Author's Notes: Here we're going to just start to scratch the surface of how things went so badly wrong in terms of Crawley Family Dynamics. We're also going to get some very mildly racy honeymoon scenes.


Disclaimer: All recognizable works belong to BBC, Julian Fellows, the wonderful actors and actresses who brought Downton Abbey to life, and a number of other people. This work is produced for entertainment only and no profit is made from it.

Warnings Ch. 1: Bullying and victim blaming. Married Canoodling.


One Day Later…

The inn was not the most luxurious of places. It wasn't by any means rundown or awful, however. Instead, it was a deeply comfortable establishment with wonderful feather beds, quilts that were just warm enough on a damp night in the North of England in summer, and a good kitchen with a very decent wine cellar. In short, it had everything a pair of runaway newlyweds could desire for a two day stay after their hastily exchanged wedding vows.

"You're entirely sure you're alright, my dearest darling? Not too sore? It wasn't too much?"

Anthony Strallan proved a husband every inch as inclined to fretting as he was a suitor. However, Edith found that that fussing was even more pleasant when nuzzled into her hair while he held her against his chest, cuddled together in a lovely warm bed. Lovemaking, Edith sighed with her cheek resting on the surprisingly soft mat of pale hair on her husband's chest, was every single thing that Moorish poet described and more besides.

"A little sore but - but not bad." She offered and, as his brow puckered in worry, offered up a tiny smile she feared was entirely too minxish for a new bride. "Nicely sore, Anthony."

"How can discomfort be a good thing?"

"It's like… a memory of having you inside me." Edith flushed at her words and watched Anthony's ears redden even as a look of startled, smug pleasure touched his face. Tongue in cheek, she added: "You really have quite a lot to offer a lady, haven't you, Sir Anthony?"

The flush swept over his cheekbones and he cleared his throat to offer archly.

"I do not know how you could possibly make a comparison, Edie."

"The book was illustrated."

Anthony looked down at her in surprise and then burst out laughing. Giggling, she hid her face further in his chest. Utterly embarrassed by her own boldness, she stroked a hand over the hair there and sighed.

"We rather desperately need a bath."

"And new sheets."

"I'm tempted to keep them." Anthony teased. "Your father's no doubt going to raise a terrible stink in the county over this. Might as well keep the proof of our marriage's legitimacy for tradition's sake? Like Henry VIII tried in that trial with Katherine of Aragon before some Catholic nicked the linens."

"I'm fairly sure Old Henry was still Catholic at that point. Are you going to hang them out of the window at Loxley and cause Papa to have a coronary?" Edith teased.

At her husband's speculative look, Edith reflected over the last few days. Days in which her staid, dull-as-paint, predictable Anthony had read her diaries, suggested, arranged, and executed an elopement with an Earl's daughter, and then proceeded to make love to her three times in the space of one night. Not including a lovely interlude in the morning which had left her so delightfully sore.

"Don't you dare!"

Anthony promptly fell about laughing again, drawing her against him as he did so despite her insistence that she was absolutely serious and he had better not. He silenced her with a kiss and Edith pulled back with narrowed eyes until he smiled at her; crooked and sweet. Then, rolling onto his back, her husband covered up a massive yawn with his hand.

"Excuse me."

"Mmm, no need." Edith did the same and laid back down, rolling onto her side to look at him across the pillow. "I'm tired too. You, old man, have worn out your young bride."

"Cradle snatching is hard work for all involved?"

Edith couldn't quite hold in a snort of laughter, and covered her face in embarrassment. He kissed her fingers. She peeked at him and seeing he was still smiling, rolled over to stretch… and ended up with her rear end firmly in a streak of cold, sticky, unpleasantness with a squeal.

"Darling?"

"You're right."

"So hanging the sheet-."

"About the bath." Edith huffed, sitting up and hauling the upper sheet with her to cover her breasts and perhaps retrieve his eyes from where they'd settled. An act that was a tad late considering her husband had spent no small amount of time with his mouth on both, moaning compliments and endearments alike as his hands framed the action. "I'm right about the sheets; meaning they need to be changed if you want me back in this bed. You will not be indulging in any medieval pageantry involving the bed linens."

