DOWNTON ABBEY 1926

EPISODE 6.

Chapter 4. Saturday September 18, 1926

Mary and Anna

"It was exhausting," Mary told Anna when dressing for dinner. "I asked every question I could think of - about Brancaster and the magazine, about Bertie and Marigold, about the tedium of travelling from one end of the country to the other on business every other week, about Bertie's mother! for goodness sake! And I listened carefully to the answers, too, so I'd have more fodder for further questions." Mary paused to take a breath. "And I paid attention to Marigold, of course."

"My lady?" Anna couldn't quite see how Marigold fit into this odd inquisition.

"I know well enough that the key to any mother's heart is through praise and attention to her child," Mary said archly, and then added, with a bit of a smile, "How is Robbie, by the way?"

They both laughed.

"He's very well, thank you," Anna replied. But she was still puzzled. "What were you up to?" It did seem strange, Lady Mary deliberately seeking out Lady Hexham's company. She draped the dress over Mary's head and began to pull it slowly into place.

"You'll laugh if I tell you," Mary said, between the folds of cloth. "No, worse, you'll think me quite pathetic."

Anna had heard the worst of Lady Mary and yet returned to dress her another day. She said nothing, confident that Lady Mary would out with it no matter how foolish it might sound. That was how they were together.

"I was trying to make friends with my sister."

Her words lay flatly on the floor between them. They both knew quite how preposterous they sounded. Anna remained silent, only raising an inquiring eyebrow.

Mary nodded. "I told you it was stupid. Only... my grandmother said something to me a few weeks ago about not having any friends. Any female friends, that is. I thought she might have a point."

For a long moment Anna worked on adjusting the dress, buttoning it up, smoothing down any unsightly lines. She circled Mary with a critical eye and then, satisfied with her work, went to collect the jewellery pieces from the bureau.

"I thought first about Mabel Gillingham...," Mary went on.

"At the races last weekend."

"Yes. But what a bore she turned out to be." Mary was nothing if not frank. "She has a great estate and doesn't care a bit about how it's being run. I had to ask Tony what their annual crop yield was and what the tenant rates were. All Mabel could talk about was the baby she's going to have." Mary stopped short of complaining about Mabel's extended account of the trials she had endured to become pregnant. Anna had had woes of her own in that area.

"So who else is there?" Mary demanded, though almost immediately she felt slightly uncomfortable. She pulled at the collar of her dress. Anna re-adjusted it. "Lady Hexham. Desperate straits indeed."

"Why ... Lady Hexham?" Anna asked carefully.

"Well, she and I already have a lot in common, obviously. How hard could it be to establish some kind of a connection with her? We both have children now, we're both worried...about the same things." Mary had not as yet confided in Anna about her concerns for her grandmother. Rather like her parents, she was carrying on as usual absent an unavoidable crisis.

"It ought to be easy for us," she finished emphatically.

"Was Lady Hexham boring, too?" Anna could ask this presumptuous question. Lady Mary had always made it clear she would never rise to her sister's defense in a conversation with Anna.

"No. Surprisingly not. She has a head for business. She's been using it at Brancaster as well as at the magazine. And while Marigold isn't a patch on George - or Sybbie, for that matter - she is a sweet child and I can't blame her mother for doting on her. Although Lady Hexham is a bit excessive in her attentions. And we do have the family to discuss. It ought to be easy for us!"

"But you've never gotten on with her," Anna said, stating the obvious.

"I know. But ought one not be able to will something into existence? We are rational beings after all. Why can't we just set all that aside and...be friends?" Mary made an exasperated sound. "You're giving me a look."

"Well, friendship doesn't work that way," Anna said, shaking her head a bit. Lady Mary was usually more astute than this.

A cross look descended on Mary, an acknowledgment of failure and her impatience with it. "Oh, I know. That is, my other friendships - with men - came so easily." She caught Anna's eye again. "I was floundering like an amateur with Lady Hexham this morning. I was not myself at all. She must have thought me quite stupid. Even more so than usual, that is."

