June 1941
"Hel-lo!"
Edith's smile was like sunshine as the train disgorged all its passengers onto Downton station's northbound platform. Anthony, who had been pacing up and down and checking his pocket watch at five minute intervals for the last hour, turned at her greeting and was about to take her hand, but Edith had already dumped her suitcase onto the platform, planted her hands on his shoulders and bobbed up to kiss his cheek. "You didn't need to come all this way," she scolded affectionately as they parted, leaving his nose full of her familiar soft perfume. "I could have telephoned for a taxicab - think of your petrol ration!" (Geoffrey was still harrumphing and shooting her dirty looks every time cars were mentioned.)
"Well, I w-wanted to be a good host." He oughtn't to be so shaken by a silly, friendly peck on the cheek, not at his age! He was the one who'd suggested this little weekend, after all. Edith's meeting with the MOI bod a few months' ago had had the outcome of encouraging her to publish more articles with a focus on 'the War on the Home Front'. And Anthony had a whole regiment of Land Girls working their fingers to the bone on the Home Farm. Why, he'd suggested, didn't Edith come down and interview them? Make rather an interesting feature for the next edition, wouldn't it? And - Mother of Mercies - she'd agreed!
He bent before Edith could stop him and hooked up her suitcase with one hand. "Good grief," he exhaled involuntarily, "whatever have you got in here? Bricks?"
"Books, mainly," Edith admitted, making him laugh. "My Brownie, clothes - hand it over if it's too heavy!"
"Not at all - I've been meaning to exercise more."
Edith tutted and slid her hand into his sling to hold the other arm as they crossed the road outside the station, where Stewart waited with the motor. "Hello, Stewart. How are you?"
Stewart tipped his hat to her. "Very well, thank you, Lady Edith." He opened her door for her and added, "And might I say how nice it is to see you at Locksley again, my lady?"
"It is, isn't it, Stewart?" Her smile grew conspiratorial. "I even think Sir Anthony might agree."
Stewart grinned broadly at her in the rearview mirror as Anthony blushed furiously and choked a little. "I'm sure you're right, my lady."
"I'm afraid," Anthony warned her as he stood back to let her pass into the hall first, "that we're rather crammed to the rafters just now. But I think we've found you a reasonable berth."
"Oh, don't worry about me - I'm like a cat, Anthony, I'll sleep anywhere. How are the evacuees working out?" Anthony, it turned out, had had a small school billeted on him; Anthony's mother's ballroom had been turned into a dormitory, and as they entered the library, she could hear the leathery thwack of a cricket ball being struck and the delighted whooping of small boys coming from the direction of the orchard.
Anthony grinned somewhat sheepishly and Edith noted that there was a beginner's Chemistry textbook on the corner of the desk, and a painting that looked to have been done by an amateur artist laid next to it. "Oh, not too bad. Rather nice to have children about the place - even if they are the most riotous little imps. And good for them to be out of the way of bombs, in any case."
"Hear, hear." She set her handbag down on the desk, next to Anthony's jumble of papers, and propped herself against the wood. "Well, what shall we do now?"
"The ladies don't tend to finish on the farm until about six, I'm afraid, then they'll come home for their tea. You can meet them all then."
Edith smiled at that. Typical of Anthony to call them 'the ladies'.
"If you're busy, you don't have to entertain me, don't worry." She gestured along the shelves. "I'll just have a browse in here, if I may."
"Of course. And… anything you'd like to borrow - "
"Just leave you a note?" Edith smiled over her shoulder. "Yes, I remember." She pulled a rather embarrassed face. "Goodness, I really used to treat you like a public lending library, didn't I? However did you put up with me?"
Anthony gave a rather sad smile. "Oh, I didn't mind. I liked it, in fact." He dug a hand sheepishly into his pocket. "It meant… well, after the war… it meant that there would always be a 'next time.' You know, you'd… have to visit to return the book, at least."
"Sometimes I think I borrowed your books just to feel a little closer to you when we were apart." She turned back, trying to brighten the rather sombre mood a little. "My Uncle Marmaduke used to tell me that you can learn everything you need to know about a person by looking at their bookshelves."
Anthony chuckled. "I hardly dare ask what mine say about me."