"Pity, sweet one, but… perhaps breakfast and a nap first before we create any more laundry? Poor old chap that I am, I do have limits." Her husband sat up beside her, stretching languidly and preening a bit as she looked on the breadth of his chest and the muscles in his arms and shoulders with clear interest and pleasure. A smugness that turned more than a little sheepish when first his back, and then his knees cracked loudly as he rose to grab his dressing gown. "Right, I'll run the bath, shall I? It's attached, and the plumbing here is wonderfully modern."

"That," Edith signed as she laid back down beneath the covers in the warm dry spot her husband had left behind in bed, stretching and then curling up like a well-fed feline. "Sounds delightful."

He leaned down for a kiss.

"I'll do as a husband, then?"

"Wouldn't have any other."

Edith's words, spoken with sleepy happiness, prompted a smile she did see, and tears of relief that she did not.

"Tell me what your childhood was like." Edith asked a little dreamily as she looked at the rolling English countryside moving past the window of their train carriage.

They'd finally quit the cozy little inn after two delightful days spent entirely, shamefully, wonderfully in bed. Anthony had plead exhaustion with a laugh and a certain amount of honesty. There had been a great deal of napping on the train. Now, having just returned from the dining car to their private compartment, both were quite awake and Edith wanted to talk.

"At Loxley." She clarified. "And school and, oh, everywhere? I want to know you the way you know me. From my journals, I mean."

"I don't have your gift for words, dearest."

"How many languages do you speak?"

That sheepish, crooked smile beamed down at her and she noted smugly how his habitual humility crumbled under a direct question of his abilities. At least one asked by someone he wouldn't act purposefully obtuse around. Kissing her hair as she was tucked beneath his arm, Anthony shrugged.

"I speak six fluently at the moment, another three easily but with a noticeable accent, and can pick a bit up from five or six others."

"And you don't have my way with words."

"Choosing them, not understanding them, Edie." Anthony looked down at her earnestly. "You really do have a wonderful way of writing. Upsetting content aside, your journals have a wonderful flow to them. It felt more like reading a very intimate novel than an adolescent girl's thoughts."

Edith colored darkly and looked away.

"Well, it hardly matters. I don't intend to publish them!"

"Would you like to publish something else?"

Edith looked at him in mute shock and her husband shrugged.

"Just something to consider. You could take some classes if you liked, or just write in your spare time. I have a friend from university who went into editing." Anthony explained. "I don't want you to feel stifled, darling. I - I never want your life with me to feel as if I'm making you smaller."

"If we carry on as we have been, I'm fairly sure you're bound to make me bigger." Edith returned, not sure how to handle or respond to the completely alien suggestion and encouragement her husband just offered. "Around the middle, anyway!"

Anthony flushed and bit his lip, then looked down at her with an expression she couldn't quite place.

"A-and would that please you? Children, I mean."

"I would dearly love to have your children, Anthony." Edith assured him, blushing a bit at the forwardness that was beginning to mark their private conversations even as she marveled at the foreign concept of having someone to speak to from whom she had nothing to hide nor fear. "Several of them, all with your eyes."

"Oh, that requires a kiss."

Her husband's mumbling directly proceeded his actions and the next few moments were lost to a slow tangle of lips and tongues, until both separated with the unspoken and mutual agreement that some things were not to be done on public transportation.

"Still, you've changed the subject. What was it like… your… family, I suppose? I've only ever known mine." Edith explained. "I don't have any cousins. Aunt Rosamund and Uncle Marmaduke were never blessed. Uncle Harold is a committed bachelor, and we don't see him and Grandma Martha often anyway."

Anthony gave the question serious thought. That was another thing Edith found herself appreciating. Her husband did not dismiss anything she said, and while others might mock him for taking so much seriously and overthinking, it appealed to Edith endlessly. It was a wonderful thing, mattering.

"I suppose it was normal enough. I know I was very lucky. Not only in being raised in privilege in terms of wealth and rank, but in terms of my family itself." Anthony explained. "We're a declining breed, the Strallans."

"So are the Crawleys." Edith confessed. "If anything should happen to Matthew, the title shall die out entirely. Papa's solicitors couldn't find a single remnant of the male line beyond him… well, unless Mama has a boy."

Anthony's eyebrows crept up.

"Your mother is expecting?"

"Yes." Edith replied and shrugged helplessly. "It does nothing to change my life, especially now that you've given me… such a better life to look forward to. Now, we've gotten off topic again."

"Right." He kissed her anyway and settled in to go on in his quiet way. "My Papa was what you would expect from a man of his time. Stern, severe at times, a man of few words and very conservative principles… but that was just the surface."

