AN: Oops, I totally forgot to add an author's note to this when I published this chapter. What a dumbdora, as Louise would say!

Tremendous thanks to everyone as usual for both reading and reviewing. I almost fainted when I saw that my little one-shot outtake had expanded to 20,000 words. But that's what happens when you have such wonderful Richard/Mary fans as readers – you all make it such fun to write!

This may be the end of their roadhouse adventure, but it is not the end of their trip. I already have a Newport outtake brewing, so when I return from my own vacation we may pick up a few weeks later on the honeymoon. Until then, make yourself a gimlet and put some Duke Ellington on the phonograph you know that's what Mary and Richard would do.


5. 'Brooksy'

Brooksy, noun: 1. A classy dresser, 2. A flapper who takes risks

Mary met her friends downstairs, explaining that Richard was staying in to write his next column for his deadline that evening. But the chorus of shocked noises and open mouths from the hodgepodge group had nothing to do with her husband's absence. As she descended the creaky wooden stairs at the front of the inn, each of the three looked at her with the same surprise they would greet her with if she had arrived in an 18th century ball gown, or a Japanese kabuki robe, or a toga. For a moment, Mary was even more uncertain than she had been – if her young and fashionable friends were shocked by the Chanel women's trousers that she had picked up on a whim in New York, then what would the people who were not young and fashionable say?

For a second she wanted to tell them the truth, that Richard's deadline was actually two days later, and drag him out with her for moral support and perhaps physical protection from the riot she was sure she was about to cause.

Even he had been surprised when she emerged from the washroom dressed in the high-waisted navy blue slacks, which she paired with a loose white blouse trimmed in light blue eyelet lace as she had seen on the model in Bergdorf Goodman. The ensemble had been inspired by sailor outfits, she had been told, a whimsical take on the new hobby of yachting and a reversal of a war-time uniform into a symbol of pleasure and respite. The billowing top with lace added a bit of femininity to the look, and Mary added a light pink belt and a duskier rose-colored cloche to accentuate this further. Coupled with her high shoes and tiny, gleaming gold and topaz brooch, she had evaluated herself in the mirror and decided the whole thing was quite feminine – after all, she did not know many men that wore pink and heels and jewelry. She just hoped others would agree. Though the clerk had assured her Coco Chanel herself wore such an ensemble all the time in Paris, Mary had imagined when she bought the trousers that they would be useful for lounging around the house on a quiet afternoon or practical for walks in the country. She had not even contemplated the idea of wearing them out, in public. But considering the previous night, when handstands and barneymugging we de rigueur amongst high society, she decided that everyone may be more experienced than she was at life but she could be equally daring.

"That's an interesting fashion item," Richard had commented as she busied herself moving things from her evening bag to her brown leather envelope day clutch. He had quickly recovered his facial expression from surprise to a poker-faced kind of cool, but Mary had to smile as she heard him struggle to keep his tone even and free of any judgments either in favor or against.

"Boys haircuts and men's trousers," she explained, "it's the latest thing in Paris."

"They're very fetching, and I'm sure they'll be a hit in Newport," he said diplomatically, "but do you think Bif and his rural Connecticut ilk will appreciate your rebellion?"

"Richard Carlisle," she said, turning to face him, "what a snob! You're as bad as those English suffragettes who believe only women of property and wealth should be able to vote." She had not intended to make a political statement with her choice of outfit, but she found one forming in her mind regardless. "Liberation is useless if it's only confined to the enclaves of the elite; rebellion should be acceptable everywhere!"

He chuckled fondly at her sudden outburst. "More letters from Sybil?"

"This will be worth writing her about. A welcome relief from my ordinary fashion narratives into the realm of the political."

"Are you trying to make a political point?" he clarified.

"Not really," she confessed, "but everyone here thinks they're very sophisticated. Maybe I want to test that theory."

"In that case, I don't think you'll be disappointed."

She laughed with a slight apprehension. "If you're so sure I'm about to be martyred, then perhaps you'll reconsider and come out with us."

"If anyone can defend themselves, it's you," Richard joked. "One withering look and a biting retort and your detractors will be running for the hills – you don't need my help."