Edith thought for a moment and then began to walk up and down the shelves. "Hmm, let's see… Homer - you have an intellectual bent of mind, but - Christie - you don't fetishise it." She tapped the spines as she went by. "All your Mama's sketchbooks - you keep things for sentiment's sake, though - " She looked at their position, tucked away into the corner by his favourite armchair - "it still vaguely shames you, and you hope that people won't realise how beautifully softhearted you actually are. I've always wondered why that is… Anyway, you're interested in the world around you, but what you really love is… the familiar, the domestic, the comforting." Her fingers lingered over the spine of Persuasion and then tripped up two shelves to hook out a collection of Shelley's poems. "And you have the heart and soul of a Romantic." She grinned. "But it's not fair, really - I knew all of that already."
"Better than anyone else, I think."
"High praise, indeed." She flicked through the poetry for a moment, and then challenged, a touch shyly, "You've seen my shelves at the office - care to try your luck?"
"All right. Hardly a man to be seen - a reaction against too many of them in your youth? Lots of history and politics - you were a bright child, but your formal education was sadly lacking, because it wasn't considered proper. You read scandalous novels - but you hide them away where you think no one will see them, because you think they'll judge you for it." He tipped his head in acknowledgement. "But, as you say, I knew all that already."
"B-better than anyone else, I th-think," she echoed him.
"High praise indeed." Anthony's voice was quiet and he was moving across the library towards her, slowly but deliberately, giving her plenty of time to move away if she chose.
Edith didn't choose.
He was a foot away and gaining when the knock interrupted.
"Sir? Might I - Oh!" Stewart halted in the doorway. From behind him drifted a burble of cheerful noise as the Land Girls trooped through from the boot room into the drawing room. "Lady Edith, I'm sorry. I wasn't aware - "
Anthony's face, for just the briefest of moments, showed frustration and then, as he turned to his man, it smoothed out into his customary expression of gentlemanly politeness. "What is it, Stewart?"
"Might I bring you and Lady Edith tea in here, sir?" Somehow, Edith did not think that was what he had come in to say, originally.
"No, thank you." She smiled effusively at them both. "I think we shall go through and join the ladies."
By halfway through tea, Anthony had become convinced that Edith was embarking on a plan of such strategic magnificence that Monty himself would have been thoroughly impressed. The object of the plan: to seduce him.
Shocking as it sounded, there could be no other explanation for the way she had pointedly allowed her skirt to slip up over her knee as they sat side by side on the library sofa, or the way her hand had brushed his several times on the way to the milk jug or the plate of carrot cake or her cigarette case. And there certainly could be no excuse for the way that same hand, so elegantly manicured, had settled almost casually on to his knee - just for the briefest of moments - as she had laughed at something one of the Land Girls had said.
Well. Two could very easily play at that game.
It was rather exhilarating, in fact. For so long - before the War, before Jim's idiocy, before Edith had waltzed back into his life - all that had lain before him was the quiet solitude of his books and his record player and his estate. And now the long-buried dreams of his past were becoming tangible once more, as if he might be able to reach out and take all of them into his grasp. How often had he dreamed of this, for example, when he and Edith had courted after the War? That he would be able to let her sit with him and touch him and flirt with him? And all of it had been so impossible: so young and inexperienced as she had been.
But it was all so different, this time. She was older, to state the patently obvious. She had a daughter! She owned a magazine! No one could argue that she didn't know precisely what she was doing.
It was as if someone had come along and unlocked him from shackles he had not even known he had been wearing, until the moment they had fallen away.
Edith smiled up at him, a scandalous, crimson smirk, and Anthony smiled back, feeling quite as light as air.
Anthony had invited all the Land Girls to a formal dinner, in honour of Edith's arrival that evening. They had changed, but not into the sort of formal wear that would have been the only appropriate option in Edith's youth; hardly any of the Land Girls were equipped with anything finer than nice tea-dresses, and Edith herself had opted for smart linen slacks and a light bishop's-sleeve blouse - the last vestige of her pre-war wardrobe. Anthony was in linen too - a neat suit - but had opted to go tie-less, a state of informality that Edith did not think she had ever seen him in before. His throat was rather distracting, actually: the line where his early summer tan met the white of the skin usually hidden away by fabric; the solid muscle of his neck; the bob of his Adam's apple as he swallowed…
"So exciting, to think we'll be in a proper magazine!" the plump Liverpudlian girl sitting next to Edith beamed, derailing Edith's dangerous train of thought. She pushed back the dark springy curls that had escaped from their pins as she spoke. "Would you like some more potatoes?"