She held her head erect as Anna slipped her necklace on. "Perhaps I should ignore my grandmother's advice." She watched as Anna crossed the room to collect Mary's shoes.

"How are things with you and Bates?" she asked. The question fell more naturally from her lips than any she had asked of Edith. "Have you sold your house in London yet?"

Anna smiled so quickly and so brilliantly that Mary was startled.

"Not quite yet. But we've had an offer and ... this may be it!"

Anna had transformed in a moment from the efficient lady's maid to a woman glowing with the happy prospects of her life beyond the duties of her work. Mary noticed and felt both exultation for Anna's happiness and just a little pang of envy. She had known such happiness in her lifetime. Would she ever know it again?

"Is there something else?" Mary asked cautiously. "What has come of that ... those ... spells you were having?"

"Oh, that's all ... gone, past, my lady."

"But there is something else." There was no mistaking the excitement that Anna could hardly contain. Even not knowing what exactly it was, Mary felt a wave of relief. It must be good news. Anna could not be happy and facing difficulties at the same time.

"I'm going to have a baby!" Anna almost gasped out the words, so complete was her exhilaration.

Mary's eyes went round with surprise and ... joy. "Anna!" She seized Anna's hands in her own and her face lit up with a happiness that was mirrored in Anna's countenance. Almost as suddenly a catch arrested Mary's elation. "What about your ... problem? Is it too soon to call Dr. Rider? Will it be necessary again?"*

"It is," Anna admitted, but even that did nothing to diminish her internal radiance. "We've talked to Dr. Ryder and we'll have to set aside a date soon."

"That's ... wonderful!" And it was. Mary felt none of the irritability she had felt upon hearing the minutiae of Mabel Gillingham's pregnancy. With Anna she wanted to know everything and for several minutes they discussed the usual details, such as when the baby would be born.

"Late April, likely," Anna said. "And in my own bed this time, hope!"

"I shouldn't mind if your second child was born in the same place," Mary assured her firmly. She had been so caught up in the relief of Anna having a child at last that the fact that Robbie was born in this very room was a minor element that subsequently made for an entertaining story. "...so long as you're both healthy." Her gaze lingered affectionately on Anna. "I am so happy for you and Bates. He's ecstatic, I imagine?"

Anna, her face split wide with the happiest of grins, nodded emphatically. She had no words to describe her husband's joy. Mary understood that, too.

"Now, have we forgotten anything?"

With her professional precision, Anna called them back to the present and subjected Lady Mary to an exacting appraisal, not unlike that of Mr. Carson examining a formal dinner setting.

"Everything is perfect," Mary declared, though her eyes were fixed on Anna and she did not give herself a glance in the looking glass.

"You'll set them on fire, my lady."

"Thank you, Anna."

John and Anna

Anna was folding laundry when John came in, well after dark, home from turning His Lordship in for the evening. She looked up at him with a smile and he wound his arms about her, holding her close for a long moment. They would never tire of this.

"You shouldn't wait up for me," he chided her lightly, his warm breath tickling the sensitive curve of her neck.

She giggled in response. "I've got things to do," she said airily. "It's not entirely a matter of wanting to set eyes on you outside of the servants' hall of Downton Abbey!"

They laughed. He kissed her tenderly. It never failed to amaze her how gentle was his embrace or how sweet and soft his mouth could be. She knew his inner nature intimately, but ths kind and caring side was something few people would have expected from John Bates. He seldom troubled to show anything of this capacity for empathy to anyone but her, save occasionally Lord Grantham or Mrs. Carson, both of whom he held in high regard.

"You need your rest," he persisted, loosening his embrace. "Why else have evenings off if you don't use them to catch your breath and restore your energy?"

"I have evenings off so I can tend to our son," Anna told him matter-of-factly, pushing him away so that she might fold the last of his vests.

"How is he?"

John had last seen his son only that afternoon, but there was an eagerness in his question and a light in his eyes that told Anna that he had been counting the minutes. He cherished their son. She loved to see that in him.

"Well," she drawled, "he ate almost all of his dinner, but spit out his peas."

