A/N: Aaaand that's a wrap. In some ways it feels entirely wrong to post this now. On the other hand, I know I sure need to be distracted from the world that is coming to an end all around us. It is in that spirit that I sat down and finally finished this fic. I'd warn you all of the NSFW-ness of this chapter, but, um, who even is working right now?

Your support throughout the duration of this story has been amazing. I cannot thank you enough. Please be well, friends. Be safe. Stay HOME.

xx,
~ejb~

Anticipation hangs heavy on the drive back to his cottage. Their cottage. A home now, truly, in every sense of the word.

He'd lit the match with that kiss in the street, so that by the time he had handed her into the car and arranged himself in the driver's seat, her eyes were dark with need.

"Isobel?" he asks, but he knows. Watches her graceful fingers creep up the length of his jacket sleeve. Closes his eyes as he feels the tug, her hands grasping his lapels. Her breath, warm and sweet, kisses his lips, and then … Her mouth. Sweet Lord, her mouth. Her kiss is playful at the start: open-mouthed; tiny breaths against his lips, nipping with the edges of her teeth, just making contact. If she's not cottoned on yet to the fact that this drives him mad, she's soon to learn.

He moans deep into her mouth and takes her lips with force, his palm at the base of her neck, fingertips teasing the wispy curls at her nape.

She presses closer, cradling his face, flicking her tongue at his bottom lip. He growls. His arm comes around her waist, pulling her in until he can feel her heartbeat against his chest and crushing his mouth to hers.

They come apart panting; he is dizzy for want of oxygen … and her. She looks up at him through her lashes, her lips kiss-bitten. Tucks her face in against his neck a moment, huffs a laugh. This is absurd; it's glorious. Foolhardy and decadent. She nuzzles against the place where his pulse pounds in his throat, kissing her way across his jawline to his ear and whispers two words he never, in all his life, expected to hear:

"Home, husband."

Her hand rests on his thigh as he negotiates the roads. She is testing his mettle, the tip of her index finger traversing the inside leg seam of his trousers. She glances up at him from time to time, her face a tableau of thrilling dichotomy: her wide eyes innocent; the barest hint of a wicked grin tugging at the corners of her lips. He is sucking air through clenched teeth, his grasp on the steering wheel so forceful that his knuckles have gone white. When her thumb sweeps the crease where his hip and thigh meet, his rhythm on the foot pedals falters and he lurches the car into reverse.

She shrieks, clutching his forearm as he throws the handbrake, grinding the car to an abrupt halt. It's on the tip of his tongue to chastise her; he can see in her expression that she's expecting a tongue-lashing. Instead he is overcome by a fit of laughter. It wells up from deep within and he could no more prevent its escape than stop the sun from shining.

She steals a glance at him and he pulls her close. "Woman, you could have run us off the road," he tells her, chuckling, not a trace of admonition in it.

"Remind me again who started this," comes her rejoinder as she fixes him with a look that makes his knees weak.

"Well played, sir." He kisses the arch of her eyebrow. "Even so, you must learn to keep your hands to yourself."

She giggles melodically. "That is one thing you can rest assured I'll never do." He raises an eyebrow at her now, and she rolls her eyes, arranging herself primly on the bench seat beside him, her head resting on his shoulder. "Better?" She glances up at him from beneath her lashes.

He nods. "It'll do." Then, reaching for her hand, he links her arm through his. "There. Perfect."

He fumbles with the key long enough that she huffs, wrestles it out of his grasp and opens the door herself. In his defence he's been a bit distracted; he'd helped her from the car and she'd seized her chance and kissed him as he was pulling her to her feet. From there she'd walked him backwards towards the front door, pulling off his hat and bow tie, pressing kisses to his mouth and throat, the tender place behind his ear.