"Mmm, please. All Locksley produce, I suppose?"
"Oh, yes." On Edith's left, a rather elegant redhead in a dress which, despite its simplicity, bore all the hallmarks of couture fashion, inserted herself into the conversation. "After we've filled our government quotas, we usually have enough left over for our own purposes. Rather lucky, really."
"Bloody lucky," the Liverpudlian corrected. "Got to have something to feed the princess over here, haven't we?"
"Ha-ha," the redhead retorted in her clipped RP voice, but it all seemed good-natured enough. "Georgina Lofton-Bruce, Lady Edith, delighted to meet you. And my friend of the Scouse vowels over there is Annie Barton."
"Also delighted to meet you," Annie mimicked Georgina with a smile.
"I'm very much looking forward to coming out with you tomorrow morning," Edith smiled, ladling another beautifully roasted potato onto her plate. Apparently all stops had been pulled out in honour of her arrival. "Sir Anthony used to take me out to the Home Farm with him, when I lived locally, but that was rather a long time ago now. I imagine everything's changed completely."
"Is it true you worked for the Women's Land Army during the last war, Lady Edith?" Georgina asked.
Edith thought over those few months' on the Drakes' farm - learning to drive the tractor - that ill-advised kiss with Mr Drake, because she had been lonely and worried for Anthony and feeling that the world was going to pieces around her ears. She swallowed. "A little, yes. But my family home was used as a convalescent home, so I mainly helped out there."
"Lucky old you," Georgina returned.
Helpfully, Annie explained, "Georgie's dad's country pile's been requisitioned by the Army."
"And not the interestingly, gorgeously wounded side of it either," Georgie sighed.
They all laughed and Anthony looked up from his plate and saw Edith's face, smiling and cheerful, and thought suddenly how nice it would be if she were here all the time, sitting at the other end of the dining table, being the perfect hostess.
"Why don't you come and help me choose another bottle of wine?" he murmured in her ear as everyone rose from the table after dinner. "Special occasion, and all that."
Edith looked up at him over her shoulder. "Heavens! I'm to be admitted to the holy of holies, am I? What a privilege!"
Anthony led her down into the kitchen, where Mrs Cox - brought in from retirement for the special occasion - sat at her scrubbed wooden table, enjoying a cup of tea and a sit down. "Lady Edith and I are just going down to the wine cellar, Mrs Cox," Anthony smiled warmly as they passed through. "Shan't be two ticks."
Mrs Cox raised an uncomfortably knowing eyebrow, but all she said was: "Right you are, sir, my lady."
The wine cellar was dark and cool, almost a relief after the noise and warmth of the dining room, especially once Anthony had shut the door above them. He collected a candle and old fashioned holder from an alcove just above the bottom step and clicked his lighter into action. The circle of light was soft and warm and Edith felt as if they were in a world of their own, just they two together, and everyone else forgotten. Wine cellars, like churches and chapels and libraries, were sacred spaces in that regard.
Edith felt, suddenly, rather trembly and full.
"You… you wouldn't ever let me do this, before," she whispered at Anthony's elbow.
"No," he agreed.
"W-why not?"
"Because while you were under my roof," Anthony murmured, lifting the candle to cast light over the neat racks of orderly bottles, "your reputation was mine to protect and, ah, if it had been known that we had been tucked away in a closed wine cellar for any length of time… there might have been talk." He swallowed, noisily. "And because I knew that if I allowed it, and you… you made advances… I wouldn't have the willpower to ensure that clearer heads prevailed."
"Oh." Her eyebrow arched. "I see. So… what inferences ought I to draw from the fact that you seem to have no such scruples this evening? Is it that I have no reputation any more for you to protect? Or that my charms are no longer enough to overwhelm you?"
"Neither, I'm happy to say." Anthony paused. "It's simply that… well, I've realised something very important."
"Well, do tell."
"I've realised that you are a grown woman, of considerable intelligence and with as much right to make your own decisions as the next person. And if you hadn't wanted to come down here, then I imagine that you wouldn't be standing here right now."
"No, I wouldn't," Edith agreed. "Heavens. How is it that after nearly thirty years, you're still capable of surprising me?"