"I don't blame him," John said with feeling. "I feel the same way about them."

'You do not," she scoffed, smiling. "You appreciate everything on your plate and are glad that God put it there."

"I hope God, if a god there is, does not have the form of Mrs. Patmore." He affected an atheistic bent, but he had sought aid from and given thanks to that same God on one or two occasions.

She swatted him with the vest in her hand. "Let me finish this so we can be off to bed."

He leaned back against the table, a silly grin on his face as he enjoyed looking at her.

"How was your day?" he asked.

Of course they'd seen each other several times but not really had a conversation.

"Oh, well enough." His question drew her back to the matter that had been on her mind all evening and the thought of it dimmed her good humour just a little.

"What is it?"

He was too quick to pick up on the nuances of her tone, but that, she supposed, was the fruit of intimacy. She sighed a little.

"It's something Lady Mary said," she admitted. "When I was dressing her before dinner. It's ... silly, really." She repeated Lady Mary's word for it without conviction. It bothered her as it clearly also had, in a different way, bothered Lady Mary.

"Go on."

Anna frowned a little, tossed the last clothing into the basket, and then collapsed into a chair, looking up into his attentive gaze.

"She said... she was trying to make things up with Lady Hexham this weekend because they ought to be friends, being sisters..."

"And does she hope to find a formula to turn lead into gold, too?" A smile crinkled John's face. "Because one's as likely as the other."

Anna did not smile at his joke. "Whatever comes of the effort, and I agree with you that it will be nought, the reason she's even thinking about it is because she said ... she said she has no friends. No women friends, that is. And she supposed she ought to."

John pulled out another chair and sat down right beside her. He understood. "She probably didn't mean it like that."

"Oh, I know what she meant," Anna said. "There's no one - no woman - of her own class that she is really close to. It was the Dowager who put this bee in her bonnet and now she's on the lookout for a friend. The sort she can invite in for tea or go to a museum exhibition with. Perhaps even the sort to whom she could pour out her heart in the full expectation of a confidence kept or someone to whom she could acknowledge heartbreak to or enlist to drag a dead body from one end of the Abbey to another."

They exchanged wry glances.

"She knows you to be a true friend," John said reassuringly, taking one of her hands.

"But she didn't..." Anna started and then stopped. Lady Mary's words had hurt her. "She didn't even... She didn't say that we were friends. I'm just the ... the jar into which she can pour all her thoughts and fears and whims, but it doesn't ... mean anything."

"You know that isn't true," John said firmly. "Lady Mary cares for you very much. And even if she doesn't use the word friend, she can hardly deny the reality of your friendship."

"But she did," Anna insisted, her voice a little strained.

"Then she is in the wrong," John said doggedly. "Anna, I know the acknowledgment is important, but I think she has acknowledged your friendship in other ways - as His Lordship has done with me and with Mr. Carson - in deed, rather than word."

It was so and both of them could recount a litany to prove it, but somehow the words were important and she felt that Lady Mary had let her down.

"Anna." John spoke softly. "You've never expected the family to invite us to dinner, have you? Or to join their party at the races? You've always known there were lines between us. It's the way things are. Lady Mary is seeking a friend on her side of the line. That's all."

She sighed and leaned into him He buried a hand in her hair and drew her more closely still.

"Yes. I know," she said with a sigh. "I don't expect ... It's just..."

"I know," he said sympathetically. And she was certain that he did.

"Did you tell her our news?" he asked, after a while.

"I did." Anna pulled back a little now so that she could look at him. And smile. No grievance could keep her down when she thought of that. Unconsciously her hand moved to her abdomen though there was as yet little overt evidence of her condition. "She was pleased. Excited. Happy for us. And she asked whether I'd need to see Dr. Ryder again."

"And you said that we'll be taking care of it ourselves this time, thank you," he said. He was grateful for Lady Mary's intervention on Anna's behalf that had led them to the London doctor and, consequently, to the secure pregnancy that gave them Robbie. But he was responsible for his own family and was determined that this time they would manage their lives themselves.

"I did," Anna said, "though I put it a little more kindly."

