***chapter 9***

A/N: Ookaaay, drawing this story to a close over the next couple of chapters as it's just not generating enough interest or feedback. So going to skip scenes and take a leap into the future...

Even now, all these years later. it was hard to accept Kate was dead. She would have been so proud of him, he knew. Paul would have been impressed as well, and maybe even Ben, if he'd lived and they'd got over their differences, would've bragged about his big brother. A butler in Downton Abbey, no less! And not only a butler, but friend of the Grantham family...He smiled fleetingly, lost in thought. No, don't push it, Thomas lad. You're not exactly going to sink a few pints at the Dog and Duck with the Earl of Grantham and the other upstairs folk any time soon...friend of the Downton Abbey children, more like.

His smile widened. Just thinking of Master George, Miss Sybbie and Miss Marigold never failed to make his heart lighter. They were funny and even funnier because they didn't know they were. Miss Sybbie once declared, quite seriously and with not a hint of sarcasm, that she didn't need to wash her face every day because it would only get dirty again. Oh, and she might as well not wash her hands either, she added proudly; Nurse Fletcher already had lots to do and it would save her so much time if she didn't have to oversee Sybbie's morning ablutions.

Then there was the time the three children had been paddling in the shallow brook and Master George decided he was quite grown up enough to put his own shoes and socks back on, as he'd just seen Thomas do. He managed well enough with the first shoe after several attempts. The second shoe, however...No matter how hard the little boy tried, left foot and left shoe refused to be reunited and he stubbornly batted off all offers of help.

"One foot growed big in the night!" He announced, triumphant at his "discovery", and rather hurt when his best friend Thomas and Nurse burst out laughing. It must be the reason, he insisted almost tearfully, only mollified when the butler promised faithfully that on their morning walk tomorrow he would put him on his shoulders and play "very, very, very fast charging horses". Thus he was carried back to Downton Abbey, one shoe on, one shoe off, yelling excitedly, "Mama! Mama! One foot growed big in the night!"

Shortly after the children had been taken to see Peter Pan at the theatre, Miss Marigold quite gravely told Thomas she didn't believe in fairies, but she wasn't going to say it in case it made a fairy drop down dead. While Sybbie was becoming quite the tomboy, determined to do everything Master George and all boys were allowed to do, only better, which was why she regularly climbed trees and was very fond of "marching like a soldier", Miss Marigold was becoming quite the little lady. Or so she believed.

Which was why, aided and abetted by Miss Sybbie and Master George, she sneaked into the garden wearing Lady Edith's turquoise ballgown. Even allowing for the fact her cousins were holding the trailing garment as though attending a bride at a wedding, the ballgown was covered in mud, due, in no small fact, to Lady Marigold falling over at regular intervals, which seemingly required all three to fall over giggling. Fortunately, Miss Baxter and Anna between them performed some miracle with the dress and, as Thomas agreed to keep the children's secret, they were never found out.

He and Paul had only been children themselves when they fell in love, celebrating their thirteenth birthdays a couple of months apart soon after they met. They knew each other for only a very short while, and yet that short time he spent with Paul had been the happiest of his life. His life! A stab of guilt pierced Thomas's heart.

At least he still had a life to live. Paul, Kate, Ben...none of them did.

His sister never woke again after collapsing that day. Exhaustion, Dr Swales diagnosed. And it seemed she, too, was in the early stages of diphtheria. The disease was sweeping the town now. It was one of the reasons Thomas was considering leaving forever. The other reason was his father.

Ironically, when it was what she wanted most, they had forged their uneasy truce only after Kate's passing. William Barrow had a new-found respect for him, borne out of fear now he was much taller and stronger, afraid he would seek retribution for all the years of beatings. He might have chanced his luck had he known the only thing staying his hand was that he looked like Ben. He and Kate had always resembled their Irish mother with their black hair and blue eyes; Ben had always been a miniature version of their father, with his small bird-like eyes, round face and sandy hair, although William Barrow's head was almost completely grey now.

The clockmaker had hired an old woman from the town to shop, cook and clean for them and Maggie Sedgwick busied herself with a thousand and one chores, from the moment she arrived in early morning until she left late at night, chores that only now Thomas realised gave Kate scarcely any time for rest.

Helen Latham never came by any more. His father had made a fool of himself, in Thomas's opinion, one last time by asking the young widow to marry him, arrogant enough to believe she might actually say yes. He spoke again of relocating the business to London, of the premises he had visited several times before Ben and Kate were taken ill; he intended to seal the deal soon, he said. Thomas never listened. Pie in the bloody sky. What the hell did he intend to use for money? He might have ceased his regular trips down the pub, but it was a damn sight too late when he'd already drunken away the profits.

It was much, much later he learnt William Barrow had a tidy sum tucked away in the bank, awaiting a time when his youngest son would take on his mantle. Consumed by grief, he had never thought to question how his father could afford for his siblings to have such lavish funerals, or wondered for a moment where the funds were magicked from to pay for Dr Swales's visits, and, later, employ old Maggie Sedgwick as housekeeper. If he had reflected on it at all, he would have simply assumed the clockmaker had taken out adequate insurance policies with a little left over.

But that knowledge was still many years away when, on an impulse, less than 24 hours after Kate was buried, he walked out of the shop for the last time. As if to mark the finality of the moment, the same cuckoo clock that chimed the day he met Paul struck the hour while the skies above darkened and rain wildly lashed the pavements. He shivered as he walked on without looking back, digging his hands deep into his pockets, pondering on his uncertain future. Going into service was the best a lad with his background could hope for and the conclusion he reached. A roof over his head, meals, a bit of brass in his pocket. He knew of a large house owned by a wealthy family who kept several servants some four or five miles away, just outside Manchester, and made up his mind he would head there.

His only detour was to Mrs Latham's to ask for a keepsake of Paul's. But though he begged and pleaded she was adamant in her refusal, threatening to call the police and show them the letters – she had found their precious communications tied with ribbon and carefully hidden at the back of a drawer she had to pull right out to find out why it was sticking. The same innocent declarations of love between a lad and a lass would hardly have raised an eyebrow. Between two boys, it would have led to his immediate arrest. He didn't dare so much as raise his voice in case it drew attention, muttering a few choice names and promising dire consequences if he ever saw her again, feeling a flutter of satisfaction when her face turned ashen, before he eventually turned away, angry, lonely, frustrated, but ultimately empty-handed.

Paul, Kate, Ben, they were all gone. Maybe it was easier not to let anyone get close and it was easier to rise in status if he didn't allow sentiment to hold him back. He was hired as boot boy at Hawthorne Grange, but he had no intention of being a boot boy forever. He had a sharp, cutting wit. He was clever. Ambitious. He moved quickly on from place to place, furthering his career and gaining an increase in salary every time.

Downton Abbey, though, that was where he finally began to settle. He had his sights set on becoming butler almost from the second he attended his interview with the Earl and Lady Grantham. But even more so when in his very first week he overhead Carson ranting to the under-butler about an article he'd read in the paper of two homosexuals being jailed for "lewd acts".

"Prison's too easy. Should be strung up, abominations against God, every man jack of them!" he thundered, throwing the newspaper down in a fury, catching Thomas's gaze and sudden realisation and disgust falling over his features. They never liked each other much to begin with – Thomas had cultivated a bristling self-sufficiency that kept everyone except the equally scheming, and therefore useful, Miss O'Brien away – but they thoroughly despised each other after that.