"Mmmm..." Edith was waking from the most wonderful dream. In it, Anthony's mouth had been trailing warm kisses up her neck, and his strong hand had been caressing every bare patch of skin it could reach, and his voice had been murmuring such heavenly wickednesses into her ear…
A hand spread out over her belly and pulled her back into a tight embrace. Anthony's nose nuzzled at the crease between her neck and her collarbone. It was warm under the quilt and Edith nestled back against him. "Lovely…" she hummed.
"I know," he replied.
Edith turned in his embrace. His hair was sticking up at angles as if he had lost a quarrel with a Van de Graaf generator and his eyes were very blue and he looked perfectly, radiantly happy. She leaned in and kissed him, long and slow. "Good morning, Sir Anthony."
He bent his head and kissed the very tip of her nose, exceedingly gently. "Good morning - dearest, loveliest Edith."
Making their way up to Anthony's bedroom had been something of a covert operation. It wasn't yet late enough that they could guarantee they wouldn't be spotted, after all - and Edith, despite feeling no shame about what she and Anthony were about to do, somehow did not want to share the knowledge of this night with anyone else, not just yet.
His bedroom was just as she might have imagined: dark woods and crimson walls, books and belongings scattered on every available surface, with only Stewart's neatening hand to stop it from becoming utter chaos. Anthony shut the door behind them and then she felt his hand lift away the hair at the back of her neck to very gently kiss her nape.
"Sorry for the clutter." He let out a warm huff of laughter. "I… wasn't precisely expecting guests."
"Oh, don't fret - this has nothing on the state Marigold's room used to get into." She turned. "Besides, I'm not here to inspect your living quarters, am I?"
"No, I suppose not." He bent his head and kissed her, very gently. "If you change your mind, at any point - "
Edith smiled against his lips. "I know. But I shan't. You must own that I've always known my own mind, haven't I?"
"True enough."
Edith reached up and kissed him again, soft and slow. Her fingers began to tug his shirt tails free while Anthony's thumb explored the buttons at the side of her trousers - and then there was a brief, polite knock at the door. "Sir?"
They froze.
"Stewart," Anthony mouthed and raised a finger to his lips.
Disentangling them, he went to the door and opened it a crack, just poking his head out. "I think I can manage alone this evening, Stewart. Didn't think you'd still be up." Even to his own ears, it sounded like a weak excuse. It was, of course, Stewart's job to still be up.
"Very good, sir. And… what time would you like to be woken tomorrow?"
"Oh, I'll just… potter down in my own good time. Tell Mrs Cox not to worry about my breakfast - I'll find for myself if needs be. Goodnight, Stewart."
"Yes." Stewart sounded highly suspicious and frightfully confused. "Goodnight, sir."
Anthony shut the door and turned to glare at Edith who was sitting on the edge of the bed, clutching her sides in silent, hysterical paroxysms of laughter. She reached up a hand to wipe away tears of mirth as he prowled towards her. "Oh, my dear…! Stewart will think you've gone quite mad!"
"I'm starting to think I have, quite frankly. The most pleasant form of insanity possible." He stopped at the foot of the bed, hand on his hip, and asked, "Now, where were we?"
Edith lay teasingly back on his bed, stretching her arms up and tucking them behind her head. "You were undressing me in order that we could make reckless, passionate love until dawn."
His mouth quirked up at the very corner."Ah, yes - how could I have forgotten?"
He braced his knee on the mattress and bent over her. Edith's blouse was a wrap-over one, held closed with a tie at her waist. "Thank God," Anthony said fervently, tugging it loose so that it gaped open. "I was hoping there weren't going to be too many hooks and buttons, sweet one."
Edith pulled an apologetic face. "Then you mightn't be the best of friends with my knickers. Elastic's the devil to get hold of, just now."
Anthony raised an eyebrow. "Think I'll reserve judgement on your knickers until I've had a chance to inspect them more closely."
"Mmm, very scientific of you…" She didn't think she'd ever heard anything so delicious as Anthony saying the word 'knickers.' Edith half-sat up and wriggled out of the blouse, leaving herself in just her camisole and brassiere. "Now, fair's fair… I'll have that shirt off you, please."
"Are you sure?" Anthony croaked.