"Beneath the surface?"

"He adored my mother, and she was quite modern." Anthony's lips turned up. "I fancy she and your sister would have gotten on wonderfully. Your younger sister. You describe Lady Sybil much the same way I would my mother; vivacious, outgoing, principled, and deeply kind."

Edith was smiling at the image he painted of the woman that raised him. In her mind it explained a great deal. She could well imagine her sister raising a son as thoughtful and sweet as Anthony Strallan. Who the father would be was harder to picture.

"Where did she grow up?"

"Cornwall. On the farm we're going to for our honeymoon, actually." Anthony smiled. "My maternal grandfather was nothing more than a country curate with a modest holding. So, I can only imagine she'd be pleased to see I've carried on her tradition of marrying up!"

"Don't hold your breath for a dowry."

"We'll manage, besides, I thought you girls… erm…"

Edith looked up, surprised and saw Anthony's sheepish expression settle into that half-smile she couldn't quite resist. Edith pressed a kiss to his chin and encouraged him with a smile.

"Your family is in no way in trouble financially, but it's known that your father hasn't increased your mother's fortune." Anthony added quickly. "He hasn't decreased it dramatically, either, but…"

"But?"

"How much do you know about the running of an estate, Edith?"

"I've learned more from you in a year than I have from Papa in my life. I'm a girl after all, and not his firstborn."

Anthony winced but accepted it and went on, his tone what it normally was. Reasonable, kind, understanding, a touch pedantic, and wonderfully informative. Edith, who'd spent her life wanting to know and understand, settled more comfortably against his side to listen.

"Downton isn't losing money in its running at the moment, at least not most years, but it's also not making much money." Anthony cleared his throat uncomfortably and cuddled his wife closer. "I choose to keep a small household, in terms of servants, and can manage it as I almost never entertain. Surely you've noticed when you visit other houses that, well…"

Edith flushed.

"We don't talk about that, but… yes, we've noticed that we keep fewer servants and they come and go more quickly, except for a few." She lowered her voice. "Papa also pays them less. It's been a matter of some contention and I heard one of Aunt Rosamund's guests a few years ago make a comment about, well, us having to take what we could. Because our footmen don't match. Then there's O'Brian and Anna."

"I thought you liked Anna?"

"I do!" Edith insisted. "As much as I trust and like anyone who Papa pays. What I mean is, when Mary and I came out we should have each had our own maid. Instead, Anna helps us dress and O'Brian has to handle all the other duties. Managing our clothes, you understand, for Mama and Mary and Sybil and I."

Anthony nodded in understanding.

"The staff at Downton is overworked and underpaid and, as a result, Downton's staff is composed of those who fear they cannot get another situation." Edith went on, biting her lip and flushing in embarrassment at the idea that it was common knowledge. "I knew, of course, but I never thought the full thing through. O'Brian had a terrible reference before Mama hired her. Thomas' reference was the least pleasant Duke of our acquaintance, Carson worked in a circus or something when he was younger - Mary knows the details and Papa thinks it's funny. Mrs. Hughes is a delight but there had to be some exception… Everyone working at Downton has something wrong with them, don't they?"

"I imagine that the employees who are only there briefly are not."

"Well, yes." Edith acknowledged. "A first job, for the under footmen and housemaids, to get a reference. They'd expect less pay but... the way Granny and Papa act. We never talked about it all! Finances are a forbidden subject for ladies, you know!"

"It's a manor house of hypocrisy, Sweet One." Anthony agreed, a little tongue in cheek, and won a giggle from his wife before going on more seriously. "As to the estate itself? Your father is a traditionalist. Traditional agricultural methods are low-yield and high-cost as wages rise."

"Which is why you've worked so hard to modernize Loxley."

"Yes, mechanization means fewer tenants doing more work with greater yeilds."

"Mechanization is as dirty a word as sufferage or liberality in Downton."

"Loxley is also better situated in a way." Anthony expounded, warming to the topic as he always did. "Downton is nearly three times the size of our estate but it doesn't have as much arable land. Downton is hillier and rockier and supports more forest. All excellent for aesthetics and when the land was awarded it was more valuable because of better hunting and the high price of wool, but now?"

"Now what, Anthony?"

"Your father needs to reevaluate land use. He's tried to expand but kept the same crops and the lowlands areas he cleared for cultivation are too wet for the grain he's trying to grow."

