Chapter The Fifth: In Which Anthony and Edith Discuss Families

"Well," Anthony's mama smiled at him as he entered the breakfast room the next morning, "you and Edith seemed to have a lovely time last night. It was so nice to see you enjoying yourself again, darling."

Anthony helped himself to kippers and eggs from the sideboard before replying. "Yes. She's…" For a moment, he couldn't finish. Still, his parents were waiting expectantly for an adjective to complete the sentence. Instead, Anthony found himself coughing and finishing, "Well, I understand why you like her, Mama."

Briefly, Phillip, at his accustomed place at the head of the table, lowered The Times and shot his wife a look over their son's head. Anne's own eyes returned an admonishing, fond glare. "Yes. A perfectly lovely girl," she replied complacently and took a calm sip from her teacup.

"H-how old is she?" Anthony asked, in a much more tentative voice than either of them were used to hearing from him. "Lady Edith?"

"Twenty-seven, twenty-eight in March."

Much too young for you, old boy. If you'd got started a bit earlier, she could almost be young enough to be your daughter. "And… not married? Not even… involved with anyone?"

Anne sighed. Anthony was toying with his uneaten kipper now, and if he had been a child still, she would have told him quite firmly to stop playing with his food. "No - more's the pity."

"She was engaged, you know," his father interrupted. "Soldier. Died on the Somme." Him and about a million others, Anthony thought; his feet felt suddenly cold, and the sound of shells echoed briefly in his ears. His stomach twisted too, and he half-pushed his plate away, almost untouched, as his father added, in that clipped way of his, "Grey. Grigg. Something of that sort."

"Gregson." Anne corrected her husband affectionately. "Captain Michael Gregson. She brought him to tea here, once, just before they got engaged. And then three months later, he was dead - such a tragedy."

"A love match, do you think?" It was true that last night had been lovely. Lady Edith was a good conversationalist, who had made him laugh and, even if only for the briefest of moments, forget the blasted arm and everything else that went with it. He could tell well enough that she was on the older side of things, as unmarried daughters of earls went - a small, unkind part of him had started to think that she might be as glad of a convenient match as he was. In fact, Anthony had begun to think that perhaps it wouldn't be a hardship at all to go along with his father's plotting.

But if her last engagement had been a love match… well, Anthony knew well enough what it was to lose someone one had loved. He had no intention of engineering a match to a woman who was still, perhaps, in mourning for a soulmate, not even if his father were ready to push him down the aisle at gunpoint.

"I think Edith thought it was." Phillip huffed from behind The Times. "He was charming."

Anthony winced. His father might as well have said poisonous. "I see. No accounting for taste, I suppose."

Anne tapped the corner of her mouth with a thoughtful finger. "Edith was charmed, though. Bewitched, even. Wartime, you know. And she… never was much overburdened with suitors, you see."

"Her degree intimidated them," Phillip tutted. "Men of her generation are such mealy-mouthed specimens."

"Ah. Yes, very likely, Papa." And then: "What did she read?"

"English Literature, at the Victoria University in Manchester." His father's voice was as proud as if he had been talking about one of his own children. "Took a Double First - she could give your brain the run-around any day, my boy."

Anthony smiled faintly. "No doubt."

"Why," his mother wondered delicately, "don't you chat to her about it, this evening?"

Anthony choked on a sip of tea he'd just taken. "This evening?"

"Yes, she's coming to dinner." In any other woman, the look in Anne Strallan's eye would have been termed one of unholy amusement. "Why, darling, didn't I tell you?"

"Why," Robert Crawley demanded of his middle daughter over breakfast, "didn't you tell me that the Strallans were going to be at this party, Edith?"

Beside her, Edith felt Sybil's shoulders tense, and looked up from her plate. Across the table, Mary was watching her with something like a satisfied smirk lingering in her eyes. Edith could well guess who had let slip that little bit of information to her father.

"Well, Lady Strallan is part of the car club, just like Claudia," Edith replied evenly. "It didn't occur to me that you'd be particularly interested, Papa."

