If only God granted one the ability to erase a single day of their life. The universe would be so much more just if a person could awaken from a dreamless sleep (as was the fashion in fairy tales) and find that the previous twenty-four hours were a page yet to be written—or better still, one that could be torn out and forgotten.

That was what she would like to do with today, this day of humiliating outbursts and long-buried secrets told. At least she still had the tattered remnants of her pride, but when she thought of the blank looks in her father and Matthew's eyes, it proved a meager consolation.

What he thought shouldn't matter. No, it didn't matter, not after everything.

It couldn't matter.

Of course, that was the problem with love. It made your brain think rather stupid things you didn't want it to.

Her head hurt to think of all the people who had disappointed her today. Even Anna, trusted, faithful, and, in all honesty, her best friend—even Anna had let her down. She had not brought up her book, had told her it was not to be found. A minor irk in a sea of more momentous disillusionments, but creeping down to the library to look for it still felt like a trial sent from Above to test her resolve.

When she walked into the library to find Matthew dozing by the fire, peaceful and so bloody handsome, with her book open on his lap she knew it was.

Mary approached him with caution, but the young woman (so much older after today) allowed herself the indulgence of looking at him freely, and she so she lingered above the young man, unable to look away. She should pull the book away quickly and run from the room, like pulling a bandage off a scabby knee, but as she tried to pull the book away, he tightened his grip on it.

"Am I dreaming?" he murmured sleepily, opening one eye.

"No, it's the real me, I'm afraid."

"You shouldn't assume I prefer the dream to reality, Mary." Matthew blinked awake and looked up at the clock above the mantle. "Already? I must've—" He then noticed what her still outstretched hand was reaching for. "Oh, I'm sorry—is this yours?"

"I came down to get it," she shivered, clad in only her nightgown and excruciatingly aware of it.

Matthew, hoping to make his own staring less obvious, turned his attention instead to the book that had roused her from bed.

"Plutarch's 'Lives'?" he read off the spine, bemusement obvious. "Seems a bit heavy for bedtime reading."

"Whenever I'm feeling miserable, I read it to remind myself at least I haven't been stabbed by a group of feckless Roman senators," she answered, wryly, and Matthew raised one amused eyebrow as he handed the history back to her.

"I always imagined you reading Bronte."

Mary smiled and rolled her eyes at him, and Matthew felt a surge of that familiar burning affection. She did not realize how dear she was to him when they shared a private joke, as they always had—she understood him as no one did or ever would.

"Forbidden passion in the wild Yorkshire moors is more Sybil's forte than mine."

"I didn't mean Wuthering Heights…I was thinking of Charlotte Bronte. Jane Eyre appeared serene to those who didn't know her," No longer light and playful, the air was thick with that tightly wound, crackling energy that always circled them. "But she couldn't hide the passion she felt, not in the end."

"Well, the man she loved had a wife moldering away in the attic," his adversary retorted, bitingly. "So perhaps she would have been well served hiding it better."

"What would her life have been, though?" He rose from the chair with great care, as if he were in the woods around Downton, trying not to startle a doe or fawn in the brush. "What is a life without affection or understanding…what is a life without love, Mary?"

Sighing softly, she looked into the fire and tucked a soft strand of chestnut hair behind one impossibly delicate ear, pondering the question.

"A life without pain, for a start."

It was a half-hearted attempt at best. No one for a second would think Mary Crawley believed the words she was saying.

"The trouble with you, Mary," He began to walk towards her. "Is that you're too strong. You're afraid of seeming weak, so you push away the people you love—" He was pained and pleading now—but so impossibly honest. "They would help you if you'd only let them."

A small, sad noise escaped her, and it was with a jolt of protectiveness that Matthew realized she was crying.

"Who…who would help a woman like me?"

"Nobody blames you," he soothed, gently, resisting for now the overwhelming urge to take her in his arms and never let go. "Your father isn't angry with you. If anything he's hurt that you didn't trust he would love you, no matter what. He does, you know."

"And…" she hesitated. "…And you?"