Edith cuddled closer and petted at her husband a bit, smiling to herself as he settled into his favorite subject.

"We've always been one of the largest grain producers in Yorkshire."

"Which was a fine thing before the States and Colonies gained the ability to drown us in cheap grain." Anthony added. "Between the land not being suited to it - he should consider beets, beans, or a dozen other crops that can be licensed to canneries but I can go on about that for too long. If it were my decision, I would actually be putting a lot more land to use grazing. Sheep, particularly and pigs secondarily."

"Papa hates change." Edith bit her lip. "But - is that why you assumed we had no dowries? I mean, we don't' have great fortunes like Mama, but each of us does have a trust."

Anthony was clearly surprised and Edith wondered why that hadn't been spread around during the husband hunt. She also wondered if everyone else thought they were the Bennet sisters.

"Not that Papa's likely to release mine after this. You really thought we had nothing?"

"Well," Her husband looked rather caught out. "I shouldn't have listened but that's the rumor. It has been for a while."

Edith, had she felt the need to, could have traced things back to the source fairly easily. First of all, her husband had proven himself quite adept at information gathering. Secondly, a single question put forward to her mother or grandmother would have revealed that a certain Duke had felt slighted and decided to exaggerate the sisters' "poverty" after he left the estate post his embarrassing non-courtship of the eldest daughter. As it was, Edith never felt the need to pursue it and neither Lady Grantham nor the Dowager would feel the need to share it by the time they got over their habit of keeping information from "the children".

"You're sure?"

"Yes, they're not grand trusts. Only a little over a thousand a year, so very nice for a single lady or a wife but not enough to support a very expensive husband or estate. We're to get them when we marry or turn twenty-eight - whichever comes first." Edith explained. "I heard Papa and Mama talking about them a few years ago and how Grandpa Levinson set them up not long before he passed. I've just noticed we're talking about my family again."

Anthony responded by lowering his voice as if imparting a secret. She was not fooled; his eyes were sparkling naughtily.

"How about this? My Mama loathed your Granny and the feeling was rather mutual."

"Truly?"

Edith was aghast and rather delighted by this bit of gossip. Her husband nodded somberly.

"Oh, yes. Despite being the daughter of a lowly baronet herself, Lady Violet made a point to comment repeatedly in my mother's presence on the misfortune families gain from marrying above themselves. Not to mention what they inflict upon the better families they marry into."

"Well, really."

"Oh, quite." Anthony's lips twitched. "Mama used to chatter on in complete cheerful obliviousness in response… largely about the timing of Lady Rosamund's birth."

"What about Aunt Rosamund's birth?"

Anthony looked sheepishly wicked.

"Nothing really, the tolerances are a little tight but she was born in a respectable timeframe." Anthony explained. "It's just that a trip that your grandfather took means that mother could, well, seem to be complimenting your grandmother blithely on having gotten a child out of the earl before he took a trip abroad without her…"

"While really implying that she's placed a cuckoo in the nest, oh no!" Edith covered her mouth, a noise half shocked gasp and half giggle coming out. "Poor Granny - and poor Aunt Rosamund!"

"It's made rather worse by the fact that Lady Violet was blonde in her youth, the previous Lord Grantham's hair was nearly black, and Lady Rosamund is and always has been a redhead."

"Oh that's terrible."

"Isn't it?"

Anthony's clear, if sheepish, pride in his mother's social skirmishes with Edith's granny broke her down into real laughter. She felt a bit sorry for her Aunt, though, and said so.

"Oh, don't feel bad." Anthony explained. "Mama wouldn't do it when your aunt was a child, and by the time she made her debut your aunt had a well-known penchant for mischief. I think Lady Rosamund rather enjoyed the rumors and added to them. Just to twit her mother, of course."

"Poor grandpapa, then!'

"Now, that I will allow. Your grandfather was a decent chap. He and Papa were good friends."

"What did your father think of it?"

"Father thought that wise men did not get between fighting cats or angry women." Anthony paused. "And, yes, that is a quote."

Edith rubbed a hand over her face and accepted his handkerchief to dab her streaming eyes.

"You sound so… happy."

"We were." Her husband offered up wistfully. "I wish you could have met them. Father would have adored you. He loved to read; they both did. Mother would have loved having another daughter around the house. Diana and Archie have a wonderful marriage, but all that traveling…"

"You miss her?"

