The Bygone Days

by phantomwriter05

In the Blitz of 1941 - Two star-crossed couples are reunited 20 years after their tragic deaths. Now, amidst a world afire with War they must navigate two decades of change, remarriages, and 20 years of dark secrets. Meanwhile, a new father desperately attempts to save a once heroic son who seeks death in battle, haunted by his failures and losses during the Spanish Civil War.

8. Yesterday - Part I

There was a long and deathly heavy silence that hung in the air between Mary and Matthew. The witless and shocked figure that stood in the study of his childhood home wanted to go after his boy, but he could not find the strength. His words, angry and disappointed, were like a warped ring of metal stricken in his heart. Terrible and horrifying images of the theater of the mind flashed like a gruesome and perilous picture show of everything he feared in life.

He could not shake the dark musings that had come prophetically to him in this very room, twenty-eight years past, when Mary had rejected this place, his home - him. A memory, a warning, in his very blood, of the dark purpose and inescapable sickness that was pervasive in the Grantham Line of Downton Abbey. Every Poldark and Crawley knew it to be true. And he had seen it, with his own eyes, more than once over the years, when it came over Mary.

Lavinia's death, the money, their new scheme – then – for the estate. It had always been there, the entire time, waiting for the right moment to strike, to overtake her. He saw now, in the end, that it had been him, Matthew himself, that had been the deterrent all along. As long as he had been there, as long as she had his love to ground her, Mary could always come back from the brink. But he hadn't been there, not for twenty long years. And when tragedy, terrible and unavoidable, befell the woman he loved but for one more time, she had lost her reason and want to live, to fight what she thought was her nature. His beloved had surrendered herself entirely to the dark sickness within her. And where sickness thrived …

Evil followed.

It was then that he found his gaze turned to Mary, who had sensed it. Against her very will she looked up to meet it. With all his heart he did not want to believe what he had just heard. It was impossible. But when he met his wife's gaze, he knew the truth. Mary was a terrible liar to those she loved most. When it came to other people, strangers or mutual acquaintances, there was no one better than Lady Mary Crawley. But when it came to her family, she found that the truth was easier to come by. Then, she could pride herself on her honesty, hold it over their heads.

That was why, Matthew suspected, that Mary could always fool the highly trained George "The Comet" Crawley, even when his legendary guard was up. The betrayal was so easy, the way she used against him all he told her about himself was because there was no lie in it. Mary genuinely and absolutely loved her children, more than anything or anyone. All the things Matthew did not know of her sitting on George's knee by the fire, spooning tightly in bed with him at a secret inn when the young captain was on fumes and at the end of his rope in this war … it was not an act – her love for their son was deathless.

Which, somehow, made it more insidious.

His wife had both plotted against George, while, at the same time, devoting herself to him entirely. It was a dark duality that had defined her relationship with their son in Matthew's absence. The unhealthy, greedy, obsessive love wedded to jealousy and envy. It became a known proverb in the House of Grantham that Mary had loved George so much … that she hated him. And thus, these confusing and – at times – sickened clashes in the last fourteen years between Mary and George had broken the land and doomed the very future that Matthew had built for them.

But what was hardest for the man standing in his ancestral study was to see the genuine devastation and sorrow in Mary. He had no personal history with any calamity of biting tyranny that his wife had unleashed upon the County. They were all words and actions divorced of reason, of belief. But the most heartbreaking of detail he saw, beyond the truth of the reality, was that Matthew knew that Mary had meant it when she said that she had changed. For whatever it was, whatever reason she had done what she did, she would never hurt George ever again.

"Mary …" He finally said.

"Leave it, Matthew." His wife rebuked him in clear brokenhearted distress.

"No, I will not!" He was suddenly roused to wrath by her petulant dismissal.

The beautiful woman in long silk robe, sleek and elegant, suddenly looked defensive. "What is there left to say?" She asked, anger growing in her. The words rang deep inside him like a bell chime to start a boxing round.

"Apparently, a lot!" He raised his voice.

"Oh …!" Mary shook her head and turned away again, covering her face as Matthew pursued her.

"More than anyone was willing to tell me!" He shouted; his face contorted in anger. Something dark, keeping with the mood, turned inside him in a sudden realization. "How long, Mary?" He asked in damning accusation.

"Matthew!" Mary retorted in protest behind her hands.

"How long would you have kept it from me?!" He pushed harder.

"I don't know …"

"How long would you have kept me in the dark?!"

"I don't know!" Mary shouted back. "I didn't think …" she shook her head.

"What? That I wouldn't find out?!"

"No!"

"That I wasn't clever enough to realize something was amiss?!"

"I didn't …" She finally revealed her face from behind her hands to expose a puffy and tear washed pallid countenance. "I didn't know how you would react!" She shook with a look of cornered anxiety.

"To what you've done? Or that you've been lying to me for six months?!" He raged.

"You just got back! I didn't know how to tell you, or what would happen if you found out! If …" She looked lost, talking about realms and ideas that seemed far above her head of the heavens and cosmos. "If the stress of knowing would affect you somehow …" She pieced out, her amber eyes distant, grasping at loose threads in her mind of the faded phantoms of a subconscious instinct that controlled actions.

"Its effects are pretty damn well working now!" He growled.

"I didn't know how fragile all of this, you, were at the time!" She was growing frustrated in her inability to grasp her words.

"You must think me very feeble, indeed, to keep something like this from me!" He shouted.

"I didn't want to lose you!" Mary yelled in a sudden and uncharacteristic rage of helpless sorrow that drained the very life from her in guilt. "Is that what you want to hear, Matthew?!" She threw her fist down to pound the air at her side in her fury and frustration. "I just got you back, and I just wanted to cherish it, cherish you!" a sob cracked her voice. "George had finally come back to … George and I were finally in a good place, Sybbie is finally living the life she always wanted, and I had you back!" She screamed in tears. "It was years ago and … and I just wanted five more minutes in paradise, and I'm sorry!" She turned away again, covering her face, as her body shook in sobs that she pridefully refused to let out.

The anger, the frustration, and the heartache, overwhelmed Matthew in a moment of helplessness. For he wanted, with all his heart, to hate her, to scream at her, to shake her with all his might. It was his right to do so, he was the wronged party. She had lied to him for months, kept things from him. They all - Mary, Tom, and Edith - made him feel like he was going crazy. Worse of all, she had made him look like a fool and a failure in front of their son. How stupid, insensitive, and entitled he had sounded, lecturing George of all the things he did not know. And it was Mary's fault. Yet, he wanted to ram his head against a wall … fore he could not muster up any of those emotions, those justified feelings in sight of her tears.

His love for Mary was too strong.

Matthew Crawley thought he'd die from a heart attack as the anger rose and fell inside him, breaking like an ocean surge against the seawalls about the unassailable fortress of their love. His fist shook and his breath came out in sputters. Slowly, he paced over to the desk and leaned over it, balancing his entire body weight on his knuckles. The fire in his gut, in his heart, and in his soul was regurgitated in a loud and booming thud as he punched both of his championship fists into the oaken surface of the desk. Mary flinched at the loud and violent noise, but did not look back, knowing on instinct what it was.

"I had a right to know …"

In the aftermath, there remained a heavy silence, as the initial argument over one topic was soon overshadowed by the lingering questions and seeming murky forest of unanswered details of all that had been spoken of. Soon, it was no longer an elephant in the room, but a large hairy mammoth that was trumpeting an oncoming charge that would trample everything in their lives. They both heard it, but neither wanted to address it, knowing that these last few wisps of time would be all they'd have left of a perfect forever found that very evening upon their reunion. Mary nor Matthew seemed to have the courage to confront the tremors of an oncoming charge. But finally, the noise in his heart and the roving pictures of the worst imaginings trumped his fingernail grip upon their happily ever after.

"Why, Mary? Why?!" He squeezed his eyes shut, nodding his head with every syllable as he leaned over the desk.

"What do you want me to say, Matthew?" Mary responded, coldly, emotionlessly, bereft of the humanity that was stolen from her in the knowledge that she had lost everything once more.

"Violet … Carson?" He turned back to look at the beautiful phantasm by the window, staring out at the frosted multi-colored night through the stained-glass windowpanes. "Why did you do it? Why would you help them?" He shook his head.

Something cracked in Mary's eyes and the cold sternness fell away, revealing a sudden vulnerability. "They weren't supposed to hurt them." She replied distantly. "They promised they wouldn't hurt them." She shook her head. It was then that Matthew saw a familiar look of betrayal cross his wife's face as it had their son.

"And George? Was he not to be hurt either?!" Matthew asked in a sudden wrath.

"They were supposed to capture him … they said that they'd send a special team of soldiers into the village and grab George. The rest of the Army was a last resort …" Mary lowered her head. "George wasn't going to be hurt; he was just supposed to be put in prison." She shook his head.

"In prison?!" Matthew snapped in shock.

"He picked a fight with the Royal Family, Matthew!" Mary snapped back. "He stole Queen Victoria's prized necklace! He entered the palace in the night and broke into the Treasure Room and stole an Indian Diamond! He killed two guards on his way out! They wanted to kill him, Matthew! They wanted to hunt down our son and kill him! I thought that if I helped them bring him in, I would be saving his life!" She said angrily.

"What-happened?!" Her husband was pointed with every word.

"The blasted vulgars!" She snapped, sounding every bit the effete elitist snob, the world thought her. "When the authorities came to arrest him, they rallied up with their hunting shotguns and pitchforks to drive away the Hussars! I told Papa not too, but they gave him no choice! He mustered the County Regiment and Local Militia to defend George. The King and Prince of Wales saw it as a rebellion against their authority. They were going to send in the Army if I didn't do something, Matthew!" The ghost of the helpless frustration of those days was ever upon her as the world she thought she knew spiraled all about her.

