Sybil and Tom didn't say a word while Mary and Matthew explained the situation to them. It was clear that Sybil at least wanted to interject several times, but she thankfully realized she should just wait to hear the whole thing before making the whole process more complicated that it needed to be. Once it was finished, she simply said, "So, you're doing all this because of an old book?"
It was so unexpected that everyone collapsed into giggles for a few seconds. Mary then replied, "Oh, I definitely would have wanted to do something about all this no matter what. But I guess what Mama told us during all those reading lessons was true; books can open your mind like nothing else. And some of the ideas Mousier Dumas came up with were quite…inspiring."
Matthew cut in, "And we're so close to pulling it off, if this damn business with Vera Bates doesn't send it off the rails. Patrick has pulled all his money out of the bank and hid it in some house around here."
Sybil smiled. "Well, I suppose I am grateful to have already had some part in making things right, however unintentionally. So what's the next move?"
Mary looked her in the eye with a quite serious expression. "I've actually been giving that some thought since you arrived. We intended to take the money ourselves and just let the two of them wriggle with no idea what happened to it. But now I'm thinking it might be better if we let them think it was all burned to ashes." Her mouth curled into a vicious grin. "What do you say, Queen Mab? Are you up for a new assignment on your own territory?"
Sybil turned to Tom. "What do you say?"
Tom turned the grin right back on them. "After all this time hearing about what happened to Sybil and everyone else, and not being able to do anything about it, this is like a dream come true. So, where is the place?"
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Thomas was quite unimpressed at the sight of Lady Rose Aldridge as she entered the abbey, and did his best to tamp the feeling down, something he'd gotten quite skilled at over the years. At the very least, her own brand of bubbleheaded excitement should prove even more annoying to Patrick and Edith than it was to him, which should provide a good deal of amusement. Whether that would make up for all the extra work the staff had been putting in to prepare for her arrival remained to be seen.
"Well, Papa told me how big the place was of course, but I just can't believe people actually live in a place like this!" Her back was turned to Thomas as she gazed around the foyer, and he took the opportunity to get his eye rolling out of his system before it could leap out at an inopportune time.
He tried to get things moving along with, "If you'll come this way, my lady…" and pointed her toward the library where Patrick and Edith were waiting. Upon closing the door he was quite torn between relief at Rose now being someone else's problem, or regret that he couldn't see the looks that came over Patrick and Edith's faces as they realized the kind of person they'd have to be dealing with for the next couple weeks.
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Sybil's stomach was in knots as she rang the bell at Crawley House. It had been so long since she'd seen her parents, but after being assured by Mary that they'd had no part in Patrick and Edith's scheme, she eagerly embraced her new part in the plan that relied on seeing them again. How happy they would be with her after her life of the past several years was a whole other story.
As the door opened, her heart melted at the familiar sight of Carson, a bit more creased around the eyes but still radiating his usual stolid reliability. Carson himself seemed close to fainting upon seeing her, and she quickly took his hand in both of hers. The contact, as improper as it usually was between employer and butler (not that Sybil had ever much cared about that sort of thing) seemed to do them both good as she felt her heart calming.
"Miss Sybil, can it really be you?" he whispered.
She nodded, feeling tears start to come. She struggled to contain them, as it certainly wouldn't do to have her first meeting with her parents in years start with her already crying. "I have quite a story to tell, if you'll take me to Mama and Papa. And yourself and Mrs. Hughes should be there too; you all deserve to know just what's been going on."
Carson ushered her into the sitting room, where Sybil nearly fainted herself at the sight of her mother and father. They looked up, and all simply stared uncomprehendingly for a few seconds. Then Carson cleared his throat, clearly knowing it would break the spell, and Sybil raced into the room to embrace both of them.
"I'm back, I'm really here, and it's so good to see you again!" she murmured into their shoulders. Then she stepped back and looked them in the eyes. "And there's so much we need to talk about." She turned back to see Carson had brought Mrs. Hughes into the room, and after their own emotional reunion, she maneuvered herself to be able to look at them all. "And I apologize for how flippantly this may come off, but I have to start with it: Mary is alive."
