A/N: Well, this is a pretty pointless chapter. It's basically a M/M one-shot disguised as a chapter. There is plot, there is important stuff in this chapter but it's not particularly obvious! Well, enjoy the banter and fluff! :) And consider it an apology in advance for the direction this story will take in the next few chapters...
Many thanks as always to those who review. I counted up the other day and I realised that 24 different people have reviewed this story at some point in total whether regularly or just once. For a small fandom, this is absolutely great, and I really appreciate every comment! I also realise that I often mention new readers or non-shippers, but I never particularly mention that small cohort who have reviewed every (or nearly every) single chapter. I write principally for myself, but you're second! OrangeShipper, Eolivet, Silverduck, AriadneO, rubberduckiesrock and bijou156, this is for you! As usual, massive thanks to OrangeShipper for beta-ing and putting up with me flailing at her about plot and characterisation over MSN. I really appreciate it.
Before reading, I suggest heading over to my profile and checking out the soundtrack to this chapter...
Chapter Eight: The Merry Widow Waltz
Piazza San Marco is the only place to go in the evening if you are a tourist in Venice. Lady Grantham and Mary had spent most of their evenings there during their stay and so it was fitting that they should return there on their final night in the city. This time, however, they had company. It might not have been the company they would most naturally have chosen, but it made a change and guaranteed some variation in their conversation.
Three cafes do business in the Piazza: Quadri and Lavena in competition on one side of the square and Florian on the other side. Mary and her grandmother had been to all of them and preferred Quadri so it was to this cafe they headed with the Bowens.
When they arrived it was at that delicious moment of dusk when the sky starts to take on a deeper, more luminous hue and the candles inside the palace buildings and on the tables at the cafes are lit, appearing as golden specks in the night. The warm autumnal air was filled with the polite clinking of glasses and cutlery and the excited chatter of several different languages rising from those strolling about the square as well as those dining. Underpinning all of these characteristic sounds were the strains of music from the competing orchestras. As the Crawleys and Bowens sat down at a table at Quadri the lead violinist there was attacking a czardas with gusto while the musicians at Lavena took a break. Across the square at Florian a Strauss polka could be indistinctly heard.
Over dinner, the conversation turned naturally enough to their family backgrounds.
"Crawley..." said Mrs. Bowen, tapping her forefinger against her cheek in thought. "It's a familiar name."
The dowager countess and Mary tried their best not to look too interested at hearing what she might say, and succeeded in it very admirably.
"You see," she explained presently after a few more mouthfuls of risotto, "my two sisters are both married to Englishmen. You might know Felicity, she married Sir Richard Marlborough and moves in the very best society!"
Lady Grantham shook her head. "Ah, no. No. I do not think I have ever met Lady Marlborough. Have you, Mary?"
Mary glanced up from her baked polenta. "No, I have not." She returned her attention to her food.
"I doubt you'll know Agatha. She's only married to someone in government, not the aristocracy at all, though she does like to know all the gossip, dear old thing! What was it Arnold does, Hettie, the home office? Or was it the foreign office? It fancy it was something diplomatic."
Hettie shrugged, not much interested.
"Well, never mind that then. He's very clever anyway."
"Have you been to England to visit your aunts yet, Miss Bowen?" asked Mary, rousing herself after a pause in the conversation.
"No, not yet, but we're going to London for the season next year." She grinned. "I'm so tremendously excited about it, Lady Mary!"
"Well, we will be there too," admitted Mary. "My youngest sister will be making her debut."
"That's splendid! How nice it will be have friends there. We thought that we wouldn't know anybody at all and nobody would ever ask me to dance. I long to dance!"
"I'm sure you will not lack for partners." She meant it too. Miss Bowen was pretty and presumably came with a pretty fortune attached as well.
"Americans never do," put in Violet drily.
Mrs. Bowen looked surprised. "Is that so? I was afraid we would stick out like sore thumbs."
"Not at all," replied Mary smoothly. "Sometimes it feels as if there are more Americans in the ballrooms of London than there are English ladies."
"My daughter-in-law is American," added Lady Grantham and then stopped significantly without saying anything else.
"Is she? We might know her!"
"Her family is from Cincinnati," replied the dowager after a brief hesitation. "Levinson."
Mrs. Bowen shook her head. "We don't know anyone from Cincinnati. If she'd been from New York that'd be a different matter."
"We do know a Levinson though," put in her daughter suddenly. "Minnie. She sometimes helps with the benefit dinners."
"Oh! Yes. Ermintrude Levinson. I wonder if there's a connection there."
Ermintrude. Mary dabbed at her mouth delicately with her napkin.
It took the duration of the rest of the meal and into looking at the menu for digestifs to explore Cora's family tree in sufficient detail to ascertain that it was actually quite likely that Ermintrude was a distant cousin.