"But they did anyway! And you helped them!"

"I … I didn't know!" She said helplessly, honesty in every word when confronted by the love of her life. "They wanted our men's defensive positions, they wanted to know where George was hiding. They said they only wanted to know so their special team of soldiers could infiltrate the village unseen. Granny even agreed to turn him over when they came." She shook her head.

"Violet was in on this?!"

"It was Granny's idea!" Mary was suddenly defensive, aggressively so in the atmosphere under George Crawley, Earl of Grantham, in which Lady Violet Crawley was the heel of history. "And I agreed with her." She nodded. "George was our future! The family's future! It was better that he spends a few years in an Australian prison in Perth than butchered due to his damned fool rebel pride!" She shouted.

"But that's not what happened, Mary!"

"I don't know what happened!" She admitted in angry frustration, wheeling back to the window. "I don't know why it went wrong! I don't know why they murdered Granny! I don't know why they burned the village! Or massacred the people in it! I don't know why they sacked Downton! I don't know, Matthew!" She listed off in a tormented anxiety of questions that had haunted her for twelve long years.

"Yes, you do!" He whirled about. "Stop lying!" He shouted.

"I'm not lying to you!"

"No, not to me! To yourself!" He pointed in accusation. "You damn well know what they wanted to do, what they were going to do! Our men's defensive positions, where George was hiding, a military force in disguise? You are not stupid, Mary!" He shouted. "They wanted him dead! You knew that! They came in the night, got past the guard, and murdered Violet and tried to murder George! Why?!" He asked.

"Because, they wanted the Estate!" Mary shouted over Matthew. "They wanted Sybbie, and they wanted Downton Abbey!" She finally admitted. "And I didn't realize it till it was too late!" The gutted voice pained Matthew to his very core. "I'm a monarchist, Matthew, so was Papa, you know that. We have been all our lives. I wanted to believe them … I don't care what George says about me and my damned intentions, I loved him as much then as I do now, and I just wanted to protect him!" She trailed off as guilt - so painful it looked as if she got punched in the gut – overwhelmed the stoic beauty who leaned against the windowsill. "Instead I nearly got him killed with everyone else we left behind when we went to London." She looked out the window, cradling her stomach as if she was going to be sick.

George Crawley, 38th Lord of Downton, Last Heir to the Royal House of York and the Earl of Grantham, was – at the time of 1928 – an opportunity disguised as a problem. The boy hero, intrepid explorer, and valiant adventurer had made a nuisance of himself. Hated and feared throughout the aristocracy, his antics in the Colonies - especially in Africa - had caught the unwanted attention and wrath of the Imperial House. Prince Edward had clashed with George several times before, in previous years. But it all came to ahead when his African tour overlapped with one of the youth's many adventures. The inciting incident came at the price of saving the prince's life and that of his party – in which Bertie and Edith were ranking members.

Ambushed and embattled in a siege of their encampment, those not killed were captured by the attacking tribesmen. The survivors of the battle, both of the Prince's entourage and many of George's companions, were led to a hidden kingdom deep in Darkest Africa as slaves. There, the prince's heart was suddenly and enthrallingly given to an ancient and immortal sorceress of whose real name is known to few, but within the borders of her own realm she was simply called "She-Who-Must-Be-Obeyed". In this tormented courtship of despairing love, the Royal Heir of a vast empire of which the sun could not set upon was held in mockery for his devotion to the foulest of ancient beauties who enslaved him.

But not all that befell in those dark months was without hope. Fore, escaping defeat and eluding capture – qualities of the boy often known and frustrating to his foes - young George had ranged across the fearsome and unforgiving African plains, tracking the captives. And it was after several side adventures and the gaining of mysterious tribal allies after passing their test of manhood that the tribe's chief hunters – a sacred and vaulted position - had led the young ranger to the secret kingdom's very doors. Avoiding the great gates - carved and gilded with ancient Egyptian symbols – the boy instead followed the rumor of a secret way into the mountain. However, his search found a single Sphynx - carved of jade stone with glimmering and piercing ruby eyes - that lay perched in sentry of the secret door. George was taken aback when it spoke to him, beckoning him forward to know his business – calling him 'Elvellon'. Confidently, after months of searching, the boy boldly spoke of his intentions. Yet, instead of sounding the alarm, the stone wonder offered a riddle in wager of helping him enter secretly the perilous realm. And of its question was simply this: What is the Riddle of Steel?

But of the answer that George Crawley gave, known only to the noblest of warriors of ages undreamed, and The Knights of King Arthur's table of old – it does not come into this tale.

However, though answered wisely, still a warning from the stone beast gave the boy pause as he tightened his sword belt and folded the back of his jacket collar up. At the very steps the sphynx warned the young 'Dunedain' that if he entered the mountain, if he chose to rescue his enslaved companions and loved ones, he would awaken a deep and reckless hatred that would cost the House of his forefathers and those he loved dearly. But before the young hero could ask more, the sleek and ancient carving of half-animal and half-great beauty crumbled before the boy's very eyes, leaving only twin rubies in a pile of ash from stone. Crouching and sifting through the dust, taking the rubies in hand, the boy looked down at the dark passage of secret steps.

In that moment, George Crawley could've turned about and eventually returned home. The life of his Aunt and Uncle sacrificed for a future in which the truth of a devastating secret would die with Lady Edith. And though mourned bitterly, a greater happiness in ignorance of a girl's true paternity could've been found in the shared future of two star-crossed lovers. All it would take was a compromise with wickedness and evil, of turning his back on the lives of those in cruel thralldom in favor of his own desires and happiness with the girl he loved all his life. However, the choice he made in that split-second would've not been so easy and automatic if he knew all the consequences that awaited. But still a young boy pocketed the twin rubies in his jacket and drew his rune etched sword from its shabby brown leather scabbard with a ring of steel as he descended the dark passage.

Yet, it is said that though hard as a decision as it might have been in retrospect of what awaited in the years to come, George Crawley, in his prime as in his youth, would not have made a different choice. Though much death, suffering, and heartache would come from his noble choice, he knew that no matter how burdened and sorrowed his plight had been because of it, saving those poor souls that night was and would remain the right thing to do. For if there was one thing that George Crawley and his future heirs would come to know in the long defeat … seldom was heroism in life an easy or rewarding action.

And thus, born in the very hour that the youth entered the heart of the mountain, a doom fell upon the House of Grantham that would beset and aggrieve them greatly with woe and despair. For it was, in the aftermath of a victorious 'Trial by Combat' between George and the Queen's champion, that the remaining company hasted to escape from her subterranean kingdom. However, in their liberation, George took no time to break the sorceress's spell upon the Prince. Both boy and Bertie's chiefest of worry at the time was for the safety of Lady Edith, who was deeply under the sorceress's sway. Thus - from spell craft's long and unbroken exposure upon the future King-Emperor - a vicious and terrible hatred of George Crawley entered his very heart and soul. Ever afterward did the Prince carry a lingering wound from the damage of a despairing and obsessive love for an immortal priestess of Ancient Egypt. And rather than be thankful for freeing him from her cruel captivity, the Prince contrived many attempts to betray his companions in the wild in order to return to the beautiful and ancient queen's thralldom.

It was a long and dangerous journey back to civilization that the party of survivors endured across Darkest Africa's jungled outskirts to its perilous arid plains. But in that time, the madness of obsession passed from the Prince's mind … yet the anger of the abyss that replaced an unhealthy love never would. And when they all got back to the port to return home to England, The Prince of Wales interrupted a heartfelt moment of love between Edith and George to vow a never-ending war of revenge upon the very boy who saved his life. Fore there was no thanks for parting the man from the woman who mocked the future King-Emperor's devotion by chaining him to her throne and treating him as a dog.

The gravest sin, in the end, that Mary Crawley committed in the aftermath, was simply not believing the stories. Of the warning that both Edith and Bertie had told of their African adventures and the Prince's sworn blood vendetta against George, their sister refused to hear. Mary - newly divorced from Henry - had become quite the fixture of the nightclub and party scene in London. She run in adjacent circles with "David". 'All stuff and nonsense' were what she said of the rumors flying of the incidents and new rivalry. In those days she had become a personal friend of the Prince on their galivants in search of drink and dance, while both she and Sybbie were often asked to Buckingham Palace to be guest of the Queen for Tea and Dinner. Rather more quickly than she thought possible, Mary had been brought into the most inner of circles. And it did not matter that there was something odd about the pointed questions of George's whereabouts and habits, or what Sybbie's prospects were.

She thought Edith jealous when she was warned – sometimes violently - to keep her beloved ward and nephew's name out of Mary's mouth in front of the Prince of Wales, to tell him nor the Royal Family anything of her boy or his life. Edith knew firsthand the power and terror of the despairing love of "She-Who-Must-Be-Obeyed" wrought in those under her heel. Of the terrible things that had been done to Edith and the just as terrible things she committed herself in that place, the Marchioness of Hexham knew the fevered zealotry of righteousness within the siren's swoon of that queen's evil daunting eyes and … kisses. If it wasn't for her love for Bertie, for George, and her burning and driving desire to return home to her golden Marigold and hold her in her arms again, perhaps the madness would've tainted her as it had so wholly the Prince of Wales.

