"Absorbing letter?" Sir Anthony asked cheerfully. It was the 22nd of December, a Monday, and the day after the Tenants' Tea. As a result, they had all had a slow start that morning, and Edith was still finishing her midmorning cup of tea as she read over Richard's latest missive.

She looked up from the window seat, her expression a little bewildered. "Well, yes, as it happens. From Richard. My sister Mary is - is expecting a baby."

"Well, what wonderful news!" He smiled broadly and encouragingly. "Isn't it?"

"Y-yes…" Edith frowned down at the letter. "She's five months' gone, already, though." She sighed a little humorously. "Only Mary could get halfway through a pregnancy without telling one of her closest relations about it."

"Has Richard said why?"

"It sounds as if they're only telling me now because they won't be coming to Downton for Christmas. Listen: Mary and I shall stay in London for Christmas, as the baby is making Mary feel rather delicate." She shrugged, folded up the letter and tucked it away in her cardigan pocket.

"Well, anyway, a niece or nephew for you." More quietly, with a shy duck of his head, he added, "And we both know already how wonderful you are with children."

"Yes." Edith gave him a proper smile this time. "I'm… rather pleased, actually. I don't… feel as sad about it as I would have done, this time last year. Now… the thought of a new little one in the family is… very nice."

"I'm glad." Sir Anthony's voice was warm and sincere. "Very glad indeed. Four more months…" He ticked them off on his fingers. "That'll be an April baby, and time enough for them to get settled before you visit in the summer. Do congratulate your sister on her splendid sense of timing."

Edith rolled her eyes. "Oh, if there were ever a woman to be calculating about this sort of thing, it's my darling sister." Standing, she lifted a sheaf of papers that rested on her desk. "Now, I wanted to talk to you about the Fete. I think I have a date."

"When are you thinking?"

"The 4th of August, I think. Does that sound all right?"

"The 4th of August, 1914," Sir Anthony nodded, smiling. "It'll go down in history, my dear. The date of the best garden party Locksley's ever seen."


"Happy Christmas, Mrs C.!" grinned Pip, kissing her cheek and setting an untidily wrapped package on the table next to her plate. Christmas Day had dawned deliciously cold and bright; Edith had been up with the larks for a walk around the gardens and was consequently already on her third cup of tea and second helping of bacon and eggs.

"Happy Christmas, my darling," she smiled. "What's all this?"

"Present," he shrugged bashfully, sliding into his seat at the table.

"From you, or from you and your Papa?"

"Just from me." Pip blushed. "I… I made it. Well, Mr Stewart helped me a bit."

"Did he?" Edith's fingers started to pull at the wrappings. "Remind me to tha- oh, Pip. Darling, it's beautiful." What sat before her, nestled in its wrappings was a little lidded jewellery box of oak. Burned into the lid, by a hesitant hand trying desperately to mimic the Art Nouveau style, was a sinuous cat - modelled, Edith realised, after her own Buttons.

Pip shrugged, fiddling with the collar of his shirt. "I fudged the joins a bit. And don't look too closely at the border at the bottom - I slipped with the wire when I was - "

Edith hugged him tightly, cutting off his list of errors. "I don't care," she whispered. "You made it for me, and if it fell apart in an hour, I would still treasure it more than anything else I might ever own, just for that."

When she drew back, Pip cocked his head to one side, regarding her quizzically, and Edith found that her eyes were damp. "No need to turn into a watering can over it!" he rolled his eyes. "Honestly - girls!"

Edith chuckled wetly and fumbled in her pocket for a handkerchief. "That's quite enough of your cheek, my lad, Christmas morning or not."

"What's all this?" Sir Anthony asked at the door. Edith looked up, wiping away the last tear, and said, "Master Pip has just given me his present, that's all."

"And then Mrs C. started crying!" Pip shook his head at the incomprehensibility of the gentler sex.

"Ah." Sir Anthony slung his arm around his son's shoulders. "In my experience, old thing, ladies only tend to cry if they are either incandescently furious or incandescently happy." Grinning at Edith, he asked, "Well, which is it, Mrs Crawley?"

"Happy, of course. Pip - yours and your father's gifts are on my desk. Perhaps you'd run and fetch them for me."

"Right-o, Mrs C."

"Which just gives me time to give you your present," Sir Anthony smiled, reaching into the breast pocket of his suit jacket and drawing out a small box. "Rather appropriate, now I've seen Pip's." Handing it over, he added, "Of course, Mrs Dale and Mrs Cox have sorted out the usual material for a dress or a skirt or… oh, whatever you do with it normally, but… I wanted to get you a little something extra - just as a thank you, really, for how tremendous you've been, taking on all this additional work since Mrs Dale's heart attack and - " Apparently realising that he was babbling, he finished, rather weakly, with, "Well, you'll see, anyway."

"Oh?" Carefully, Edith slid the lid off the little box.