"…I'm sorry I didn't say anything. It's not because I judge you—even if I felt that way, I'm not in a position to judge anyone. I just…" she held a breath again, in anticipation. "I just had no idea what you'd been through. Going through it all alone, Mary…God, you amaze me."

"You don't see a fallen woman when you look at me?"

"When I look at you—" He stepped even closer, into the fire's light, and it cast an almost ethereal glow over her face, over that impenetrable mask that was slipping for the world to see. "I see the strongest, bravest…the most wonderful person I think I've ever met."

Before he could even think, Matthew had raised one hand to brush away the tear on her cheek, delicately, as if it were a dewdrop on a rose.

"But you might try telling people how you feel more than once every eight years, Mary," She laughed with him at that, and his other arm rose to join the first, cupping her cheek. "Then it wouldn't all come out at once and in quite such an, er…explosive way."

She leaned into his touch, into the warmth of his body and his voice.

"That must've really shocked them all. When Patrick died," her voice hitched at the memory. "When he died I didn't shed a single tear. I was going to marry him—it was arranged for us, but he was still my—but I couldn't. Everyone—Edith and Papa most of all—thought I was so cold. I couldn't make myself cry, not for anything."

"Why was that, I wonder?" he asked, huskily, as his arms fell from her face down past her shoulders, to her waist, as if they had a mind of their own.

"I suppose it was because I didn't love him." She moved closer to him, some non-physical force pulling her towards him, despite the distrust and the misunderstandings and how incredibly thick they could both be.

"…And why are you crying now, Mary?" Matthew was whispering, so close that he could see her tears as they fell to the floor.

"I suppose…" she choked, and he circled her with his arms, a protective band. "I suppose it's because I do love you."

In the next second he was kissing her, and it was with all the longing and need of nearly eight years, he was running his hands through her wonderful hair (it smelled like freesias and lilac and Mary), down her back, all over her. Faintly he heard the sound of a seven hundred-page book drop to the library floor, but it was a million miles away for all he cared. Who could ever say this woman was cold? She was like a holding a raw flame, through her thin nightgown she was all warmth and fire and goodness—she was more than that.

She was the light of his life.

They broke the kiss at last, but did not release her—still holding on to her glorious self as if his life depended on it.

"God, Mary—I love you so much." Another kiss—on her cheek, another, her neck, lower and lower. "Marry me, please."

She made some soft and essentially feminine sound and his heart rate shot through the roof again.

"I want to so badly, Matthew, you know that," He heard the first way and his heart leapt out of his chest, she loved him, she wanted him, she tasted so bloody good. "Only…"

Matthew ceased his ministrations (to a sigh of regret from her) at once.

"Only what?"

He should've seen it coming. Things were never easy for them, were they?

"What about Richard?" Her joy turned to worry and he wanted to kiss it away, make it better, anything to stop her from looking so distraught. "What about the family name? If I jilt him this close to the wedding, he'll have all of our heads—"

"Do you love him?" Matthew interrupted, expression intent, eyes searching her face hungrily for an affirmation of what he knew could not be.

She glared, incredulous at the suggestion.

"Of course not! You know that I—"

"And do you love me?"

Pulling back, exasperated, she gave him a look that was equal parts scathing and annoyed.

"How many times are you going to make me say it before you believe me?" It was something a wife would say to her erstwhile husband. The intimate promise of the admonishment filled him up, like warm cider, and gave him the courage to speak words that he had known were true, somewhere deeply hidden in his heart, almost since the moment he had met her.

"And I love you," he declared, to the universe at large, and the phrase 'largess of the bourgeoisie' floated through Mary's mind, spoken in Granny's voice. He might've been yelling it from the top of Kilimanjaro or to a hung jury in a crowded courtroom. "More than anything in the world, and you deserve to be happy. Even if you didn't give a fig for me, I would tell you not to marry him. Your happiness is all that matters, Mary." Embracing her again, he whispered into her hair, softly, "It's all that matters to me."

Oh, he was wonderful even when he was being ridiculous and noble.

