Chapter 11
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The Gardens of Branksom House
St James Square
London
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He saw the way she had been constantly looking over her shoulder all the time when they were together.
Was Sybil ashamed of him? Was she really so afraid of what her posh family would say if they knew how happy she was to spend her hours with a fella like him?
"Is that why we're hiding in the garden?", Tom responded sarcastically, bitterly...feeling positively terrified of her answer. "Are we out here sneaking a few words to each other behind the bushes because of how well that I fit in?"
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The cool night air felt difficult to breathe in. All she could inhale was the scent of him.
Tom was close to her...closer than she would have liked under the circumstances, but somehow still not close enough.
She could feel the heat radiating from his body and the warmth of his breath upon her face. It made her skin tingle with anticipation, a rather frustrating paradox of feelings when paired her feeling of frustration and betrayal at his uncharacteristically hurtful accusation.
Damn him!
Sybil was angry, and more disappointed in Tom than she could put into words. Surely after weeks of comradery and friendship, he thought better of her than to suggest that she held him in such a low regard as to be ashamed of him...of them.
The young aristocrat sighed deeply, recalling how she had been so compelled to walk away from Tom on the day of their first serious disagreement. This time however, despite her lingering confusion on the exact nature of her feelings for Tom, Sybil firmly resolved not to go anywhere.
"For goodness sake, Tom! How could you think me so weak as to reject you in front of my family and peers? I don't care about class, I care about people...and you Tom Branson are a good person." Sybil smirked as the next words left her mouth. "Even if you can be a self righteous prat sometimes."
Almost feverishly, Tom's eyes seemed to search hers. Sybil felt her own cheek flush darkly beneath the intensity of Tom's gaze until he turned away sheepishly, running a ragged hand through his hair. "For feck's sake, Sybil. I didn't mean it like that."
Determined for some kind of resolution, Sybil looked up at him expectantly. Face to face with Tom, she found herself trying to understand his point of view. She took a deep breath, steading herself. Sybil looked up at Tom, desperately seeking some form of reassurance...reassurance that maybe he would fight for them as fiercely as she would, just so long as they could both commit to keeping an open mind about one another's realities and not just their shared dreams for a better world. "Then how did you mean it?"
Tom looked at her thoughtfully, his voice regaining a sense calmness and certainty that Sybil almost envied. His knuckles brushed lightly against hers in a manner that sent the most irrational of her emotions into a spin "I don't think you see how you've changed things for me, darlin'. You've turned my world upside down."
Sybil frowned. "That almost sounds like a bad thing."
Tom glanced away from her towards The Napier's House. The music from the party was still loud enough to reach their ears...a constant reminder of the social barriers that divided them.
"Ireland is a very different country, love. Dublin has the worst slums in Europe, or so they say. There's parts of Mayo and Clare where it wouldn't be uncommon to see children lying dead at the side of the road because their families were evicted from their farms by the local landlord."
Sybil looks at him totally horrified at the idea but despite herself, feels a prickle of defensiveness in the pit of her stomach. "I can see why you think the way you do, Tom. Truly. But my father...he isn't like that. He's a considerate landlord to the tenants at Downton and a good man."
Tom smiles sadly, humourlessly. "A man who had any part at all in raising you would have to be."
Sybil frowned, despite the warm sentiment of Tom's words she could feel him distancing himself from her with niceties. "Then why do I feel like I'm being pushed away?"
Guiltily, Tom's eyes drifted momentarily from hers. "I thought I knew what I would be getting myself into but it's just...its one thing to hear you tell me that you come from all of...this...", he said heavily, gesturing vaguely to the large town house and grounds. "...but it's another to see it with my own eyes."
"And what do you see, Tom?"
"A young woman, beautiful inside and out, surrounded by her people...people who live in a world very different to the one I grew up in", at this he chuckled humourlessly, almost to himself.
Sybil could nearly feel the pain in his voice. She bit her lip, preparing herself, as the next words left Tom's mouth.
"It's like a bad joke, darlin'; a Dublin Jackeen in love with an English Lady. "
Hearing this, Sybil felt her heart contract painfully, aching dully as it pounded—thumping furiously against her ribcage...it was a pain that told her she was alive. She longed to reach out to Tom, to wrap her arms around him and to feel his lips brush against hers.
But not yet...she needed to know for certain.
"Tom?", she whispered questioningly—warningly.
In truth, she didn't trust herself to say anything more for fear it would break the perfect bubble that their relationship had existed in since that first day at the women's rally.
Their relationship?
Again, Sybil found herself wondering if she loved Tom.
She wondered if her heart aching at the thought of the two of them being parted from one another meant that she reciprocated the feelings that he had only seconds ago declared, wholly and unconditionally.
