Thank you to HamiltonAsparagus for your kind review

Thanks also to nlas134 for adding this story to Favourites and Alerts

A/N: Unfortunately, have sciatica so not been able to sit at the laptop for very long, the reason these updates are taking a little more time than usual. This story is AU.

***chapter 16***

"Good morning, Miss Brown! I trust you slept well?" Unaware that Phyllis Baxter flinched inwardly as she always did when anyone used her alias, the silver-haired landlady of the B&B smiled happily at her guest's polite murmur of acquiescence – although, if she hadn't recollected a most peculiar dream in which she'd already begun her employ at Downton Abbey and she and Thomas, who was a child of five or six, and which didn't seem in the least bit strange, were breaking eggs into an enormous box - Miss Baxter would have been convinced she hadn't slept at all.

" Can I finally tempt you to a full breakfast today? You've a long journey ahead and I always say a hearty English... "

"Thank you, Mrs Mitchell. Toast with marmalade and a pot of Earl Grey as usual will be quite sufficient."

Mrs Mitchell shook her head and tutted at the youth of today. At least, being three score years and four as of last summer, she considered anyone under fifty to be a youngster and regarded Phyllis at forty years old or thereabouts as a mere slip of a lass. "Young folk nowadays, don't eat enough to keep a sparrow alive. I really wish you'd have something more substantial. I realise the excitement of meeting with your old friend after all those years and him being able to help with the book may have stolen your appetite, but..."

"Indeed." Phyllis smiled enigmatically, relieved when another diner attracted Mrs Mitchell's attention and thankful she had been economical with the truth about her background. Her fellow guests in the pleasant B&B overlooking the Cornish countryside would be horrified if they knew she was an ex-prisoner. Worse, these people who trusted and respected her were being deceived.

As she had done in the other guest houses she stayed in after leaving London, Miss Baxter had given her name as Phyllis Brown. She even found herself explaining, when once or twice she was slow in responding to her new identity, she was "a little hard of hearing". And because holidaymakers and guest house owners alike were curious about an unmarried, middle-aged woman's solo journey, invented a story that she was researching for a book she had been commissioned to write about the lives of ordinary British people since the turn of the twentieth century.

Growing up in poverty in a large city prior to The Great War was of "particular interest", Phyllis told Mrs Mitchell, which was why she was so keen to "interview" her old friend from Manchester. And even though only fifty miles or so separated the two cities, Manchester, not Yorkshire, was where she allowed everyone to think she was headed today, thinking it wise to cover her tracks before she embarked on what she prayed would be the start of a new, and honest, chapter in her life.

Thomas had warned her to say nothing to anyone at Downton Abbey about her crime; he had "sorted it". Phyllis could only conclude he had explained her circumstances to Lady Grantham and the Countess held him in such high regard she trusted his judgement and was prepared to give her a second chance, albeit deeming it prudent to keep her secret from the other serving staff. It would be an enormous relief to start afresh and Miss Baxter hoped Cora Crawley would be pleased with her work. She hated being someone she wasn't, trimming and embellishing and altering her backstory when and where necessary, telling lie after lie after lie, and always in terror of being discovered. Oh, what a tangled web we weave when first we practise to deceive…*

She'd quoted those very same lines to Thomas and his friend Paul when they were children. The reason escaped her now, something to do with a trick they played on Thomas's father, but she remembered she'd emphasised they should always tell the truth and "shame the devil". How much of a hypocrite was she? And yet how else was she to survive?

Thomas's letter, telling her she had been accepted as Lady Grantham's ladies maid on his recommendation alone, had sent her spirits soaring. Perhaps she could salvage something of her old life that had gone so terribly wrong when she met the handsome and suave Peter Coyle and blinded by love stupidly allowed him to talk her into stealing from Mrs Benton.

"If you truly loved me you would understand."

"It hurts me that you think so little of me you refuse to do this one small act."

"A few items of jewellery she'll never miss, just enough for us to set up home."

He made even the impossible sound plausible. "We'll pay it back. Every penny. As soon as we're married and settled and we've opened our little shop we'll save and save and send the payments. Every month, regular as clockwork."

Clockwork. That was Mr Coyle's favourite expression.

"It's all going like clockwork."

"The Cook's followed the new rota like clockwork."

"The trams to the town run like clockwork."

It always reminded her of Thomas. Over the years, she tried to learn what became of her friend Kate's little brother but to no avail. Ironically, although she she searched diligently, methodically keeping records, picking up again the thread reluctantly dropped during her three-year incarceration at His Majesty's Pleasure, it was by pure chance that at last she found him.