Robert Crawley set his knife and fork down with a furious clatter that made Sybil stuff the final piece of toast from her plate into her handkerchief and spring to her feet. "Well, I must be off. Early shift, don't you know?"

Mary rose to her feet too, to Edith's surprise. Apparently, while getting her younger sister into trouble was enjoyable, having to sit through the results (in the form of their father's admittedly questionable temper) was not something she was going to volunteer for.

"What I am interested in," Papa thundered, as the breakfast room door shut firmly behind them, "is this family's reputation, Edith. Apparently, you have no such concerns."

"I don't believe that dancing with a man at a ball constitutes a risk to the family's reputation - " Edith began, and then stopped at the look of taut realisation crossing her father's face.

"Dancing." Robert Crawley's voice was that taut, low tone that suggested he had passed straight through anger and halfway into rage. "You danced with Anthony Strallan? He had the nerve to ask - "

"No, Papa." Quite frankly, Edith didn't think Major Strallan had the nerve to do much of anything just now - more was the pity. "The nerve was all mine. And I believe it would be far more damaging to my reputation to ignore the eldest son of people who have been so kind and decent to me." Her voice shook at that last, but Edith was proud of the fact that it remained calm and even. It was a nasty trait of those with the surname Crawley to have tempers with very short leashes on them, and Edith knew her leash to be even shorter than the usual.

But sometimes, Sir Phillip had once gently pointed out to her, keeping your powder dry is far more effective than a lot of shouting and stamping your feet. From any other man, she'd have thought it highly patronising, but the advice had been given so easily, like a father to a daughter, that she hadn't been able to take offence.

And it was certainly proving rather useful advice just now. Her father's mouth was opening and closing like a badly-hung door. Edith took her opportunity and stood, setting aside her napkin. "And now I must get on, Papa - I've two charity committees today, and a dinner engagement. Do excuse me."

It hadn't been a terribly productive day for Anthony.

There had been no communiques from the War Office - not that that was a surprise, given the conversation he'd had with Colonel Goult before catching the train up last week - and Papa couldn't bear to have anyone but Mama in the study while he was working. As a result, he'd been left to his own devices, wandering the library, irritating Stewart, and fretting about this blasted dinner.

Dancing with a girl was all very well, but it had been a very long time since Anthony had had to sit down at a table and make conversation. He'd quite lost the knack - if he'd ever had it in the first place, which he doubted.

And of course - Mama being Mama - she had seated them together, at the foot of the table. Up at the other end, Papa and Mama were discussing the latest news from the Front with Miss Orton and Lady Flora Millbanke, but silence reigned between Anthony and Edith. All the ease of the previous evening seemed to have vanished, for some reason.

"Well, here we are again," Anthony tried.

"Yes." Lady Edith's earrings seemed to shiver as she reached for her wine-glass. "Your mother said you wouldn't mind my coming to dinner," she apologised softly, "but I'm sorry I said yes now - I must be intruding on your precious time with your parents."

"Not at all." He leaned a little closer across the table and confessed, "Actually, it's… rather nice to have a - a - Goodness, this will sound awful - "

"No, go on." Lady Edith's smile was open, encouraging. "What is it nice to have?"

"A sort of 'No Man's Land'," Anthony sighed. "Someone to act as a buffer."

Lady Edith's smile turned sympathetic. "Between you and your father?"

Anthony grimaced and took a long sip from his wine glass. "Lord, is it that obvious?"

"You're terribly alike, that's all." Lady Edith shrugged helplessly. "Unstoppable force meets immovable object. More common in families than people realise, I think." It certainly is in mine, Edith thought ruefully. It was rather hard to enjoy dinner, when she guessed that when she got back to Downton, it would only be to face a second interrogation from her father.

"Well, it's a relief to know that you don't think me a callous beast, anyway," Anthony found himself smiling at her, and the mood inexplicably lightened. "So. You're a graduate. My father was boasting about it this morning."

"Boasting?" Lady Edith blushed.

"He's as proud of you as he is of his own children." Quite probably prouder, at least in my case.

