Rosamund remarks.
"It clearly wasn't," Mary says. "Edith's response was, Oh dear, it will have to be cut out of your hair, and then you won't be able to play Rapunzel in the pantomime. Luckily I've learnt all your lines as well as my own."
"I'm the one blonde in the family," Edith retorts, in much the same manner as she pled her case before Mama. "Why should you get to play Rapunzel?"
"Because I don't have the hooked nose to play the witch."
Immediately Mary regrets picking at her sister, though not so much because she's managed to wound Edith again with a joke all these years later-it hardly compares to being called a slut-as because Richard no doubt finds their bickering petty and childish.
He only raises his brows at her above twinkling eyes and asks, "Am I to be entertained with a Crawley sisters' Christmas panto?"
"Aren't the everyday theatrics of this family entertainment enough for you, Sir Richard?" Granny asks.
"I do miss those days," says Mama with a wistful sigh. "That'll be one of the perks of having grandchildren."
Her gaze settles on Mary as she says this, her smile widening to reveal more of her teeth as Mary glares back.
"All the Christmas fun," Mama adds, with a sharp nod and a tone that makes fun sound as agreeable as a visit to the dentist.
"I am pleased to think that I have risen to such a position that I'll be able to provide this sort of Christmas magic for my children," Richard says, his eyes on Mary as well.
Mama's eyes widen subtly above that hollow smile, darting between her guest and her daughter as she clearly wonders whether Mary told Richard about the baby.
"Such sentiment," Mary says. "I expect it from Mama, but from you, Sir Richard? No need invoke the Spirit of Christmas Yet to Come. We have Edith to bring that touch of childishness to our otherwise grown up Christmas Present."
If there is one lesson Mary ought to have taken from her youth-apart from the ones about what may befall a girl who spends time alone in the company of a man-it's that Edith, always so perversely keen to meet other people's expectations, only becomes more insufferable when shamed for certain behaviours. The behaviour in this case being, of course, childishness.
"If memory serves, Sir Richard," Edith says as he slides beside her onto the bench seat of the sedan, Papa having climbed in ahead of him to occupy the space next to Mary, "you're not a religious man."
Papa snaps his head around from peering out the rear windscreen, concern tugging more heavily at his features as he regards Richard than the previous moment when he tried to make out the icy drive. "I do so hope my daughter is mistaken, Sir."
"This could hardly be a more uncomfortable drive if we'd taken the bus," Mary mutters.
Earlier, whilst waiting in the vestibule at Downton for Lynch and another chauffeur hired to transport them all in two cars for midnight mass at York Minster, Richard made a quip about going altogether in a bus, which Granny did not realise was a joke. Their current seating arrangement is Mama's doing, presumably made in the hope that the half-hour journey there and back would be enough time for Richard to change Papa's opinion him and obtain his blessing on the forthcoming nuptials. Intentionally or not, Papa foiled her plan; he told Sybil it was more appropriate that she ride in the other car with Mama, Granny, and Aunt Rosamund-no doubt to spare himself from more chit-chat about Gwen and working women and suffrage as much as to keep the impressionable sixteen-year-old from Sir Richard's poisonous influence-and bade Edith to ride with him, Mary, and Richard, instead. Because clearly Edith is full to overflowing with her own venom.
"Lady Edith's memory is reliable," Richard replies in a tone which, despite the darkness inside the car, tells Mary that if she could see his face, he would be meeting Papa's gaze in his usual unflinching way.
"But doesn't it feel hypocritical?" Edith persists. "Attending a service to celebrate the birth of our Lord whom you don't even believe exists?"
"On the contrary. Nothing makes me feel more as one with our countrymen than keeping a hollow ceremony for the sake of tradition."
Beside Mary, Papa snorts. "I daresay the pews will be filled tonight with people who sin on Saturday and repent on Sunday."
"Liars and slanderers, for example," Mary says, catching Edith's eye as it gleams in the headlamp of an approaching motor. "Purveyors of gossip."
"Which of us in this car could be guilty of those heinous sins?" Edith says.
Only as her sister's smirk slips away into shadow as the other car passes on the narrow road does it occur to Mary that Richard may think she referred to him. She looks across the car but can make out no more of him than a silhouetted profile, his head turned to peer out the window, though it is too fogged up to see anything out of, and even if it were not, the night beyond too black.