"He's coming up on Friday," she whispered back, drinking in the faint smell of brandy and cleanness and whatever was essentially Matthew that she could not seem to ever forget. "I'll have to break it off then, in person."

"I want to be there," he replied, too quickly and with a suspicious amount of eagerness.

"For what reason should I say you're there?" Mary replied, dryly, and reluctantly she extricated herself from his arms. "To lend moral support?"

"To make sure he doesn't start any trouble."

"The only thing that's going to ensure trouble is started is you being there."

"I mean it, Mary. He threatened you before—"

"And you were the reason!"

"What?"

"He was the one who brought Lavinia back, after you were…after the injury. He was jealous of how much attention I was paying you, all of those walks we used to take." She smiled up at him, frustrated but loving. "He could see I had feelings for you, as well."

"Am I the only person on earth who didn't?"

He would never understand why he had been so blind to a fact that was common knowledge to her family, to both their fiancées, to her butler, for heaven's sake.

"You saw what you wanted to see, Matthew," she reassured him, wistfully, and squeezed his hand.

Ruefully pushing aside that idiocy, the young solicitor from Manchester thought of all the other things he had to apologize to this woman for. His latest crime was the most obvious.

"I'm sorry that I went over you, that I went to your father with my suspicions—I should've respected that your life is your own."

"Don't apologize for it. As angry as I was this evening—I'm glad it's all out. It's a relief, really."

His mouth quirked in barely-concealed laughter when he thought of how different things had been this morning when he woke up. They had both been content to throw their lives away for a reason that, in the rustling stillness of the library where Mary and he stood as equals, was very far away.

"My mother's really the one to blame, you know." She was unfazed. "I heard you had a bit of a chat with her today."

"…I gathered that's how you knew. What did she tell you?"

"She told me enough," he said, echoing Isobel's earlier words.

The love of his life looked down at the floor, and just when Matthew thought she couldn't get any more darling, he caught sight of the embarrassed blush staining her cheek.

"Yes, well…she caught me at a weak moment—and she's a very good listener."

"The thing you've got to remember about mother," he raised her chin, gently. "Is that she's equally good at telling other people. I'm afraid your prospects for a mother-in-law are very grim, should you want to keep anything secret from me."

"I'm used to meddling, Matthew." She lifted his hand up to her cheek and smiled, adoration shining through like a beacon. How could he have doubted her feelings, how could he have doubted her—though he'd accused Lady Mary of being afraid, the man who loved her knew she was not alone on that score. "Isobel is nothing compared to Granny, as much as I'm sure she'd like you to think she is."

"We may have to agree to disagree on that score, my dear." The final two words were a caress, a kiss and a prayer. "But if that's the sort of thing we're at cross purposes over from now on, I'll be very happy."

"Oh, Matthew." For the first time in his life, he knew exactly what she was thinking. "I'm so happy—I don't need anything else in the world, if I could only go on feeling like this."

"You might object to not being clothed, darling."

"You know what I mean," she chided, comfortably leaning into his dinner jacket, and he wanted to give her the world—or at least a gift in place of the ring he didn't possess, yet.

In lieu of a silver band, he slipped his own piece of Mary Crawley out of his pocket and handed it to her.

"I thought you might like having this…for luck." He'd grown very attached to it, in his way, but in the face of her delight he didn't mind relinquishing it. "Not that you'll need it, of course, now that you have me."

"I would kiss you if you didn't look so smug, Matthew Crawley."

After all, he didn't need a piece of her anymore.

He had her wholly, body and soul.

Merry Christmas Eve! Or happy Christmas morning, as I expect it is by now in the UK, where the story stats page tells me most of the readers of this tale are. I took a bit more time with this chapter because I wanted to do it right. In before the glorious special, which is a good thing because I'm fairly certain that no matter the Mary and Matthew outcome, I'm going to collapse with emotional exhaustion. Thank you all for the wonderful feedback and support, and may you all have a blessed, peaceful, and joyous Christmas. God bless!