"And Lady Mary," he went on, "may be feeling a little left out of things herself, on that score. We have our own lives, Anna."

It was easier for him, she thought. He had known Lord Grantham first during the South African War and in the military officers and men weren't friends. There was a culture there that had given John the foundations for a firm bond with Lord Grantham but allowed for distance, too, as a natural thing. Perhaps ladies and their maids were not meant to be friends either, but the boundaries were more blurred.

"I'm being silly," she said and laughed, though the hurt had not entirely dissipated.

"No," John said solemnly. "You're not. It's only natural to want to be recognized. Only I think the Crawleys have given us abundant evidence in things more fundamental than a dinner invitation or a cup of tea."

"What have you been up to?" Anna asked, ready to move on.

"Well," John drawled, and a grin curled his lips, "there is news." He reached into his coat pocket and retrieved a long, official-looking envelope.

Anna's eyes went round with anticipation. She knew what he was going to say.

"It came in the second post and you were nowhere to be found. And we didn't have a moment to ourselves at tea so..."

"John! We've sold the house!"

"We've sold the house!"

They fell into each other's arms.

"We're on our way, John," she whispered in his ear.

They had been perusing advertisements for property in a desultory sort of way, just to see what was out there they'd told each other. But now they could begin in earnest, now that they had the wherewithal to finance their dream.

"A hotel of our own," he breathed into her ear, "and children all around us!"

Edith and Bertie

A visit with the family was a bag of mixed blessings, Edith thought, as Bertie withdrew to his dressing room and her maid, Angela, helped her out of her evening clothes. After a peculiar day of faux friendship from Mary - it was, as her grandmother liked to say, as though she had stepped through the looking glass - Edith was exhausted. Edith did not much like her sister, but she thought she preferred the one she knew to the stranger who had plied her with questions about her life at Brancaster and laughed at her jokes and generally taken an interest.

And Tom had seemed out of sorts, too, quieter than usual. And she'd found his explanation yesterday for the cancellation of the children's sleep-over not quite convincing. If he'd changed his mind about wanting to have the three cousins rampaging around his cottage he had only to say so. No excuses were needed. Henry had supported Tom too eagerly. What was going on there?

And then there was Granny. It was understandable that Granny herself refused to entertain any discussion of her health, but why was everyone else collaborating so completely in this silence?

The problem was that she was no longer a part of the Downton universe. Of course she was related to it, but she had moved away and into a different sphere. All the issues remained as they had always been, but she was no longer privy to the intimate details that were absorbed by a social osmosis when one lived in the same house. If she did not ask blunt questions, then she would never get any of the answers.

She glanced, slightly vexed, at the dressing room door. Bertie was taking an interminably long time to change. Edith dismissed her maid and scrambled under the covers. The nights were cooler now in mid-September, although she could not help but think that they were milder in Yorkshire than Northumberland and that the more modern Abbey was cozier than the sprawling ancient edifice that was Brancaster Castle.

At length Bertie emerged from the other room. Just the sight of him, even in his commonplace old dressing gown - he had refused to discard it just because he was now Marquis of Hexham - sent a quiver of desire up her spine. Sometimes she recalled that she had loved a number of men in her lifetime - Patrick, Anthony, Michael, and Bertie - but the first two paled before the loves of her mature years and though Michael was, arguably, her first real love, she could not now envisage a life that did not include Bertie, her first husband.

She was about to issue a tender invitation but the expression on his face, indeed his whole bearing, gave her pause. Unlike the Crawleys and other members of their class, Bertie had not been raised to affect dispassion at every turn. He could be reserved, to be sure, but when he felt something, it radiated from him. Edith revered this about him. She had never been wholly comfortable with the stiff upper lip approach and had not always adhered to it herself. Seeing consternation in his face now, she reached out to him.

"My darling, what is it?"

He came to the bed, but did not climb in beside her. Instead he sat down heavily, his back toward her, his shoulders slumped.

"Bertie! What is it?" Edith threw back the bedclothes and went round his side of the bed. Only then did she notice that he held some pages in his hand, a letter perhaps.