Of course, though Richard may not be guilty of the aforementioned transgressions, he is no more a saint than Edith. His fortune, in fact, is built on dubious ethics. On the one hand Mary does not care, not really, what secret unsavoury means enabled to climb up from where he began: in a little Morningside house that could spare neither the luxury of money nor time to have a Christmas tree-How can she, when he employed those very tactics to punish the insinuations the Sketch made about her?
But while she admires how shamelessly he stands against Papa's disapproval, she must also grudgingly acknowledge the truth of Edith's words. Richard claims to want to do things properly, yet he cannot suspend his own campaign for the right to coexist with men like Papa to focus on the uphill fight for her. Mary detests the game as much as he, but mustn't they first appear to have mastered it before they blatantly disregard the rules to please themselves?
Granted, she can hardly expect Richard to compete when he isn't playing with a full deck. If he holds the King of Hearts close to his chest, she hides the Ace in her sleeve. Or beneath her increasingly uncomfortable corset.
However, sandwiched between him and Papa in the predictably overcrowded cathedral, you would think Richard the most pious of them all. It does not elude her that any connection Papa feels with a supreme being is more likely to occur within the walls of Downton, the ancient House of Grantham established by the monarch ordained by God himself, than in any church. But it is Richard, not Papa, who sings every word of the Nativity hymns to the Lord of Lords and King of Kings in the voice of a devoted, if not remotely humble, subject.
Mary leans toward him, drawn by the bright timbre of his voice, as well as a sudden urge to comment on this previously hidden talent.
"Careful," she murmurs, and he leans in to hear, "you're rather destroying your reputation as a staunch atheist."
His reply is a purring breath against her cheek above the fur collar of her evening coat. "I think I only have that reputation with your sister. I wasn't baptised an atheist as an infant, after all. And how do you think poor Scots Presbyterians spend Christmas when they haven't festooned Sequoia trees to gawk at?"
Mary presses her lips together to stifle a laugh. "Am I meant to envision the Cratchit family?"
"With fewer crippled children and thicker brogues."
Abruptly Richard's twinkling gaze flicks to the front if the church, and he sits back against the pew; Mary notices Papa turned slightly to her, no doubt wearing the same disgruntled look as when he used to scold her and Sybil for whispering during the sermon, though she doesn't look; instead she continues to watch Richard out the corner of her eye as he falls into the current carol easily, even before he finishes turning to the correct page in the hymn book.
"Gladly, dear one, lady mine,
Help I cradle this child of thine;
God's own light on us both shall shine
In paradise,
As prays the mother Mary."
Mary has attended enough Christmas Eve masses in her life to know that the reading that preceded this carol was the account of Joseph who, having learnt his fiancée conceived a child by some means other than him, meant to put her aside quietly so as not to disgrace her. Because he loved her. Never has the gospel story struck her as having any bearing on her own circumstances, before these present ones. How did Mary feel to learn Joseph would marry her after all...because an angel of the Lord told him to? Presumably the Blessed Virgin didn't argue the point, as she did with Mama, which was why God chose the other Mary in the first place, above all other women, the Handmaid of the Lord.
But did she never doubt? Mary lifts her eyes to York Minster's west window. The winter sun long since set, but the candelabras illuminate the stained glass with an ethereal glow. Her gaze sweeps the collage of images wrought in hues of glass so deep they might well be cut from rubies, sapphires, and topaz, until they find the two panels devoted to the Nativity. Did the Mother of God never doubt Joseph's love? Did she wonder if he regretted his choice to do what he was ordered to do? Did Joseph resent not having a choice, truly?
No. Of course not. Mary gives her head a slight shake at the ludicrousness of her own musings. Because they were good people. Their stained glass images wear halos and even the ass and ox grin inanely at the saintliness.
Richard, on the other hand, as Mama so bluntly stated, is not a brave, good man. Not that Mary wants that. Brave and good was never recovered from the icy Atlantic, never mourned by her any deeper than the black dress she wore because other good, brave people expected it of her. Oh, Richard is good to her. He squared off against the Sketch's editor, though arguably that was as much to preserve his own reputation as hers. Even so Mary cannot imagine that he won't stand by her now, if she asks him to.
The problem being, she doesn't know if she can.
She's not a beggar. If she was, she would have begged him to stay that day, instead of hopping on the first train to London with his scoop. He would have stayed if he wanted to, and Lady Mary Crawley should nothave to beg a man to want her.
To love her.
If Richard doesn't love her, she would rather he not marry her.
God rest you merry, gentlemen,
Let nothing you dismay…
Too late for that, she thinks, her throat constricting around the words, choking her as she attempts to sing the hymn along with the congregation.
