Isobel was sitting on the couch with a book in her lap, half of her mind still vaguely attached to the tumult of wedding-related things whirling around her head when Molesley appeared around the door.
"There's someone to see you, Ma'am."
"Well, then, Molesley, you must show them in. Who is it?"
"Mrs Branson, Ma'am."
"Mrs-...?" abandoning her book, Isobel flew off the couch, and- Molesley dodging quickly out of her way- sprang through the door into the hall, wondering if it could be true, "Sybil!" she cried in her delight at seeing her young cousin standing there, "What on earth are you doing here?"
Sybil grinned at her.
"I could ask what on earth you are doing getting married, Cousin Isobel. And so quickly?"
"I'm consolidating my happiness," Isobel assured her, "And at my age, I really can't afford to hang around over this sort of thing. You look-..."
"Large," Sybil finished for her, raising her eyebrow and resting her hand on her stomach.
"Trust me, my girl, you've got a long way to go yet," Isobel warned her, "And I was going to say "well"! Anyway, you must come and sit down. And where is Mr Branson? He can't have let you come over on your own in your condition? Molesley, we'll have some tea, please."
"Tom is in the Grantham Arms," Sybil informed her, sitting down in the chair by the fireside, "He thought I should come and see you first, let you know we're here, and then we're going up to the house. Mama is expecting us, but I asked her not to tell you, to let it be a surprise.
"Well, I certainly am surprised. And how are you here?" Isobel asked once she'd settled herself, "And don't give me some barbed comment about having got on a boat and sailed across," she told her sharply, just as Sybil opened her mouth, "I mean can you both afford it? You'll be coming over for Mary's wedding too, I presume?"
"You know me so well, Cousin Isobel," Sybil remarked- referring to the expectation of a sarcastic remark-, "Well, we were always going to use the money that Papa gave us for a trip over here, to tell you the truth, we practically set it aside for the time when Matthew and Mary finally had the sense to get married. But then Tom got a particularly lucrative writing job, and the very same evening a letter arrived from Granny saying that, and I quote, "Cousin Isobel has been playing the Madame Bovary with Dr. Clarkson, and is having to get married." I knew I couldn't miss your wedding, and as seem as we found out about both on the same night we took it as fate and thought that we had to come!"
"She said what?" Isobel asked, aghast for several reasons.
"I know," Sybil laughed, "It sounded rather ridiculous to me too. But is it true?" she asked, her curiosity making her look every inch as young as she was.
"For one thing," Isobel remarked, "I don't think she can ever have read Madame Bovary, because, it's different, on several counts-..."
"But in essence...?" Sybil amended hurriedly.
Isobel gave her a long look.
"I am not having to get married," she told her, finally, "No one is making me. But if what you're asking me is if we stood on ceremony and middle class morality, then, no, we didn't. I loved him, and you know that I've never really understood propriety. Or if I have, I won't be bound by it, especially not over things like this."
"Oh, I'm so glad!" Sybil told her, "Genuinely so! Oh, Cousin Isobel, I always knew that you were the romantic of the family!"
Isobel rolled her eyes a little, but smiled all the same.
"Anyway, enough about me and my misdemeanours," she told her quickly, "What about you and your baby?"
"Oh, we're alright," Sybil told her.
"Have you thought of a name yet?" Isobel asked as Molesley brought in the tea. She wondered briefly if he'd waited outside for a less controversial subject to arise before coming in.
"Well, if he's a boy, it's Patrick after Tom's father and his Cousin who was killed in the Easter Rising."
"And a girl?" Isobel asked, picking up her teacup and taking a sip.
"Mary," Sybil told her, "It's the only one that I suggested that Tom's mother looked really happy about; she's a Roman Catholic, you see. She said not to mind her, but in the end we couldn't. She's not the kind of woman whose opinion is easy to ignore."
"I must say I don't envy you in that respect," Isobel told her.
"What? Having to kowtow to your mother-in-law?"
"Well, that too. But the whole thing, really. I love Matthew dearly, he's the best thing that ever happened to me, but I wouldn't go through having a baby again for the whole world. It's a good job I'm old really," she paused for a second, "And yet..."
"What?" Sybil asked, watching curiously over her teacup.
Isobel snapped away from the silliness of the thought.
"Nothing," she smiled.
"No, go on," Sybil told her, "What were you going to say? I should like to here it, after you've put so much apprehension into me."
"I'm sorry," Isobel apologised, "I didn't mean to. I was going to say that... That I would have loved to have had Richard's child too. That's a foolish thing to say, but it's true."
"I don't think it's foolish," Sybil told her, "Not at all."
"It is," Isobel affirmed, "But somehow I don't seem to be able to convince myself that it's wrong of me."
"I always knew," Sybil told her after a moment, "When I worked with you both at the hospital. I could tell that it wouldn't be long before something... and it wasn't, was it?" she asked.
"1917," Isobel replied, "Yes, Richard did tell me that he loved me for a long time before that."
"Oh, it wasn't so much Dr. Clarkson who gave the game away."
"What do you mean?" Isobel asked, astonished.
"You could tell by the way you looked at him that you loved him," Sybil informed her bluntly, "By the way you passed him patient files, by the way you let him wind you up so much and always forgave him."
For a few moments, Isobel could not think of anything to say.
"Don't worry," Sybil continued, "I'm not sure that anyone else would have noticed; it was only because I was with you both day in day out. And of course, I knew he loved you when you went away. Because one day he practically chased me out of the hospital in frustration; and when he wasn't cross he was quieter, much quieter. That reminds me," she bent down and fished a large cardboard file out of the bag at her feet, "I found this in a shop in Dublin. I thought Dr. Clarkson might like it."
Isobel read the letters printed on the card. It was a record of Roses of Picardy.
"Yes," Isobel agreed, smiling at her, "I think he'll like it too."
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