Barely weeks ago. While she had been out walking, enjoying the fresh breeze of early September before autumn cast its chill, a sheet of newspaper, one of several pages being blown by the temperamental wind, briefly touched the toe of her shoe and was gone. But not before Miss Baxter glimpsed a photograph of some aristocratic family seated outside their castle-like home with their servants standing behind. And noticed one of the attendants was Thomas Barrow.

Phyllis's heart quickened with excitement even as her mind urged common sense. It was hardly likely to be Thomas. No doubt it was simply someone who resembled him. Besides it was several years since she last saw him, when he was just a boy of thirteen. But…

...What if…?

She needed to see the photograph again to be sure, but already the newspaper pages were racing on as if there were no time to waste, scattering and scuttling, flying and flapping, the wind separating each sheet.

Phyllis looked around for a newspaper vendor, but Cornwall's was a slower pace of life than London where last she lived and worked until outed by a malicious parlour maid and instantly dismissed. It would appear to regard crime as something that dwelt far, far away, not here where the air was fresh and bracing, and no newspaper boys ever streamed out by early morning and late evening to shout headlines of shock, horror and scandal as they did in the overcrowded city. The long, narrow streets were populated by no more than a small group of hikers with sturdy boots and walking poles bound for the high moors and rolling hills, and a straggle of sightseers browsing postcards and keepsakes in the handful of shops not yet closed for the season. But at last she espied a general store advertising newspapers, its quaint olde-worlde windows crammed with tins and tobacco, toys and games, gloves, hats and scarves and bric-a-brac, and shaking silver raindrops from her umbrella from an earlier shower, hastened up its four well-trodden steps.

"May I be of assistance, Ma'am?" The elderly proprietor put down the clipboard on which he was writing, placed the stub of a pencil behind his ear – although there were several for sale of every size and thickness should he be careless enough to lose it – and peered at Miss Baxter over the rim of half-moon spectacles .

"I...there was a newspaper...a photograph of an aristocratic family..." Phyllis stumbled over her words, flushing under his scrutiny. A quick scan of the publications laid out on the counter showed pictures and headlines of political matters, a protest about taxes, a photograph of a motor car submerged in a river, but none contained the precious picture of Thomas Barrow.

"Ah, the Granthams! I still have a couple of the souvenir editions left." The shopkeeper eagerly delved under the counter and pulled the very same out of a transparent cover, flicking over the page to the photograph. "There!" He triumphantly declared.

It was Thomas, it was, it was! Phyllis would have taken an oath on it. She knew his stance, his dark hair, his steady gaze. And in moments her plan changed abruptly. It was ill conceived to begin with. And deep down she must have known this.

Why else change her course away from Dover and the ferry to Calais by telling herself she had always wanted to visit Cornwall? Did she truly believe a wild idea of seeking employment abroad, with no more than a smattering of French, an ability to sew and a willingness to work hard would succeed? There must be hundreds like her and none with a criminal record. Supposing her past was discovered too in France? What then? She had fled Manchester, humiliated to discover her intended, the man she trusted with all her savings, was already married with children and spending every penny she gave him. Now she was fleeing in shame at being revealed as an ex-convict. Surely she should have learned by now running away from problems never solved them?

After being released from prison, Miss Baxter had managed to obtain a situation in London through an old acquaintance who had worked for the same elderly mistress in Scotland, but when another maid discovered her crime, she was dismissed without preamble, her old friend lucky to keep her own job by a hair's breadth. She couldn't, and wouldn't, risk Mr Barrow losing his livelihood – and was he even still in the same employ?

As it happened, her question was answered much sooner than she ever imagined.

"Quite a day for Cornwall when the Earl of Grantham no less opened the convalescent home for our brave boys, quite a day," the shopkeeper continued chattily, indicating the front page coverage of Robert Crawley cutting the ribbon and further down pictures of smiling crowds cheering on patients in various states of mobility being helped inside the large building; "thousands came, schoolchildren lining the streets waving flags, carnivals, processions, like the celebrations at the end of the Great War all over again, it was. Of course, now the war to end all wars is over forever, thank God, it's somewhere ex-servicemen can have a month's relaxation, and well deserved. The Cornish Clarion thought the first anniversary last month of the opening an ideal time to produce a souven...Ah!" He looked up. "You must be the History Lady?"

The sudden question caused Phyllis to start.

"My sincere apologies ," he added quickly. "I heard there was an author, a Miss Brown, residing here to do some historical research and I assumed..."

"I am she." How glibly she lied now. And even with a false smile. Whatever had she become?

Relieved he had not committed some major faux pas after all, the shopkeeper relaxed again He loved nothing more than to share with anyone who might listen, particularly tourists, his vast knowledge of the county he had lived in and loved all his life. "Well, I can tell you everything you wish to know about our convalescent home for providing our lads with rest and recuperation, and almost everything you wish to know about Lord Grantham." He flicked back to the page showcasing the Grantham clam and their entourage, a professional photograph meant for reprinting on the villagers' Christmas cards, perhaps, to judge by how neatly its subjects were arranged and posed.

