Author's Note: Thank you all so much for returning to read this chapter and thank you for the kind words you all left on the previous one! I hope that you all enjoy, happy reading x
From where she was sitting opposite Adelaide at the table in the quaint little café they had come across while on their walk, Anna smiled as she watched her remove her lacy white gloves and place them in her lap before she brushed an annoying red curl back behind her ear and shed her coat. The way that she draped it over the back of her chair before turning back to her and sitting up a little straighter made her so proud, but at the same time it made her feel somewhat wistful. She was no longer the loud, boisterous little girl who pleaded for cake every time she and John took her out for afternoon tea. Well, no, that wasn't exactly true. Sometimes she was and she cherished those moments, but more often than not she conducted herself in a much more ladylike manner these days and she knew that that was due to Miss Sybbie.
She had been spending a lot more time with her recently since John had been so ill and she had been so busy with trying to nurse him back to health. She could tell that she had been bored because she had been unable to really play with Evelyn and she had gotten tired of playing with the same toys all the time, so she had spoken to the nanny at Downton and the two of them had managed to come to an agreement. Once a week, she would take Adelaide up to Downton and she would stay and play with the children while she went home and did all that she had had to do. One afternoon, she had returned to collect her and when she had entered the nursery she had found her and Miss Sybbie sitting at the table together with a little tea-set spread out. Miss Sybbie had been teaching her about etiquette when it came to having tea.
At the time, she had thought that it was a little game and she had thought that all that Adelaide had learned would just go right over her head as it had always been prone to do, but it was clear as she watched her now that she had remembered it all and was trying her best to put it into action. She watched her set her gloves down on the chair beside her and take the napkin from the plate in front of her so that she could drape it over her lap, and when she looked up at her she was unable to resist reaching out so that she could rest her hand on her cheek and brush her thumb against her skin. Her heart swelled when her little girl covered her hand with hers and nuzzled against her palm, something that she was prone to do with both her and John, and she sighed with happiness when Adelaide blessed her with a soft smile.
'Do you really think that daddy will like our new dresses, mummy?' Adelaide asked once they had both settled back in their chairs.
'Oh, daddy's going to love them, darling.' Anna nodded.
'Why did we have to get the red and green ones? I liked the yellow ones better.' Adelaide admitted, her hands playing together in her lap.
Anna remained silent for a moment as she thought about the easiest way to explain John's heritage to her without confusing her too much. 'Do you remember how daddy once showed you some photographs of him as a child with Balgair, his grandfather? His Scottish one, not the Irish one,' She asked before Adelaide nodded in response. 'Well, Balgair was a member of the Bates clan and a clan is just another word for a very large family. Daddy could probably explain this a little better than I can because I'm still not too sure about how it all works, but I'm quite sure that back when Balgair was alive it was the clan that you were part of that determined what colour tartan was worn. The Bates clan wore red and green tartan, so we bought the red and green dresses so that we can honour daddy's heritage. Do you understand that?'
'Yes, mummy,' Adelaide reassured her. 'Does daddy still have family here? Or have they all died?'
'He has one cousin, Blaire, and she and I have written to one another a couple of times in the past because we met the last time he and I were here. She doesn't live too far from Duneagle and we actually walked through her village as a bit of a shortcut to get back there, so we bumped into her and her children. The two of them are very much alike and she's so lovely. We want to take you and Evie to meet her at some point before we leave on Friday, but you need to know that her Scottish accent is thick and so it might be hard for you to understand.'
'Mummy, why doesn't daddy have a Scottish accent too?' Adelaide asked as she tilted her head to one side inquisitively.
Anna smiled. 'Your daddy has Scottish blood thanks to his ancestors, but he's never actually lived in Scotland as far as I know and that could quite well be the reason. You see, your grandad on his side decided to leave Scotland and move to Ireland when his parents died and it was in Ireland that he met your nanny. They married quickly and then I think your nanny found out that she was pregnant three years after that. Daddy lived in Ireland with his parents until he was about your age and then they moved down to London, but neither of us are sure about why that was. For as long as he can remember, England has been his home and so he has an English accent. He picks up the Scottish accent very easily when he's here though and he does slip in and out of it without being aware. Maybe you'll be able to hear him do it if you listen.'