"Diana is… you'll meet her through her letters first, but you'll see what I can't explain. She's as social as I am not, and as much a delight as she can be a trial. We're quite apart in age but somehow we were always close. It was lovely having a little sister, after having been alone so long." Anthony explained. "She's another one who your Sybil will get on with."

"If Sybil's allowed anywhere near me after this." Edith fretted. "Papa won't have the power to do much to me, but he'll want to punish me somehow. That could be-."

Edith looked up as Anthony took her chin in his hand and gently tilted her face up.

"How well do you expect your little sister to take such an order?"

"Oh, she'll start a one woman riot, forget accidentally attending a public one." Edith huffed a weak laugh and nodded, freeing her chin and cuddling back against her husband's side. "I… see your point. I won't borrow trouble."

"Thank you, sweet one."

"Your nephews?"

"Two absolute scalawags."

Edith sighed and rested her head more fully against her husband's chest. Settling in with her eyes half-closed, she drifted off to sleep to tales of the mischief that Anthony's nephews had gotten up to over the years since their birth. It was clear from his tone that he loved them all the more for it. As such, she felt it more a matter of influence than premonition when she dreamed of a little boy with blonde hair and blue eyes and a smile full of mischief.

"Oh, Anthony, it's perfect!"

He simply couldn't stop smiling.

"Kittens!"

A honeymoon was expected to be a time of unstinting happiness and, well, carnality. Despite his misgivings that the simple process of aging and the effects it had on a body might have left his young wife unhappy with the man she's chosen, or that he'd find himself unable to satisfy her, Anthony soon realized… it was all silliness on his part. Edith was as delighted with him as he was with her. In every way possible.

This included not only the delight of their lovemaking. She was equally happy to cuddle against him and nap on a long train journey. She enjoyed sharing her mind with him as much as her body, and the joy of having a companion simply to speak to and spend time with again could not be overstated. Anthony, outside of those subjects that fascinated him, was a man of few words. Yet, with Edith, he found he could talk for hours.

Now she loves Mama's farm. To think, an Earl's daughter. The Dragon of Downton's granddaughter, no less! Mama, I wish you were alive to see this. You'd have been her favorite in minutes and held it over that woman's head for decades thereafter, had you the time.

Anthony leant against one of the ancient oaken beams of the hay barn. The upright supported him easily. No surprise; it had carried the weight of roof and stood by the stone walls for around five hundred years by this point. His wife, of course, was seated on a hay bale cooing happily at what appeared to be a black and white spotted puffball with large green eyes.

"Would you like to keep him, darling?"

"Oh, no, they claw everything in sight." Edith laughed and brought the little bit of fluff up to nuzzle, grinning. "Besides, they make Sybil sneeze and this one is far too young to leave its mother. I'll just play with her a bit, then pop her back into the nest with Mama in a moment. Aren't they precious, though?"

"They are." He leaned forward and reached down beside Edith, towards where a pile of loose hay featured an orange mother cat and the four nursing age mates of Edith's friend. Unable to resist, he gently scratched around the mama cat's ears and then petted at the babies. "We've more in every barn in Loxley as well, should you ever change your mind. You can't possibly lack barn cats in Downton."

"Well, no, but I learned not to pay attention to them."

Anthony frowned and Edith sighed.

"I used to play with them, until I was eight or nine I suppose. Papa and Mama didn't mind as long as I changed so Sybil wouldn't be bothered by it."

"What stopped you?"

"Oh, someone said something to Mary about spinsters and cats and she just… wouldn't… leave it alone. It wasn't-."

Anthony reached out and gently cupped his hands under Edith's, stealing the kitten to return it to its mother and then drawing his wife back to her feet. He'd seen her do this before, of course, it was a habitual behavior. What he hadn't understood was the seriousness of it.

"Edith, don't dismiss the hurt that your sister inflicted on you or diminish yourself to make it seem less strange." Anthony countered. "Mary's behavior was not that of a normal sister. I have a normal sister. She's a trial. I'm ten years her senior, half-a-foot taller than her, and male besides and that has yet to stop her from showing me what-for whenever she feels the need. She has hidden my papers and I've ducked her in the lake, and those are just incidents in the last five years. Yet, our childhood was nothing like yours."

Edith looked at him and, in a breathy rush, the truth eked out.

"She said I - I was so ugly I'd never marry, but that was fine because I could take care of Mama and Papa, and it wasn't like a cat would care about my looks. She went on and on about it."