For Jesus Christ our Saviour
Was born upon this day,
To save us all from Satan's power
When we were gone astray:
O tidings of comfort and joy.
Even if it were not for the plodding tempo of the hymn, accompanied by the organ's doleful strains, Mary feels certain that this Christmas can hold nothing of comfort or joy for her. No blissful Nativity, certainly not a virgin mother and child. She hasgone astray, but she doesn't see how there can possibly be any real salvation. Only desperation and ruin.
She doesn't realise a few tears have slipped down her cheeks until Richard shifts beside her, then reaches across to give her the handkerchief drawn from his coat pocket-along with a note Edith presses into his hand.
Mary unfolds it as she dabs her eyes.
I told you the black dress would be appropriate.
The knock comes well after midnight.
Mary's eyes widen in the dark, and her fingers curl into a claw, clutching the blankets to her chest, even though she's lain wakeful since they returned from mass, fully expecting this. At the second rap, a little louder, she throws back the covers and sits up, ignoring nausea that comes from rising too quickly, and swings her legs over the side of the bed. By the time she staggers through her bedroom in the dark-catching her hip on the arm of one of the chairs in the sitting area and cursing Papa for not having electricity run upstairs-her heart beats so quickly that she is sure even under ordinary circumstances her stomach would be fluttering. The doorknob rattles in her trembling hand as she turns it.
A beam of shifting yellow light makes her squint as she leans her head around the door to peer into the darkened hall where Richard stands, fingers flexing around the candlestick gripped in his hand. Even as her own hip throbs from her run-in with the chair, the uneven breath she releases, making the flames judder at the ends of their wicks, is actually silent chuckle; what gothic concession creeping through the halls of Downton by candlelight must be for a man as modern as Richard claims to be.
"May I come in?" His voice, scarcely louder than a rasp, nevertheless seems too loud in the empty hall.
Mary opens the door wider, relieved to notice in the encroaching pool of light that Richard at least had the sense not to prowl about in nightclothes; he's still wearing his trousers and evening shirt, though his bowtie dangles from the unbuttoned collar, and he stands in his stocking feet in the red carpeted hall, making no move to enter.
"I suppose I have to let you," Mary replies, "so you won't be caught like a thief in the night."
"I've never had need to steal anything. And if you don't want me here, you won't have to ask me twice to go. And not just from your room."
His voice drops to a lower register with the last, and it rumbles through her like the ominous warning of a brewing storm.
There it is: his presence is no sure thing.
One word, and he will be out of her room, out of Downton...
Out of her life.
Mary steps backward, retreating further within, then sidles around the door to give herself room to catch her breath and him to enter. Or not.
"I invited you, didn't I?"
"In fact your mother did." The door clicking shut behind him underscores Richard's clipped words; the carved white mouldings frame his height and broad build, and not for the first time tonight Mary's neck prickles with awareness of having no escape. "You can understand how I'd be unsure whether she really offered it at your behest."
Her lips part, tongue pressed to the backs of her teeth to retort-And you can understand how I wouldn't be keen to invite you back, when you couldn't wait to leave-but the words stick in her throat as Richard's face shifts, the shadows cast by the candle receding as the hard angles soften. When he speaks again, she watches his mouth form the words gently, and remembers the sweetness of it upon her own.
"You haven't been yourself. Though I can guess why."
"Can you?"
He makes no immediate reply, instead turning to place the candlestick on the side table that stands between the settee and the chair she bruised herself on. She holds her breath, torn between hope and dread that he knows her secret already, and she will be spared having to tell him.
"I left you a lamb among wolves," he says, returning to her. His hand settles on her hip, the thumb somehow finding exactly the spot where she struck it, and she flinches away.
"Me? A lamb?"
Richard's his hand falls to his side. "Would a black sheep be more apt?"
Even under the circumstances, Mary cannot stop herself giving a little snort of laughter at that. It cuts the tension between them-somewhat-and emboldens Richard to touch her again, one hand on her shoulder as the other traces a curling tendril of hair back from her face.
"In any case, I said I'd fight for you, but you've been on your own with Edith at your throat."
Edith. Mary lets out her breath, her shoulder sagging beneath the weight of his hand. He hasn't guessed, then. Well. She wasn't sure she wanted him to know, anyway.
She shrugs. "I'm not sure I need you to. I've been fighting with Edith my whole life, after all." Being called a slut by Edith is new, though.
"She envies you." Richard's other hand settles on her shoulder now, the callused pads of both thumbs scuffing over her collarbones above the neckline of her nightdress. "You possess every social advantage she lacks."