He retaliates by catching her about the waist as she's about to cross the threshold and lifting her into his arms. When she opens her mouth to ask what the hell he's doing, he kisses her deftly into silence. "I've been waiting all my life to do this. Surely you wouldn't deny me the chance." Her head falls back and she laughs as he carries her through the door. He kisses her throat, lingering over the pulse point, she still cradled against him, and when at last he sets her down she is quick to close the door behind them, getting him between her body and the smooth, hard wood. Much like the night he'd first kissed her, when she'd been an eager recipient of his ardour until her patience wore thin, she presses him against the door now, her hands at his nape drawing him towards her, palms flattened to smooth over his shoulders and down his chest. She angles her head, blinking heavily at him.

"Richard," she breathes. He is knocked for six by the awe in her voice. That she has longed for this like he does; that she loves him as thoroughly as he loves her.

Her lips brush his and he forgets to think, forgets everything but the feel of her hands on him, the sweet, needy sound she makes in the back of her throat when his tongue touches hers. He reaches for her hips, manoeuvres her to stand between his legs, pulls her flush against him. He's been hard since he backed her up against the car door, and he's not going to try to hide it or feign concern for her delicate sensibilities any longer.

Especially not when she responds to the feel of him against her with a deep, "Mmmm," into his mouth, resonant through her chest where their bodies touch.

He briefly entertains the notion of having her against the door, reckons by her enthusiasm that she might be game. But in all his dreams of this moment she's always laid out amidst cool sheets, every beautiful inch of bare skin a veritable feast for his ravenous eyes; hands; mouth.

Her own small hands bring the moment back into sharp focus, insistently tugging at his braces, the flies of his trousers, her teeth dragging across his bottom lip.

He envelops her hands and holds them down by her sides. She makes a discontented sound and looks at him with a question in her eyes. He raises her hands to his lips and presses a heated kiss to the inside of each wrist. "Let me take you to bed," he murmurs.

She huffs a laugh. "Right. But I'll walk there under my own power, thank you." He answers her with a raised brow and she elaborates, "It won't do for you to throw your back out before the wedding night!"

He frowns for a fraction of a second, his pride injured slightly; he'd like her to think —would like for the both of them to believe— that he could carry her to bed with ease, the staircase and his sixty-eight years notwithstanding.

But before he has the chance she turns on her heel and makes for the stairs, the fabric of her dress skimming the curve of her bum as she begins to ascend. On the fourth riser she looks back at him over her shoulder and his jaw drops. She appears at once magisterial —the elegance of her form, the extravagance of the dress— and debauched —her lips swollen, pupils dilated, chest heaving with each breath.

"Aren't you coming?" she asks him. Innocent and cunning and wonderful and his.

"Not until you've done," he answers with a sly grin. Now it is she who gapes at him, and he watches as she shudders, a shiver running the length of her spine. She turns, continuing her journey up the stairs with him on her heels, her hips swaying enticingly.

Once inside their bedroom, he slams the door shut. She looks at him and they both break out in laughter, and then he's turning her, placing her palms against the door as he goes to work on the row of buttons at her back.

His lips descend on the base of her neck. The softest skin he has ever encountered; yielding to his mouth, arching into his touch. "Richaaaard," she complains. Why are we still clothed?

"So. Damned. Many. Buttons," he apologises, each word punctuated by a kiss.

"Just get it off!" she commands, her fingertips worrying the grain of the wood, itching to touch him.

He grins at her flustered directive. "But your dress, darling."

"I don't care! I'll have it repaired. Please!"

Fortunately the last of the buttons are loosed before he has to resort to ripping the garment off of her. He skims his hands down her back, over her hips as he guides her out of the dress, draping it over the chair by the window. Perhaps one day it will be of interest to Mary's girls, or George's wife. He sees the softness in her eyes, watching him as he turns back to her. Comprehension; gratitude; a touch of wistfulness. He feels it in her touch: warm palms cradling his face; in her kiss: soft and lingering.

"You were so beautiful today," he tells her in a whisper against her cheek. She stands before him now in brassiere and girdle, lace stockings and heels. So warm; so soft; so very nearly bare. He can see her heart beating beneath her skin. "You are so beautiful, my love."