Anthony stifled a wave of anger.

"And what did your parents do?"

"Papa laughed and told me not to take it seriously. Mama would frown and chide, but that was all she ever did. At best they would say that it was just Mary's way of teasing. That it was just how Mary was. They always said that. It's just how Mary is. Like her being cruel was gravity and I must just accept it." Edith choked on a laugh. "Or they'd ask me why I didn't love them and want to take care of them."

"Dear God, Edith…"

"It - it wasn't always… they'd apologize later. Well, Mama would sometimes. Papa would… kind of pat me on the shoulders and tell me to buck up, it was all a joke. When I was little they'd go on about how Mary was Mary and we had to understand. They stopped as we got older. It was - it wasn't as bad for a few years in some ways? As long as I just… let her do what she wanted, but when I was about twelve I couldn't take it anymore and started talking back. I started trying to hurt her the way she hurt me. That made it worse. The things she'd say…"

There was nothing else to do. Anthony pulled his wife over to a stack of bales. Then he drew her to sit beside him in the fragrant hay and held her as she started to cry. It was the first time he'd seen her truly weep and he was left grappling with surprise when, shortly, she surged to her feet and began to pace angrily, wiping at her eyes.

"Oh, God, Anthony what is wrong with me? I just - I just wanted them to love me. A few days ago I - I wanted to make them proud and just hear them say - say what they do to Sybil and Mary. That I was pretty and smart and doing the right thing. I do everything they ask and it's never right or they just ignore it! Now I feel like I hate them and one moment I'm so happy and now - how did- you shouldn't have-."

"Edith, darling, I'm uncomfortably close to a half-century old. Let me decide what I should and shouldn't feel or endure." Anthony shot back, stifling the urge to go and wind her up in his arms again and resting his elbows on his knees as he watched her. He wanted to comfort her desperately, but if she needed to move… "Have you ever been allowed to be angry before?"

"What do you mean?"

"We're you punished for being angry at Mary?"

"Of course, everyone was."

"Pardon?"

"I mean…" Edith visibly tried to think of how to explain it and Anthony waited as he sensed, suddenly and intensely, that he was on the verge of hearing some puzzling piece of how the Crawley family ended up the way it had revealed. "It…"

"Yes?"

"Sybil was different. She gets angry, but she's never cruel, and she's Mama's favorite. Mary's as well. Mine, too, honestly." Edith smiled weakly. "Everyone loves Sybil. You - if we see her."

"Put that aside for now. Excepting Sybil, who wasn't allowed to be angry at Mary, besides yourself?"

"The staff mainly. Aunt Rosamund used to visit more when we were little, but she isn't one to let someone go on in ignorance of a mistake she believes they're making and she used to make comments so she stopped visiting like she once did."

"Color me shocked."

Edith smiled weakly at the sarcasm and rubbed at her eyes. Her breathing was normal. He chanced extending a hand and she shook her head lightly. He waited as Edith thought, but when his wife seemed to come to no new location within herself, he prompted.

"Why not?"

"Pardon?"

"Why couldn't anyone be angry at your older sister?"

Edith paused, opening her lips and then closing them.

"I want to say because she was beautiful and everyone's favorite but - but to be honest I can remember her being punished quite a bit when we were very small. We're only thirteen months apart, you know."

Anthony nodded encouragingly, but Edith just frowned and, after a bit more wandering and a stop to pet the cats, she eventually came back and allowed him to tug her into his lap and wrap his arms around her.

"Tell me about that, then. About how and why Mary was punished and when it stopped."

More Notes: One thing that has been noted by fandom is that Downton Abbey has fewer servants than they should. Now, I can believe certain households would do this and know from my own turn-of-the-century family history that some households did. My great-great grandfather was a wealthy man born around the same time as Robert in Minnesota. He kept a small household because he liked it. Then again, he also liked going to hunt Grizzly Bears with an ash bow.

On that note, I liked the idea that part of why the Granthams mock Anthony a bit isn't just his awkwardness. The man's known to be wealthy but lives below his means. In my mind, the Granthams are the opposite. Cora's fortune came in and saved an aristocratic family on the brink of ruin, canonically Robert is bad with money and running the estate profitably, and I can picture him basically trying to project an image he can only just afford and as such scrimping seriously on servants. Not the least because, if you notice, there's something at least a bit wrong with everyone hired in Downton and the footmen don't match.