Edith would reinvent herself. It was the only plausible conclusion she could come to that didn't end in her utter destruction. Without Anthony, she was lost. She loathed admitting it, feeling she'd gained so much independence during the war, but it was true. Every plan she'd made in the last years involved him, and now every one of them was shattered, invalid, gone.
She'd have to start over, or release every idea she had about her former self, if she had any hope at all for a future. Anything involving marriage would be entirely out of the question, of course. Any prospect would be a false version of Anthony, a sort of wrong mirror image, a lie. Marriage to anyone other than him would be a half-life.
No, if she were to have any hope of happiness she would find an entirely new direction.
"Perhaps I'll become a secretary," she mused to Anna, watching the new middle class going about their day as Belford weaved the car through London traffic. "Or I could illustrate children's books. Or perhaps work for Cousin Isobel, helping fallen women." She turned to Anna with a sardonic smile and said, "Or perhaps I'll just become a fallen woman myself."
Anna patted her lady's hand. She wasn't used to sitting in the back of the motor, but Edith had insisted. Anna would have refused on grounds of propriety, but remembering Lord Grantham's request, gave in.
"Or maybe I'll just lock myself away, refusing all company, and drink all day until I've sufficiently wasted my life."
"If that's your intention, Milady, I ought to tell Mrs. Bass to stop buying food and rather pass the budget on gin," Anna said dryly. Edith laughed, but her laughter quickly dissolved into tears as her brave façade cracked. She fought them briefly before giving in. She collapsed her face into Anna's skirt and allowed herself to be rightly miserable while Anna rubbed her arm and pet her hair and hummed a sweet little melody.
When they arrived at the house her father had rented, Edith sat up and rolled her eyes. A three-story connected home on the edge of the park, it was not quite the modest retreat she'd had in mind.
"Two weeks ago we were ready to pack up the house and sell the pots for extra cash. Now that Matthew's come to the rescue, they think twelve rooms covers the bare necessities," she scoffed, wiping the last of her tears from her swollen face.
"Let's get you settled," Anna suggested, avoiding comment on His Lordship's expensive taste.
"Don't bother opening the top floor. No one will be visiting," Edith sighed, stepping out of the motor. "And Anna, please pick a room for yourself on the main. It's ridiculous for you to freeze away below stairs when there's half a dozen rooms right down the hall."
"Oh I couldn't," Anna began to protest, but Edith stopped her.
"You can, and you must."
"Very good, Milady," Anna sighed, giving the heartbroken Edith whatever she wanted. She was under strict instructions to ensure Edith got what she needed. But no one, not the Crawleys nor Anna knew yet what that entailed.
The entire first week, Edith never left her room. She spent a great deal of time sleeping, and crying, and she hardly spoke or ate. Anna sat with her in a reverent silence, rarely leaving her side. When Edith needed holding, Anna sat on the bed beside her. When she needed space, Anna worked on her needlepoint or wrote to Mr. Bates at the desk in Edith's room. The only activity Edith took was writing; one letter every day to Sir Anthony. Sometimes they were long and sometimes short, but every evening Anna walked down to the corner to post them.
When the initial anguish began to feel lonely, Edith took to sitting in the kitchen with Mrs. Bass and Anna, watching them going about their chores. She would ask questions and talk about little things, she never mentioned Anthony. At first Mrs. Bass was uncomfortable; a Lady lingering in the kitchen was unheard of. But after a week or so, Mrs. Bass said, "Well if you're going to wear a dent in that chair you might as well be of some use to someone," and put Edith to work.
Mrs. Bass showed Edith how to polish flatware, how to break asparagus at the neck, and brew tea, and pit cherries for a crisp. Then how to clean a bird or bake a cake, how to cut onions with a cold knife to avoid tears and to soak your hands in lemon to mask the smell of garlic. When Edith wasn't learning to cook, Anna showed her how to mend a button or hem a skirt. Edith talked with them about politics and the vote, and each morning they went through the newspapers together.
But every day at noon, Edith sat at the desk in the study to write her letter to Sir Anthony, and every evening Anna still posted them on the corner. It never changed. Sometimes Edith would return with her letter, her face puffy and red from crying, and hand it to Anna with shaking hands. Other days she would thrust it into Anna's care with anger and frustration and stalk off to be by herself for a bit.
Never once did Edith receive a letter from him in return, and Anna's heart broke each time the mail came and Edith's face fell just slightly. She'd hear from her sisters and mother, from Granny and occasionally Aunt Rosamund, but she only ever replied to Cora. She always said that she was doing well, keeping busy, and to give the rest of the family her love.
After several months, Edith began writing to the papers again, her editorials getting more popular and being published more regularly. Mr. Anders of the Chronicle approached her about being a regular columnist for the women's paper he ran, and she jumped at the opportunity despite her family's protests. She began writing about everything from suffrage to India to labor, and threw herself into her work. And when she wasn't studying or writing politics, she was helping Anna track down information on Mr. Bates' case. After a time the color returned to her cheeks and some of her former self seemed to come back.