A small circular brooch lay there, made up almost entirely of tiny delicate silver curlicues, a single blue-green stone set into the bottom right of it, like a bud amongst vines. "Sir…"

"I thought it would suit," he interrupted softly. "Terribly small, and simple and understated… you'd never notice it, in the normal way of things. Then…" (he reached out and tilted the box so that the stone caught the morning light, sparking off lovely multicoloured depths) "…all of a sudden, perfectly unexpectedly, it becomes quite, quite exquisite." His warm thumb brushed her bare wrist briefly, fondly and then let go. "And afterwards, of course, it never seems small or simple to you ever again."

The excitable clattering of Pip's feet in the passage as he returned could be heard. Edith gave him a quiet, grateful smile. "It's beautiful. I… I love it." The door opened behind her and she turned, with not a little relief, to relieve Pip of his burdens, two soft packages wrapped with rather more skill than his to her had been. "Now… you both have the same because I didn't want either of you to be jealous," she said, rather primly, making Anthony hide a smile behind his hand. "And - and - they may not quite fit perfectly, I - I was guessing a lot of the time and I - "

"Let us at least open them before you start making excuses for them, hmm?" Anthony pulled out a pile of soft blue-green knitting and shook it out, revealing a thick woollen pullover. "My dear…" He looked and shook his head at her in wonder. "I don't think a woman has ever made anything for me before…"

"You're telling me that Mrs Dale didn't knit you a hat or booties or a little jumper when you were a baby?"

"Well, perhaps she did. But this is the first thing I can remember." He shrugged off his jacket and pulled it over his head. "Perfect," he smiled, although Edith could see that the arms were a touch too long, and the torso a touch too wide.

Pip was pulling his on too, his hair appearing ruffled as his head poked through the neck. "Did Mrs Dale knit me things when I was a baby?" he wondered. "Thanks, Mrs C.!"

"She did," Sir Anthony smiled. And then, an expression of indescribable sadness crossing his face, he added, "And so did your Mama, too. For months while she was having you, all we heard from dawn till dusk was the click of her knitting needles." He swallowed. "And it was just the same when she was carrying your sister."

"She must have been a very clever woman indeed," Edith put in softly.

"She was," Sir Anthony nodded, squeezing Pip's shoulder warmly. "She was indeed." And then he smiled.


"Mama, hello." Once again that year, Edith had been invited to spend Christmas at Downton. Matthew had sent the car for her, and by the time Edith slipped into the library, it was half past eleven o'clock and most of the Earl and Countess's guests were already gathered.

Cora turned and Edith saw that she was holding baby George in her arms. "Hello, my darling." Cora grinned. "Just getting in some practise before Mary's little one arrives."

Edith leant in and kissed her cheek. "How is she?"

"Just a little tired. That's quite normal, I promise." Cora bounced George very gently in her arms, smiling down at him. "I think she and Richard just wanted a quiet Christmas together - before all the chaos begins!"

A pair of warm arms wrapped around Edith from behind, and Sybil's bright laugh sounded in her ear. "Hello, you! Gosh, it seems like years since we saw you!"

Edith turned to accept Sybil's embrace. "Well, if only you wrote more often!" she laughed. "Hello, Tom."

"How are you, Edith?" he grinned.

"Very well. I read your column last week - it was very good."

Sybil squeezed her husband's hand proudly. "They always are, darling."


"I think," Isobel said to Edith after lunch, "that we should invite Sir Anthony and Phillip for the ball on New Year's Eve. What do you think? Or have they already made arrangements?"

"I… don't think so," Edith replied. "I could ask, if you'd like."

Isobel squeezed her hand. "Yes, do. Pip's old enough now to not disgrace himself amongst adults, isn't he? It would be a nice treat for him. And the Gervases will be here, and the Montgomeries. Veronica and Flora, too."

"Oh, but Lady Strallan will be here, then, too," Edith recalled. "She was staying with friends in London for Christmas, but she'll be here for New Year."

"Then she should come too." Isobel sighed. "I'm only sorry Mr Pelham has decided to go and stay with his mother for Christmas. He'll miss everything."

Edith swallowed away a small lump in her throat. "Well, I'm sure his mother will be very glad to have him."

"Yes," Isobel mused. "We're only sorry that you two have fallen out so badly. When I think about how sweet you were together last Christmas - "

"Well, I didn't like him at all," Sybil intervened staunchly, squeezing Edith's other hand tightly. "And besides, I think there's a man a hundred times' better just around the corner for our darling Edith!"

Isobel grinned excitedly. "Oh, my dear, is it true? Do tell!"

Edith blushed, caught between them both. "Oh, Sybil's just teasing, Isobel. There's nothing like that going on. Not with anyone."

"Yes, cousin Isobel," Sybil smiled. "Just teasing." Her grin became somewhat mischievous as her gaze dropped to Edith's blouse. "Lovely brooch, Edith darling - Christmas present?"


AN: Edith's brooch isn't based on a specific real-world example, but is a combination of several designs I found while I was researching this chapter. But because I am a knitter and seamstress myself, I *do* know precisely what wool I was imagining for Anthony and Pip's jumpers; if you want to check it out, it's Quince and Co.'s Lark yarn, in the 'Peacock' shade. It's not at all historically accurate, but it *is* deliciously soft and lovely to knit with.