"Yes. L-lie down for me, would you?"
"Lie down?"
"Yes." She caught his hand and kissed it. "Please?"
He couldn't argue with that voice. Slowly, he lowered himself to the mattress and Edith leant over him, her loosened curls flowing over her bare shoulders, like an older, more beautiful Veronica Lake.
He wasn't wearing the sling tonight, which made everything a little easier. Edith's fingers feathered over the buttons on his shirt, teasing them out one by one until the fabric started to gape open onto his vest.
But she had got no further than the third one down before Anthony's hand came up and gripped her wrist gently, halting her progress. "What is it?" Edith asked.
He slung his good arm casually around her shoulders and drew her down to rest against his chest, holding her close in the chilly air of the bedroom. "I… It's a mess, Edith," he confessed quietly into her hair. "I'm used to it, but you need to understand… it's not - not pretty or romantic or heroic or - "
"Has Stewart seen it?" Edith interrupted, lifting her head.
"Yes." He grimaced. "Unavoidable, I'm afraid."
"And did Diana see it?"
"Once." He gestured almost helplessly with his good hand, before it squeezed her hip. "An accident. I honestly didn't intend for - "
"So what makes you think that I care for you any less than they do - did?" Edith wondered calmly.
"What?" he blurted stupidly. "It isn't a case of - "
"Yes," Edith murmured gently, and sat back on her heels, her fingers once again reaching for his shirt. "It is. You think, somewhere inside you, that if I see your scars, I'll stop loving you. Stop wanting you. I won't." Her other thumb rubbed over the stubble on his jaw. "I promise I won't, my darling." Both hands smoothing over his chest now, she sighed. "If you really don't want to show me, if you'd rather we made love without taking your shirt off… then we can. But - " (and here, she leaned down to murmur in his ear) - "I've been wanting to feel you pressed against me naked for a very, very long time now…"
Anthony was silent for a very long moment, his face tight with some unreadable emotion. At last, fearing she had gone too far - that he was shocked or disgusted or on the verge of calling the whole thing off - Edith whispered, "What are you thinking?"
Anthony did not answer. Instead, he sat up and, one-handed, continued undoing the buttons she'd started. Edith watched solemnly, not daring to speak or look away or do anything that might make him stop. But when he reached the waistband of his trousers, she couldn't hold herself back any longer - she reached forwards and helped him shrug the fabric free so that he could deal with the last few buttons, feeling a sudden, rippling flinch of desire go through his belly as her fingernails grazed the line between his trousers and skin.
A pause, a breath, a quick glance of confirmation at Edith - and Anthony shrugged the shirt off his wounded shoulder and then, in a motion born of long practice, ducked out of the vest too, leaving him bare.
He had been right.
It was most certainly not pretty. There was a central, white patch of old scar tissue - the bullet hole, presumably - and then a criss-crossing of faint red lines that once would have been brutally angry. Edith swallowed.
"Sweet one?" Anthony murmured, and his voice was as she had never heard it before - fragile and quaking and shy. "I - I know, it's disgusting. Vile. Surgeon was a bloody butcher. If - if you can't bear it, if it's too much - "
Her arms were around his neck, her cheek pressed close to his, before he could say another word. "Don't," she managed, her voice clouded by angry tears, "don't you ever speak about yourself like that again, Anthony Strallan, do you hear me?" She hissed out a furious exhalation of breath and promised, "If I ever catch any of the - the bastards who did this to you, then I will shred them into pieces and scatter them to the four winds!"
His shaky chuckle made her draw back a little, her face creased fiercely. "I mean it!"
"I know you do, sweet one." Gently, he kissed the tip of her nose. "Thank you."
Edith leant forwards again and allowed her arms to drape around his back. As she did so, Anthony recalled another vital fact. She was almost naked from the waist up, her soft, lovely breasts pressing against his chest as she held him to her.
The same thought seemed to have occurred to Edith, because she said, quite matter-of-factly, "And now I'd quite like you to make love to me."
"Yes. Just… one more thing…"
Edith lifted an eyebrow. "What is it?"
Anthony jerked his head towards the wall and muttered, "The painting."
"The… painting…? Darling - " Edith twisted her head, trying to work out what he was talking about.
