Author's Note: "Whatever is sought for can be caught, you know, whatever is neglected slips away." ― Sophocles, Oedipus Rex

Disclaimer: I'm not even a custodian, my dears, let alone an owner. These characters and their settings are the work of others. I hope I do not offend with my homage.

"She'll be nothing but an old man's drudge," Mama said, from just the other side of the privet hedge.

Violet's heart started to pound. Who was Mama talking to?

"I think you're exaggerating," another woman's voice said. "It's a good match for her."

And whom were they talking about?

"I hardly consider it a good match for young girl to be forced to become what amounts to a nurse to an old m—"

"You speak as if she had a dowry. Better to be a nurse to an old man than to be an old maid. It's an old family. And the man himself is not so old he can't still get children on her," the older woman pointed out.

Violet fled through the shrubbery. She did NOT want to know whom the ladies were discussing.

Arriving out of breath back in the nursery, she found Nanny. The Irish girl cocked a knowing eye at her panting, no-longer-escaped charge. "Come and have some tea now, Miss Violet. Sweet tea is just the thing for frayed nerves."

As they settled themselves into the third class railway carriage, Tom said, "How could he do it? How could he leave her at the altar like that?"

Sybil looked troubled, and after a few moments had passed with no reply from her, Tom began to fear he might be in for a scolding for discussing the matter. Fine. He looked down at his hands, folded in his lap. Edith was her sister. Probably she didn't want to discuss it.

But she did want to. Sort of. Her husky voice was very quiet as she pointed out, "I left you at the Swan Inn. How could I have done that?"

For the first time, she was considering just how devastated he must have been on the night of their aborted elopement. That is, she had thought she had considered it, but now, she imagined him weeping as she'd seen Edith weep over Sir Anthony. Sybil had been devastated herself, but it had been her choice. Tom had had no more choice than Edith had.

But Tom replied, "You told me you'd be true to me, and that you'd given me your heart, not that you 'couldn't let me throw my life away.'"

"But Papa told you he 'wouldn't let me throw my life away…' and I tried to stop you from telling them. I said in the drawing room that I didn't think it was such a good idea, that we mustn't upset Granny… but you were strong, you wouldn't let me back down."

He smiled. "You wouldn't let yourself back down. I didn't stop you. I couldn't have. I myself had no way to back out; I had no other explanation for having walked into the drawing room. Once I walked in, I knew I was finished at Downton, but you could still have rejected me."

"No," Sybil contradicted him lovingly, "I couldn't possibly have rejected you. Not then; not ever."

"We had a lot of tests before we made it to the altar, my darlin'," Tom reminisced ruefully. "I thought at the time they were hardships, but perhaps they were a necessary process of annealing to make sure our love would be strong enough to hold us together…" Tom took his wife's hand in his. "Thank you," he said, "for betting on me."

"Thank you," she replied, giving his hand a gentle squeeze, "for never giving up."

Despite the more or less disastrous end of his previous stay at Grandda's farm, when Tom was at last on the train this year, he felt only an eager anticipation, which for some mysterious reason was completely unalloyed with apprehension of any description. He had no explanation. He actually found it quite difficult to be at the farm. He did not really belong there. He frequently found himself in the wrong place, at the wrong time, and doing the wrong thing. Even the youngest of his cousins were sometimes called upon to set him right. He had to rise earlier (not that he was by any means a slug-a-bed at home in Dublin, not at all!), work harder, mind himself better (not to speak of minding Grandda), and pay close attention nearly constantly to everything and everyone lest he inadvertently commit something unpardonable, but… he wanted to be there. Not permanently, he knew he would want to go home in the autumn and return to school, but for now… he wanted to be with the old man. But being allowed to visit the farm was not an unmixed blessing. It was decidedly mixed.

'I am drenched in the blood of the lamb,' Tom thought. It was not a religious thought, but a practical and literal one, except that the animal being butchered was not a lamb but a sheep.

"Amadán," Grandda remarked sourly, contemplating the spectacle of his gore-soaked 'city' grandchild. "No one will ever accuse you of being a country boy, will they? Is that where I told you to stand? Do you think we can make drisheen out of you, fool?"

"Sorry, Grandda," Tom said breathlessly. He tasted blood as he spoke. It covered his hair, his face, his clothing. It was as warm as bathwater, as thick as syrup. And salty.

"A fat lot of good your sorry will do when that dries. Get back to the house, get out of those clothes, and put them to soak. Do you know how to do that, or do you need a wet nurse to go with you?"

"I—" The blood that had risen to his cheeks was covered by the sanguine fluid that now coated those flushed cheeks.

"I'll go with him," Muirne offered.

"No, you won't. We're not done here! Siobhán, take the useless idiot back to the house, find him some clothes, and help him put the clothes he's wearing to soak. And I do NOT want sheep's blood all over the house!"

The girl looked over at her grandfather in surprise. "A Dhaideó?"

"Has Tom infected you with his stupidity? Théann tú leis abhaile! Move!"

Siobhán abandoned her current task to the other girls, and came over to her crimson-saturated cousin. He looked like a character out of a tale of horror as he attempted to wipe blood out of his eyes with equally bloody hands.

"Come on, Tom," she urged him, low-voiced.

Tom looked regretfully at his grandfather for a moment longer, then nodded, and followed his cousin obediently back to the house. Unfortunately, wanting to be somewhere didn't necessarily mean you belonged there.