She moves against him, hands in his hair sliding down to his shoulders. "I want you," she tells him. Surging towards him, closer still; the slide of her tongue against his own: so certain, so hungry. Nimble fingers finally undoing his braces, opening his shirt, rucking up his vest in their quest for bare skin. "Help me," she implores him, pulling at his shirtsleeves.

He gives a quiet exhalation of amusement and kisses her hard on the mouth. "Easy now. There's no hurry." He unbuttons his cuffs and tosses his shirt to the floor. She looks at him for permission and when he nods, raising his arms, she peels his vest off over his head. His trousers and socks join the pile and he kneels before her in nothing but his shorts. Lifting each foot in turn, he removes her shoes and then pauses to gaze at her in her underthings. He unfastens her garters and rolls each stocking down slowly, trained on her response as he kisses behind her knees, running his tongue up the insides of her thighs. He can smell her excitement, the heat of her, as he presses his face to her mound.

"Oh!" she yelps, "ohh," as he nuzzles her. She runs her fingers through his hair and he closes his eyes against the sensation. The knowledge that she is here. In his arms, touching him. That she now wears his ring, shares his bed, has given herself to him. Nearly a third of his life spent longing for her to the exclusion of everything else, and he could just as easily have spurned her attentions and missed this moment forever.

There is a question in her eyes as he lifts himself upwards, but he shakes his head in answer. "I love you," he breathes as he sets to work opening hooks until her girdle falls away and he presses his mouth to her belly through the fabric of her knickers. Muscles ripple under her skin, her breath draws sharply inwards. He hooks his thumbs in the waistband, slowly peeling the garment off, latching his mouth to one freshly exposed hipbone and blazing a trail with his tongue to the other. Her gasps of surprise, the tightening of her fingers on his scalp tell him to linger and he does, kissing his way down to the shadowy patch of curls at her centre.

"Isobel." He says her name as a means of asking for her eyes. When her gaze is locked upon his own, he leans in closer and lets the tip of his tongue slip past his lips to flick the tiny nub of flesh at the heart of her pleasure.

She gasps sharply and clutches at his head. His hands push gently at the insides of her knees, encouraging her to widen her stance. She complies without delay and then his hands are on her hips, palms planted against her upper thighs. "Look at me, darling," he urges once more and when she does, he slides his thumbs over her sex, finding her hot and wet and swollen, opening her to him and holding her there.

She is breathless, strung tight as he watches, waits. Her mouth forms the silent syllables: Oh, Christ, and he brushes against her with the pad of his thumb. "Please!" she cries. At last he kisses her there.

He is gentle and she is perfect, bearing down against his mouth. "Oh, God, Richard … Yes!" she cries when he dares to delve inside her with his tongue. He works her over and over, lapping at her like a man starved until she is trembling, the muscles of her inner thighs quivering. At last he grants her reprieve, applying his lips, the flat of his tongue to the little bundle of nerves and suckling, soft but merciless. Soon she is crying out above him, bucking hard against his face and squeezing him with her thighs. Her sex flutters against his tongue; he latches on hard once more and she comes apart in his mouth. The taste of her, the sight and sound and feel nearly have him coming in his shorts, but still he kisses her, slipping his finger inside and curling it upwards, drawing out her pleasure.

She tugs at his hair and he grins against her oversensitised sex, biting down gently on the fleshy part of her inner thigh and sucking hard enough to mark her. He lets her help him to his feet and kicks off his shorts, and then she pushes at his chest, her arm going round his waist as he tumbles onto the bed, bringing her with him. It is only as she comes to rest above him, her thighs straddling his hips, the tickle of coarse hair between her legs and the heat of her pressing against his belly, that he realises he neglected to strip her of her brassiere.

"This won't do," he rumbles. Their eyes meet as he cradles her breasts in his palms. She moans deliciously and arches into his hands, her nipples pebbling beneath the final barrier between her skin and his. Lifting away from him a moment, she braces up on her knees, reaching behind herself to open the clasp between her shoulder blades.

"Take it off," she whispers, watching his eyes as she lowers herself to him again and he lifts his hands to her shoulders, slipping the straps slowly down her arms. He watches her shiver, gooseflesh rising on her upper arms, her nipples peaking sharply.