Just as Adelaide opened her mouth to respond, the sound of footsteps approaching caught their attention and they both turned their heads to see a young waitress making her way over to their table with a notepad in hand. She removed the pencil from behind her ear and turned to a new page in her notepad just before she reached them, she and Adelaide sharing a soft smile when she came to stand beside her chair. 'You have the same hair as me!' Adelaide gasped, pointing up at her fiery red hair that had been pulled up into a perfect bun atop her head.
'Goodness, I do, don't I?' The waitress giggled, her light Scottish accent coming through before she gestured to her hair which was hanging over her shoulders in two braids. 'My hair used to be as long as yours but I had to cut it so that I could work here. Your braids are beautiful!'
'Thank you, my mummy did them. She used to be a lady's maid, so she's very good at doing hair.' Adelaide informed her.
The waitress turned to Anna and the two of them chuckled together for a moment before she asked: 'Are you both ready to order?'
'Yes, I'll have some chamomile tea please and Adelaide would like some apple juice and a slice of chocolate cake.' Anna replied.
The waitress quickly scribbled down the order before looking at her once again. 'Will there be anything else?'
'No, thank you, I think that's about it.' Anna admitted.
'Okay,' The waitress nodded. 'I'll be back in a couple of minutes.'
'Thank you.' Anna and Adelaide said in unison before she turned on her heel and made her way back to the kitchen.
Once the two of them were alone once again, Adelaide pushed her menu aside so that it was out of the way before looking at her mother. 'Mummy, please can I come and sit on your knee?' She asked with hope in her eyes before the most tender smile crossed her mother's lips.
'Come here.' Anna told her while patting her lap.
Adelaide wasted no time in leaving her chair and walking around the table to where her mother was sitting, a sigh escaping her when her mother took her waist in her hands and brought her to sit in her lap. She cuddled against her on instinct, her hand taking hold of her blouse as she rested her head on her shoulder and let her eyes drift closed when she turned her head to brush two warm kisses against her temple. 'Do you think we might be able to go shopping and have tea at a café again when we go home, mummy?' She asked her after a short while.
'Of course we can, my darling,' Anna wrapped her arms around her and pulled her closer. 'We had a lot of fun this afternoon, didn't we?'
'I always have fun with you, mummy, you're my best friend.' Adelaide told her before brushing a kiss against her cheek.
'And you're mine,' Anna pressed her forehead to hers for a moment, blinking back the tears brimming in her eyes. 'You always have been…'
'How much longer are you going to make me stand out here?'
Standing in front of the mirror in the bedroom that she and John shared that night as she zipped up the back of her dress, Anna giggled and shook her head when he called to her as he stood out on the landing. She had refused to dress to go out to dinner with him in the bedroom because it would have ruined the surprise and so she had allowed him to get dressed before asking him to go and wait on the landing while she changed. He had known that she was up to something, she had seen the curiousness in his gaze when he had looked at her, but he had done as he had been told and it was obvious that he was starting to become increasingly impatient with every minute that slowly ticked by. 'Honestly, anyone would think hours have gone by,' She tutted at him as she ran her fingers through her curls once more. 'You can come in.'
She turned in place as soon as she heard her husband turn the doorknob and it truly took all the self-control she possessed not to burst out laughing when he took one step into the room and stopped dead in his tracks. He lowered his gaze to the red pumps that she had chosen to wear and her heart raced in her chest as his gaze moved slowly up her legs which were exposed since the dress ended just below her knees, a gentle blush blooming in her cheeks when his gaze locked with hers at last. He began to walk towards her in silence and she kept her gaze trained on him, her heart only pounding harder as he continued to shorten the distance between them until his hands were on her hips and she was pressed flush against him. She knew that he could hear the way that her breath was shaking with anticipation, but she didn't mind.