And so Edith passed six months, never once forgetting her letter to Sir Anthony. But everything changed when Bates was acquitted freed from prison. Anna no longer wanted to stay in London, and Edith was finding it more and more difficult to avoid her familial obligations. She'd been home just once when Sybil had the baby, and her mother had been to visit twice against Edith's will.
Anna cried when she told Edith, "I'm so sorry, Milady, but Mr. Bates will be returning to Downton as his Lordship's valet, and I couldn't bear to be without him."
"Anna, you needn't explain. Of course I don't expect you to stay," Edith said, taking Anna's hand. "You've been very, very good to me. I don't think I could ever repay you for the last months."
"You needn't repay me, Milady. I'm just glad to see you're feeling better."
Anna bobbed and turned to go but Edith, who had never been a particularly affectionate person with anyone but Anthony, suddenly pulled her into a hug. "Thank you. For being my friend, the only one I've ever had really," Edith whispered into her ear before releasing her.
Their last night in the house, Edith made dinner for Mrs. Bass, who deemed it a "right treat," and the three of them giggled late into the evening like young girls at the end of a summer holiday. When it was time to say goodnight, Edith felt an overwhelming sadness. "Tomorrow I'll be back in that great, cold house with all those married people and the ghosts I've spent the past half-year trying to forget. It will be dinners and parties, and Edith will you please do this, and I think I might suffocate."
"You're a strong girl. Didn't give you credit for it at first, but you've got a real meat to your bones. Don't let them push you around," Mrs. Bass said in her gruff way, laying one calloused hand under Edith's chin before bustling up the stairs for bed.
"She's fond of you, you know," Anna muttered. She looked ten years younger than when they came to London. The joy at Bates' freedom and their future together, husband and wife, together at Downton, well it showed on her features. She was illuminated, relaxed, and very nearly giddy.
Edith smiled at her, but failed to mask the creeping sadness she'd been fighting. "You'll be alright, Milady," Anna said suddenly. "You've worked hard while we've been here, to kindle that light in you. You lost it when Sir Anthony left, I know. But you've got some of it back now. Don't let anyone put it out again."
It didn't take long for Edith to settle into the routine back home. She ate breakfast with the gentlemen; being unmarried she felt no right to a tray in bed. She worked in the vegetable garden sometimes and spent a fair amount of time below stairs, toiling with Mrs. Patmore, much to her father's dismay, and often went for long rides on her old mare, Calliope. She avoided driving for the most part, but would run errands to Ripon if anyone asked her to. She was compliant, pleasant, even angelic.
Sybil and Cora had conspired with Anna to surprise Edith for Christmas. They converted one of the old storage rooms upstairs into a studio for Edith's use, complete with drawing desk, plenty of light, a little wood stove, and a round window with a view of the orchards.
Always on her best behavior, no one bothered her when she'd retreat to the attic after luncheon to draw or write; editorials, articles, opinions, the occasional story, and always, always her letter to Anthony. She never failed. Even when a severe head cold kept her in bed for a week, she shuffled up to her little hideaway each afternoon.
"I think," she wrote to Sir Anthony one day in February, when the sky was so dark from heavy clouds that she bent low over her paper to see her own words, "That I may cope now, though just barely. I've failed, for a long while now, to see the point in living without you. I admit there are days when I wake and am so saddened without you beside me that I fail to get out of bed. But those days are fewer now. I am living, though only as much as the leaves on the ground in autumn—lifeless and still until the wind comes and blows me along. I just wait, each day, for the next gust that will get me through.
"It's easy enough to keep busy, reading or studying or playing the dutiful spinster aunt. But at night when the house grows still I'm so restless with missing you I think I'll go mad. When I'm lucky, I dream that somehow everything is changed, and we're together—in the park or the car or the church, and-even better-in bed. Those mornings are the most cruel, when I reach over to you in half-sleep and find nothing but icy sheets.
"My darling, darling Anthony. Each time I think I'm getting on I see a book or hear a phrase or have some errant thought that brings you to mind and with a sharp ache I realize I love you now more than ever. I worry about you constantly. I wonder if you're being kind to yourself, taking care to be well and healthy, I worry that you aren't sleeping enough or that you're punishing yourself with solitude. I know through the town line that you've taken on a man to manage Locksley, which frightens me worst of all.
"I don't know if you read these letters. Part of me wishes that you do and the other feels deep down that if you had read them you would have come to me already. Be well, my dear man, for my sake and yours. I'm ever hopeful that sometime in the future we will be together again."
She cried, then, which she hadn't done in quite a while, and signed it, "Eternally yours, Edith."