"You just don't want to be subjected to the chattering flappers for an entire afternoon."

"That too."

It was easy to be brave with Richard, upstairs in their cozy room joking about the shockwaves she was about to send through the backwater village they were going to visit. But this would be the real test.

Now, with Louise and her friends' reaction, Mary had a full set of astonished companions, and her competitive side took a great satisfaction being able to stun these most daring of her peers. The side of her that wanted nothing more than to be innocuous, the picture of aristocratic respectability, was less sure. Fortunately the competitive side won out.

"What?" she asked, meeting their surprised silence with a puzzled look as she walked to the car. "Is my hat crooked?"

Louise was the first to recover herself. "No it's lovely," she assured her. "In fact I've never seen one quite like it!"

The automobile was an olive green Winton from 1916, a terrible wagon of a car that looked big enough to fit four generations of a family in one go. It was practical in every respect: plenty of seating and storage, a color to mask mud and dirt, cheaply made in with economy in mind. How distasteful, Mary thought to herself. Louise and her group made an especially interesting picture as they all climbed in, their glamour fading slightly in the sun and the mediocrity of the obviously borrowed family car.

As soon as Mary had settled herself in the backseat, Louise hit the gas and they bolted off in a cloud of dust onto the highway, her cousin's foot apparently as leaded as Richard's and her enthusiasm for the Winton no less than his for the Isotta, in a different way. "You could bang this thing up until it's a heap of a wreck even Bif couldn't fix, and it would still run," Louise said over her shoulder; Mary grabbed the arm of her seat as they took a particularly sharp corner with precarious speed. She had wondered before they left England if she would survive their trip to America; now she wondered even more. But there was no going back – that seemed to be Louise's motto in life, and Mary felt obligated to adopt a similar attitude for the afternoon.

They arrived a short few minutes later, though some of the screeching turns and squealing tires made the journey feel like a miniature eternity. Their destination was Mystic, a charming old harbor town separated by a single-lane drawbridge that lowered up and down constantly to let tall masts of the sailboats pass through on their way to the ocean, the picture perfect East Coast seaport that seemed not to have changed very much for the last hundred years. How appropriate for her sailor-inspired outfit, Mary thought to herself; perhaps here a maritime uniform would not even merit a second glance.

The main street started on one side of the river and crossed the bridge onto the other, so Louise steered the car into the queue to cross to the denser section of the street, inching past wooden-fronted shops painted in various pastels and shades of white that reflected onto the sparkling water as they waited for the bridge to lower. The town was busy, but not overly so, but they did have to wait for a large sailboat to pass between the broken roadway. When they finally reached the other side, Louise slotted into an angled parking space in front of a simple storefront with a sign featuring a fork and spoon: "Let's get something to eat," she suggested in a tone that was more an instruction, "I'm starving!"

Mary's prediction that the flapper children would be bright and chipper in the morning seemed to be far off the mark in Reggie and Ella's case, and they seemed much worse for wear than the ever-energetic Louise. Neither had said so much as two words from the front porch of the roadhouse to the front door of the restaurant, and Mary gathered their early morning dancing had continued long into the dawn light.

"What time did you retire?" she asked Ella, who greeted her with a vacant stare from under the shaded brim of her hat.

"I went up around 7," Reggie interjected, his drawn out syllables extended further by a lack of sleep, "but you and the saxophonist were still ordering another round when we finally called it a night," he said in Ella's direction.

"The saxophonist?" Louise asked as she started to open the restaurant door. "Where was I?"

"In a clinch with Reggie, I presume," the black-haired girl answered, her paper-white skin slightly marred in the sunlight to reveal a healthier pallor underneath the powder and her new black frock faded a bit from the inky black velvet number from the night before.

"I do hate to miss things," Louise said, frustrated.