"What's that?"

He flicked his hand and the papers - there were three pages - fluttered. "There was a letter on my night stand in the dressing room," he said dully.

This was bewildering in itself. "But who would be writing to you here? And the post was sorted hours ago."

He shook his head. "It's from one of the staff," he said. "The assistant cook." He glanced at the topmost page. "Daisy Mason."

"What?" Edith did not think she could be more astonished. "What could Daisy want with you?" She was already preparing a rebuke in her mind. The junior staff had no business communicating directly with the family.

"She gave me something. For you." But though he held up the pages, he did not hand them to her.

"What is it?" Edith asked again, but she was less interested for the moment in the letter itself, for she had no foreboding as to its contents, than she was in Bertie's demeanor. He looked perturbed, confused, ... upset. She reached out to him, but he looked away.

"Bertie." They did not fuss, she and Bertie. His behaviour thus alarmed her.

And then he did look at her and Edith almost stepped back. She did not like what she saw in his eyes, the wounded reproach. She had seen such a look only once before, on that awful day when Mary had told him about Marigold. But there was nothing of that sort between them now.

"Bertie!" she said again, more stridently, her voice rising a notch.

Edith had changed very much over the past few years. The trials of her love life and her emergence as a woman of business and a figure on the London literary scene had re-made her in ways she readily embraced. She was more confident now, more convinced of her own worth. Bertie's steadfast love had helped this new Edith to flourish. But she could not leave everything behind - no one could - and the scars of her past lingered on, not far beneath the surface. And in moments of crisis or anguish they came to the fore only too easily. So it was that in the space of less than a minute Edith went from casual lover to anxious spouse, her wide eyes glistening, her whole frame in tension. She clutched at his arm.

"What is it?" she demanded yet again.

"You never told me about the Drewes," he said.

It was the last thing she had expected to hear from him. "What?"

"The Drewes," he said, his voice tight.

"Yes, I did," her voice faltering in confusion.

"You told me that Marigold was fostered by a local family," he conceded. "The Drewes. Who cared for her until you were prepared to bring her to Downton. Yes, you told me that." There was an alarming brittleness in his words. "But you didn't tell me everything."

It was hard to concentrate. What would Daisy, the assistant cook or whatever she was, know about the Drewes? And why would she tell Bertie? But through this fog of inexplicable detail, Edith reached for the most accusing of his words - everything. Her breath caught.

"You didn't tell me that she was to them a child they had adopted as their own. You didn't tell me how taking her away again affected them, how it broke Mrs. Drewe's heart. Nor did you mention that they were obliged to give up tenancy at Yew Tree Farm because of this."

As distressed as she was at Bertie's mood and his accusatory tone, his reference to Mrs. Drewe and her broken heart re-directed Edith's emotional response. Mrs. Drewe. She reviled the woman. "She was a stupid woman!" Edith spat. She'd not had to think of Mrs. Drewe in a while, but the venom engendered by their acquaintance and the turmoil of their last encounter were easily resurrected. "I needed to see Marigold, have a place in her life, and Mrs. Drewe made it very difficult for me. Almost impossible, actually," she said savagely. "She was jealous and resentful. And I couldn't live with it - or without Marigold - any longer."

"Do you blame the woman?" Bertie demanded bluntly.

"Why are we talking about this?" Edith cried, angry that Bertie was giving any attention at all to Mrs. Drewe and getting angrier that he would presume to comment on such a matter.

He held up the pages. "She wrote a letter about what happened with Marigold and left it hidden at Yew Tree Farm. Daisy lives there now. She found it."

"Daisy!" There was another target for Edith's wrath. "What is she doing giving it to you? The interfering little witch! How dare she!"

"Edith!" Bertie was scowling and now he got to his feet, too. "Yes, she gave it to me. But only because she thought you should have it, that it was really written to you." He exhaled deeply in a visible effort to curb his own excess of emotions. "And I think she's right. And I will give it to you. If only you'll promise to read it through."