"Of my parents," he explained. "My father, particularly."
"I don't…"
Anthony shifted himself off the bed and made for the wall. "I'm just going to… cover it over, for tonight." At Edith's stifled giggle, he explained, "It's only… I have to look at him every day, and even in paint he has a wonderful capacity for disapproval."
"I stopped caring what my father thought when I was fifteen," Edith told him. "Perhaps it's time you did too?"
He shrugged and went into the dressing room, returning after a moment with a towel, which he tossed carefully over it, ensuring the canvas was completely covered.
Edith laughed again, laughed uncontrollably, until Anthony was kneeling over her on the bed, with an expression in his eyes that she had dreamed of for twenty years and more.
"Anything else?" she wondered.
"No," he said simply and bent and kissed her.
"What time is it?" Edith wondered lazily, nuzzling against his chest.
Anthony reached out for his watch and frowned down at it in the dim light. "Just before five," he murmured. "Time for us to rise, I'm afraid, if you're going out with the Land Girls."
Edith sighed a little plaintively. "So it is." Still, it was with reluctance that she disentangled herself from his embrace. "Anthony - this was… so unutterably perfect. Have I time for a bath, do you suppose? I really think I must - five glorious inches of hot water sounds like just the ticket."
As she wandered into the bathroom, humming, Anthony lay back and felt a somewhat smug smile spreading across his face. There was a naked goddess in his bathtub who thought that he was perfect. Unutterably perfect.
"Edith?" he called. "We could have ten inches if we shared…"
By lunchtime, Anthony felt that he'd spent enough time away from Edith and wandered down to the farmyard with a basket of supplies. "Hello!" Edith waved and scrambled down from where she was perched atop a tractor. Trust Edith Crawley to be in thick of anything mechanical!
She trotted over to him in her pullover and breeches, beaming. "Had a good morning, have you?" he asked wryly.
Edith pushed back the hair that had escaped from her scarf. "Delightful. I'd quite forgotten how much I enjoyed this sort of work - and it's all good colour for the story, of course." Her inquisitive brown eyes lit on the basket hooked over his arm. "What's in there?"
"Spot of lunch for the hungry workers." He lifted the cloth. "Ginger ale, cheese sandwiches with Mrs Cox's best chutney, and apples from the store. And," he raised his voice slightly, "if you follow me, Lady Edith, I'll show you the machinery I was talking about earlier."
He stepped back as Edith walked around the corner, out of sight of the others - and then pressed her to the wall of the barn to give her a thorough kissing. Edith looked up at him in delight. "Machinery, hmm?"
Anthony nudged her nose with his. "Didn't want to shock the Land Girls. Terribly impressionable bunch, you know." He kissed her again, very softly. "Are you all right? We, ah, exerted ourselves rather thoroughly, last night. I'd hate to think I'd worn you out overmuch."
"Quite splendid, thank you. And you? I'm sorry I had to leave so early." She lowered her voice. "I could have stayed in that bath all morning."
Anthony went a little red and cleared his throat. "Yes, well, quite… as you say… quite splendid." They sat together on an old, low wooden bench behind the barn and Edith rested her head against his shoulder.
"Might I ask you something?" Anthony's voice was a low murmur above her. Silently, Edith nodded against him. "Where do we go from here?" he pressed on.
"I suppose it's no good asking you to come to London and live in delicious sin with me?" Edith wondered wryly against his neck.
Anthony kissed the top of her head. "Afraid not, my dear. Despite my deplorable behaviour last night, I'm still a rather old-fashioned man. I'm sorry." He drew back and squinted apologetically down at her. "Is that… a disappointment?"
"No." Edith laced their fingers together. "I - I do love you, Anthony - you do know that, don't you?"
He lifted their joined hands to his mouth. "I believe you might have mentioned it once or twice last night, but… ah, I've always made it a habit not to set too much store by things said… in the heat of the moment."
"Well, I'm perfectly sane and sober now - and I love you."