Fortunately the restaurant was empty as they walked through the front door and chose a booth by the window facing the street – Mary was not really prepared for a full-house audience just yet. The waitress at the counter barely looked up at their arrival and certainly did not gawk, so maybe this day out with her new trend would not be the trail by fire she had expected, she contemplated as she assessed the space. It was a typical American restaurant, like she had been told about on the crossing over from England, their dinner companions weaving complex images of the average American eatery in such sharp contrast to the crystal and mahogany splendor of the Mauretania. And this was the ideal example: beyond simple with Formica tabletops and ketchup on the table, the requisite bored waitress and the cliché menu. Mary was secretly delighted with the selection, as "typical American cafe" had been on her list of must-do's for their journey, though she would never admit to anything so gauche in this group of jaded aesthetes.

"Daytime is so boring," Ella began after they had ordered a variety of egg dishes and the expectedly weak coffee had arrived, giving her a bit of a jolt into the land of the living. "What could Richard possibly find to write about in the day" she asked Mary, "when everything exciting happens at night?"

"I wish I knew," she answered honestly. She was dying of curiosity.

"Perhaps he'll write about your outfit!" Louise exclaimed, finally letting her own curiosity get the better of her. "The only women I've seen wear trousers were out on Long Island during the war, on their way to work at the munitions factories."

"It's the latest thing in Europe," Mary replied, adopting her dismissive patrician tone.

"I remember when harem pants came out," Ella said. "I was sixteen and everyone was shocked. And then by the next season my mother and her friends were wearing them too."

"You girls can wear pants if you like," Reggie said, "and I bet you look better in them than your mothers. But I would look terrible in a dress and corset."

"I believe that's the point," Mary pointed out, sipping the watery coffee and deciding to change to tea. "No man would put up with the discomfort or impracticality of women's clothing. So we're stealing yours."


"I've been dying to find a beret," Louise said over the ringing bell that signaled their entrance into the hat shop. "All the magazines say you must have a beret this fall."

"Well we must follow the trends," Mary replied, with a small dose of sarcasm – there was nothing worse than someone who was too fashionable.

Reggie and Ella had broken away after lunch to inspect the sailboats – Ella's father was planning to purchase one so she promised to do some research, though Mary had extreme difficulty picturing the pale girl on any kind of sea excursion. She looked forward to such an adventure should the opportunity present itself in Newport, if only to satiate her curiosity about the variety of swimwear available in the girl's exclusively black wardrobe.

So far the shopping excursion had been relatively problem free. The young girl at the general store counter had been shocked into silence by Mary's outfit, but by the time they were ready to pay for their essentials she was ready to gush loudly about how breathtaking and heroic the trousers were, and Mary along with them for taking a stand for suffrage. Mary wasn't quite sure that pants equaled the right to vote, but she did not deprive the girl of her illusions. The older woman at the lingerie shop had been less silent and less gushing, instead unleashing a rant about young women today and the impropriety of short skirts and no corsets. But then Mary inquired whether the changing trends had negatively impacted the shop's business and the woman replied that yes, in fact, the decrease in demand for corsets was deeply hurting her profit margin. Louise suggested she should start selling women's trousers instead, and the shop owner did not seem opposed to it so long as "high society types like you will overpay for them." The girls assured her their compatriots would. And the jewelry shop proprietor had been markedly silent in his response. That is until Mary asked to see one of the brooches that caught her eye, a small gold frog set with four tourmaline stones, sparkling green amongst the more touristy-themed sailboats and seashell items under the glass counter, and the salesman warmed considerably. What a country, she thought to herself – one could get away with anything so long as one had the money to back it up.

Mary concluded that this was quite a good town to debut her new outfit, and the experience would make for some entertaining talking points on the Newport party circuit. After all, this was a far better indication of what ordinary people thought about rapid social change than any Newport dinner party would be.

"What do you think?" Louise asked as she tried on a brown felt beret, the color complimenting her short amber bob and her dark lipstick.

"Very chic. But try the burgundy," Mary said, spotting a panama hat on one of the shelves. "What about this for Richard?" She asked, holding it up so the light shone through the bits of straw as it poured through the shop's front window.

"Very chic," Louise replied with a smile as she tried on a mauve beret instead. "And necessary – all the men in Newport wear them; it's part of the uniform."

