DISCLAIMER: I DO NOT OWN DOWNTON ABBEY.
A/N: thankyou so much everyone who has reviewed! I'm so happy people are enjoying it as much as I'm enjoying writing it.
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"Oh goodness, Edith darling I'm so sorry!" In a mess of blonde hair and green coat, Dorothy swooped down upon Edith and kissed her cheek before throwing herself down on the chair beside Edith's. They were in the lobby of the Savoy, where they had arranged to meet before they moved into their new home, and Edith had been waiting for two hours. She had managed to convince herself that Dorothy had changed her mind and found someone more exciting to live with without telling her when she arrived.
"I'd just about given you up. I thought you might have found me to boring after all!" She said, a slight flutter in her voice giving away the honesty of this statement.
Dorothy leaned forward and grabbed Edith's hands very earnestly. She had an expressive, excitable way of talking that meant she opened her eyes wide and made dramatic gestures, as if she was on the stage. "We need to get this one thing straight before we go any further: you must stop thinking that I don't want you lodging with me. You must stop putting yourself down. You aren't at Downton anymore and I am not your sister."
Edith smiled. She had only met Mary once and yet Dorothy had seen straight through her. "Don't be silly."
"I mean it, darling. You must promise me that all this self-doubt stops here. London is no place for self-doubt. We aren't debutantes anymore; we're beautiful, independent women with confidence." Dorothy's speech got louder at the end and the two men at the table next to them looked at her with distaste.
Edith laughed. "I promise."
"Good. Because I'm going to repeat this to you every morning until you believe it." Dorothy stood up and gathered up all her bags and parcels. "Shall we be off then?"
In the taxi Dorothy reached into one of the green Harrods bags and pulled out a beautiful felt cloche hat. "Isn't this delightful?" She held it up and gazed at it. It was peacock-blue with a bright feather in the velvet band.
Edith nodded, thinking that it would go very well with her winter coat. "It is." She hoped Dorothy would let her borrow it if she ever went somewhere smart. "It'll look lovely on you."
"Oh, I bought it for you!" She pressed it into Edith's hands. "As soon as I saw it I couldn't resist. I knew it would match your wonderful coat, and it's the very latest style. Oh put it on darling, I'm simply dying to see it on you."
Blushing, Edith did. "Do I look ridiculous?"
"Quite the opposite - you look like a fashion plate!" Dorothy picked up her green hat from her lap and put it on. "Now we'll really be the toast of the town when we go out together."
"It's very generous of you, are you absolutely sure you don't want it?"
"Of course not - consider it a living-in-London gift." Dorothy flashed her grin and leaned over to tell the driver that they had arrived and rolled open the window so they could get a better look at the house. "Well, what do you think?"
Edith looked out at a beautiful white townhouse with grand front steps and shiny black railings. It faced out onto a park with trees and benches, and Edith could tell that in the summer the flowerbeds would be riotous with colour. "It's wonderful. Which floor have we got?"
"Oh, we've ended up with all of them. Papa decided that it would be more of an investment to buy the whole house rather than rent a floor. I'm not sure exactly why; I try very hard to ignore everything financial, which his hard because he does so want me to be interested in money." Dorothy screwed up her face to show her displeasure.
Edith looked at her incredulously. "What on earth are we going to do with a whole house?"
"Fill it with people, silly! We're going to have the most marvellous parties in all of London." Dorothy got out of the can and Edith followed her. "Everyone is just desperate for parties; can't you feel it in the air? We're bored of the war and rationing and feeling guilty for surviving - let's just celebrate the fact that we are alive!" Dorothy grabbed her hand and pulled her up the frontsteps to hammer on the black front door.
"Oh hurry up Billings, we're HERE!" She called. The man who opened the door was really rather young for a butler, only about 40, but every other aspect of him reminded her of Carson. He had the same placid, slightly haughty expression and a deep, soft voice that managed to invoke authority and calm.
"Good afternoon, Lady Dorothy. Good afternoon, Lady Edith." He inclined his head to them in turn. "I shall send the footman to get your luggage."