'This is pretty…' His voice was no higher than a whisper as his lips were dangerously close to hers and he looked into her eyes.
She swallowed, her gaze flicking instinctively between his and his lips. 'You think so?'
'Mmm…' He hummed.
It wasn't until her back came into contact with the wall that she realised he had been walking her backwards, but before she could open her mouth to speak he caught her in a shamelessly passionate kiss. Her head spun and she struggled to process anything for several moments, but when he moved one hand to the back of her head to keep her from hitting it against the wall she snapped out of the little daze she had ended up in. She allowed her hands to come to rest on his arms through his jacket and clung to him as he kissed her with wild abandon, the urge to thread her fingers through his hair becoming almost unbearable as she met him kiss-for-kiss. She would have thrown caution to the wind and messed his hair up without a second thought if they hadn't a dinner reservation in an hour, but they had and so she had to refrain.
She was unsure as to how considering there was so much blood rushing in her ears, but she somehow managed to hear Adelaide open and close her bedroom door and so she reluctantly brought her hands to her husband's chest and pushed him back a little. She let him press his forehead against hers as they struggled to get their breath back, her hands moving down to his waist so that she could hold him close while he ran his thumb over the hair at the back of her head, but when the door to their bedroom opened they quickly made the decision to part. 'Goodness me, how beautiful do you look?' John exclaimed gently when Adelaide came running into the bedroom and made a beeline for him, the two of them laughing together as he scooped her up in one arm and brought her to balance on his hip. 'You look just like mummy.'
'Mummy said that we had to get the red and green dresses because they're the colours for our family, daddy.' She explained to him.
'You actually listened to me when I was telling you about that?' He chortled as he turned back to Anna and watched her neaten up her hair.
'Why are you surprised? Your family history is important to you and that makes it important to me as well.' She smiled.
Adelaide patted John on the chest then, causing him to look at her again. 'Do you like our dresses? It was our special surprise for you.'
'I love them and I think you both look absolutely beautiful in them,' He buried his lips in her curls. 'A bhobain.'
'What does that mean, daddy?' She inquired when he pulled back, sliding her arms around his neck as he readjusted the hold he had of her.
'A bhobain means my darling in Scottish.' He informed her while brushing his thumb against her leg through her tights.
Adelaide beamed at him. 'Say something else, daddy, say something else.'
He hummed in thought for a moment as he looked around the room before his gaze landed on Anna as she reapplied her smudged lipstick. 'Mo leannan,' He said in a quiet voice, drawing his little girl slightly closer to his chest while his gaze remained on his wife. 'My sweetheart.'
Even though she had her back to him, through the mirror on the dressing table he could see Anna smiling and his heart swelled in his chest. 'We ought to head downstairs and start putting our coats on,' Anna told them once she had set her lipstick down and turned around again. 'Our reservation is in less than an hour and we still have to walk into town so that we can catch the bus, so I think we should head out soon.'
'Right you are, darling.' John nodded before allowing Anna to walk past him and following her out of the room, his lips brushing a light kiss against Adelaide's hairline when she laid her head on his shoulder and cuddled against him while he closed the bedroom door behind them. There was nothing, not a single thing, that he loved more than the three girls that he had been blessed with. He was still unsure as to what he had done to deserve them because he had done many things in the past that made him less than proud, but he had clearly been deemed worthy of them and he was determined to do everything in his power to prove that that was right. Their lives and their happiness had been entrusted to him and he was determined to let the three of them know just how important and loved they were by him every day of his life.
Wrapping an arm around Anna when she cuddled up to him in her sleep as they sat on the bus that was taking them home later that night, John chose to ignore the disapproving glance that the woman sitting opposite them sent his way as he pressed a languid kiss to her temple. He had thought that she had looked exhausted when they had decided to leave the restaurant and head home so that the girls could go to bed and she had proved him right. They were less than ten minutes into their journey and she was already well and truly dead to the world, her eyelashes beating delicately against her cheeks as her lips were slightly parted and she was releasing the gentlest snores into his neck. She had asked him to wake her up if she fell asleep, but she looked so content and settled and so he decided to just leave her be for a while.