Sybil knew what could only come next, she could see the still unspoken question shining in the unshed tears of emotion in Tom's eyes.
"Oh my darlin', I've told myself and told myself that you're too far above me. I know that things are changing and I doubt they'll change fast enough for us. But still...I'd never forgive myself if I didn't ask you..."
Cutting him off mid sentence, Sybil placed an urgent finger over Tom's lips. "Please don't", she pleaded, surprising herself almost as much as him with the unexpected nature her outburst.
She thought of her family and of the polite but firm rejection that they would expect her to give to such a proposal. For a moment, Sybil considered telling Tom that she was flattered but that she could never accept such an offer of marriage. For the sake of her parents and the reputations of her two still unmarried sisters, she would have to refuse him.
However, looking up at Tom as she now was, another answer entirely came to Sybil's mind instead; a mad one, an illogical one...but perhaps a wonderful one.
"I need more time, Tom!"
"More time?", he asked in disbelief, apparently having expected the outright rejection that Sybil had already half rehearsed inside her own head. Looking down at her in pure and unadulterated wonder, Tom's eyes shined with something powerful, something that she had never seen in them before-it looked like hope. "Do you really mean it?"
Sybil nodded, feeling a matching grin tug at the corners of her cheeks. "Will you wait?", she asked, almost uncertainly.
For once, Tom was completely speechless. His eyes were filled with some enamouring and overwhelming emotion that Sybil could now put a name to. How could she have missed it before?...it was love.
"I'd wait forever."
At this, Sybil couldn't help but smile. She felt a wave of...something well up inside her chest at the earnestness of Tom's words...the words of a man who may very well one day be her husband. "I'm not asking for forever, just a few more weeks."
Tom smiled, an adorably goofy smile that managed to illicit Sybil's first honest and carefree laugh of the evening. "Mo ghrá...Is leatsa mé, idir chorp agus anam."
"What does that mean?"
Tom, chuckled teasingly, running a teasing finger across the apple of Sybil's cheek. Although evidently tempted, they wouldn't kiss yet. There was plenty of time for such things later when their affairs were more settled. "All in due time, love."
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A/N: Happy (slightly late) Christmas to everyone reading this story! I really hope you all had a great holiday. I'm so sorry my updates on all me stories have become so infrequent but I'm very busy at the moment with work and school. I hope you understand!
Anyways, thanks so much again for reading and I hope you all have the happiest of new years!
Pearlydewdrop xx
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Note on Irish Slang: Jackeen: a slightly pejorative name for a person from Dublin. Commonly it is shortened simply to Jack, and Dubliners often refer to themselves as such. The opposite of a Jackeen is a Culchie.
James Joyce-Jackeen(as he was born in Dublin)
Michael Collins-Culchie(was from co. Cork)
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History Note:
Rural Ireland: In the Eighteenth Century, farming land in Ireland became more and more the property of English landlords. The bulk of these were absentee landlords who showed little if any compassion for the people who worked the land. Absentee landlords were responsible for much anger among the rural population of Ireland. They crammed as many families onto their land as they could. No family who worked the land could produce enough to feed their children. Landlords enforced their authority via the police or army who could be called in to evict families if the landlord requested such help. Even in the Nineteenth Century, many of the poor in Ireland had no rights, the power rested solely in the hands of the landlords and those who upheld law and order were frequently in league with landlords. The extent of poverty and the issues surrounding it were well known in the British establishment. Even a stalwart Tory like the Duke of Wellington commented that: "There never was a country in which poverty existed to the extent that it exists in Ireland."
Dublin: The Act of Union of 1801, which abolished the Irish Parliament in Dublin in favour of direct rule from London, marked the decline of Dublin's fashionable status. It prompted a mass exodus of wealthy citizens, back to England. Under the pressure of poverty throughout the city, the area went downhill fast. The fine houses gradually turned into slums as many of the wealthy left their houses to be run by agents, who promptly became profiteering landlords and converted the once large rooms of the houses into many small rooms where they packed in as many poor families as they could. Many of these families had arrived in the North Inner City Area seeking refuge from the Great Hunger (1845-49) which devastated parts of rural Ireland. Totally impoverished, many of the destitute were forced into begging or stealing in order to survive. Due to atrocious living conditions and sanitation, disease was rampant and infant mortality rates soared. Some women resorted to prostitution to feed their children and to pay the high rents. The alternative was to risk ending up in the workhouse of the South Dublin Union on James's Street, a place which struck fear into the hearts of Dubliners. Such conditions lasted for decades and Dublin was almost as poor in the run up to the first world war as it had been in the years following the great famine. Things didn't change properly until the 1920s.
