Mrs Hughes had been right to stand in Sarah's way, even if it had been for all the wrong reasons. Striving to become her Ladyship's maid really had been a terrible idea.
Sarah had spent years living in a dream, letting her lady's voice lull her to sweet, open-eyed sleep as she fantasized about an idealized future miles away from reality.
Her second week as Lady Grantham's new personal maid was a rude awakening.
Lady Sybil had woken up in the dead of night running a high fever and since she showed no sign of improvement as the hours passed, Sarah was sent to rouse the countess much earlier than usual. It was the beginning of spring, and the sun was already shining by the time she stood before her door. She knocked sharply and wasn't surprised when she received no answer from her mistress. Still, Sarah did wait a few seconds before coming in – if only for the sake of established procedures – and thank God that she had, because the sight that greeted her eyes upon entering had her look away in embarrassment.
The rumour long had it that the earl and countess shared a bed nearly every night, without any regard to propriety whatsoever, but Sarah had yet to witness it with her own two eyes, and if given the choice, she would have liked the situation to remain precisely as it was.
There could be no mistaking what they had been doing when she had knocked on Lady Grantham's door – the sheets were in disarray, both spouses sitting up awkwardly; most of the buttons on his Lordship's pyjama top were undone, one of his hands holding the garment shut instead; her Ladyship was clutching the bedspread to her chest protectively.
Sarah stubbornly stared at the cream silk of Lady Grantham's nightgown, which lay on the carpet at her feet, but she couldn't block out the sound of their gasping for breath.
"Lady Sybil isn't well. Mrs Hughes and Nanny Cooper are preparing to send for the doctor. They need your approval," Sarah said dully, telegraphically, and left the room without waiting for their instructions, closing the door behind her.
For days on end, Sarah could think of nothing but what had happened that morning. Of course, Lady Grantham had immediately tried to downplay the incident, saying that they should put behind them an 'unfortunate turn of events that was equally as mortifying to all the parties involved', but Sarah simply couldn't help replaying the scene over and over in her head.
The mere thought of Lady Grantham and her husband in bed together turned her stomach, and yet she wouldn't stop picturing the countess in her mind, just as she had looked when Sarah had stumbled upon them – the wild curls of dark hair that had escaped from her loose braid, her glowing cheeks and shining eyes, her lips reddened and swollen from his kisses...
She was fascinated and repelled all at once.
The realization finally dawned on her as she lay in bed one night, eyes wide open in the darkness, and she felt the walls of denial she had built to protect her heart crumble to dust all around her... The shameful truth was that she had enjoyed seeing Lady Grantham as she had, breathless and flushed with her desire. Only she wished it had been her who had put the colour in those cheeks, and not his Lordship.
Sarah had been utterly obsessed with that woman's smile ever since it had been aimed at her; the sound of her delicate laugh and her soft inflexions would float into her mind at the most unexpected of times; she had seen her naked and felt almost overwhelmed by the sheer beauty of her body; she needed to be as close to her as humanly possible. And yet it had taken no less than that for Sarah to finally realize the true nature of the feelings she had for her mistress, for her to put a name on the irresistible pull she felt towards her. Not ambition, not admiration, not even selfless devotion as she would have liked to believe, but the most unnatural kind of yearning – a selfish, all-consuming love that wanted Cora Crawley to be hers and hers alone.
The very idea of that love horrified her. How could she have allowed herself to fall at first sight for a complete stranger? (Sarah knew that she had, that remote day in the library. She could have pinpointed the exact moment when it had happened.) How could she have let herself fall for her, a woman, some vapid American heiress whose fortune could have bought Sarah's entire village, the wife of an earl and a dutiful mother who would never even dream of understanding her senseless feelings, least of all of reciprocating them?
The very manner of the falling in love was enough to make her sob inwardly. She had been minding her own business. She had done nothing wrong by simply walking into a room to rearrange some flowers, and yet she was being cruelly punished. Distantly, Sarah wondered if the love was divine retribution for all the sins she had committed in her life. After all, she had never been a very kind person.
Their relationship was doomed from the beginning. Sarah had never been the tender-hearted kind to start with, but her love and frustration changed her for the worse. As she had come to work at Downton years ago, she used to be quite stoic. While she had always rued being forced into service, she had accepted that this would be her lot in life and that she had better make the most of it. When she had met Lady Grantham however, the seeds of something ruinous had been sown deep inside her. As they finally sprouted, Sarah began to hate everything and everyone – herself for being a stupid, lovesick idiot; God for making her the deviant that she was; her place in society, which kept Lady Grantham from ever seeing her as more than a means to an end; the rest of them happy-go-lucky fools who surrounded her day and night; and worst of all, Lady Grantham herself, who would never know of the storm she had unleashed within her heart.
The nicer she was, the more Sarah resented her. But she would still play along, not only because it was what was expected of her anyway, but also because she desperately craved the affection, regardless of the form it took. She lived for the woman's smiles and the rare, treasured touch of her hand on her shoulder and forearm.
The problem was that she always hungered for much more and the lady's all American familiarity was like salt in an open wound. There was no friendship between them, not by any stretch of the imagination and no matter what Cora – for Sarah had taken to calling her by her Christian name in her head– liked to pretend. One moment she would be warm as a cup of tea, all kittenish smiles and whispered secrets, the next she would be aloof and distant and Sarah would know this was her cue to either leave the room or keep as low a profile as possible.
In her darkest hours, Sarah would stoop to believe that maybe, just maybe, Cora had figured it out somehow and that she was secretly laughing at her maid's eagerness, that she was actually a devil disguised as an angel. Her bitterness grew with every passing day of the next ten years. But as much as she wanted to get away from Lady Grantham, she couldn't.
She would denigrate her constantly, and later Thomas Barrow would ask her why she didn't leave if she hated the bloody cow so much, and she would always answer that she couldn't risk having Lady Grantham upset and badmouthing her. Good reputation was everything to a servant and all the more so to a lady's maid.
The truth was that Sarah didn't believe that Cora was the kind of person who would try and ruin her, even if she left. Lady Grantham could certainly be demanding, flighty and sweetly patronizing in a way that always made Sarah's stomach turn, but she meant no harm. The truth was that Sarah was the one who didn't want to leave, even though she was in agony over being so close to the woman she could never have. She was as addicted to Cora as a drunkard to alcohol, and while the love and hatred inside her had blended so that she could hardly tell where one ended and the other started, the mere thought of leaving her side threatened to make her collapse. She simply couldn't see her future away from her mistress. Until that fateful day...