"Had a farmer from Downton village visit this very shop only a fortnight back. Said the Granthams were very well liked and respected. He knew his valet John Bates well too, friend of His Lordship's from the War apparently. That's him, that stoic-looking gentleman with the stick... " He tapped a forefinger on Mr Bates who stood behind Robert Crawley. "Told me their servants tended to stay with the family many years because of being very well looked after, not like some of those big households who'd sack you for as much as a sneeze. That formidable matriarch is Lady Violet Crawley and that poker-faced fellow is still with them..." Phyllis held her breath as he pointed out Thomas. "A Mr Harrow or Carrow, I believe, oh, and I think this lady over here..."

She listened politely as he talked about the Crawleys and Downton Abbey before launching into a longer monologue peppered with moving stories and amusing anecdotes about Cornwall Convalescent Home. Finally, however, she was able to escape to the B&B and the privacy of her own room.

Phyllis wrote and wrote and wrote that night. Her ploy of being an author secured for her an ideal excuse for not being disturbed, for it was naturally assumed that Miss Brown had begun work on her book.

There is often a certain deference given to those who pursue the creative arts, the writers and poets, the artists and musicians, by those who earn their living in more mundane but no less honest (and inevitably more profitable) occupations, and staff and guests alike walked more softly and spoke in whispers if they happened to pass her room. Nancy, Mrs Mitchell's granddaughter, rapped respectfully on the hallowed door some time in the late evening to bring an unrequested but nonetheless welcome tray laden with tea things and an assortment of finger sandwiches and just as respectfully withdrew. Miss Brown's request to have breakfast in her room on the morrow duly noted.

Phyllis poured out her heart in her letter to Thomas Barrow, confiding in him everything that had happened to her since she left, cleansing her soul. Nothing omitted. She was determined to be totally honest, consumed by guilt to know that when just a child of thirteen he had lost his sister, brother and best friend to diphtheria in the space of weeks, and left with no one but a harsh and brutal father who beat him for being homosexual.

She finished and posted the long correspondence next morning, walking several miles to a post office in another village lest anyone who knew her as Miss Brown, author, wondered why she should submit what they would naturally assume to be the first few chapters of her book to a stately home in Yorkshire and not a publishing house in London.

She wrote to Thomas to reassure, to offer her condolences and support, albeit many years later than she should have done, as she admitted, being unaware of the tragedies that had befallen him. "Wrapped up, as I was, in my own petty concerns..." The best that she could hope for, she told herself, was that he might send a short reply, but the most she could hope for was that he would read the lengthy letter and not discard it as soon as he saw her name. She had explained her difficulty of finding work after prison for no other reason than the possibility he might perhaps know of somewhere she might be able to put her dressmaking skills to good use. But never in her wildest dreams did she imagine he would secure for her the position of ladies maid to Lady Grantham.

The offer could not have been more timely. The money she'd earned from occasional sewing work and her months as a housemaid in London until her sudden dismissal was almost gone. Barely enough was left now to pay her fare to Yorkshire. And barely enough energy left inside her to lie. She allowed everyone to think the letter she collected from a post office mailing address and studied so hard and so happily must be promising news from her publishers, then embellished her story about needing to leave so quickly "to interview an old friend in Manchester", thinking how constantly exhausting it was to wear the mantle of false identity and how glad she would be to shed its heavy cloak. Yet lie she must or sleep under the stars. Nobody would have willingly allowed a thief into their home.

Which was why she was so grateful to Mr Barrow. However he explained her circumstances to Lady Grantham it had elicited her sympathy. Phyllis was not so naive as to imagine even in 1922 the landed gentry were any kinder to their servants than they had been a century before. People spoke of the tide of change that was coming to sweep away the old class system. The poor in these modern times spurned doffing their cap to the rich; they walked out of factories to demand better conditions even when the Army was ordered to shoot the strikers. From what she knew of capitalism – which didn't amount to much, for she was too busy earning a crust to sit down and read political papers – the rich wished to keep the poor in their place and Conservatives in power and resented the Labour party's encouragement of trade unions and workers rising above the status quo. Times were changing rapidly, those who once would have entered service were instead taking jobs in shops and offices where hours were less, freedom greater and wages higher. But the Granthams were rare in always having been benevolent employers.

Thus Miss Baxter happily set off for Downton Abbey, oblivious to the fact a vengeful Thomas Barrow had ensnared her as completely as the spider captures the fly.

*Oh, what a tangled web we weave when first we practise to deceive(Sir Walter Scott)