Of all the terrible things done to Lady Edith Pelham in her life, of all the tragedies, her enslavement in the subterranean kingdom was the most horrible. Fore her mistreatment was not in hard labor of the mines that Bertie and Captain Quartermain had been condemned. Edith slept on a large harem bed surrounded by smooth pillows and other men and women of different colors and creeds, a human menagerie of beautiful and physically fit people for whatever mood struck the queen's fancy. While in captivity, the Marchioness ate her heart's desire and drank the finest wines she had ever tasted. The cruelty was in the emotional imprisonment, in the worthless and helpless sorrow in the enslaved devotion to one that would not love her back. Cruel and mocking was the evil woman who dressed Edith in silk loin cloth and gilded brassier. She enjoyed parading her around by a golden leash. claiming to everyone of Edith being 'England's Greatest Beauty' with jeering sarcasm to the laughter of a spider's court of trapped flies. Yet, Edith took pride in it, thanked her for the humiliation, fore at least she thought of her - that she was, in some small way, a part of the golden-haired queen's life.

Edith was reminded of Patrick, of Matthew, of her own family at times, and the helpless heartache felt for those she loved that had never loved her back. Convinced in this sorrowing and desperate race up an unclimbable hill of familiar pain, The Sorceress had replaced family and faith and had become Edith's goddess. Nothing else seemed to matter, not Bertie's back breaking forced labor, not Marigold waiting at Downton for her parent's return, nor if George was safe out there somewhere on the plains. She submitted to humiliation and preformed whatever cruelty her goddess desired of her, doing all of it with a mindless and maniacal passion.

But most awful of the things felt in her brainwashed enslavement was the hatred, the very vitriol, she felt coursing through her like potent venom when George stole boldly into the throne room, revealing himself unlooked for and undetected by the guards. She remembered his anger, his perilous eyes, when he caught sight of his Aunt Edith with a gilded collar about her neck. And she wanted to murder him for it, fore ever implying, with his deadly glance. that Edith's place was anywhere but at her Goddess's feet. With torment did she recall lifting her voice in uniformed unison with all in court, speaking as one hive, in rancorous cultist intimidation when George evoked an ancient right of challenge on the sorceress's misuse of blood magic.

There was a disturbed look of dismay in her nephew's eyes when Edith begged and pleaded for "She-Who-Must-Be-Obeyed" to choose her, to send her out to fight the boy. She knew that George would not hurt her, that he loved her as if she were his own mother, that he would allow Edith close enough to kill him – and she would kill him. George wanted to take Edith from her goddess, her beloved, her life. But the golden queen only shushed her, resting the Marchioness's head upon her lap like an affectionate pup, promising her that she had other plans for Edith's young 'Elf-Friend'. But they were plans that did not pan out in the end. And when George won that fierce and terrible duel, Edith wept bitterly - lying on the marble floor among ancient Egyptian pillars in a swoon, as if slain by grief of the coming parting with her purpose in life.

But when she awoke in Bertie's arms - his back and chest lashed from the foreman's whip, a beard upon his worn face - she never wanted to remember anything else. Her savior in those dark hours was the blessed relief and desperate love of the moment that she came back to him, to the world, after a tormented nightmare. The reason over madness that had come in the sudden memories of her family, of those she loved. It was then, in the eyes of her husband, that the spell that had convinced Lady Edith Pelham that she was unloved and worthless was broken. And her worth was shown through by the courage and heroism of those who faced much danger and toil to rescue a woman they loved for who she had always been.

It was in all these experiences that Edith, above all, knew the very fire that Mary was playing with. She knew the madness, the devotion, that was ingrained deeply in the very heart of one damaged by such black spell craft. But most potent of its poison was in those who knew love's jilting, who were desperate for it all their lives. David Winsor was a kindred soul in that regard, a lost, unremarkable, and unloved surplus child brought up in the seclusion and cold upper classes of British High Society at its noon tide. Their golden goddess had given people like the Prince and Edith a purpose, an altar to pray. To sever one so deeply interwoven in the holy way was to take from them all that they thought they knew themselves to be.

And as such, did the Prince of Wales see George Crawley as no simple foe. The young Lord of Downton was a heretic, a blasphemer, and an inconceivable abomination of great evil that had to be destroyed, burned out to the very roots of its seed. Thus, in every flippant and mocking dismissal at tea, luncheon, and dinner in the London Season, had Edith's fear grown of the very peril that Mary was placing their boy in. But too late had Lady Mary realized that Edith had been right all along … that the great beauty and talk of the Season that year was being used and manipulated.

She found herself to be the Bishop piece in a chess like scheme that was moving within Buckingham Palace and the House of Lords.

The success of Downton Abbey had hit its greatest stride under the captaining of Lady Mary and Tom Branson in the Autumn of 1928. Due to the incredible foresight and administration of Matthew Crawley in the year before his death, The House of Grantham's assets thrived in an atmosphere in which much of the old nobility fell to ruin. And it was jealousy as it was envy that painted a target on the ever-popular Grantham Family's back. Returning from Africa with broken spirit and dark hatred, the Prince began to take council against Downton Abbey. And It was in early 1929 – in an incident between Mirada Pelham, Lord Hexham's mother, and the children of the House of Grantham - that the full scheme conceived and cultivated in The Season of the previous year was brought in full might against George Crawley.

Sybil Afton Branson was the sole heiress of "Branson & Talbot Motors". The early and immediate success of the company had taken Tom Branson and Mary Crawley to new heights when Henry Talbot sold his controlling interest to his ex-wife during the divorce mediation. Thus, were the young girl's prospects extremely high in the financial long term. But more so, the most delectable frosting to an already delicious confection, was Sybbie Branson's unmistakable beauty. Rivaled only by her cousin and best friend Marigold, Sybbie was quickly growing into a creature of such surpassing loveliness that it was hard not to notice as the years passed. Taken all together with her fortune as the sole heiress to a profitable and ever expanding motor business and her budding into one of the greatest beauties in all of the Imperium, it was decided that Sybbie would be the focal point to ending the House of Grantham.

Behind closed doors, in opulent dining rooms filled with cigar smoke when the ladies went through, a dark plot was hatched in the highest levels of the King's Government. It was there explained that George Crawley, 38th Lord of Downton, Heir to the House of the White Queen and Earl of Grantham, was a cancer on the aristocracy. In those days, tales of his adventures were amusing to speak of and recite at dinner or in the drawing room of a London Season. But in ten years? In twelve? What kind of man would he become? What could he accomplish with the full tilt of the agricultural powerhouse of the Grantham Estate at his fingertips? What couldn't he conceive with the riches of the treasures he was rumored to have discovered abroad? He was a rebel and traitor to his class and his House - Lord Grantham and Lady Mary could and had readily attested to such. He prejudiced and mocked the King-Emperor and the Royal House of Hanover in public, broke with the Anglican Church to convert to Catholicism, and spoke Gaelic in the open English street like some Jacobite of his ancestry. Would it not be their duty to society, to England herself, to do something about this threat? And it was then, when mutters of agreement between puffed smoke and sipped brandy of titled men was universal, that the Prince of Wales weaved his webs.

What he sold to each man, committing to all and none, was Ms. Sybil Afton Branson. If and when George Crawley - the Rebel and Traitor - was eliminated, the Earls of Grantham, the Lords of Downton, and the last heir of the Royal House of York, would be extinct. This would leave Downton Abbey and her estate to Lady Mary Crawley, whose heiress would be her beloved niece and adopted daughter, Sybil Branson. With their help and investment in the Grantham Estate, they could play the long game of harvesting the beautiful and rich Ms. Branson's future, if not for themselves, certainly for one of their sons. In less than a decade, an old name, fallen on hard times of a changing world, could find prominence again in their sons' securing of the silken marriage purse of Sybbie Branson. This scheme, this dream, was pitched in secret throughout the aristocracy during the London Season. Each struggling noble name was offered but a chance, in private, to be the one to capture the heart … and fortune ... of the richest and most beautiful heiress of their age. All that it would be required for this glorious future to become reality was the death of George Crawley …

By any means necessary.

Of how much of this plot Lady Mary heard and knew had long be speculated, yet, was never known till tonight in confession to her only priest, her savior – her husband. But what was unknown to her, till too late, was how easily she had played her part when the time came for the years' worth of plotting to finally consummate. Believing in the sanctity and the cornerstone of the Monarchy in English Society, Lady Mary gave all that was asked of her by the Royal House without question. Both she and Lady Violet arrogantly assuming that they were the voice of reason, the mediators of peace, in the ridiculous situation that their family's heir had landed them all in.

But, instead, they had simply given a cabal of courtier conspirators the very weapons to destroy their family.

As a reward for her help in the destruction of the Village of Downton, the sacking of Downton Abbey, and the massacre of its denizens, Lady Grantham, Mary, and Sybbie were ripped from their loved ones and taken as hostages of the Imperial House under 'Royal Obligation'. There, shut in the Palace and Sandringham, Both Cora and Mary would take Lady Bagshaw and Lucy Smith's place to become the Queen's ladies in waiting. With George's escape from the massacre, becoming a hunted Outlaw - with no charged crime – the conspirators would take no chances with their promised prize. Thus, was Sybbie taken from the care of her father and family to be held as a 'ward' of the King and Queen till she was of marrying age.

Some said – George chiefest among them – that Lady Mary Crawley lost all reason and hope the day her daughter Caroline died. But for Mary, the moment that she was taken by the darkness, surrendered to it, was in the years she spent in the service of the Royal Family. Fore quickly did the conspiracy unravel to her as things went ever astray for those who held to cheap promises of the future as masters of Downton Abbey and Sybbie. What Mary thought was saving her son's life was in fact what got the people she loved killed. She learned that under no circumstance was George to live through that fateful night. They had come to East Riding with murder in mind. Lady Violet, Dowager Countess of Grantham, was not meant to live either – fore they'd risk no witnesses.

