'I have a suggestion to make, but I want you to hear me out and think about it, not just shoot the idea down in flames as soon as I finish speaking,' Mary said, leaning back in her chair as Tom came back into the office.

'Oh, yes? Well, that's put me on my guard straight away, the way you've phrased that,' he said, half joking, half wary, perching on the edge of his desk. 'Go on then, tell me what your suggestion is.'

'Promise me you'll give it some consideration,' she said, narrowing her eyes and pointing her pen at him.

'I promise.'

Mary bit her lip, holding his gaze before going for broke and saying what was on her mind. 'I think we should sleep together.'

'No,' he said immediately, shaking his head. 'Absolutely not.'

'You said you'd consider it!' she protested, throwing her pen on her desk.

'I did and then I rejected the idea.'

'You thought about it for – what? - a fraction of a second? That's not giving it proper consideration,' Mary argued.

'I gave it as much consideration as it warranted. We can't do that; you know we can't.'

'I think it might help.'

'How? How will it help?' he said, sceptically.

'Maybe if we give in and do it once, it'll help us get past this,' she said, optimistically. 'Perhaps it will satisfy our curiosity. You know, kind of like scratching an itch.'

Tom gave her an incredulous look. 'What, in the same way that kiss we had a few weeks ago so successfully stopped us thinking about each other? I don't think so, Mary.'

'It might work,' she insisted.

'Or it might open the floodgates and we'll want to do it again. And again. And again. I know which one I'd put my money on,' he said, raising an eyebrow at her. 'And I think you do too if you're honest.'

'We might not. We might find we're totally incompatible in the bedroom and that would be the end of it.'

Tom gave her another sceptical look. 'And pigs might fly. No, you'd be breaking your marriage vows.'

'They're my marriage vows to break,' Mary groused, irritably.

'That may be true, but you need my co-operation to break them and I'm saying no,' Tom said, firmly.

'I think it's worth considering it. Discussing it instead of simply dismissing it,' she said, stubbornly.

'No, it's not because it's not going to happen. And talking about it is only going to make things worse. Look what happened this morning and all we were doing was looking at a map! If we start talking about the possibility of us sleeping together it's just going to rile us both up even more, and make this even harder' Tom replied, equally determined to draw a line under the subject.

'Maybe I should have suggested it while you were still looking at the map and certain things were getting harder. You know, before you…' Mary said petulantly, breaking off with an expressive hand gesture as he shot her a look that warned her not to finish that sentence. 'I bet you'd have given it some thought then.'

'It wasn't the bloody map,' he said crossly and, in Mary's opinion, unnecessarily.

'No, I know it wasn't. It was me touching you that put you in that state. And I wasn't even touching you intimately. I didn't even touch your skin!'

'I know that,' he snapped.

'Then think about it, Tom,' she said, invitingly, leaning forward and fixing him with a sultry look. 'Think how good you felt this morning when my hand was on your back, touching you through your clothes. And then think how much better it could have been if we'd been in bed together. Naked. Skin against skin.'

Tom gave her a warning look. 'Don't, Mary. Don't go down that route. You know we can't do that.'

'Why not?' she growled, frustrated.

'You know precisely why not,' Tom snapped. 'The small matter of your husband. The one you seem to be forgetting about.'

Mary gazed at him consideringly. 'I think you won't consider it because you're labouring under a misapprehension, Tom.'

He returned her look, his hands gripping the edge of his desk. 'Do you? And what misapprehension would that be? Because I know for a fact you're married – I was the best man at your wedding for God's sake.'

Mary ignored his glibness, instead focusing intently on him. 'You seem to think that we can claim we're not having an affair as long as we don't sleep with each other.'

'Well, yes, we're not sleeping together so we're not having an affair.'

Mary shook her head. 'I'm not at all sure that's true.'

'Why? Because we've kissed? We shouldn't have done that, I know, but that's not the same as sleeping together,' Tom insisted. 'You can't be accused of committing adultery until you sleep with me and we haven't done that.'

'That may be technically true but, nevertheless, I am being unfaithful to Henry, emotionally if not physically,' Mary asserted.

Tom shook his head. 'No, don't say that. That's not… that's not the same thing.'

'Isn't it?'

'No.'

Mary gazed at him, deciding it was time to be brutally frank and disabuse him of this notion that physical intimacy was the main requirement for an extra-marital affair.

'I know you won't say it and I know you don't want me to say it either, but I'm going to anyway because there's no point in not saying it, not anymore. I love you, Tom. I'm in love with you.'

'Mary,' he pleaded, looking stricken. 'Don't.'

She ignored his plea and carried on. 'If that's not being unfaithful to Henry, I don't know what is. The fact that I haven't been to bed with you is neither here nor there.'

Tom sat silently, thinking about what she'd said. Mary got to her feet, slipping around the corner of the desk, determined to push her point home.

'Imagine Sybil had come to you during your marriage and told you she was in love with another man,' she said softly, watching as he jerked his head up to stare wildly at her. 'Would you have shrugged it off as nothing simply because she hadn't been physically intimate with that man?'

'No, I wouldn't have,' he said honestly after a moment of silence. 'I would have felt completely betrayed.'

Mary nodded, knowing she'd got through to him. 'Then don't you see? I'm already an unfaithful wife.'

Tom dropped his gaze to the floor, contemplating that. Mary moved to stand in front of him. She stepped between his splayed thighs, putting her hands on his shoulders. Tom's hands came up to rest on her waist and she felt sparks of excitement zipping through her.

'Does that put a different complexion on things?' she asked, gently.

Tom nodded, sending hope skittering through her until he spoke again. 'It does, but it doesn't make a difference.'