But Edith would have none of this. Mrs. Drewe had driven her to distraction for almost two years when all she'd wanted was to be close to her own child. If the foolish woman had only accepted her attentions to Marigold in gratitude instead of suspicion, there would have been no trouble. This was only what Edith had intended in the first place. That the arrangement had become increasingly untenable Edith put down entirely to Mrs. Drewe's selfishness, rather than to her own growing need to have Marigold more fully in her life, especially after learning of Michael's death.

"I will not," she said hotly, her eyes flashing. She could feel her cheeks flushing with rage. "I will not indulge that woman's hysteria. She tried to kidnap Marigold, you know. At the Thirsk stock show. Lured her away and ran off home with her. I was beside myself! And I'll have words with Daisy, too, for dragging this up..."

"I should hope not" Bertie said sharply. "She's only the messenger. And I believe she did the right thing in giving the letter to me to give to you. Please, Edith. Read it."

"No."

They stood in silence, staring at each other. Finally Bertie looked away. He folded the pages and put them in the pocket of his dressing gown, which he then took off and folded carefully over a nearby chair. "I trust that you will not take this away. The note from Daisy is addressed to me and the letter itself has been entrusted to my care. I hope I don't have to worry that you will destroy it."

"I don't want to touch it!" Edith snapped.

He shrugged. Then he got into bed, turning onto his side, and staring across the room.

Now the hot tears that had been pressing on her spilled over Edith's cheeks. It was an irritating response to conflict that had once been her only defense against Mary's taunts and always a poor defense at that, but she had never mastered it.

She stalked around her side of the bed and sat down hard upon the edge, balancing there for a moment. This was supposed to have been an enjoyable family excursion away from Brancaster and an occasion of joy given their announcement regarding Marigold's adoption. But now it had been blasted away by that horrid woman who was long gone but still had such power to disrupt Edith's life. Her and that other stupid one, Daisy. She'd read the letter, Daisy had, and probably communicated its contents to all of Downton now, now at the moment when the scar of that transgression had been effaced by the adoption.

Edith glanced over her shoulder at Bertie's hunched form. And he was cold toward her. Well, she could address that at least.

She stood up and walked round the bed again, determined not to speak to his back nor to court the possibility that he might not turn round if she asked him to do so.

"Why are you treating me like this?" she demanded, as irritated as she was hurt. "What does it matter to you whether I read this ... this letter or not?"

With a sigh, he threw back the bedcovers and sat up again. "Because it's something we need to discuss, Edith, and we can't talk about it until you've read it."

Bertie was seldom unyielding and perhaps it was this more than anything else that shifted Edith. She held out a hand, though her chest was heaving with aggravation and the anguish of betrayal. "Give it to me then."

He hesitated only for a few seconds and then fished it out.

Edith took the pages from him and went to sit at the desk across the room where she put on the light, all the better to see the poisoned script. Mrs. Drewe's words did not improve her temper, but she struggled through them. Doing difficult things was nothing new for Edith. As she read them, her tears dried and her rage grew. When finished, she exercised an immense restraint in folding the papers and placing them carefully on the desk.

"Vile woman," she said again.

Bertie stared at her. "Vile woman! How can you say that?"

Edith stared right back at him, open-mouthed in disbelief. "I only wanted to see my daughter. And I was good to her. And to them."

"Why couldn't you leave them be?"

"I just...couldn't, Bertie! And why should I have done? The reason I brought her to Downton was so that I could see her. She might as well have stayed in Switzerland with the Schroeders otherwise."

"Who were they?" Bertie was confused.

Now Edith paused. "I told you about them. They were the people I left Marigold with in Switzerland. At first. Before I realized..." He was looking at her with renewed horror.

"You mean she was adopted there, too, and you took her away from that family as well."

"They only had her for a few months!" Edith cried. "And they adopted another baby shortly afterwards."

Bertie got up and began to pace the room. "And that makes it all right, I suppose. Why didn't you just find a substitute for the Drewes, too, and then we wouldn't be hearing from Mrs. Drewe." Edith could hear the sarcasm in his voice. "Two women, two families who took Marigold into their hearts and you tore her away from both of them."