"Edith's a much more accomplished pianist, I'm afraid."
"That's only an advantage in a world populated by Jane Austen heroes." Richard's thumb fits into the hollow of her throat, and Mary's pulse beats against it. "The only thing Edith has in her favour is being the daughter of an earl, so she's trying to cut you down to my level. Such as she imagines it."
His touch grows hard as he pronounces the words harshly, but then he draws in a long breath, and his fingers relax about her neck, sliding upward to cup her face in his palms as he goes on.
"She doesn't see that there is more to me than that. And much more to you. I do. I have. From the moment I first laid eyes on you. A girl in black."
She is still a girl in black-or was before she changed out of her evening gown-and Richard is still the man who wants to kiss her. He tilts his head and presses his mouth to hers without a trace of hesitance, nor does Mary resist the slightest bit, but kisses him back.
As his tongue sweeps past her lips, and she allows her own to glide alongside it, she can easily forget that he is only partly correct about what has made these weeks apart from him do much more difficult to bear than their separation before his abbreviated visit to Downton. She places her hands over his, pressing his palms against her face as if she can mould their bodies into one. And they twain shall be one flesh. But isn't that what she thought occurred when they made love before?
Her hands fly from Richard's and his leave her face. Before she can break the kiss, however, the heel of his palm fits into the small of her back, pressing her hips against his hard arousal; the other hand curls softly over her breast.
"Richard-"
Mary turns her head, but still he does not take the hint that she means to put a stop to this, content, apparently, to trail kisses along her jawline. His fine hair tickles her cheek as he nips at her neck, tasting the perfumed patches behind her ears and the valley between her collarbones.
"God, Mary...This is all I've thought about since I left here. How much I want you."
"Sometimes even Sir Richard Carlisle can't have what he wants."
His lips pause in the dip of her breastbone just above the ruffled neck of her gown, and his eyes appear green as the blue catches the golden candlelight when he lifts them to her.
"Excuse me?"
"If you wanted me, you shouldn't have left."
Richard's exhale is hot against her skin. Slowly, He straightens up, and Mary stands rigid in his grasp at her back and on her breast until he stands at full height and finally releases her.
"Frida was right, damn her."
A shiver, and Mary no longer feels so in control of herself. "Frida?"
He turns away, the veins standing out on the back of his pale hand as he raises it to smooth his hair.
"I told her she was a bloody fool when she suggested my departure may have left you in some doubt as to the honourableness of my intentions." He frowns deeper, but the side of his brow twitches upward as if a new idea flickered through his mind. "I told her she didn't know you as I do. That I gave you no reason to doubt me."
"Surely you can appreciate why I might-"
"No, Mary, I can't," he says, over her, though his volume does not increase. "I am a man of my word. When I say I will do something-for example, marry a woman-I will do it."
He advances on her as he speaks and Mary braces herself, digging her heels into the floor and squaring her shoulders, but he does not grip her shoulders as she expected him to do in his anger. In fact he does not seem angry at all. More...offended. Or hurt. A wounded animal. It seems so strange that a man who has no qualms about blackmail and bribery should place so much value on keeping his word.
Tough problem, Mary reflects yet again, is not so much with the words Richard said as the ones he didn't say.
She, of course, doesn't say this to him. Not least of all because before she has a chance, Richard distracts her with a question of his own.
"Does this mean Frida is right about the other thing, too? Are you..." He swallows. "...pregnant?"
"Is that what the London gossips are saying about me?" Mary hears herself say. "Because you of all people should know that not everything that goes around is true."
"I haven't heard any gossip about you."
"I find that difficult to believe. Don't you have spies for that sort of thing? Bloodhounds to sniff out scandal?"
"Where is it coming from?" Now he becomes physically imposing. "Not that little kitchen maid?"
"The new maid. Ethel. She came bearing tales from London." Mary doesn't know why she doesn't just tell him it was Edith-she certainly deserves to be punished for what she's done-or that Diana Manners spread it around.
"Well the only source Frida mentioned was female intuition."
"Oh, well is that all?" Mary rolls her eyes. "I find it hard to believe you would trust intuition over facts."
"The kind of intuition that follows the fact of hearing someone be sick in the lavatory at Fortnum and Mason. Now look me in the eye, Mary.
She does. And tells him, "Frida was mistaken."
With a nod, Richard strides to the door, opens it, and steps out into the hall. Just as it shuts behind him, Mary catches his low parting words. "She would not be the only one."