He turned his attention to his lap when he settled down in his seat again and smiled at seeing his lovely little girls sleeping against his chest. Evelyn was nestled in one arm while swaddled in her blanket and Adelaide was perched on his knee, her hand holding onto his waistcoat as her head rested on his chest and her curls tickled the underside of his chin. Giving Adelaide a tender kiss on the head, he inhaled her natural scent before sighing happily as he thought back to how in awe she had been as she had watched Anna reel earlier that night. She had been completely silent and her eyes had been so wide and bright, her attention focused completely on her mother as she had watched her dance. When the dance had been over she had clapped with everyone else and as soon as Anna had made it back to the table she had gone to her.
In all truthfulness, when Anna had told him that she would reel while they were away he had thought that she had been teasing.
He had thought that she had just been saying that to him to convince him to take her and the girls to Scotland, he had never imagined that she had genuinely been planning on getting up there and dancing. He knew how much she loved to reel. She had always been wreathed in smiles when she had had a dance lesson with Lady Rose the last time they had been in Scotland and she had looked so happy when she had danced for him at the Ghillies Ball. So much time had passed since then though and so many things had happened to them. Her attack and all that had happened afterwards had completely stripped her of any confidence she had had and she was still trying to build that back up. She hated being the centre of attention and having people stare at her, but tonight she had pushed through it and he was incredibly proud.
Seeing her dance like that had reminded him of what a strong woman he had married, even though he never needed reminding of that.
To say that she had had a hard life was an understatement.
She had been through things that were supposed to break a person and cause them to become a shell of their former self.
She had grown up with an alcoholic mother and the most revolting, abusive stepfather and at the same time she had been raising her little sister more or less. She had had no one to turn to or confide in about what had been happening to her at home. Instead of being allowed to be a child and enjoy her childhood, she had been forced to take on a parental role at the age of eight and he hated knowing that. He wished that he could say that things had started looking up when she had moved away to start working as a tweeny, but that would be a complete lie. The housekeeper at Alderton House had been horrid to her and made sure to tell her that she was a waste of space at every opportunity and she had struggled to make friends with anyone because she had been the youngest and the smallest. They had just walked all over her.
He knew that things had improved when she had applied and been taken on at Downton because Mrs Hughes had taken a shine to her the moment they had met. She had been eleven when she had started working there and she had told him numerous times about how she had been allowed to sneak downstairs and have tea with Mrs Hughes in her pantry when she had been unable to sleep. He loved knowing that she had been so motherly to her during a time when she had been so vulnerable. There was no doubt in his mind that it had been thanks to her that Anna had been able to progress as quickly as she had and that what she had been through in the past had been unable to ruin her. Sadly though, even though things had improved when she had moved to Downton he knew that she had still had more heartache to come.
And that had been thanks to him.
He had been attracted to her the moment he had met her and he knew that she had shared those feelings because he had heard her breath catch in her throat when they had shaken hands. She had defended him at every opportunity in his earliest days there and on what he had thought had been his last night there she had come to him. She had brought him up a tray since he had been feeling too humiliated to head downstairs for dinner and she had practically begged him to keep her informed of his whereabouts, but he had known that she had known that if he had left he would have ended up in the workhouse. Why else would she have been crying when she had wandered back down the hall? She had thought that he had barely paid any attention to her at all in those early days, but she had been terribly mistaken about that.
She had been the only thing he had paid attention to.
It was through paying so much attention to her that he had ended up losing his heart to her and falling in love with all her adorable quirks. He just wished that he had waited to propose and sit down with her to discuss their future until he had been completely certain that Vera had been out of the picture. He could still remember how her sobs had echoed in the silence of the night when he had told her that he had been leaving her and Downton to give Vera and his vows a second chance. The sound had pierced his heart and he had been certain that he had never experienced pain like that before that night. Looking back on it now though, he realised that she had been in unimaginable pain and it made his heartache seem incredibly insignificant. He had been so weak back then and she had deserved so, so much better than him.