"He's a ridiculous darling." Edith shot a fond look down the table towards Anthony's papa, her face and voice filled with exactly the sort of love one would hope to find in an affectionate daughter. Or daughter-in-law, a sly voice muttered in the back of Anthony's head. "He and your mother were… so very supportive, when I was taking my entrance exams, and… when my father was - " She stopped, quite suddenly, and covered her confusion with a sip from her wine-glass. "Well, anyway… they've been… simply lovely to me."

"What was your father doing?" Anthony found himself asking.

"I'm sorry?" she blinked.

"You said 'When my father was - ' and then stopped. What were you going to say?"

Edith chewed her lip. "I'm afraid it doesn't reflect terribly well on him. I probably oughtn't to say." At Anthony's encouraging look, however, she pressed on, "He - he was kicking up a fuss about supporting me financially while I studied, that's all, and so your mother told him flat that if he wouldn't, she'd loan me the money herself and make sure that every gossip in Yorkshire knew she'd had to do it, because he wouldn't provide for his own daughter." She raised a dry eyebrow. "Funnily enough, he came around."

Anthony grinned in reply. "That sounds like Mama, all right. When she and my father were first married, she caused a terrific scandal by donating her allowance for a year to the Ladies National Association for the Repeal of the Contagious Diseases Act."

Lady Edith's eyes went round with admiration. "Heavens, really? She's never told me that! Whatever did your father do?"

"Backed her to the hilt," Anthony replied cheerfully. "Family tradition. You know him - has that rather inconvenient commitment to the idea of fair play - and my mother takes every possible advantage of it."

Edith's sigh was somewhat wistful. "You're so lucky, you know." Shaking herself, she added, with an attempt at brightness that failed utterly, "They've been wonderful to me. I'll never be able to repay all their kindness."

Ah. Anthony knew what that sounded like: a young woman, neglected at home, but given attention and love and support by a pair of kindly neighbours, who had been tricked into thinking that she owed them some return on their investment, by marrying their troublesome son and getting him out of a scrape of his own making.

"Don't give all the credit to others," he replied, trying to distract himself from that awful thought. "I mean… you must have worked terribly hard. I know my degree wasn't a picnic. And for an Earl's daughter, well… it's an unusual ambition."

Lady Edith shrugged, making the bare creamy expanse of her shoulders glow in the lamp-light. Stop, Anthony ordered himself firmly. You are not allowed to think about that. Not about her skin, or her eyes, or her hair, or her laugh, or her brain. You are not allowed to be attracted to her.

And where in Creation had that come from?

"I… wasn't an easy child," Lady Edith admitted. "Not… biddable or beautiful or… or interested in the things I was supposed to be interested in." Her eyes were clear and utterly, disarmingly honest. Anthony wasn't used to that in women. At least, not women that he was seated with at dinner. "In that situation," she continued, "you can either… carry on trying to hammer a square peg into a round hole… or you can plough your own furrow, so to speak."

"And you chose the latter."

She smiled faintly. "And I chose the latter."

"Well," Anthony's mama announced to the table at large, "shall we all go through together?"

"You'll be going back on duty soon, I expect," Lady Edith asked over coffee. Again, Mama had engineered those seating arrangements - Anthony and Edith side by side on one of the sofas. To Anthony's surprise, she sounded almost wistful about that.

"Oh, not for a while. Not until after New Year, anyway." He forced a tight smile. "My commanding officer has been… rather generous with my leave."

"Strallan, it's been a hell of a time, for all of us - especially for you. I need that devilish brain of yours fighting fit - understand? Not on the verge of a break-down. Go home, for God's sake. Take a few weeks, why don't you?"

Lady Edith's returning smile was much warmer. "Oh, lucky thing!"

Anthony wanted to do anything he could to keep that smile on her lovely face.

"Perhaps we'll see some more of each other, before I go back to London?"

"Really, Anthony, I don't know why you're making such a fuss." Maude spread marmalade carefully on the triangle of toast in front of her. "Surely you didn't expect to come home half a man and for me to carry on playing the dutiful wife? That isn't reality." She didn't even sound apologetic.

"He's my damned junior officer, for Christ's sake! Maude -"

"Don't be a dullard, Anthony." She took a sip from her cup of tea. "Nothing has to change. If you don't make trouble for me, then I shan't make trouble for you."