But the worst torment she could think of was what she had done to her little girl.

Sybbie was taken away from everyone and everything she knew to become a pawn in the schemes of the Imperial Court. She was not allowed to leave the palace, not allowed to come and go at Sandringham House without an escort. Tom could not see, speak, or write to her - the girl wasn't even allowed to acknowledge him as her father. The only visitors she was allowed was Edith and Marigold. In that time, isolated and alone, with only Cora and Marigold as a constant in her life, Sybbie was inundated and indoctrinated – brainwashed as George would later accuse - in High Societal and Royal etiquette and education. By the time of her thirteenth birthday she would be a perfect Princess – beaten from her mind and manner was all her happy memories and cherished joys of Downton Abbey, till she forgot who she was.

Only once a year was Sybbie permitted to leave the Palace or Sandringham Estate, and that was for the Royal Ball at Harewood. There, with great effect and showmanship, was her 'progress' from young girl to young womanhood showcased. Dressed in regal gowns of silk and satin, arrayed in jewels and diamonds, she was the eclipse, The Northern Lights, the highlight of the societal calendar. Then, each Lord was promised at least one dance with the exceedingly beautiful young creature. And every time that Mary saw them together, she died a little more inside.

Her calendar was chalk-a-full of Royal Visits, Balls, and Tours as personal companion to the queen. But the one event a year she dreaded above all was the Ball at Harewood. To the outsider, the newly presented debutante at her first outing, the yearly reveal of Sybbie Branson must have seemed like what all girls dreamed of. To be the center of attention, the anticipated guest, to come down the steps like Cinderella arriving at the ball to the gasp and adoration of the crowd. How could any young girl not idolize and dream of the life that Ms. Sybil Afton Branson lived every day? But in reality, Mary saw only the truth of the matter …

It was a Stock Show.

Every year, Sybbie was brought out of her seclusion - outfits, gowns, and hairstyle meticulously chosen for months - for the moment that she could be led about like a prized breeding mare. Each Lord was given a dance with the young beauty in order for him to examine her teeth, her hips, and weigh her. Each man who took her in his arms as they danced across the ballroom floor to the string waltz was simply being kept on the hook. They were all given just enough to believe that Sybbie could be their son's - their own when he wasn't looking - someday. The Royal Ball at Harewood was to simply perpetuate the fantasy, the hope - after so many years – that someone would finally eliminate the elusive phantasm that had become the folk hero and famed outlaw, George "The Comet" Crawley. Each year had it become an unbearable torment to Mary. Fore she could do nothing to help nor protect her little girl. Mary herself was doomed to remain an ornate and shiny ornament, sitting to the queen's right, her hand placed possessively on Mary's thigh as guest came to greet and grovel at the King and Queen's feet.

Like Sybbie, Lady Mary was also trotted out at officialdom ceremonies. She was the key to an audience with the King or Queen, the regal prize of every ball. The woman with her sharpened wit, statuesque physic of a Grecian Goddess cut from pale marble, and cold beauty was also a pawn of diplomacy and hospitality. At State Dinners she was always sat next to key figures, at balls she was to dance with important guests, and at Royal Visits she was the Lord's or lady's - or both - 'housewarming gift'.

It was an unspoken quid-pro-quo of the House of Hanover – favored by Edward VII – in which the King-Emperor quietly had his pick of the Lord's wife or daughters. And in return, the Lord was given consolation of a replacement to warm their bed in their wife's absence or to satisfy the honor of their daughter's lost virtue. It was a quiet and ceremonial exchange. In the Royal visits to Downton and Grantham House, Robert Crawley forwent with the tradition and, with respect, denied access of his wife and daughters to both King Edward and King George. But Mary quickly found that Lord Grantham was a solitary outlier in that regard. Often, in many royal tours of dozens of great houses over the years, had she found that most Lords and Ladies rather 'respected tradition' – in fact, with Lady Mary as the offered consolation, many greatly enjoyed the 'old traditions'. There was always dignity and an elegance to her pleasant ruby lipped smile as the lord of the great house took her hand in greeting, yet his eyes lingered in anticipation of darkness with he looked upon the sight of the dark-haired ivory goddess. And never did Lady Mary Crawley, in those moments, dare to catch her mamma's eye in the knowledge of what would be expected of Mary that night.

It was a true test of Lady Grantham's patients and fortitude to spend so many years away from her beloved Lord Grantham, away from her daughter and secret granddaughter. But most of all, it took all in her power to be presentable, amenable, and unflappable in the presence of the queen, of the royal family – knowing what her eldest daughter was forced to do in private. Yet, Cora Crawley was schooled hard and deftly in societal practice, and she knew that Mary and Sybbie's survival in that terrible place had to be managed delicately and with tact. That if she or her daughter did anything rash, not just they, but their entire family could be harshly punished more than they already had been.

But in all those years of dark deeds and cruel ambition in the very halls of monarchy's absolute power, there was only a brief time in which Mary could escape to a wholesome world.

("Down by the Sally Gardens" – Music Box Melodies)

She would never, for the rest of her life - no matter if she lost every memory and was unmanned – forget what it was to walk into that opulent bedchamber within the gilded halls of the Palace. She could still see that golden glitter from sparkling crystal caught in the lamp and scented candlelight. Slowly, softly, she would open the door without knocking. The first thing she would smell was a cherry blossom scent mixed with a sweet fruit that would forever be associated with her little girl. Upon her entrance, surrounded by the many beautiful and fine objects of silver trays, regal sundries, and romantic paintings of Arthurian maidens and portraits of great stately women on garden swings, she strayed softly to the vanity. The closer she got, the more pronounced the deeply sentimental and hooking Irish tune of a varnished and highly crafted wooden music box became. With its gilded Celtic embroidery and ivy carvings, it was, officially, a present from Princess Mary. But both Sybbie and her mamma guessed the truth –

The present had come from Tom.

It must have cost him a small fortune, for the craftsmanship was unique and one of a kind. The song, so perfectly chimed, was unrivaled in its mechanism. It was a wordless promise, a symbol unbroken, that no matter how far away, how many gates, walls, doors, and guards kept them apart, his only baby girl would never be far from Tom's heart. And Sybbie cherished the music box above all the grand and romantic gifts laid at her feet by many suitors as she grew in stature and beauty over the years of her 'fostering'. The significance of the gift's weight was only added upon when Mary saw the destitution and ruin that both Tom and her papa lived through in the aftermath of the massacre and depopulation of the county. She would often wonder how many meals Tom had gone without, or what was sold, in order to give such a gift to Sybbie. But she would deem he thought it worth it to know that his precious little girl used it every single night.

But all of those details only added to the context, the atmosphere, of seeing, nightly, the girl that sat at her vanity. A silver comb brushed slowly and steadily through her long tresses of glossy and luxurious waving curls of black silk - an angelic voice hummed softly with her daddy's music box. The glitter and glint of the gold and amber lit bedchamber was caught in the net of her hair, as its shine reflected off her plated brush with each strafe as she quietly stared at herself in the mirror, lost in thought. She remembered the crystal sparkle in her cerulean eyes that glowed softly like pale lanterns on her feline and elegant elfin features. Her skin was clear, soft as milk, and pale as the undimmed moonlight. Perhaps, measured against one another, there were some that would say that Marigold was the fairer of the two girls. But it would be a photo-finish … and only some would claim it. Truly, Mary believed that her little girl – an enchanted princess from a fairy tale - had the very face of love.

There were times, earlier in captivity, when she would run to Mary's arms and cling to her. Mama or Marigold looking on with sadness, the brush in their hand, watching the tears stream down the girl's ivory cheeks in the weariness of seclusion and sickness of loneliness. But in the latter days, in that final year, the hyperactive and cheeky Ms. Sybbie of Downton Abbey was replaced by a prim and upright Princess - soft spoken and sorrowful. A gentle and delicate smile, frail as golden thread, would overcome her angelic countenance as she glanced her mamma's approach in the mirror. Then, gently, she'd hand off the comb and Mary would brush her daughter's hair.

In the early days, Mary would tell her much of the gossip of Court, of the dinners and balls she attended in other great houses. But by the end, even in their greater emancipation from Mary's prestige within the Imperial House, they still said nothing to one another. It was not simply that Sybbie was allowed to sit dinner with them, attend the royal drawing room with her mamma and granny. It was that they'd rather spend it in comfortable silence, admiring the yearned after visage of each other, cherishing the sheer presences of the other. Each glancing through the mirror to smile softly and enchantingly when an eye was caught.

Then, it was time for bed. Quietly, slipping out of her robe to reveal a nightgown growing less in lace and sleeve and more in tight satin and straps, the girl would slide into her silk sheets. Mary would always lay with her, her arms about her. Gently, once settled, Mary would always sing to the girl, no matter how old she got. Sybbie, for a long while, would listen and join in, intertwining her fingers in her mamma's - staring and threading through them. The softness of Mary's golden voice and the wholesome escape from her prison always lulled the beauty to sleep before her mamma left.

In her younger days, the girl would cling desperately, unable to sleep, begging her to stay the night. She'd cry terribly, knowing the knock would come to summon Mary back. Those were the hardest nights of Mary's life, having Sybbie beg, clutching to her neck. And she was pained even more by the hardness of her response, scolding the girl for being immature, for not acting lady-like. Then, to her greatest torment, she'd punish Sybbie for such 'childish tantrums' by refusing to visit her at night till she learned how to act properly in the Royal House. From then on, after two weeks of abandonment, Sybbie never begged nor clung to Mary again when it was time. Instead, she trained herself, willed herself, to fall asleep while her mamma was there … that way she wouldn't have to see her go.