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Sybil imagined she now had some idea of how her sister had felt filling her in on the whole story, and her parents were not nearly as patient as she had been. She supposed she couldn't blame them, as they still had yet to actually see Mary in the flesh. Though she did notice her father seemed rather less affected than she was expecting. "Papa, what is it?"
Robert sighed. "I suppose I'd better come clean myself. I've suspected for some time that Mary was back." After the gasps all around, he turned to Cora and said, "That letter we got, it was Mary, I'm sure of it now. I thought I recognized her handwriting, but I just couldn't be sure enough to raise your hopes when they could just be dashed again."
A hundred emotions seemed to cross Cora's face in the space of the next several seconds, after which she visibly pulled herself back and said, "We are going to talk about this later, but for right now there's something more important." She turned back to Sybil and said, "What exactly are we supposed to do now?"
Sybil breathed a sigh of relief. "We know where Patrick has hidden all the family money, in a secret spot in Downton Place. But Mary and I can't be the ones to get it; I'm supposed to be in Ireland and she's pretending to be someone unconnected to the family. It has to be you two."
Robert said, "It shouldn't be too hard. Is that really all?"
Sybil gazed down at the floor, unable to meet their eyes before the next part. "And you'll have to get in and out quickly, because I'm going to blow it up."
In the stunned silence that followed, it ended up being Mrs. Hughes who broke the ice. "I'm sure I didn't hear that correctly."
Sybil still couldn't look at anyone. "You've probably heard about Queen Mab in Ireland. That's me." When there was still no reply, she went on, "I saw firsthand how horribly the Irish are treated by people like us, and I had to do my part to help."
Robert cleared his throat to get her attention, and she was unsurprised to see the angry look on his face. "And you thought the best thing to do was become a terrorist?"
The tears she'd been stifling finally came out. "I was careful never to actually hurt anyone. I only destroyed things, and anyone rich enough to have a place over there can replace them. Hopefully back here where they wouldn't be hurting the Irish anymore."
Cora didn't seem quite as angry as her husband, but the coldness in her eyes felt even worse. "And did you ever consider that you might kill someone by accident? What if there was someone in one of those houses you didn't know about?"
"I did, actually. And maybe if things had been different I wouldn't have gone down that path, but after everything I'd been through, I convinced myself it was worth the risk." She forced herself to meet her father's gaze. "You were in a war, Papa. You can't tell me there weren't times when you were at least tempted to take the same risk."
The anger didn't go out completely, but a level of contrition was added that immediately made Sybil feel guilty. "You're right, I can't tell you that. And maybe that means I lost the right to criticize you over this. Whatever it means, we have the rest of our lives to work it out, and if we keep going down this road we'll never get done what needs to happen. So just tell us where to look, and we'll do it. But just know this conversation isn't over."
This got Sybil to look up at everyone again, knowing this was the best she was going to get. "All right. First you need to know where to plant the bombs…"
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Edith had long since given up trying to stop her cousin from yammering on about any little thing that popped into her head. The best she could do was hope it reached a level of white noise that allowed her to tune it out. From the looks he'd been giving her, Patrick seemed to have made the same decision.
"Cousin Edith, did you hear me?" Drat, it seemed Rose had just been saying something she should have been paying attention to. Luckily, Patrick turned out to not have been as successful in blocking her out and jumped in. "Of course. You go on into town, have a great time. After all, you don't want to be stuck in this old place the whole time you're here."
If he'd sounded a bit too eager to get her away, Rose didn't seem to notice. "Oh, thank you so much! I promise I won't be out too late."
I can only hope, Edith thought to herself.
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Robert and Cora were distinctly uneasy as they entered Downton Place, both with an arm on the suitcase where they would be putting the family money, which was also intended to serve as their cover story of wanting to bring over some knick-knacks to their own home, though it hadn't been necessary as no one had met them on the way. Neither had wanted to carry it alone, as it made them feel too much like the only one responsible for what was about to happen. The building's loss wouldn't be too big a blow, as neither had ever been very fond of it, but carrying their own degree of complicity was something neither had been prepared for at all. Still, such a betrayal by their own daughter demanded they play their part to put things right, and so they were now getting on with their part with a minimum of fuss.