"I'm afraid this would be the equivalent of women's trousers back in London – utterly unacceptable!" Mary joked, removing her cloche to try the hat on herself and finding it comically outsized. She tipped the brim down further over one eye and made a face in the mirror imitating a gangster she had seen in a motion picture, though somehow she imagined real American gangsters did not wear straw.

"Personally I think it makes all the Newport boys look like members of some outsized barbershop quartet," Louise opined. "They congregate together and roam the lawn parties in packs so all you really see is a bunch of straw hats coming in your direction, and every time I see a group I expect them to burst into a rendition of 'Sweet Adeline.'"

"Or maybe 'Sweet Louise,'" Mary replied. "Well now I have to buy it."

The other girl abandoned the beret selection and picked out an orange-patterned scarf instead, wrapping it over her wavy hair so just a curl or two peeked out from the bright accessory. "Rather good for cars with no tops," she commented as she studied her reflection. "You know, I have to say, Mary, I'm really surprised at you."

"The barbershop quartet look doesn't suit me?" she asked over her shoulder.

"Not that," Louise said. "It's just… when I left you the after my visit to England, I was absolutely sure that the next time I saw you, you would be Lady Grantham of Downton, with a brood of well-behaved English children and a stuffy gentry husband who talked about barn renovations and spent afternoons roaming the grounds with a faithful hound."

Mary had to snort at the picture, her life now so different than the perfect country existence she had imagined for herself before the war.

"And I would go and visit you," Louise continued, "and feel just a little bit sorry for you, and you would feel just a little bit sorry for me, and we'd both feel just a little bit better about our completely different life choices."

"Don't forget you almost went that route too," Mary objected, though she did not intend the retort in a mean-spirited way – Louise had a candor about these things that she actually found quite charming. "The whole point of you being in England was to land yourself an English husband and an estate too."

"But I didn't," Louise smirked. "And you didn't either!" she said with delight.

"I sort of did," Mary admitted, "I did get married, and we do have an estate in Yorkshire. Though I think we're both starting to reconsider that…" she mused.

"Is it near Downton?"

Mary looked up from under the straw brim sheepishly. "It's next door."

They both shared a laugh at this absurdity. "You were always confused, dear. You don't marry to stay with your family; you marry to get away from them!"

"I thought then that you married for a position, a place in respectable society," she replied as she removed the panama hat and took it to the register.

"Maybe you get married for love," a quiet voice interjected. Mary looked up and realized it belonged to the shop assistant behind the counter, a young woman about their age with delicate features and a round face. "Sorry," the girl added, "I didn't mean to overhear."

"No, no! Love is for fooling around," Louise corrected emphatically. "And marriage is for… well, it's not for everybody."

"Don't mind her," Mary told the girl, "she is crusading for freedom, one person at a time."

"I am." Louise confirmed the fact like a revelation, as if it was the first time she had thought about it in those terms. "And did I convert you?"

"I don't need your help for liberation," Mary replied with a raised eyebrow. "Or do you know many women who wear trousers?"


Twilight was beginning to set in and it was nearly time for supper when they pulled the Winton back into the roadhouse parking lot. The inn was even busier than the night before, with people spilling out onto the front porch and music blaring from the windows. Mary and Louise were wedged into the backseat with their packages, each having decided they would rather secure their haul personally than risk anything flying out on the breeze and resulting in the loss of a precious new item. Ella sat up front, to navigate, while Reggie was behind the wheel after insisting on driving back to everyone's great relief and Louise's great annoyance. Once parked, he got out to assist the ladies with their goods, when Mary caught a New England accent as sharp as an icepick cut across the parking lot.

"It's really a gasket cap off a Model T!" Bif's voice explained with great pride, "but it works real swell in your fancy Eye-saatah." Mary allowed that the Isotta was not the easiest of names to pronounce; however, she had yet to hear it gotten so outstandingly wrong.

Richard and the mechanic were walking in the direction of the garage, and the two making quite a pair: Richard's tall form looking especially elegant in his white casual shirtsleeves and dark cuffed pants of the latest style as he towered at least a foot over the stocky and unkempt Bif, whose oil-stained gray overalls were a wrinkled example of function over fashion. From their gestures she could tell Bif was keen to go into even greater detail about the superiority of American parts for European automobiles, while Richard impatiently tried to move on to payment and getting the keys.