"You're carrying his child."

"You ought to be thanking me." A cold, mocking smile curled Maude's mouth. "An heir for your precious estate, if you're lucky. And all you have to do is stay quiet and do your duty." Maude drained her cup. "Because you wouldn't want to cause a scandal now, would you, Anthony? Your father would be so disappointed."

Anthony shot up in bed, sweating. Around him, the sheets were disarrayed and there was a stabbing pain in the injured shoulder. He'd bitten his cheek as he'd dreamt - always the same nightmare, that awful memory - and he reached for the glass of water on the bedside to wash away the tang of blood on his tongue.

He knew from long experience that there would be no getting back to sleep now: for one thing, his heart was hammering like a runaway train, and his pyjamas were clinging, cold and damp, to his skin.

With a sigh, Anthony threw back the sheets and rose.

By half-past seven o'clock, after struggling into his clothes and shaving single-handed (no point waking Stewart and enduring his silent disapproval), Anthony was letting himself out of Locksley. Perhaps a walk into the village would settle the post-nightmare nausea. It was worth a try. Anything was better than sitting at home waiting for everyone else to rise, after all.

And then, as he reached the first few houses of Downton village, as the church clock was just striking eight, he saw a familiar blonde-haired figure approaching from the opposite direction. She raised a friendly hand in greeting, and Anthony found himself raising his hat as they drew level with each other. "Lady Edith, good morning!"

She beamed up at him from beneath the brim of her own hat. "Hel-lo! Heavens, isn't not having to be up at the crack of dawn the whole point of a holiday from work?"

Anthony smiled tiredly. "Doubtless it is. Escaping insomnia, I'm afraid - thought a walk into the village might help."

"Oh, bad luck. I'm escaping New Year's Eve preparations." Lady Edith smiled impishly up at him. "Why don't we escape together and have a cup of tea? There's a shop just around the corner, by the churchyard - do you know it?"

Anthony let himself be drawn along, allowing her soft pleasant chatter to wash over him. As they rounded the corner, however, a large Army ambulance roared past from the opposite direction and zipped out of view again, heading towards the hospital.

Edith stumbled, her foot catching the edge of the pavement; only Anthony's hand suddenly tucked under her elbow saved her.

"Are you all right?" he murmured. Of course, she wasn't - any old fool could see that. Her face had gone all white. Still, it was polite to at least give her the opportunity to lie about it.

"Y-yes. Yes, of course. Silly of me." He thought she was about to make some excuse, and then Edith admitted, "One would think over the last few years that I'd have grown used to such sights. But I'm afraid I haven't." Her fingers squeezed his elbow. "I'm sorry, do you mind if we sit down for a moment?"

"Of course not - and, please, do stop apologising." Gently, he guided her to a bench on the green, where they could sit and watch the world go by, and she could recover her composure. "It's a perfectly reasonable reaction to something horrid. Especially…" Anthony swallowed. "Especially given your… particular situation. My mother told me about Captain Gregson."

"Did she? Good Lord." Lady Edith rummaged in her handbag and then dabbed at the corner of her eyes with a handkerchief. With grim cheerfulness, she added, "Well, I imagine I'll get over it, sooner or later."

Anthony gave her a sympathetic smile. "My dear, it's always a tragedy to lose someone you love. You needn't force yourself to - to recover any quicker than you're ready to." Lord knows, you're a fine one to be talking! The treacherous part of his brain scoffed at him. How hard had he been fighting over the past two years to forget Maude, to force her out of his head and heart! No natural recovery there.

Edith swallowed thickly. "I… Michael and I were well-matched, I thought. He owned a magazine in Manchester, in peacetime. After the wedding - after the war - I was going to work with him." She shrugged. "I did a little writing at university, you see, and I thought - I think - that I'd rather enjoy doing more of it. And Michael… wanted a partner in that way." She exhaled, noisily. "I suppose what I'm trying to say is… well, we were excellent friends and understood each other very well - and I was very attracted to him - but everyone assumed that our relationship was more romantic than it actually was. I think - I think most of the tragedy after he died was that… I couldn't grieve for him in all the ways he deserved."