"And I'm in love with you." He exhaled. "Edith, you know what I'm about to ask - "
"Yes - but don't. Not now, not yet." She looked up at him pleadingly. "I want to be with you, Anthony - and I'm not saying that I'm… opposed to marriage, or anything like that. Quite the opposite. But… all of this is so new - lovely, but new." She ran her fingers through his hair. "I want to talk very seriously about how it would all work, first. You don't want to live in London all the time - you'd hate it." She looked over the fields. "And… I wouldn't blame you. But I have the magazine - they need me too much for me to move halfway across the country, not just now."
Anthony kissed her, softly. "Then we'll talk seriously about it later - at a time and place of your choosing."
She wrapped her arms around his waist and squeezed, tight. "Thank you, darling." She grinned up at him. "Of course, that's not to say that we can't have our fun while I'm here…"
The end of the weekend came all too soon. Stewart, with all his usual tact, waited at the car while Anthony escorted Edith on to the platform to catch her train. "Thank you," she smiled, a little shakily, "for a lovely weekend. It was honestly… heavenly."
"You're most welcome." He lifted his hat and ducked to kiss her, very gently and sweetly, on the mouth. "I suppose you'll be terribly busy this week, getting the new edition ready?" His eyes were shrewd and a touch anxious.
Edith neatened his collar with a brush of her hand. "Not terribly busy. If you wanted to… pop up to Town for… dinner or… well, the flat isn't quite as comfortable as Locksley, but it's more than bearable. And… well, I do live alone, Anthony." She chewed her lip slightly teasingly. "If you wanted to, that is."
"Would Wednesday afternoon be convenient?"
"Perfect."
"Is it true," Marigold demanded down the telephone, "that you spent the weekend at Locksley?"
Edith paused, weighing up how much trouble telling the truth was likely to get her into. Unfortunately, this was precisely the wrong thing to do. "You did!" Marigold exclaimed, accusingly. "When I telephoned the office on Friday afternoon and Daphne told me, I thought she must have got mixed up!"
"Yes, all right. I did, if you must know." Hastily, Edith added, "Anthony's making some very interesting improvements to the estate just now, and I went to interview some of his Land Girls for the magazine. Nothing sordid about it."
"His Land Girls." Marigold snorted in patent disbelief. "I see."
"Whyever else would I have gone?" her mother protested.
"I… well, did you stay at the house?"
"Well… yes. It was… far more practical than trying to get a billet somewhere else at such late notice - and you know how your grandmama fusses when either of us visits. Besides, the Land Girls start work terribly early in the morning!" Edith let out a little laugh. "I'm old enough now that I don't need a chaperone, surely?"
"Hmm," Marigold replied, disapproval thickly coating the sound. "Whose idea was all this?"
"I… don't recall, precisely." Another fib. She was most definitely going to Hell. "You know how these things are, darling. They just sort of… pop up in conversation, don't they?"
"Well, was it your idea or Anthony's?"
"You've become rather… informal about him, haven't you?" Edith dodged.
"You call him Anthony," Marigold stabbed.
"I was engaged to him."
"Well, you aren't any more, are you?" Marigold's voice cracked on that. Clearly, mentioning 'engagements' had been a bad idea. Edith winced. "Anyway," she pressed on, "stop avoiding the question!"
"All right, it was his idea."
"Oh. I see." Marigold's voice positively dripped with contempt.
"You keep saying that." Edith bit her lip. "It was nothing. Purely business."
"If you say so. But - look, Mother, just… be careful, won't you?"
Edith gasped in amused outrage. "Whatever do you mean? Anthony Strallan is no threat to my virtue, if that's what you're suggesting." Quite the opposite way around, in fact, my darling. Edith wasn't about to voice that thought aloud, though, however amusing it sounded in her head - in the mood Marigold seemed to be in, she was far more likely to provoke a verbal disembowelment than laughter.
"No, of course not." Marigold sounded impatient now, and underneath it all, rather prim and proper. "But… he broke your heart once, remember. Nothing to stop him doing the same thing again." Marigold sighed. "I don't mean to say that I don't like him, Mother, because you know jolly well that I think he's the sweetest old stick - remarkable, really, when you consider what a bloody little tick his nephew is - but… well, there's no ignoring the facts, is there?"
"The facts," Edith replied, rather severely, "are that Anthony and I have always been very good friends, and are quite capable of managing our own affairs."