"So it's all ready to go, Mr. Carlisle."

Mary smirked at the salutation, imagining her husband had not heard that in quite a while.

"That's great news," Richard replied as they continued into the office.

Mary was torn between relief and regret that they would soon be on their way. While she did not care about another night carousing in the bar, she had actually been looking forward to another morning in their quiet corner room on the third floor, here in this carefree limbo between New York and Newport, where nothing anyone said or did mattered very much and everything seemed meaningless in the loveliest way. This stop-off was much like the Mauretania, a transitory space where there was nothing but time, a place to spend the morning talking in bed and exchanging reminiscences with the quiet laughter at one's own travails that can only come from being separated from them by a safe distance. A place to experiment with the latest dance steps, sometimes unsuccessfully. A place to… well, she couldn't quite bring herself to use Richard's phrase; but a place to make love at dawn as the sun rose over some unfamiliar horizon, greeting them with glorious possibility. Newport and New York were not bad; they were just destinations. And for the first time in her life, Mary was beginning to enjoy the journey.

After asking Louise to take her packages to the front desk, she followed in the direction of the garage to inspect the Isotta. It was parked in one of the repair bays, facing an open door to the road; soon it would be back on the tarmac as it was meant to be.

Hearing Richard and Bif settling the bill in the office, she approached the car and looked it over for damage. Mary ran her hand over the shiny apple-green paint of the hubcap, following the curve over the wheel and across the hood up to the windscreen, over the edge of the rolled-down window trimmed in gleaming brass, to touch the uneven bumps of the ostrich-skin upholstery. It was so superior to Louise's Winton, she could hardly believe they were the same species of machine – while the Winton was average and exaggerated and almost cartoony in its strangely angled proportions, its shot side walls expanding out to the overly-stretched roof in a V-shape that made it seem always like an eager dog precariously perched on its hind-legs, the Isotta was low-slung and drawn-out and elegant. The Winton was odd and middle-class and looked like a compromise. The Isotta was a racer with a pedigree, and all the grandeur and sophistication of something unafraid to be what it really was.

Much to her surprise, Mary was as in love with the automobile as Richard was. When he had first ordered it, she was less than impressed – he showed her the brochure and it looked much like any other car. Worse, he had ordered it in direct response to her setting a final, specific wedding date. Mary saw the Isotta as his celebration of the reality of the whole thing, and though she was less reluctant about their marriage than she had been, the tangible object became a symbol in her mind for not looking back, and she was not completely sure she was ready for it. But now, so many miles removed from England and her past doubts, she had come to see why Richard was so taken with the speedy, advanced automobile. It was like freedom; it would take them anywhere they chose to go; and it would take them there in great style. And even when it broke down – which she still blamed Richard for more than the car – it led to some adventure that was entirely new to both of them.

Richard appeared beside her with the key in his hand and relief in his eyes: their precious automobile was going to be alright. Mary laughed affectionately at his concern and opened the car door, starting to climb in.

"I don't think we'll have time to make it to Newport at a reasonable hour tonight," he began.

"No, but we do have time to avoid dinner with the bright young things and their dimming concoctions." He grinned at her comment and closed the door after her, striding around to the driver's side to take the wheel, deferring to her choice without question. "Not that I object to a bit of fun," she continued, "but I did spend the whole day with them."

"I'm sure their kind of fun will be there when we return," Richard said as he cranked the engine. He hit the gas and the car peeled off through the gravel and onto the road in the opposite direction from where they had just come.

"Please!" Mary said, "I've survived several near-crashes today, can we not have another?"

"Just testing to –"

"– see how she handles," Mary finished for him. "You must really like Bif and his towing truck," she said. "You seem so eager to see them again."

He cast a dazzling smile in her direction, and she forgot her wish that he would watch the road. "Can you blame me," he asked, "when a breakdown leads to such interesting possibilities?"


The End.