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January 1920

Bates studied Anna across the table, ostensibly looking at her hat, but really taking in every detail of her face. She was thinner, a bit pale, but her eyes were bright as she waited expectantly for his approval. "I like the hat. Just ridiculous enough, I think. Was it hard to find one with that many feathers?"

Anna smiled. "I may have overdone it a bit."

"Did you make that yourself?" At her nod, he chuckled. "What a clever wife I have. With such dexterous fingers." He remembered those fingers on his body, their gentle touches and then her tight grasp as her need overtook her, and he felt a heat and a stirring inside him. One night with her was not enough. Would never be enough.

Her blush across the table said she understood what he was thinking, and that her thoughts may have been running down similar paths.

"I think about you every night, Anna. Your hair in the firelight, the taste of your skin …" The words came from him in a rush. Despite the lack of privacy, he needed her to know how much he longed for her, ached for her.

She swallowed. "Me, too. The—the way you touched me … Sometimes it's as if I can practically feel your hands …"

He licked his lips. In the real world, he may have been sitting, unwashed and unshaven, in a scratchy dirty prison uniform in the midst of a drafty visitors' room … but in his mind's eye he was back in that bedroom at Downton, sliding between soft sheets with her in his arms, the room filled with the glow of a hundred candles. Bates couldn't help staring at her soft, beautiful mouth and thinking of what it felt like to kiss her, what it had felt like to feel those lips …

Anna gave a soft moan, a breathy, needy little sound that went straight to the pit of his stomach and kindled the warmth there to a flame.

"God, you're so beautiful. I wish I could—" He caught himself, the ache of his arousal waking him up to where they really were.

Across the table, Anna looked down at her hands, twisting them together.

"I'm sorry," he said. "I didn't mean to—"

"No. I didn't, either. It—it makes it worse, I think, talking like this, remembering and not being able to—"

Not being able to touch. Never being able to touch. Maybe never again in all his long life ahead. The thought was like cold water dousing him, cooling the fever within him very effectively.

Anna straightened in her seat, her voice taking on more vigor and decision. "I think—Mr. Bates, I think we just can't talk about that. Not here."

"You are right, as you so often are, Mrs. Bates." He looked at her fondly, proud of her ability to pick herself up and be strong. "Now … what else has happened at Downton this week?"

Grateful for the change in topic, Anna moved on to a tale of what the dairyman had said to Mrs. Patmore, and the moment passed.