"You should bring her to England," suggested the dowager countess with admirable gravity. "She should come and stay with us at Downton!"
The Bowens looked almost overwhelmed at the generosity of this invitation while Mary studiously did not catch her grandmother's eye. "What a sweet idea, your ladyship! You should write her and tell her, Hettie. I wonder if she might be persuaded to come out for the season."
"She really is an awfully nice girl," said Hettie as if she picked up at some level that her new friends needed convincing of the fact.
"Even better," continued Lady Grantham, warming to her theme, "let her meet Matthew. I dare say a marriage could be arranged there. Nothing would be tidier than that!"
"Ermintrude Crawley..." sighed Hettie. "How romantic!"
Mary almost choked on her grappa. Ermintrude, Countess of Grantham. Matthew and Ermintrude Crawley. As a combination it did not trip off the tongue. It did not, as Oscar Wilde might have put it, produce vibrations.
She stood up suddenly. "Come, Miss Bowen, the orchestra at Caffe Florian is by far the superior this evening. Will you come and listen to it with me?"
Hettie looked surprised but with a glance at her mother to ask permission stood up and crossed the square with Mary.
"Wouldn't it be so lovely to dance under the stars? If only we knew some men here!"
"If you smile invitingly enough, you might be asked all the same!" Mary replied indulgently as they took up a prime position beyond the cafe tables where they could see and hear the musicians very well, who just then struck up a new waltz.
Hettie sucked in a breath and turned to Mary with glowing eyes. "Oh, Lady Mary, it's the Merry Widow waltz! It's quite my favourite piece of music in the world. I saw it three times in New York! I – I've even got the Merry Widow umbrella and a signed poster from the actor who played Danilo; he was so handsome!" She drew breath. "Do you know it?"
Of course Mary knew it. One would have to have been living under a rock to have missed the phenomenon of The Merry Widow. She had seen the operetta at least once in London a few years ago and thoroughly enjoyed it. Hearing the music, however, brought back memories not of the show but of the last time she had heard it, which had been at Aunt Rosamund's annual costume ball during the previous season.
It had been Matthew's first and only London party.
The theme was Olympians. Mary had wanted to go as Minerva, but her mother had heard a rumour that Miss Clerkenwell, the debutante of the moment, had already picked Minerva as her costume of choice and advised Mary to change so as not to put herself in competition.
"Remember when it was you who got to dictate fashions, Mary?" pointed out Edith snidely.
Mary remembered very well and glared at her. "Her grandfather was a banker! It's quite insufferable."
Nevertheless, she resigned her claim to Minerva and picked Diana instead, a choice that made her mother raise her eyebrows. Edith went as Hebe, the cup bearer. This was not so ironic.
That Saturday, dressed in a white gown of the classical style (via the Regency), and a matching jewellery set of silver crescent moons, with a little bow and quiver slung artlessly (or artfully) over her shoulders, Mary appeared with her parents and sister in her aunt's salon which had been transformed into an aesthete's Greek paradise. It was to all intents and purposes a typical society ball, lifted above its fellows by Lady Rosamund's inventiveness of decoration and the effort to which her guests went to be a part of it.
Mary flitted round the ballroom, a glass of champagne in her hand, bestowing charming smiles on everyone she saw, though her particular attention was reserved for single gentlemen of high rank. This was her first season since Patrick's death and so the first season in which she lacked a marital safety net. It was also her first season since Pamuk and she was finding it a real effort. It would have been impossible for her to say whether the change was in the men who approached her or in her attitude towards them, but change there definitely was. The young and eligible seemed to ignore her and instead clustered round Miss Clerkenwell and her eighty thousand pounds like bluebottles round a gaudily polished dung heap. The men who did pursue her were not as young or titled as they had been once and the very thought of any of them as a husband made Mary shudder however much she tried to disguise it. She could imagine their beards, their stomachs, their mean little eyes, and the thought of being in close contact to them was repulsive. Not that any of them had come close to proposing to her over the three weeks they had been in London that April, though they pursued her. Nobody could simultaneously attract and repel quite the way Mary did.
Still she flitted and attempted to charm her way round the ballroom even after she had overheard some old society gossip make a remark under her breath involving the phrase, "mutton dressed as lamb." For a moment she thought this woman had heard something about Pamuk; but no, she did not need that kind of speculation to pass judgement.
Then Mary had found herself face to face with Cousin Matthew.
He had only come down to London on Friday night for a dinner at Lord Grantham's club and then for Rosamund's party. He was quite naturally a source of intense interest to society as the new heir of Downton, especially considering his origins and the peculiar way he was behaving himself. For he was dressed in ordinary white tie with no concession to bed sheets or breast plates like some of the other young men. Moreover he danced very little and without any apparent logic behind his choice of partners. (It would have been very shocking to discover that he had simply asked the ladies he liked the look of without any thought to their social background or whether they were eligible or not for marriage.) Mary had been amused to overhear more than one young woman declare him the most interesting gentleman in the room basing their judgement solely on his prowling around the edges of the dance floor looking awkward and not talking to anyone.
