It's Christmas Eve, and I'm giving you angst; I will try and sort myself out by tomorrow. If I find time between seeing lots of relatives tomorrow, perhaps there will be something cheerier on Christmas Day!
He had been catastrophically stupid, he realised too late, not to take his spare set of clothes from the wardrobe in the on-call room as he left. Having left her the way he had done the previous night, the last thing he wanted to do was appear to intrude upon her in the morning. However, it was either risk that, or go around for a whole day in the clothes he had worn as he slipped between the sheets with her, and which were rather crumpled for it.
It wasn't light yet, he had not been to sleep at all for any great length of time so he was able to choose his moment well. He tapped gently on the door in case she had decided to try and slip away early without being noticed. She was asleep, though; he saw her form still lying curled over in the bed from the greyish hue of window, rain pouring down against it outside. Determined not to linger, he crossed quickly to the chest of drawers in the corner, digging out the articles of clothing that he needed as soon as he found them. It was only when he turned back around to leave that he really caught a good look of her, and all intention not to linger went flying out of his head.
She was oddly, eerily, disorganised-ly beautiful lying there. Her hair, in its loose knot, splayed out a little in the strands that had escaped, gleaming in the rain-distorted moonlight. Lying half-curled into a ball, her wrist lay beside her face, almost touching her nose. It made her look very young. Not young; small. The neck of her nightdress had become a little displaced, one side pressing right against her neck, the other side exposing the skin almost all the way to her shoulder. The blanket too was at an odd angle, as if she had shifted a great deal in her sleep, or as if she had been too warm while she was still awake and she had only drawn it halfway across. It did not cover one of her knees, and her leg protruded, the hem of her nightdress cutting a clear white line halfway up her calf.
He took a step closer to her; he did not think there was a very great danger of him waking her up, he recognised her sleep as a deep, exhausted one. That was certainly understandable, given... everything. To his dismay, he also noticed and odd smoothness to her cheeks and a redness around her eyes. It was rather too much for him to bear: the thought of her lying here alone, after he had gone, crying. He suddenly found himself wishing that he had not left her alone. He did not regret telling her that they could not make love there and then, but now he wondered if it might not have been kinder of him to stay with her after that.
Almost certain that she would not wake up, he perched lightly on the edge of the bed, level with her hips, stroking his hand gently over her cheeks. She stirred a little, and for one alarming moment he thought that he had been wrong and that she would wake up, and e very angry with him, but she settled back down after a moment. He continued to trace over one of the light creases still washed out with her tears with his thumb.
Isobel. Oh, Isobel.
…...
Thankfully, she was able to get out in the morning without being noticed by anyone. She splodged down the rainy main street, running the last few steps up to Crawley House and shut the door tightly behind her. She had forgotten it was Saturday, and that as it was raining it was likely that Matthew would at home all day. Simply flinging her coat and hat on the coat-stand before Molesley could get there, she found there was nothing she could do to avoid the inevitable questions but to make a run for it up the stairs. She shut herself in the bathroom and started to run a bath, something she hadn't done since they had come here. It was oddly comforting to potter round the bathroom doing things for herself, not really stopping until she sank down into the heat of the bath.
The loose strands of hair at the back of her head fell into the edge of the water so that they were wet and stuck to her shoulders when she sat up. Finally, she settled herself to lie against the back of the tub, and allowed her mind to wander. Where it wandered to at its first given chance was rather predictable; to a bed in the on-call room of Downton Hospital. And how she had acted there. Wantonly, would be one, more moderate, word for it. She felt some of the heat of the water creep into her cheeks. She raised her wet hand and rubbed it roughly across her eyes. She had acted so very wantonly, with a man who was not her husband. Her only excuse, if it was one at all, was that she had been doing what she had thought he needed her to do.
In hindsight of course, she realised that she had been doing it every bit as much for herself as for him. There was no denying that she had wanted to. This did not really shock her. What did was the lack of hesitation with which she had gone about it. This morning she felt like an old woman, but last night she had had no thoughts of her imperfect skin or deteriorating figure. Perhaps that was because he hadn't got as far as taking her nightdress off. Who knew? Her hand drifted unwittingly to her hip. Wide. Good God, what had she been thinking of?
She lay there quite still for a few more moments and concluded that the answer to that was quite simple. Him.
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