There was a time in which it was made infinitely harder. For Sybbie would achieve her goal of falling asleep before the clock struck midnight on their time together. But Mary would not leave her, could not, for she wanted to hold her forever, her last child. But then, a booming and aggressive knock from a footman would shake Sybbie awake and Mary from her thoughts. A reminder, in this perfect world of love and safety they created for themselves, that they were not truly guests … but prisoners. Then, Mary would kiss her girl goodbye, before another, more violent knock, would occur. Those were the nights that she knew her little girl would cry herself to sleep.

However, in the final months of that first year, she and Lady Grantham had developed a system. Quietly, as careful as possible, Lady Cora – who had many privileges in the palace and Sandringham – would come and trade places with her daughter. Each looking pained as they passed one another. They traded a small rub of the arm, a quiet peck on the cheek. Cora would shed her robe and slip under the covers to take Sybbie in her arms. When Mary left the bedchamber, she'd dare not look back at her mother and daughter, least she lose all strength and will to carry on. The true wrench and pain of such departure from the very place she knew she was needed most was as cruel as having to hold it all in, to not show weakness in front of the royal footman that always came to escort her back.

It was then, that Mary was ever embittered, for the rest of her life, when asked about Royal Obligation. For the ignorance of the questions asked was tedious. But the most stinging, was also the most fundamental. And it was the query of what it was like to stay at the Palace … what her bedroom was like. It was always then that she answered the former, brushing past the latter. Fore, she did not want anyone else to know that Lady Mary Crawley did not have a bedroom in all the time that she was the queen's companion. Her bedroom, her bathroom, her changing room, her toilet, was the Queen's rooms. Privacy had become a luxury found only in hygienic and privy moments. Other than that, Lady Mary served at her namesake's pleasure. She ate with the queen, she lounged with the queen, strolled with the queen on long walks. She attended to her needs for conversation and secretarial work. They even bathed together.

But of all the most hateful things that Mary loathed, it was that she was forced to sleep with the queen. There was no comfort of solitude, no quiet to let the day settle. Mary would wordlessly stare dead eyed at the fore wall while standing in her knickers as creams and oils were leathered upon her torso and long ivory limbs by the queen's own worshipful hands. Afterward, with a kiss upon her bare shoulder to release her, Mary paced back around the tall four poster bed where she'd slip out of her underwear and into whatever nightgown or negligee had been chosen for her. At last she would climb under the sheets with an old woman who only momentarily looked over her glasses and papers to admire her companion in the chosen attire before going back to some last-minute charity work.

It was then that Mary Crawley swallowed hatred, as the Queen never failed to ask – conversationally - how Sybbie was.

It took everything in her power, every night, not to explode on the woman, to scream at her for such dereliction of self-awareness. She wanted to rage that Mary was not her husband, her wife, her daughter … Mary was not in her bed willingly! Sybbie needed her mamma, she needed human interaction, she needed her family! Marigold every weekend, Edith on Wednesdays, and Mamma as governess being the only constant was not enough! But each night, with the crack open of an Austen or Wharton novel, without a hint of even a farrowed brow, Mary would pleasantly report back only gushing reviews.

Within a half-an-hour, an hour – that could've been spent with Sybbie – The queen would retire. When she shut off her lamp, Mary knew that she had perhaps fifteen minutes more, before she would give up Ms. Woodhouse or Ms. Morland for the dark. When her light went out and she settled in, the queen would turn over and take Mary in her arms.

Some mornings they'd awaken to find themselves on opposite sides of the bed, or back to back. But every night, it started with an arm slipping over Mary's hips and pelvis and pulling her tightly against her in cuddled familiarity. A nose nuzzling her cheek, an ear, the nape of her neck. There was a peck on her jaw, temple, or throat. Yet, that was all there was. No hand ever slid under her nightgown, no wandering finger finding crack and crevasse to slip into while in the dark. The woman - who had Mary completely at her mercy - simply cuddled her, petted her, kissed her chastely. The extreme extent of such moments of sexuality, was the balance of years of dozing off or slowly awakening upon her stomach while the hand of the queen distractedly petted and stroked Mary's bum gently as she read a paper or magazine in bed.

This, however, was not exclusive to the bedroom.

From ballrooms, to tea, to garden strolls, Mary - more and more often in that first year - found the queen's hand drawn to her bottom. When talking with groups in the drawing room, standing by the mantle at Royal Balls. Always in distraction, as one who twirls strands of their own hair in a finger or tugs a beard, the Queen would sometimes distractedly pat, palm, or stroke Lady Mary Crawley's bum. It became an unconscious tick of tedium or boredom of a conversation or setting, and Mary would be forced to act as if nothing was amiss. Smirking, smiling, and laughing at every empty word of disingenuous conversation, she would hide a reddening face knowing others could see it and were staring. But much like their bathing and sleeping together, the things going missing in every house they stayed, no one dared to speak up or out of the queen's wandering and 'affectionate' hand. Instead, the gentry all praised their 'empress's new clothes' with snide private looks.

Yet, even then, it felt more a misguided sense of maternal affection than worshipfulness of Mary's most prized and lusted after asset. An early onset of senility or cognitive erosion in the painfully public and embarrassing social gaff that only fed the rumors of Mary's 'true role' in the Queen's household. In those times, in the increasing failings of the King and Queen rule, she could not decipher why they would not abdicate. Surely, it was time - was it not? They had been sovereigns for twenty years, and they were already well matured when old 'Tum-Tum' fell in prostrate to the destroyer. It seemed almost treasonous to allow such a farse to continue on. Sometimes, till this very day, Mary could still hear a haunted crooning voice echoing singularly down the long and empty gilded halls in the still of the Witching Hours – a great emperor idly wandering the palace at night with childlike cries in fear of not knowing where he was. How long would they all ignore the queen's tremoring hand that spilt food, her atrocious breath, and her groping of Mary out of boredom whilst in public?

It was then that she remembered something that George spoke of to Sybbie that she overheard when they didn't know she was near. The world traveled and adventuring youth proclaimed that a tyrant was easy to spot anywhere in the world, fore they were those who had nothing and yet feared to lose everything. It was in these words of her boy that she viewed the King and Queen. And their fear of loss was only second to the fear of who would inherit their kingdom of toppling cards.

It was the first thing that Mary learned, immediately, when she became the queen's companion. Neither King nor Queen loved or even liked the Prince of Wales. Indeed, for many long years, holding and clinging desperately to their power, had the Monarchs attempted to delay the transition of the Crown. And it was a great irony to Lady Mary, fore often and much had she heard praise by Papa and Carson of the King for his reform policies in the pushing forward of family unity as the keystone of the Royal platform. That each loyal subject had a duty to England and the Empire by the living of moral values introduced into the domestic home. Yet, within the palace, the King and Queen had isolated and coldly dismissed their own children.

A marriage by close cousins of which a beautiful German Princess - born and raised in England - was forced to wed the consolation brother when the attractive and charismatic crown prince died abruptly before his father. The cold and bitter new heir found no love for his cousin, nor any for their children – poisoned by his hateful relationship with his philandering and immature playboy father. Thus, was Prince Edward – David – Windsor born into a circular world of which he was terrified of a father of whom he hated with the same fire as his before him.

At first his womanizing and immoral actions were unnoticed by an absent and uninterested King-Emperor. Then, as age crept upon the monarch, the King looked to those of his court, such as Bertie Pelham and Lady Edith - model peers in marital bliss - to teach the carefree and philandering royal heir duty and responsibility. But in the wake of "The Grantham County Massacre" and the fallout of the Lord's Convention calling to curtail – if not to outright strip - the Monarchy of power after the horrible incident, both King and Queen knew that 'David' would never be ready for the throne. Now, even as their mental faculties frailed and failed, even as the King shuffled about in growing confusion, and the Queen bathed openly with an Earl's daughter, they'd hold to their crown and power to the bitter end.

Fore it was in the early months of 1929 that victory had defeated the House of Hanover.

But it remained still some years before Mary could unravel the strange mystery of her captivity. Rather quickly, through bathtub confessions, did the old queen admit to not particularly caring about George. This shocked Mary, turning her head to catch a glance of a woman chuckling to herself. 'Cheek of the Devil, that one of yours' the Queen had complimented with affinity as she washed the stain of the night's sins off Mary's worshiped figure. Of the incident in which her son, cloaked and baring a Sikh saber, broke into the palace, stole into the queen's treasure room, and took a diamond necklace gifted to Queen Charlotte of Mecklenburg by the East India Company. Mary had been so sure that their home was sacked, and their people killed, in retaliation for George's escalation to the Prince's provocations against him in the wake of what happened to Sybbie and Marigold at Brancaster. But instead, the queen only sighed, admitting that the Indian diamond necklace was a 'beastly heavy thing' and that the robbery and fight was the most interesting thing that had ever happened in her entire time in the palace. 'How many people get to see a real sword fight anymore?' Had been her comment of the battle in which George Crawley was wounded three times but slew two royal guards and wounded half a dozen more in his escape. It was then - her nose being teasingly pinched by the queen as she was pulled back against her bare wrinkled chest languidly - that the reasons for being there, as the queen's companion, did not fit with what she resigned herself too.