"Not cold?" he asks, teasing, pulling her closer.

She shakes her head. Bites her lip. Stares at him. He can see her heart beating wildly as he lifts his head and draws her breast into his mouth. He catches her nipple between the roof of his mouth and his tongue and laps at her, circles the aching bud. Kisses her gently until she's panting, then bites down softly on a mouthful of rounded flesh. Her hips are circling madly; she is thick and damp and hot, so close to him yet still too far away.

As if sensing his thoughts, she raises up, knelt above him so that her wetness brushes the base of his erection. She moves a hand between them to align herself with him and slips against his length.

He hisses, clutching at her, his hands slipping down, palming the globes of her arse. She drops her head, eyes squeezing shut, and lets him direct the motion of her hips.

"Good," she breathes, and lowers herself to her forearms, braced on his chest. Her lips trail over his neck, nipping at the pulse in his throat, meandering across his shoulders, placing open-mouthed kisses where his heart beats.

"Yes!" He barks as she sinks her teeth into him there. It's a surprise of the most wondrous kind, as are the next words to leave her mouth.

"You are mine, Richard Clarkson."

He levels her with a look, the entirety of their history written in his eyes. "Always have been," he tells her, aligning their bodies. His eyes dark and desperate, he strokes himself a few times as she watches.

"My God," she breathes, and holds to his shoulders as she slowly takes him inside her.

Her skin is soft as silk, his hands on her hips holding her, steadying her, as she adjusts to the length and breadth of him. He loves the feeling of stretching her.

He's not the only one. He pushes up into her a little; deep, deeper, and watches her ribs retract as her breath draws sharply inwards. "Yes," she whispers, her eyes drifting shut; head thrown back, the long tender column of her throat exposed. She holds him, just holds him, completely still, within her. He throbs. They are throbbing together, the temptation to drive into her nearly killing him. His palms smooth upwards, over her back, pressing into her shoulder blades, drawing her down to him.

Eighteen years of love, his raised eyebrows and her raised ire. Admiration for the brilliant medical mind that lay within the beauty who could turn his head with just one glance. Who could set his blood to boiling with the tap of her pen against his patient's chart, with the words, "When I practised in Manchester …" They have each been to the end of themselves, with one another. For one another.

"Have you any idea," he asks her, breathlessly, punctuated with a kiss, "how long I've waited for you?" He kisses her lips, her jawline as he arches up into her.

He catches her on the back foot and she gasps. Before she can answer him, he latches onto her left breast and suckles her, slow and deep. In response her sex flutters around him, squeezing him. "You've got me, my darling," she pants at last, cradling his face. He is hers, utterly; completely, and nothing has made him feel prouder in all his life than when she declared him so. Nothing, that is, until she tells him, "I am yours. Only yours."

When she raises up to take him, he follows and kisses her nipples, the soft place between her breasts. His lips move over her throat and then he pauses. Their eyes meet and he curls his fingers against her scalp.

"I love you," he tells her, as if it's the first time the thought has occurred to him. Perhaps it is a fresh revelation of sorts: loving her has so little to do with him and everything to do with her; not because of what she does for him, but rather who she is.

She laughs, a joyous sound, sweet huff of breath against his mouth, and kisses him long and slow as she begins to move. "My darling," she calls him as she rocks herself above him. "My husband … my love," as though she knows. As if, like him, she can scarcely believe it. To have longed for one another for so very many years: life and death and even war simultaneously coming between them, driving them onward; forward, together. Apart. And now, at last, bound to one another. Against all odds, unto death.

He is powerless beneath her, mesmerised by her heat, her cries, the undulations of her beautiful body as she rises up and away from him and then sinks back down. She takes him by surprise as her hips flex and she works him somehow deeper still.

"There," he grunts, and palms her bum. Holds her fast. "Christ, Isobel. Right there!"