"Thankyou, Billings." Dorothy answered for her. "There are some shopping bags in the taxi as well, if you could bring those in."
From the door they made their way into the entrance hall, which had shiny black and white tiles on the floor and a white marble staircase with a gold banister. There was a table with a bowl of White lilies on it and a big, circular mirror with a colourful geometric pattern round the frame. The lamp was made of coloured glass. Edith didn't know it at the time but her new home was already all set up for 1920's art-deco craze. Dorothy had always been ahead of the times, and had spent quite a long time on the interior decoration of the house.
"It's all so modern." Edith breathed. In Downton she felt the weight of her ancestors in every corridor, but this house was new and fresh and ready for young people to have fun in it.
"You feel it too, don't you?" Dorothy said. "The house wants us to be here and give it a good time."
It seemed fanciful to imagine a house with wants and desires of its own, but Edith did understand what she meant. The place was built for the purpose. "It really does."
"Come on upstairs and I can show you your rooms." They both trooped up the beautiful staircase and onto the first floor landing. The same understated modern elegance prevailed, with another square mirror and bowl of lilies. "This is my floor. There's my bedroom and bathroom and a little room for a dressing room and a sitting room which we can share. We'll have dinners downstairs and there's a drawing room down there as well, but I expect parties will just end up spreading all over the house. Now, come up the stairs again and this is your floor." Edith followed her, feeling a bit like Alice following the White Rabbit into some sort of wonderland.
They got up the stairs and Dorothy pushed open a door. "This is your bedroom. It was partly furnished already and then I went with Daddy to pick a few extra things. I hope you like them, but it is a bit different to Downton. If you want we can go and swap them?" Dorothy looked nervously at Edith, who was gazing into her new room in awe.
"Don't change a thing. It's perfect." She crossed the threshold onto the powder blue carpet and walked across to the window. As she parted the gauzy curtains she could look out onto Russell Sqaure and see the people milling around in the November cold. Underneath the window was a pale blue silk chaise-lounge, where she could already imagine lying curled up on cold evenings, looking out at London life continuing around her. Turning back into the room she looked across at the glass dressing table. The looking-glass had a strange, stark black and white pattern around it that attracted Edith. Like the floor and mirror downstairs, it was different from anything she had seen before. The bed was covered in blue velvet throws and silk pillows, and above it was a large framed picture of a frosty field, mist drifting across the strange blue sky.
"I picked the picture to remind you of home. Apparently it's somewhere in Yorkshire." Dorothy walked across to a door in the corner and pushed it open. "Here's your dressing room. And then your bathroom is just across the hall."
Edith followed, half reluctant to leave the beautiful bedroom . Her beautiful bedroom. She needn't have worried though, because the bathroom was just as lovely. It had a square bath and white, shiny tiles and the window looked out onto the little square of garden behind the house. On the windowsill was a little vase of the ubiquitous white lilies, whose pretty scent seemed to have filled the house.
"Darling, what do you think? Do you still want to live here?" Dorothy took hold of one of her hands and held it tightly, looking at Edith with excited expectance.
Edith laughed a little incredulously. "Who wouldn't want to live here?"
"Oh I'm so pleased!" She threw her arms around Edith so unabashedly that it took her aback. They didn't really hug each other in the Crawley family. She couldn't remember the last time that she had put her arms around Mary in a manner that had been more than perfunctory. It felt nice to be on the receiving end of a gesture of such open affection. "Now, I'll have Matilda come up and draw you a bath. We have to get ready for tonight!"
"What's tonight?" Edith asked. Whatever it was she hoped she would have the right clothes for it.
"Darling David is going to take us out to Sheekey's, and then on to some cocktail bar with some writers that he knows." Dorothy skipped out of the room and began to jump down the stairs with all the energy of a toddler. "He's such a sweetie and he knows the most terribly interesting people, so it's bound to be a hoot! You must wear one of the dresses I just bought today, Edith. It will look so beautiful on you. I'll have it laid out for you!" In a swirl of blonde hair she was gone, leaving Edith in her room feeling excited and nervous.
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