He had to admit that he felt the same way now, but she had smacked him enough times for him to know never to say it out loud again.
She had such a way of keeping him in check and that, along with her undeniable strength, was one of the things he loved most about her.
He looked at her again when he heard her sigh as she nuzzled her cheek against his shoulder and his heart raced when he saw that she had woken up. She was gazing up at him through tired blue eyes and he was unable to resist pressing his forehead against hers, her sleepy hum making him chuckle as he grazed her nose with his own. 'And you said that you weren't feeling tired in the slightest…' He teased her gently.
'Okay, maybe I am feeling a little tired.' She replied, her voice hoarse from slumber as she made herself sit up beside him.
'A little?' He raised a brow at her while putting the arm that had just been around her around Adelaide and pulling her closer to his chest.
She rolled her eyes at him in response. 'Do you want to sleep on the sofa tonight? Because that's what'll happen if you keep this up.'
'You're mean when you're tired, you know that?' He pouted, the two of them laughing quietly when she looked at him once again.
'Look at them,' She whispered, gesturing to their daughters. 'Sometimes, I honestly can't believe how blessed we are.'
He hummed. 'Anna, you deserve this and so much more considering all that you've had to go through to get to this point.'
'We both deserve it,' She corrected him. 'Neither of our lives have been easy, but now we both get to start afresh with Addie and Evie.'
'And I intend to make the most of that.' He told her.
'Me too,' She reassured him as she leaned back in her seat and cuddled up to him once again. 'Me too…'
Drawing the covers over herself once she had climbed into bed beside John after tucking Adelaide into bed and kissing her goodnight, Anna all but collapsed into his waiting arms and curled into his side before draping an arm across his stomach and lying her head on his shoulder. The evening had been lovely and it had been made even more incredible by other diners approaching their table to comment on how polite and beautiful Adelaide was, but she knew that she would appreciate it much more in the morning once she had gotten some sleep and was much more awake. She tilted her head back and looked up at John when he ran a hand over her hair in a soothing fashion, the two of them sharing a smile before she moved her hand to his chest and stretched up ever-so-slightly to catch him in a kiss that was both soft and sweet.
The kiss ended almost as quickly as it had begun and she settled down in his arms again in an instant, her leg tangling itself with his under the quilt as she draped her arm back across his stomach and let him draw her close. 'Are you going to tell me what that was for?' He asked.
'Nope,' She tucked her head into his neck, sighing as she closed her eyes. 'You're a smart man, I'm certain you can work it out on your own.'
He was unable to keep himself from chuckling as he ran a hand up and down her back. 'You are something else, Anna Bates, I mean that.'
'That had better be a compliment.' She mumbled, already beginning to fall asleep on him once again.
'You daft beggar, of course it's a compliment…' He tutted. 'I love you so much.'
'I love you too,' She brushed a clumsy kiss against the side of his neck. 'Now, turn that lamp off and come and get some sleep.'
He wasted no time in doing as she had said and once the room had been plunged into darkness and he had snuggled down underneath the quilt he held her tight, his hand at the small of her back as his lips came to rest against her temple. He closed his eyes then and just allowed himself to focus on the sound of her steady breathing, his lips curling into a smile against her skin when her body lost all tension and he was able to hear light snores escaping her. 'Goodnight, Anna,' He whispered after kissing her warmly once again. 'Pleasant dreams, my darling.'
Author's Note: Thank you so much for taking the time to read this chapter and I truly hoped that you enjoyed it! There's some drama coming your way soon which means that we'll be seeing a reappearance from two people very close to Anna, so I hope that you're all ready for that and I want to thank lemacd for the support that you have given me with the idea! Thank you all once again for taking the time to review and please let me know what you thought if you have the time. I'll see you all soon x