"You introduced him to my parents, they tell me." There was a question in that, even if he wasn't quite brave enough to ask it outright.

Edith shrugged. "I'm not… terribly close to my own. And they've been very kind to me. I… wanted reassurance, that I was making the right decision. Your mother was very nice - when isn't she?" They chuckled together. "Your father said he was too smooth by half and that I ought to give it up as a bad job."

"Ever the diplomat," Anthony sighed wryly.

"Mmm, isn't he?" Edith sniffed noisily and blew her nose. "Gosh, I do love him, though," she managed thickly.

Anthony smiled thinly. "So do I. Most of the time."

Edith was smirking, her cheeks rosy in the morning chill, as she guessed, "When he isn't trying to make you marry a woman half your age whom you met approximately five minutes ago?"

Anthony closed his eyes. "Ah. And who mentioned that to you, I wonder?"

Edith shot him a sidelong look full of meaning and Anthony bit out a curse. "Damn him."

"Don't be cross with him." Edith's voice was soft and pleading. "He only… wants what he thinks is best. For you and me."

"No, he only wants his own bloody way, as usual." At Edith's shocked expression, Anthony ducked his head. Clearly no sleep was doing wonders for him. "My apologies. My father and I… don't always see eye-to-eye with each other."

"That's a shame. He's always been…" Edith stopped, blushing. "Sorry. I oughtn't to speak as if I know him better than you."

"Oh, you might well." It was remarkably painless to say that, these days. It was something Anthony had gradually come to terms with, in the years since the divorce. "Papa's always found daughters easier than sons - spoiled my sister rotten. Still does, in fairness."

"Diana. Yes. He talks about you both an awful lot."

"You must be excellent at pretending to be interested in dull subjects, then." Anthony shook his head. "Perhaps we would make a good match."

Edith raised her eyebrows in a remarkable impression of Anthony's maternal grandmother at her most lovingly stern. And wherever would she have learned to do that? "Don't fish for compliments," she ordered, mischievously. "Your mother would be most unimpressed."

"Then I shall have to rely on you not to betray me to her, shan't I?"

Edith laughed and took his arm. "All right. But only if you give me tea first!"

They started to amble back towards the village teashop. "Such an odd idea, isn't it?" Edith offered at length. "Marriage. Of course, I'm… aware of your particular situation." As if he wouldn't be able to work it out, she added quietly, "The d-divorce."

That word usually landed like a punch to the stomach. Somehow, this morning, wandering along in the fresh wintery sunlight with Edith on his arm, it only glanced off. "Ah. Yes. Two years' ago, now."

"But it hasn't… put you off… further experiments with the institution?"

"No choice, I'm afraid," he shrugged easily. "One day, I am going to inherit the title and the estate, after all."

"Ah. You'll need an heir. Of course."

"Yes, as… mercenary as that sounds." Heavily, Anthony explained, in the same way he'd been rationalising the whole miserable business to himself the last two years, "My sister's children are very young, and… they've grown up all over the place, not settled or - or restricted. The estate isn't a burden I'd wish to put on them, if I can help it."

To his surprise, Edith's only response was to nod thoughtfully. "No, of course, it would be horrid for them. You don't sound mercenary at all, only… practical. Mrs Chetwood has… two sons, is that right? David and Christopher?"

"Quite right. David's eleven and has the Devil's own cheek, just like his mother. Christopher's eight and the sweetest chap ever to have lived."

"They sound delightful." Edith smiled. "Or are you just a biased uncle?"

"Oh, a little of both, I think." Anthony paused to open the door to the teashop and let Edith pass ahead of him inside. "Biased enough that I want them to have choices in the world, in any case."

Edith nodded slowly. "I quite see. But… in that case, if we both know where we stand, where's the harm in - in getting to know one another a little better?" She smiled. "Even if it is only to please your father for a while?"

"Lady Edith, I do believe you're a trickster." A thoroughly charming one, too.

Her smile deepened, mischievously. "Why don't you prolong the acquaintance and find out for sure?"

"Perhaps I shall. Perhaps I shall."