"'Affairs'?" Marigold squeaked and Edith winced. However had she managed to raise such a prude? And even if, by some miracle, she had, how had two years in the WAAF and a failed engagement to a pilot not debauched her daughter yet? Really, youth was wasted on the young.
"Oh for goodness' sake, Marigold - " Edith heard the polite, familiar rap at the door with some relief. "Darling, someone's at the door. Must fly."
Before her daughter could reply, Edith had set the receiver firmly down on its cradle. Was this what it was to become old? To live long enough to be criticised by one's own offspring?
She was still pondering this important question as she opened the door to Anthony - and the overflowing box of Locksley veg that was tucked under his arm. It hit her like a wave of pure deliciousness: the fresh, green aroma of cabbage and cauliflower mingling with the sweet crispness of carrots and parsnips, and the earthy goodness of potatoes, all undercut by the faint, sharp tang of turnip. Of course, vegetables weren't technically rationed, but shortages meant that such a bounty was not to be sniffed at. "Oh, Anthony, how lovely!" Edith exclaimed. "You really shouldn't have."
"Of course I should have," he retorted, settling the box safely into her open arms. "Hang on two ticks and I shall bring you up something even better." And with that, he vanished again.
Edith was still admiring her gift, with all the stunned delight of a teenage girl who has just been presented with her first bouquet of flowers, when he returned with two covered baskets. Like a spiv showing off illicit wares, he twitched aside the cloth that concealed the contents of the first and revealed… more meat than Edith had seen in one place together since the war had started. Bacon, pork chops, a section that looked like the pig's belly…
She couldn't help it: she gasped.
"Anthony Phillip Strallan! Bring that inside this instant before someone catches a whiff of it and reports us both to the police!"
He grinned, but followed her inside obediently. "All perfectly legal and above board, I assure you. The pig club had a slaughter day, and I thought I'd… share my part of the spoils with you, that's all."
Edith raised her eyebrows. "'Share' or 'hand over lock, stock and barrel'?" she wondered, somewhat severely. She knew his generosity better than anyone else, perhaps, and it would be perfectly typical of him to deprive himself of such a treat for her sake. "Anthony, there's half a pig here at least!" Her voice rose at the end of the sentence and to her horror, she could feel her eyes prickling with grateful, happy tears.
"I say, something amiss, sweet one?" he asked, a touch anxiously, at the expression on her face. "Not like you to blub over gifts."
Edith turned down the hallway. "No. It's just… lovely of you and so generous and… well, I've just spent the last half hour rediscovering what a prying, interfering harpy my daughter is growing into. At your expense, I might add." Anthony's kindness had thrown Marigold's unfairness into even sharper relief, and Edith felt suddenly rather indignant on his behalf. Here he was, bestowing on her all the fruits of Locksley's earth, while Marigold was busily accusing him of all sorts of iniquity.
In the kitchen, Edith piled up her spoils on the table and called over her shoulder, "I do hope we're going somewhere nice for lunch - I rather need to wash a bad taste out of my mouth."
Anthony set down his second basket with a sympathetic expression. "Ah. I see."
A little red-eyed, Edith turned and propped herself against the table, arms crossed over her chest defiantly as she stared up at him. "She'd heard about the weekend, somehow, says that you're - and I quote - the sweetest old stick, but that I shouldn't trust you as far as I can throw you. Or - words to that effect."
"Ah," he said again, rather bracingly. "Well, she's most probably very right, my dear."
"Tommy-rot," Edith sniffed. "I thought that we'd got past the stage of allowing our movements to be dictated by our respective families." She shot Anthony a glare which seemed to spit fire. "Well, haven't we?"
"Absolutely, my dear. Absolutely."
Satisfied for the moment, Edith peeked into the second basket again. "Oh God, damson jam as well? Let's hope Marigold doesn't hear about this - she'll accuse you of trying to seduce me through food next."
"Oh no," Anthony reassured her and very gently wiped her eyes with his handkerchief. His eyes twinkled. "If I'd wanted to do that, we both know I'd have brought a jar of blackberry too."
There was nothing to do then save hug him, tucking her hands under his jacket and pressing her cheek to his shoulder. Snuffling into his tie, she mumbled, "Oh, please. You'd need at least three jars. I'm not an entirely loose woman, you know."