'What? Why not?'

'Because it doesn't change anything. You're still Henry's wife. Henry's still my friend. I can't do that to him.'

Mary stared at him, frustration seething in her chest. 'You and your bloody sense of honour.'

Tom gave her a small, wry smile. 'Apparently, that's one of the things you admire most about me.'

'I'm not sure I do anymore,' she said, frowning at him. 'Not when it's thwarting me like it is.'

'I think you can probably blame Catholic guilt as well,' he said, apologetically. 'I've an unhealthy dollop of that in me too.'

Mary sighed. 'I really, really wish you were Church of England. We don't go so overboard with the guilt.'

Tom gave a low laugh. 'You're not the first Crawley to wish that. Although for entirely different reasons.'

Mary eyed him consideringly. 'So, you're really not willing to take me to bed while I'm married to Henry? Even though you wrote me that delicious letter?'

'No. I can't. It would be wrong and, no matter how much I want to – and believe me, I do - I don't think I could live with myself if I did that. I'd certainly never be able to look Henry in the eye again.'

'I'm not suggesting we tell Henry about it,' Mary said, dryly.

Tom shook his head. 'I can't lie to him. I don't have it in me. Besides, you know I'm no good at lying.'

'No, you're not, you're rubbish at it.'

'Well, there you go then.'

'But you are good at keeping a secret,' she said, looking at him thoughtfully. 'You're a past master at that. You kept Lucy's secret, Edith's secret about Marigold, and you never told anyone about my trip to Liverpool with Tony after you guessed it. And Granny of all people trusted you enough for you to be the only person to know her whereabouts when she hightailed it to the continent a couple of years ago. She knew you'd keep your mouth shut about it if she asked you. What if you looked at it as a secret instead of a lie?'

'I think you're splitting hairs there. And besides, I was in a completely different position in all of those cases,' he protested.

'Why?'

'Because none of those were my secrets. This is. If I took you to bed, I'd be betraying Henry and I can't do that.'

Mary pursed her lips, studying his face. 'Well, we find ourselves in a bit of a conundrum then, don't we? Because I don't think I can go the rest of my life without having you inside me at least once.'

'Mary!' Tom exclaimed, turning pink, scandalised by her forthrightness. 'You can't say that!'

'I can if it's true and it is,' she said, mildly amused by his prudishness about her choice of words when they were literally wound in a loose embrace discussing sleeping together.

'Well, don't say it again,' he implored her.

Mary frowned, feeling a tug of annoyance. 'Why? Is it offending your Catholic sensibilities?'

'No,' he said, looking up at her, heat in his eyes as his hands tightened fractionally on her waist. 'It's putting images in my head. And you know how ill-equipped I am at dealing with that today.'

She stared at him, biting back a triumphant smile. 'Oh, I see.'

'It's not lack of will, Mary. That's not why I'm saying no to you,' Tom murmured, trying to get her to understand his position. 'God, I can hardly believe I am saying no to you. I want you, I do. I think you know that. If nothing else, this morning has proved that. But I can't be that man, the one who betrays everything he believes in because of a weakness of the flesh.'

'I know,' she whispered, pressing in closer, sliding her hands from his shoulders to the back of his neck, and dropping her forehead to rest against his. 'I know you can't.'

'Then please don't test me,' he begged. 'Don't push me to do something I'd never forgive myself for.'

Mary sighed, nodding her head gently. 'All right, I won't.'

'Thank you,' he whispered, with heartfelt gratitude.

'I do wonder, though, how I have managed to fall in love with possibly the only man in the world who would have a torrid emotional affair with me but refuse to make love to me,' Mary mused, giving him a rueful smile.

'I'm sorry, Mary, I am,' he said, feeling awful about the whole situation.

She gazed thoughtfully at him, contemplating another option. 'What if… what if I left him?'

Tom jerked his head up to stare at her, wide-eyed, looking like he wasn't sure he'd heard her correctly. 'What?'

'Henry,' Mary clarified unnecessarily. 'What if I left him?'

'No, no, you wouldn't.'

'Wouldn't I? I want to be happy, Tom. I don't love Henry. I love you,' she said, curling her fingers into the hair at the back of his neck and gazing into his eyes. 'Being with you would make me happy.'

He eyed her carefully. 'Are you just saying this because you want me to change my mind about us sleeping together?'

'No,' she said, indignantly. 'Give me a little more credit than that.'

'You can't decide to end your marriage just like that, Mary.'

'It's not just like that though, is it?'

'Henry hasn't done anything wrong. He doesn't deserve this,' Tom said, a troubled look on his face.

'No, but perhaps you should look at it another way, Tom. Does he deserve to be shackled to a woman who wants to be with someone else? Wouldn't it be better to set us both free?'

Tom was silent, thinking about that. 'Isn't it too soon to be thinking about that? We've only been in this situation for a short while. These feelings might yet fade.'

'They won't. Not for me,' Mary said firmly, shaking her head. 'Do you think they will for you?'

'No, I don't think so,' he said, slowly. 'I think they go too deep.'

Mary let out a relieved sigh, stroking the back of his neck as a huge rush of love flooded through her. 'Then it's something I should seriously consider.'

'Maybe. That's up to you. I'm not going to tell you what to do. But I think you need to sleep on it for a while. It's a big decision,' Tom said, cautiously.

'I know. And I know a divorce wouldn't be easy on any of us, but it's a way out of this.' She pulled her head back a little to look at him. 'But you'd have to give up Miss Smith too. Would you do that?'

Tom met her gaze. 'If you were free? Yes, I would.'

Mary smiled at him, feeling like her heart could burst open. Perhaps there could be a future for them after all.