"A pleasant surprise, I hope?" But his eyes, creased faintly at the edges, and the slight pulling back of his lips spoke of his uncertainty.
"Oh, darling. The loveliest one possible, I assure you." And then, before he could puzzle that one out fully, she had turned, business-like, to the racks of wine. "Now, come along. We've six thirsty Land Girls up there - not to mention Mrs Cox - and if we leave it much longer, they may send out a search party. Red or white?"
The bottle of merlot Edith had selected was very much appreciated by the Land Girls, but by nine o'clock, they were all yawning. Making their excuses, they bade Edith and Anthony goodnight and traipsed off to their respective billets.
Anthony stood and opened the French doors, letting in a breath of cool, late evening air. "Stroll through the garden before turning in?" he wondered.
"Lovely." Edith stood and wrapped her cardigan around her shoulders against the faint chill in the air, and let Anthony take her arm as they stepped outside into the garden. The air was humming with the thick, fragrant scent of roses and Edith bent to inhale it, eyes closed dreamily.
"I don't think I've ever smelt roses as lovely as Locksley ones," she murmured. "Strange, isn't it? Even in the middle of a war, there can still be such beauty."
"Then you must have one to take in with you." He rummaged in his trouser pocket, produced a penknife, and bent to cut a bright, lovely bloom for her.
"Tsst! Damn…" He held up his thumb with a wince, and in the dying light, Edith could see blood blossoming where he'd nicked it on a thorn.
"Oh, Anthony! Come here…" She tugged out her handkerchief and, against his protests, pressed it against the small cut.
"Well," he commented, once Edith had satisfied herself that the wound had stopped bleeding, "if this isn't a perfect metaphor for us, I don't know what is. Me trying to do the decent thing and always ending up looking like the worst fool in Creation." He looked thoroughly embarrassed.
Edith tutted. "Nonsense. It was a lovely thought, my dear." An apologetic smile crept in. "Just… perhaps one better carried out in full daylight?"
Her hands were soft in his hair, smoothing it down - and then they drifted to his shoulders. They were very, very close - close enough that even in the dim light of dusk, he could see each individual eyelash, and feel each individual puff of air as she inhaled and exhaled. "Edith."
"Anthony…" she breathed. "I'd very much like to be kissed, just now."
"Anthony," Edith said after some considerable time, "I ought to confess something."
"Oh? What might that be?" Anthony sounded rather punch-drunk - which Edith found was something of a relief - and his hand was deliciously warm on her waist.
"I won't say that I came here specifically in order to seduce you," Edith admitted, "but nor will I say that it wasn't a… secondary motivation."
She had thought that he would be shocked by that, but instead, his fingers closed on a loose curl of her hair and rubbed it gently between his thumb and forefinger before tucking it back behind her ear. "I see. Rather brazen of you."
"Mmm," she agreed. "I am rather brazen, you know. I don't see the point in being otherwise. And I know that there's lots of people who'd be shocked if they knew we'd had this conversation but I don't care. We're neither of us married to other people, or even involved. It's not as if I can get pregnant again - and just in case, I have brought precautions." She could feel herself blushing at that and she rushed on somewhat hurriedly, all of the reasons she'd rehearsed to herself on the train up from London bubbling out of her: "No one's been blackmailed or forced. I honestly don't see what's so immoral or shocking about stating, quite clearly, that I want to make love with you."
"Well, quite."
"And when you consider the number of people in unhappy marriages, 'lying back and thinking of England'… it makes absolutely no sense for - " She stopped, quite suddenly. "What did you say?"
"I said: 'Well, quite.' You're right. It would be nonsensical to say that two free and unencumbered persons oughtn't to make love to each other if they should so choose."
Edith looked up at him. "Precisely my view of the situation."
"But…" Anthony chewed on his lip, "what if the, ah, available equipment doesn't come up to the mark…?"
She lifted his injured hand to her mouth and kissed his knuckles, very gently. "Then… you've got five - four - working fingers and a very clever tongue. I… somehow don't think I'll be disappointed."
His eyebrows flew up into his hairline at that. "Oh. Um. Right. J-jolly good."
"But only if you want to," she added hastily. "You mightn't want to rush in and - "
Anthony's mouth crashed down onto hers.