"Yes!" Poised above him, strung tight and impossibly soft, she is a dizzying paradox of "all things bright and beautiful," he thinks. And then she circles her hips and all capacity to do anything but feel is lost. He moves in counterpoint and together they find a rhythm, lush and tender.

This is intimacy: the wanton purity with which she moves; breathes; blinks at him, incredulously, as she feels and feels and comes up short of words with which to quantify it. The definitive way in which she has placed her trust in him.

He catches her eyes, kisses the pad of his thumb, draws it down her midline to the bundle of nerves at her centre.

"Ohh!" she breathes, clenching hard around him as he begins to stroke her gently. He watches her reactions, the deepening of her breaths, the way her nipples stand in stark relief when he finds the spot, the pressure that she needs.

Beauty, he thinks, and, mine. He takes his time with her, bringing her to the edge and then backing her down again and again. It thrills him to witness the juxtaposition of her in the dominant position, still certainly holding him captive, yet doing so by yielding to his control.

He taps his thumb on her clitoris so lightly that he's hardly touching her at all, but it's exactly what she needs.

"That's it, beauty." He feels her tightening around him like a vise, the long, suspended, breathless fluttering, and hears her frantic cry:

"Please, Richard! Oh, God, please!"

His hips snap sharply upwards and then he stills the both of them. Stroking her with painstaking tenderness, he bites down on her earlobe, then whispers, "Come now, Isobel."

Her back arches; her palms brace against his chest. "Ohhh …" She keens long and low, letting him watch her, the moment she breaks and her eyes go beautifully unfocused. "I love you!" she breathes, practically soundless. "I love you! I love you!"

"Beautiful," he marvels aloud. "So bloody beautiful."

He lets her recover, holding tightly to her hips to keep him inside her as he lays her down. He is peppering her neck and the tops of her breasts with kisses when he feels her fingers running lightly through his hair.

"Yes," she murmurs, laughing low and wicked, seductive. "My God, husband … yes."

He nuzzles her nose with his, kisses her hungrily. "I'll never tire of hearing you call me that." He grins, brushing the backs of his fingers across her cheek.

She smiles beautifully up at him. "And I'll always get a thrill from being called your wife."

He raises a playful eyebrow and settles deeper into the cradle of her hips. "A thrill, aye?"

She nods, shuddering pleasurably as she leans up to kiss him, her legs opening wider to him in welcome. "Come on. I want you."

Mother of God, he thinks as he begins to move. Never stop, will you? Please just never stop. She is heaven; she is home; she is beauty untold, crying out in delight as he takes her hard and deep, her legs wrapped round his waist, heel drumming against his arse. Slick. Tight. Hot. Mine. You're mine. My wife. Oh, Christ. Oh, fuck. Oh … Isobel!

She is kissing him softly all over his face, smoothing sweat-damp hair back off his brow when he returns to himself. "I'll never stop wanting you, husband, my love," he hears her soothe, and comes back to her with a kiss, long and deep. She moans into it and his hips roll against her one more time. She reaches for him as aftershocks course through them both.

"Hmph," she grumbles as he softens, slipping from her. She lies on her back, one arm folded behind her head, as he settles on his side, turned towards her.

"Not to worry, darling," he tells her, smoothing his palm across her belly, delighting in the twitch of her muscles at his touch. "There's plenty more where that came from."

She giggles, wrapping her arms around him. "I plan on holding you to it," she breathes hot in his ear, "but for the moment I'll settle for you. Holding me." With a pointed look she adds, "Never stop, will you?"

A stricken look crosses his face. "Did I—?"

She nods vigorously against the pillow, grinning. "Yes, you're rather vocal when we're … like this."

"Oh, Isobel, I'm—" Sorry, he'd been going to say, but the press of her finger against his lips silences him.

"Have you any idea how it feels to know you want me in that way? You've given me life again, Richard. I may have been living before but I wasn't alive." He understands. After Matthew, she had become but a shell of her former, always vivacious, sometimes vitriolic, self. It had nearly killed him to watch the woman he loved, who had always been enduringly vibrant, fade into shadow. "Don't ever apologise, you wonderful man. I'm alive, and I'm in love. And it's all because of you."