Sybil's instructions had been very clear, having hidden a few baubles away during her childhood in this same spot that all of that generation seemed to have known about. The second bedroom, five boards from the rear wall, and the loose floorboard came right up. And there, as promised, was a startling treasure trove of cash, the family's whole fortune summed up as liquid assets. Robert couldn't imagine how Patrick had actually gotten it all here.
"Are we really doing this?" Cora asked.
"I can't quite believe it either. But if this is the way we can make good the wounds that tore this family apart, I'm willing to take it on." Robert opened the suitcase, which on their way in contained the explosives Sybil had prepared.
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Rose still couldn't believe how easy it had been for Cousin Edith and her husband to let her go to this party. True, she's fibbed a bit about just how debauched she was planning to be, but her mother would have never let her step a foot out the door for anything resembling having a good time. Her smile grew wider as she thought of the look that would appear on the Marchioness' face if she walked into this place with the beer and wine flowing, and many of the dancers getting quite a bit closer than anyone in high society would even get in the bedroom most nights.
The fellow next to her had been chatting about the films that had come out over the last year, amazed that she hadn't seen any of them. Rather than let on that she was a poor little rich girl who wasn't allowed any culture, which didn't seem likely to stir his sympathies, she'd said she was a maid whose employers disapproved of the industry. They had a date to see Charlie Chaplin in a couple days, but for now her thoughts were quite a bit baser.
"Listen, I know a secret way in to one of these houses. There'll be no one around, and we can do whatever we want." She put on her most amorous look and added. "By which I mean, you can do whatever you want."
The man was quite amusingly put off his game, and she guessed he typically had to work quite a bit harder for this sort of thing. But he didn't take long to get back in the game, and said "This place is dying anyway, wouldn't you say?"
Rose saw nothing of the sort. But she supposed she'd taken in enough for one night. She'd better pace herself or she'd never get through this trip, and she guessed the next experience would definitely be an upgrade.
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Robert and Cora met Sybil at the closest she dared come to the house, with it just barely in sight. "You placed them all like I told you?"
"For a couple complete amateurs at this, I think you'll be quite impressed." A bit of the twinkle she remembered came back into her father's eye as he said it, but he quickly grew morose again as the true weight of the situation settled on them all.
Sybil sighed. "I arranged for a good bit more time than I usually would so you'd be sure to get out. But given how far you had to travel, it shouldn't be long now."
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Rose and her date (she realized she still didn't know his name; well, plenty of time for that after what she came here for) barely waited after sneaking into the old house to start ripping each other's clothes off. In her experience it was a rare thing to be so completely on the same page with someone else about what you wanted, and she intended to take full advantage of it.
But she didn't get the chance, or get to do anything else ever again, because that's when the bombs went off.
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A/N: I actually got a message during the latest drought of updates on this story asking if I'd abandoned it, and I assured them I'd be getting back to it soon. I hope you're happy now!
And because we've now hit such a big turning point, I'll indulge a bit in inviting you all behind the curtain of the writing process (I'm actually a professional writer, with my first novel being published this November, so this is the kind of stuff I spend a lot of time thinking about). I knew from the start that Mary and Matthew's plan would have to have some major, borderline unforgiveable collateral damage, but it wasn't until I took that break to iron out just where the story was going I talked about before that I settled on poor Rose being the best choice for that role.
I wanted it to be someone with a fairly major role in the actual Downton series even if they wouldn't get much of an actual presence in this story, and also be someone the fans largely liked so their death would have a real impact. And with those in mind, I suddenly hit on Rose's canonical slumming and pretending to be a maid to get a date putting her in the ideal spot to accidentally be in the explosion site. Plus, this being a Rose before any character development allowed me to make it sting even more by playing all her scenes for laughs until the reader hopefully starts to realize where this is going, and it becomes one of those cases of hoping against hope it's not what you think, but knowing the whole time it probably is and just having to watch the train head toward the inevitable crash.
This also illustrates the advantages that come from this kind of planning ahead, as I was able to put in a couple mentions of Rose's impending visit in earlier chapters, which possibly hit the reader just on a subconscious level until she actually arrives here. But they're in there, and this absolutely does not come out of nowhere, one of the things that most annoys me when I come across it in any story.
And now, to spin out how things can get even worse from here…