The Prince of Wales hated George Crawley and would continue to do so till his dying day. He had sacrificed his entire family's future and standing to destroy him and failed to do so. In the meantime, his parents, who were assumed to have been helping him, in fact, did not care about their disappointing son's feud with the young Heir of the White Queen. But still, they kept Mary, Cora, and Sybbie as hostages. Mary had no agency, no privacy, all of her activities and clothing, down to her knickers, were chosen for her. She slept and bathed with the Queen every night, yet, the monarch, her namesake, did not make any romantic or sexual advances upon her. But there remained a markable absence of maternity about their relationship. While not sexual in nature, Mary's body, in particular, was ardently admired and caressed in envy and objectification – massaged with scented oils by the queen's own worshipful hands - in a way that no sane mother would a daughter.

Then, one night, like the shattering of glass in her mind, it all came to her. There was paved a chaste and admiring kiss to her navel as she stood before the queen in silken Lingerie and sheer robe. 'I chose such a fine dolly, did I not, dear?' she asked the King who sat in a chair by his wife's vanity. Red tinted amber eyes widened in realization of a single word. As the Queen gave a few pops to Mary's bottom to send her on her way next door to a nephew who was promised a 'special present' for his appointment as 'Head Boy' at Harrow. It was then, shutting the door with her bottom, bracing her back against the door that everything came in a rush. The year spent away from Sybbie, Papa, Tom, and the Estate – with how many more before she was allowed freedom? She suddenly realized what she was – not daughter, not slave, not friend, not concubine, nor live-in sapphic lover.

Lady Mary Crawley was a doll – the Queen's doll.

While sitting in the royal bath listening to the queen chucklingly commiserating the failure of young men as lovers while washing her nephew's 'prematurity' off her companion's ivory belly – Mary's eyes darted as the webs untangled in her mind. The Prince of Wales had no power, no authority, over the Royal Army. He had pull in the Admiralty, some command over operations. But the King-Emperor was the only one who had absolute control over the military. If it was "The King's Own" in foreign livery that had attacked the village and Downton Abbey, then the King-Emperor was the only one that could order their muster and arming. Thus, Downton's attack and massacre could only have been ordered by the King-Emperor himself.

Sybbie was troubled by the distant look in her mamma's eyes as a slowly growing disturbance fell over her beautiful countenance. Light was shown on tidbits and clues that had passed her fool mind in the glamorous grind of her gilded cage. Each brush of Sybbie's glossy raven tresses cranked the thought process that unraveled the mystery. If the King and Queen hated the Prince, if they did not want him to have their power, then why would they help him against George? If the Queen was amused, and not offended by the stealing of Queen Victoria's favorite diamond necklace. If the King had written his son off as a failure. What did they benefit, what did they get, for helping him? In that lingering question, her attention was captured by an absolute angelic beauty - caught between the innocence of girlhood and the maturity of a woman - who softly hummed to her favorite part of the Irish melody of her daddy's music box.

She thought back to that first royal visit three years then passed. She remembered the missing items from the house, Anna questioning her about them. She remembered their return by the end of the visit. Yet, in that same night was when Sybbie and Marigold had performed for the King and Queen. She had never seen such sudden adoration and love as they had for the girls, especially Sybbie. All night they had sat on their knee or at their side in the library. Then, at the end of the successful evening, came her first encounter with the Queen in an intimate setting, after a full night of the woman talking with Mary, and Mary only. She had petted the younger woman's hip, stroked her bare back, and massaged her throat with a thumb. At the ball at Harewood, Mary sat at the queen's right hand. She made a comment at their parting, that she wished to see her again. And for years afterward had Mary become a regular figure in Court, bringing Sybbie - as was the King's request and delight.

What did the Prince offer his father and mother? What they wanted. What was it that the King and Queen wanted? What everyone else wanted. Sybbie and Mary. The mother and daughter were the Sovereigns' price for the use of the "King's Own" to put an end to George Crawley. From the moment that the Queen had seen Mary in her blue silk gown at the Royal Dinner, even after years of knowing and seeing Lady Mary Crawley, it was in that evening that the Queen wanted her for her own. And it was in the first notes of Sybbie's enchanting song that enthralled the Downton Library, which the King had been smitten by a young heiress. All night she had never been far from his hands and arms. He had wanted her, his own perfect, beautiful, daughter of his choosing. Seeing her standing there with the roses in her curls and soft full smile, the King-Emperor loved that little girl more than he had any child, especially his own. But perhaps the most galling of this demand to the Prince was that it would send astray much of his plans and promises that he had revealed and made to the Gentry.

It was then, that Mary knew, that like the missing items of the very houses the Queen stayed, Sybbie and she were the finely crafted and beautiful treasures taken from Downton Abbey.

It suddenly occurred to Lady Mary Crawley that she was an object and nothing more. She was a doll, a living and breathing doll – a girl-toy – that the queen dressed and customized, admired and touched, hugged and kissed at night. Mary Crawley was the ideal Lady, a fantasy that the queen revealed to Court and the Public of what every young girl should strive for … and that perfection and loveliness would ever remain the exclusive property of the most powerful woman in the world.

The Queen had looked up from her spectacles and clipboard with interest and puzzlement when Mary shed her satin negligee and threw it to the floor defiantly. Standing before her captor naked, the younger woman challenged the queen's authority with one action. But, instead, there was a noise of bemusement from the old woman propped against the pillows upon the headboard.

'Get back into bed.' She ordered callously, returning to their tour schedule of India.

The cold and uninterested dismissal of her rebellion shocked Mary, her eyes wide, her face contorted in outrage. She knew, Mary knew that the Queen realized that her dolly, her 'girl-toy', was aware. But the royal did not care that her companion knew of her status in the household. Fore, it did not matter. Mary was hers, and there was nothing she could do about it. Indeed, it was in that moment, shown coldly in disinterest, that it was not about love and affection, secret sexuality and dominance over another, it was simply about want and possession.

Queen Mary saw the eldest daughter of the Earl of Grantham on a particular night in 1927 when she visited Downton Abbey. And in a span of a minute, she knew she had to have her. Like many fine things in the homes of her hosts that she had her dress maker take, Lady Mary Crawley was an object of beautiful craftsmanship and baffling elegance that the Queen just had to have for herself. Of what she would do with her, what she wanted with her, not even the Monarch knew herself. She just knew that she wanted her … and the most powerful woman in the world would get what she wanted - always.

Thus, it had been her joy, her fascination, in 'playing' with her 'dolly' in the year since Lady Mary was delivered to the queen as a present for backing David's – oh-so-predictable - incompetence. The crumbling and corruption of one's mental and moral facilities in the long exposure to near absolute power and echo chamber of endless 'yes' from those about her had stripped the awareness of self-knowledge. She did not see that the woman in her bath and bed was a person, a human being, not a doll to be objectified and played with. And as elderly decline came on, such a blind spot intensified till she simply did not care. Lady Mary Crawley belong to her, she was her property, and she would remain so till she said differently.

It was then, realizing this in the mastering disinterest from her captor, that Mary, like every night before, slipped under the silk sheets – finding contentment in being ignored in her sudden hate. They had murdered her granny, they had murdered Carson, they killed her people, sacked her home, and hunted her son to the ends of the earth … and for what? They tormented her children - offered a substantial reward for the death of one and paraded the other around like a prized mare to be bred. So many lives destroyed, such unfathomable sorrow, and all allowed because an old couple wanted a mother and daughter as if they were dollies in a storefront window.

Then, turning over, she did not wish to see any part of the woman who she was named after.

But, when the lights turned out, that same woman – shamelessly - slipped over and pulled Mary against her to be spooned as if nothing was amiss. But when she went to kiss her cheek, the prideful daughter of an Earl shrugged out of it wrathfully. Mary rancorously demanded the queen not touch her with a scandalized velvety deep voice. Then, she tried to get loose of the royal's arms about her bare torso and hips. They struggled and wormed about the bed under the sheets. It was then that something forceful and imbalanced in prideful orneriness of contrary old age brought out a cruel possessiveness in the queen.

At its fervor pitch, a loud clap of a hand struck Mary across her pale face. With wide eyes, she held her cheek as she sat up against the headboard. There was no emotion in the old woman's face, only an irritated and guilty sobered sigh. Then, as was often the case when physical force was used against her in discipline, Mary complied in cowed shock. The queen grabbed the naked woman and pulled her from the headboard and back under silk sheets. Turning her over more forcefully on her side, the old woman pulled her companion harder against her, wrapping her ivory nudity into her arms forcefully. This time, Mary did not fight, laying still, a she received belated apologetic kisses on her bruised cheek bone. But even as Mary's neck was nuzzled and snuggled as the queen settled in for sleep, she swore that night would not be the end of it.

It was then, after a year, that Mary declared open war on the Queen.

It began by refusing to wear what was picked out for her. She was a woman grown, a mother of two, she could pick out her own clothing! 'Very well' the queen would sigh, but then they'd only bring out three outfits … of the queen's own choosing, for her 'precious dolly' to pick for herself. Mary then refused to bath with the queen any longer. Once more, the queen sighed, and agreed. But instead, Mary privacy was trampled by her majesty who would not acknowledge 'no' when in her want to bath her companion. These escalating quarrels were managed domestically, behind closed doors, as the woman refused to be kept and paraded.

She would not wear negligee, only nightgowns. She would not allow the Queen to touch or admire her body with her oils and creams. Their nightly wrestling matches grew as Mary refused to be held, to be treated like some perverse stuffed animal of a small girl. Mary had warned Sybbie that they might bar her from seeing her daughter as punishment for her growing defiance. But they never did. The Queen had grown amused and exhilarated by Mary's rebelliousness. Fore it made the small achievements earned in the victories of a touch or kiss that was given up in submission to the Queen's will.