He feels the sting of tears and watches as her eyes well up too, but there's a nagging thought that won't leave him alone. She had proclaimed him vocal, had clearly heard the plea he'd intended to go unspoken that she never stop. And now that his faculties are back in working order, he recalls having had... other thoughts in the haze of sex. Isobel is not proud; he's known her to be as comfortable elbow-deep in the abdominal cavity of a patient as dressed to the nines in silk charmeuse trading barbs with Lady Grantham across the dinner table. Still, if he'd said that aloud … He wouldn't dream of using such vulgar language in her presence, especially not whilst—

"I love the way you make me feel," she is saying, oblivious to his disquietude. "I love the way you kiss me, the way you touch me." Her fingertips graze her collarbone, drifting downwards over the tender skin between her breasts. "And I particularly love the way that you …" She whispers the rest in his ear.

It makes him feel … things. Relief, to begin with. Only she would so readily absolve him of such effrontery. He can't recollect having ever heard her utter anything baser than the occasional damn, so to say that he's gobsmacked is not an exaggeration. But more than all of that, he feels the crackling of embers; matchlight flames lick at his skin, coiling deep in his belly. He groans softly.

"What's the matter, my love?" She smooths her hand from his shoulder, down his flank and his eyes squeeze shut at the sensation. The gravity of their circumstance keeps knocking him for six. This is Isobel. The woman he has wanted, whom he has loved for so very many years, yet who would never belong to him. And now she is bare beside him, touching him. Telling him that she loves him too, wants him too. She is his wife, his wife. His. Wife.

He answers her with a kiss. "You, my beauty, are a temptress, and if I were a younger man I'd have you under me again in a heartbeat." He sighs deeply. "Alas, the spirit is willing …"

She chuckles sympathetically. "Oh, husband, we've got time." She takes his breath away. Sated, heavy-lidded, smiling contentedly. Such confidence behind those words. He curls his body around hers, treasuring the satisfied sound she makes as he gathers her against him.

He can't resist touching her, tracing patterns on her bare shoulder, skimming his palm over her belly, caressing her breasts. She groans softly, wiggles against him, whispers low how good it feels.

I was a fool to let you go, he thinks. How did I live without this? He feels his limbs grow heavy, fights to keep his eyes open. She is losing the battle as well; he can tell by her stillness, the deep, even breaths that press her back against his chest.

"Richard?"

He registers her voice through the syrupy haze. "Yes, love."

"You once told me you had a feeling that you and I would sink or swim together."

He smiles into her hair. "I remember it vividly."

She turns over to face him. "At the risk of sounding trite, you kept me from drowning. It was always you, pulling me away from the cliff edge." Her facial expressions cycle through the entire spectrum of emotion. "Until I pushed back so hard that you let me go."

His mouth drops open. "I ju— … I—"

She cups his chin in her palm. "Shh, no." Kisses his lips. "It was never about your taking a step wrong. It's that you loved me when I was positively wretched. Sink or swim, no?"

He grins and turns his head, kisses the centre of her palm. "Aye," he rasps, unable to keep the emotion out of his voice, "aye. But you're not the only one was saved. I always knew you were in my corner, even when we couldn't spare a glance at one another without a row breaking out. Knowing you were with me, that I had an ally. I'm not sure you're aware of what that meant to me. What it means now."

She looks upon him with soft eyes. "It means I love you. Always."

He tries to speak but can't get round the lump that has formed in his throat. He swallows hard, blinking against the sting of tears, and finally tells her, "Then I've all I ever wanted."

She leans in close, smooths back his hair, peppers his face with tiny kisses. No more words are said as she gathers him against her. Her chest against his back, her knees behind his own, his bum resting in the cradle of her hips, her palm pressed firmly where his heart beats.

For better. For worse.
Adversity and prosperity.
Love. Honour. Cherish.

Sink or swim.

P.S.: Oh yes I did. I went there. I really couldn't care less about the fandom war that broke out several years ago over the use of that word. It has its place, even among the most conservative of marriage beds.