Their clash over this was only escalating. Edith was aghast at her dear husband's attitude. "Tore! She is my daughter, Bertie!"

But he was not sympathetic and now he turned toward her, his face like flint. "You gave birth to her, yes. But they took her into their home and their hearts, Edith. The Drewes had her for almost two years!" Bertie was ordinarily not given to such heated conversation, but he, too, was breathing almost in gasps and seemed distraught. "And it was the news of Michael's death that prompted you to...repossess...her?"

"Repossess!" The word cut Edith deeply. "She is my daughter, Bertie. Mine!" Why did she have to keep reiterating that? "And yes, once I knew that Michael was dead I had to have Marigold with me. Is that so wrong?" She did not think it was but clearly he had other views.

"And that's how you did it?" He gestured at the hateful letter.

Edith made a dismissive movement with her hand. "She exaggerates. She made it as difficult as possible."

"Is there an easy way to do something like that?"

"Why are you taking her part!" Edith was shocked that Bertie seemed sympathetic to Mrs. Drewe's position and even more so at his lack of solidarity. Was she not his wife?!

But Bertie found her views as bewildering. "Wouldn't anyone?"

Edith had no framework for comprehending this demand. Her family had closed ranks about her, with Mama offering the only words of consideration for the farmer's wife, and even she had not raised the matter again. "It was her husband's fault," Edith snapped. "He should have told her, made the circumstances clear. It was his idea to deceive her." This was true literally, but not wholly within the spirit of the compact. Tim Drewe had anticipated Edith's plea for confidentiality.

"You're blaming him?"

Edith looked away.

"And then they were driven from Yew Tree Farm."

"Not driven. But they obviously couldn't stay there. Not after she had kidnapped Marigold from the stock show. Bertie, she was deranged. It would have happened again. Moving was Mr. Drewe's idea," she added.

But Bertie was not persuaded of this.

They stood apart, staring at each other, both sickened and hurt by the exchange.

"What now?" Edith demanded. There was fire in her eyes. She loved Bertie dearly, but her love for Marigold was primal.

Bertie had no answers.

"What was it that needs discussing, then?" Edith persisted. "Or did you just want to know the details?"

He was watching her carefully, looking for ... what? "Do you feel no remorse, then, about Mrs. Drewe?"

Edith could have spat at the name. "Why should I?" she demanded, and then wondered why she was on the defensive. "And why do you care?"

He met her inflamed gaze with a resolve of his own. "Because I love Marigold, too, Edith," he said. "She is the child of another, and yet I have taken her into my heart as though she were my own. As Mrs. Drewe and the Swiss family did. And I can imagine... I can feel the pain and grief were she to be taken from me as she was taken from them. And yet you have only contempt for this woman who loved your child."

"There was no other way," Edith insisted. "I needed Marigold. And Mrs. Drewe would have been a constant danger and disruption."

"I daresay Mrs. Drewe thought much the same about you," he said bitterly. And then he straightened and seemed to make up his mind about something. "Excuse me," he said peremptorily. And he turned and disappeared into his dressing room.

Angry, distressed, perplexed, Edith followed him to the door and found him grabbing his clothes. "What are you doing?"

"I'm getting dressed," he said. "And then I'm going... I don't know where I'm going. But I'm not staying here."

"You're leaving Downton? In the middle of the night! Because of Mrs. Drewe?!"

Bertie drew himself up formally at her words and met her gaze forthrightly. "Let's be clear about this, Edith. It isn't about Mrs. Drew. It's about you and me and Marigold."

She was stunned. She watched in silence as he dressed. Buttoning up his shirt, he glanced over at her. "Quinn can pack my things tomorrow." He paused by her side. "I'm going back to Brancaster. I've an estate to run, as your father reminded me." He spoke quietly but there was a quiver in his voice. "I'll see you there whenever you and Marigold return."

And then he left.

*A/N1. When I named the character Daniel Ryder, I was thinking only of a name that I really liked. I had forgotten that the consultant Anna saw in London was also named Ryder. This is wholly accidental and the two characters have nothing to do with each other.