But even now, speaking of all these evils for the first time to Matthew, to anyone, Lady Mary Crawley saw only the stupidity, the pride, that had led to her downfall. It was human to fight for what she did, to be given respect and autonomy as a person. But in her desperation to escape the submissive role and entrapment of her life as a plaything of an Empress, she had made a grievous error. Fore it was in public that Mary thought that her war of independence would be won.

She had risked defiance in the drawing room once or twice. The queen announced she was going up, holding out a hand that Mary would ignore. There was titters and amusement in the crowded drawing room as the ivory beauty acted as if she could not hear nor see the Queen. She would grin victoriously in the tub as her back and breasts were scrubbed harshly by a furious royal.

Only Lady Grantham had cautioned Mary against rash action. They both stepped around the issues, around what was being done in private - believing the rumors that circled of what she did to her eldest daughter in private. And though Mary had assuaged her mamma's fear and torments of forced sexual submission and acts, it still aged Lady Grantham greatly of the knowledge that her daughter, her little girl, was viewed as an object, a soulless plaything. But still had Lady Grantham instructed her daughter to curb her rebellion and be mindful of her actions at Court. But, as usual, Mary ignored her mamma, and instead planned her magnum opus of revenge.

And she had chosen her moment perfectly.

The new Labour Prime Minister was to be a guest of the Royal Family at Sandringham. Seeing it on the schedule, a plot was hatched of which she would learn to regret bitterly years later. For weeks before the retreat to the Royal estate, Mary had allowed things to fall back into the old ways, the old habits. She joined the queen for baths, wore what she picked, allowed a squeeze or a caress while in the knicker specially tailored for her. Then, on the night of the dinner, Mary had chosen a skintight satin evening gown in the queen's favorite color. She waited all dinner, and into the night, till they were all conversing in the drawing room.

Much of the new cabinet was gathered around Sybbie and Mamma, while the Prime Minister and his wife spoke with the King and Queen … and Mary. As predicted, eventually - bored by such a 'common' woman as the wife of the Prime Minister - the queen's hand reached down unconsciously and cupped an absent firm squeeze of Mary's bum in tight satin. Immediately, publicly, drawing the attention of everyone, Lady Mary Crawley violently and scandalously slapped Her Majesty's groping hand away with an audible smack of silk opera gloves. The Queen was mortified at the looks that fell upon her in the aftermath.

This was not an aristocratic company - a smirking gaggle of titled men and women who knew the score. These were not a Tory bench that would look the other way, perhaps not condone it, but certainly speak nothing of it. These were Labour ministers, liberals, commoners at best. They certainly would not forget nor turn away at the sight of the Queen-Empress groping for and squeezing the bum of a Great Lady, daughter of an Earl, in public, nor the rightful shock of her scandalized reaction to the sinful molestation. These people were the very opposite, the very opposition, of the royalty and aristocracy's way of life and traditions. And in one moment, in one planned scandal, Lady Mary Crawley – an avowed Monarchist – had given the Liberals all they needed to hang the Royals. 'Queen Mary, the pervert' they would say in the liberal papers in London and York. It was a scandal of some magnitude and a black eye to the monarchy.

Wordlessly, wandering away, Lady Mary had joined her daughter and mamma with the cabinet ministers and The Duke as the conversations in the room slowly, awkwardly, resumed. It was then that the Queen announced that she was going up. However, for the first time in a year, she did not reach out a hand for Lady Mary Crawley to take and be led away by. Instead, she simply went up. In private, Mary had squeezed her eyes shut and held her breath as Sybbie took her hand. But she finally let out a sigh of relief when the Queen left. At the end of her evening - the first on her own terms in so long - she was ready to take whatever consequence would come her way. But, instead, Mary was barred from the Queen's room. The "Page of the Backstairs" informed Mary that her luggage had been moved to Ms. Branson's room.

It was the happiest night that Mary could ever remember having in so long. Neither she nor Sybbie could hide their excitement, their joy, at their reunion. They held each other tightly all night, brushing one another's hair, listening to her music box as they lounged together - kissing each other's cheek continuously. That night, Mary got to take her tweeny beauty in her arms and not be disturbed by a violent knock or staring at the perilous clock inching ever closer to her departure. She never had a sweeter sleep, nor awoken so afresh at the sight, long missed, of Sybbie sleeping soundly. It was then that she hoped that they never left Sandringham, that they stayed there forever, just so she would never have to leave Sybbie again.

And for a while, daring no self-reflection – a Mary Crawley specialty – she truly believed she won.

In the year of Mary's 'service' to the crown, she had not lay idle in opulent bedrooms. Fore she found - as many novels she read had attested - people liked to talk after sex. And above else, married couples like to talk in the presence of strangers they had just shared together – as if she was a part of their marriage. Thus, had Lady Mary become privy to many secrets of the Imperium and Aristocracy that was freely given in the afterglow of sex with a new, beautiful, and talented, partner. In time, as was her cleverness and ingenuity, Lady Mary Crawley used such secrets and 'friendships' forged in wives and husbands enjoying 'royal hospitality' to make moves within the Imperial Court. In less than a year, Mary had turned what was supposed to be a scheme to lure her boy back home to rescue his mamma into a perilous weapon against those who wished to harm her children.

In the media firestorm of the 'salacious' rumors of the Queen bathing and 'touching' an Earl's daughter – a narrative fed and contrived by Mary in her 'reacquaintance' with Richard Carlisle - the handlers of the Royal Family advised the Queen to distance herself "greatly" from Lady Mary. That meant that they could not be seen interacting nor engaging together in public or even in private, knowing eyes and ears – on the "Court Circular's payroll - were everywhere in the Palace. Yet, neither could they simply let Mary go home. For she was now privy to many Royal secrets, as well as chief bait in the ever-distancing objective to draw George Crawley out into the open.

Therefore, a compromise was made.

The King-Emperor gave Mary full privileges to go and do what she pleased in the Royal House as long as she took Sybbie with her. At first this shocked Mary. Her only goal was to escape the queen's ownership of her and to regain her agency as something other than property. But it was later that she learned that the King was only fulfilling a promise to her little girl. Fore, often now, did he request young Sybbie's company. Greatly had 'the old tyrant' – as George called him - enjoyed Sybbie's wit and way with words. But most of all, his love was for her songs, her ethereal voice that soothed the anxiety and episodes of confusion in old age. More and more did he grudge the girl nothing and gave all she asked with 'of course' in a smiling bearded countenance. And of her mamma's expanded freedoms and turn as her little girl's chaperone, the King-Emperor did not even blink.

With emancipation through lies and schemes of her own, did Lady Mary begin a three-year meteoric rise within the Imperial Court. Indeed, had Lady Mary become quickly popular and beloved among the royals and their guests since the beginning of her obligations to the queen – especially the King's nephew, The Duke. But for the first time, rather than entrapped in sitting rooms and garden leisure strolls with a hand thoughtfully stroking her bottom, Lady Mary Crawley was allowed to unleash and harness the sportswoman that she had always been. She rode, hunted, stalked, and hiked with the best of the men at every Royal visit and Holiday. And they all loved her for it even more, requesting her and Sybbie at every turn to come here and go there in company with Royal Guests, Lords of Peerage, and members of the Royal Family.

At State and Royal Dinners, in many drawing rooms from Scotland to India, without submission of the Queen's hand, the beautiful athlete and Great Lady spoke her mind and showered all with a charming wit that enthralled and mesmerized. Within a month of emancipation, Lady Mary and Ms. Sybil were a formidable mother-daughter team that was cherished throughout the Imperium. And by the end had Lady Mary Crawley become the poster image and public face of the Imperial Court, her beauty, elegance, wit, and athleticism was a golden standard for all Great Ladies of Aristocracy. Indeed, of the enduring stereotypes of the British Upper-Classes in the millennia to come, many were born and taken in parody and reverence of Lady Mary Crawley in her years in the public eye as a popular member of the Royal Household.

Where once she had been a hostage, a 'hospitality' given to foreign diplomats and royal relatives – the queen's own living 'dolly' - she was now a player within the wheels of a vast empire. And by cleverness and guile that came from a childhood at the feet of Lady Violet Crawley, did the beautiful Lady Mary begin to use the Imperium's own secrets and deceits to gain more and more power within Court. Till by the last year of her "Royal Duty" had her knowledge and charm won her a place as a real broker of power within the Imperial Household. At her height of popularity in public and court had it seemed that all information of intrigue and perversion, of secret dalliance and proposed alliances from ancient families, passed through Lady Mary Crawley's purview. There, in her deft hands for scandal or adoration would such news be spun as either good or ill for her own purpose or to allies who paid her homage.

But such power, as all, came at a price. And what was once used as a way to humiliate, to punish, Mary and her boy, could not be disregarded and put aside once it was used as a base of influence. Thus, did Mary continue her many dalliances and affairs within Court. And of such illicit stock and trade was it a booming business while the Royal platform decayed in the rising popularity of the moral squalor found in the last days of the Weimar Republic. Within the upper classes of British society had the remaining Noble Families and the Imperial Household been the arbiters of many dark and sinful recreations and improvements upon the despairing nihilism of their German relatives. Their many crude and animalistic behaviors in private parties of London Homes and Great Houses had revived the memory of the freed Hebrews at the foot of the Holy Mount Sinai in Moses's absence. Their lustful pursuits of wicked pleasures and beastly gluttony was shown as complete disregard and open contempt of care in a world, a country, brought to its knees in the destitution of a worsening economic depression.

And it was in those evil days that Lady Mary Crawley, ever upright, but often sorely tempted by the lude and shocking, surrendered her inhibitions and decency to the decadence and pleasures of Caligula's Rome. Often had she partook in all sorts of experimentation of flesh and narcotic, with eyes open to ambition and closed to the sinful gouted richness of unwholesome impulses. What once was used to protect her children, her family, became a greed of limitless vice within the corruption of the power she held. But the greatest of her appetites was the endless need and want in the sating of the allusive intimacy and pleasure that had once nearly destroyed her relationship with George and had ruined her marriage with Henry. The dehumanization and objectification of Mary's body by the queen and the ever burden of guilt for her betrayal had numbed her to all matters of moral decay. And, indeed, it did not matter who was her partner – man or woman – as long as her needs were met, and no woman ever expected her to lower herself to return such pleasures.

It is here noted that, unlike many of the participants of these disgusting and shocking displays of hedonism, Lady Mary was fully aware and cognizant of all she did of foul and vile things in ambition. And unlike her peers, she did not smirk or laugh at the idea of getting away with it. Instead, in habit of self-correcting behavior in the throes of a lifelong tremendous hatred for herself, it was Lady Mary's gregarious self-punishment that she found salvation. Satin restraints, her own knickers for gag, and the red marks upon her ivory flesh. The pain of a cane, the cry into silk, and the sputtered sobs in the knowledge that she deserved it, all of it, as she stood naked at the foot of her bed, hands and feet tied to the posters. She killed her granny, she killed Carson, she had betrayed her son. She reveled in the scorn and humiliation, as a cockney accent called her a 'Filthy Posh Cow', reaching for another instrument to punish their beautiful 'slave' who paid exceedingly well for their skill in her torment.

Matthew Crawley reached out gently, his eyes closed in pain, touching so softly her back, her bottom, where he imagined they had hurt her so terribly. But he gritted his teeth in helpless frustration when his wife stepped away from the touch she longed for. Guilt and sorrow were upon Mary's countenance that looked away from her soul mate. He saw that she was mortified and ashamed of his loving and protective hands, the pity and pain he felt for her in that moment. Fore she knew that she did not deserve it, could not bear to think of a world in which anyone thought that Lady Mary Crawley was a victim of those days, those years. Fore, it was she, and no other, which lost her children, because of such sinful behavior.

As George had accused and said aloud in hatred and accusation, Mary's actions in those wicked days was not unnoted or unwatched. Ever darting at her heels, ever in hero worship and love, was Sybbie faithful to her beautiful and famous mamma. And from cracks in doorways and keyholes had the girl heard and seen much of Mary's vices and sins. There were rare nights that her heroine wandered into her room in a daze of drunkenness or high on narcotics, smelling of wine and men's seed - foreign lipstick smeared upon her neck and ivory breasts. There she would take the girl in her arms and become incredibly serious as she assured Sybbie that everything she did, she did to keep her girl safe.

It was an evil thing to say to a frightened and isolated young girl who despaired much of her poor lovely mamma's plight.

She watched in trauma on those nights when Lady Grantham, in shock and anger, rancorously threw Mary out of Sybbie's room, slamming the door in her daughter's face. The girl would hide in her bathroom with Marigold to escape the angry rantings of the woman in the hall, tripping over her own evening gown skirts as she demanded her mamma open the door at once. In her cousin's arms –sister in all but name – did she cower in shameful tears as her mamma's cold and velvety voice echoed in scolding reminder of who all of this was for, and who was protecting her. Cruelty was in the accusations of the girl being ungrateful and spoiled that were echoed just under the velvety comforts and cuddles of a teary Marigold assuring Sybbie that everything would be alright, that Aunt Mary did not mean anything she said that night. And, indeed, the next morning, was some small present of deeper meaning between them left on her pillow when she awoke. Later in the evening a sober and guilt-ridden Mary would come to her and apologize profusely for whatever she might have said. And always – always – did Sybbie forgive the woman she worshiped above all else.

But as the years went by, Sybbie Branson never forgot what she saw and heard, what she smelt and felt in captivity. And when the time came in her own teenage girlhood, feeling the cold eyes and haunted lusts of Mirada Pelham ever in her nightmares, Sybbie took a dark comfort in the similarities between herself and her mamma when she fell down the same rabbit hole she once feared. In much evil that she allowed to be done to her in the year before George's return, Sybbie strived for a taste of the same void of numbness that she had expertly learned from her hero – Lady Mary Crawley.

However, not all of Mary's affairs and schemes were born from ambition. For the chiefest of the motivations of such wonton illicit degradations was often used to gain what little news she had of George who was exiled far away, and to monitor the royal campaign against him. Much of Mary's deeds in those wicked days had shielded George from discovery through misinformation and the brokering of many dark deals of which haunted Mary many a night alone with her thoughts of their steep prices. Yet, even years later, at their most heated, when angry and bitter words were traded like grenades thrown from their trenches, she never spoke of such things to George in wrath or resentment.

Though, if it is said that George was ignorant of such things, it was surely to spare Mary. Fore much done to her was often and purposefully photographed and filmed secretly to be sent abroad in a campaign of psychological warfare. For the awful truth in most of George's eight-year exile in North America, despite bragging and rumor from the Royal House, was that no one knew where he was or – with exception of Lady Hexham - how to find him. After the massacre and the fall of Downton, the boy had left the names Crawley and Grantham behind him. He became a nameless and ragged wanderer of the highways and country roads of the rugged and fierce American landscapes. In many of the boy's adventures in those eight years in North America, very few knew the true name of the mysterious youth that had wandered into town that rendered them aid or rescue in arms or labor. And just as often did he disappear afterward into the wild or shadows - once more the nameless wayfarer of no importance or account in the eyes of the great and small.

In the growing impossibility of finding the skilled ranger before he came of age and into his inheritance, it was the hope of conspirators, desperate for Sybbie's hand in marriage, that 'The Comet' would stumble upon the bait that they flooded across the Atlantic. Anything to remind George Crawley of the evil perpetrated by Mirada Pelham at Brancaster Castle, the misunderstanding between Mary and Henry in his boyhood, and the "Halloween Massacre" of 1932 in Dutch Town in the Upper Westside of New York City. The hope had been that such reminders of the boy's dark history with sex would enrage him, would draw him out of the shadows and lure him into a trap long set if he ever attempted to rescue Lady Mary from the Palace. And it was true, George had seen the pictures and movies in his journeys and ranging across America and in Northern Mexico – more times than he cared to remember. And, indeed, had it much of the effect on their wolf's head as they hoped … except for its failure to achieve the primary goal. For George Crawley may have seen the bait in many places, but he never bit.

Not even in the year within an ancient Mexican Criminal Asylum. There, thrown in the deepest and darkest dungeon, the only light he saw for a year was the glow of a projector in which endless reels of Lady Mary's torments tied to her bed posts were played on a loop. For months, in the rot of that foul place, a former Ottoman Princess - whose only child died in Lady Mary's bed in 1913 - attempted to drive George Crawley mad with the very humiliation and pain Mary paid for to punish herself for hurting him. All day and night had he been taunted and reminded that he had fled like a coward and left his family, his mamma, to such a fate at the hands of his foes who relished in her humiliation. But still, in fell words and endless reels of Mary's debouchment, had the youth remained unbroken within the eye of the very storm of grave and dark psychological torture within that hellish horror of darkness, moss, mold, and ancient stone.

It was a battle of wits that George eventually won … but not without a greater cost to himself.

If George Crawley was in a dark room, he immediately left it at the whirring of a projector and the glow of black and white picture. No one was sure why he only arrived at the movies when the news reel started … and he never explained it to a soul. Pornography of any kind, George Crawley did not hold with. He did not allow it in his house, his barracks, camp, or presence. The men he commanded throughout the years thought him a Quaker, or at the least a more devote Catholic than an Irish grandmother. From boy to man, Captain George Crawley preferred to live his life purged of the gross and unseemly. It was a flaw that all his men could overlook in their devotion to his leadership and unmatched valiantry in battle. But his prejudice against smut remained a mystery that was unanswered … Fore he would not speak of it to anyone.

But most telling of all was the nightmares. In the darkness of a midnight, the pink and orange glow of the hours before dawn, Lady Mary would awaken to see a shadowy figure sitting beside her on the edge of her bed. She could not see the scarred and fair countenance lost in nightshade, but she felt his guilt and shame of anxiety in memory of the dark dream that brought him to Downton Abbey as the rest of the world slept. Without a flinch, without a startle, and without a word, the woman reached out for a tanned and callous hand and placed it to her freckled cheek, nestling its palm gently. A reassurance to her boy, whose love had never been in doubt in all these long years, that she was emancipated from her evil plights of the past. That he had not abandoned her to torment and rape. That though she had been his prisoner and hostage for years, none-the-less, he had rescued her and brought her back to a wholesome life … In one touch she had confirmed that Lady Mary Crawley was safe in every way possible.

It was then that she would slide out of the sheets and onto his lap as he embraced her, her nose nuzzling his stubbled cheek as he held her to him fiercely. It lasted only a brief score of minutes, this soul deep affection of pure love. When they broke the hug, she would kiss her gallant war hero chastely and stare long and deeply into his eyes with her thousand-watt intimate gaze of red tinted amber. Taking his cheek in hand, Mary would try to pull him with her as she slipped back under her covers. Taking her eyes off him only a second, to lift the comforter and sheets for him to join her. But when she turned back, he had already disappeared … as if no one had ever been there at all. As to why he came, she did not know. And of what nightmares or horror of a late battlefield had led him to her bedroom and arms, Mary could only guess … convincing herself of his ignorance of her darker deeds of the past. Still, as she laid back, a single tear stained her pillowcase in the wake of his absence.

Fore of all the issues that plagued the troubled relationship between Lady Mary and Captain George Crawley, the desperate and pure love that they had for each other was not one of them.