"How do you like your first ball then, Matthew?" Mary asked him, glad of the momentary respite from trying to be attractive to unattractive men.
"I have been to balls before, you know! Neither Manchester nor Oxford are quite the barbarian outposts I think you imagine them, cousin." He sounded in something of a snit, or maybe just bewildered. Mary did not much care which.
"Very well. How do like your first London ball?"
He smiled wryly at her. "Not as much as it likes me, I think! I have just this moment been introduced by force to the famous Miss Clerkenwell; she was very nice to me, however."
Mary could have happily strangled the blasted woman with her bare hands. "Of course she was," she replied indifferently. "She has a large fortune from trade and she wants a title."
Matthew blinked. "Oh. Well, I liked her anyway."
"Why didn't you bother with a costume?" she continued hastily, not wanting to spend any more time discussing Miss Clerkenwell than she had to. "It only makes you stand out."
"But I did!" He turned to his side, and showed off a modest scabbard containing a sword – or something that passed for one. Then, to Mary's increasing incredulity, lifted up one of his feet so she could see a pair of gauze wings attached to each of his shiny, black dress shoes. They were really charmingly discreet and adorable. Mary had to try hard not to approve of his taste.
"Hermes, I suppose?" she asked casually.
Matthew looked distinctly smug. "Perseus."
Before Mary could reply to this (and she was too surprised initially know what to say) she was accosted by Lord Blickling, one of the fattest and most middle-aged of her dwindling number of suitors.
He bowed as far as he could, which was not very, and bestowing on her an unctuous smile begged the honour of her hand for the next waltz.
Mary's heart sank. "Oh...but I..." She tried to put off answering but before she could think of an excuse or plead a full dance card, which she did not have, she felt Matthew's hand unexpectedly on her elbow.
"I'm sorry, sir," he said cheerfully, "but Lady Mary has already promised this dance to me."
Lord Blickling's smile hardly faltered even as Mary shot her cousin a frowning glance. "Then the one after perhaps?"
Mary opened her mouth but again Matthew spoke before her. "That one too, I'm afraid!"
Mary was proud of how extremely calmly she added, "I'm terribly sorry, my lord. As you can see, it is quite impossible for me to accept your kind invitation. Next time, perhaps."
These were the last two dances of the evening, and the Crawleys were to return home the following week. His lordship had to be contented with this pleasantry and he retired from the field of conquest with no very cordial feelings towards the victorious Mr. Crawley.
Meanwhile, Mary turned to look directly at Matthew. She raised her eyebrows. "So I suppose this is your attempt to deserve your costume!"
"Did it work?"
She raised one elegant shoulder and then dropped it before replying with a mischievous smile, "Lord Blickling certainly has some monstrous qualities to him!"
He grinned back at her and met her eyes in appreciation and for a brief moment she liked him very much. The orchestra had almost finished the introduction to The Merry Widow Waltz and Matthew held out his hand to her.
"I was going to ask you to dance anyway before he appeared."
"You anticipated my answer."
"Well, you can change it now if you like. Will you dance this one with me, cousin Mary?"
She placed her hand in his and sighed, making more of a fuss than she really felt. "I suppose it would look bad if I refused!"
"Very bad indeed," he murmured as he led her onto the floor, glancing sideways at her.
As the waltz proper started, he pulled her into a loose hold and guided her out among the couples already there. Mary was surprised at how competent he was but had no intention of telling him so.
"I wonder," she said after a few moments of silence, "what those people who believe that dancing equates to marriage would say about your decision to engage me without bothering to ask first!"
"Is that a widely held view then?" Matthew replied evasively.
"Among the readers of Jane Austen certainly!"
There was a little pause and then he asked, "Do you count yourself as among them?"
The dance required Mary to look over her partner's shoulder and not at his face so Matthew could not see her raised eyebrows.
"To be sure I have read her. Who has not?"
"Who indeed? But do other people go around comparing their conversations to ones in books?"
Mary shrugged. "I don't know, but I think several ladies here tonight were pinning their hopes on your declaring them not handsome enough to tempt you."
If he could not see her raised eyebrows then she could not see his blush. "I'm sorry if I gave that impression!"
"You're sorry for it? Why, Matthew, you really are new to society!"
Some shift in the way he was holding her gave her the impression that he was smiling. "Is Jane Austen a particular favourite of yours then?"
"Not very," she replied immediately, though she was surprised at the shift in the discussion.
"But you have read her."
"Of course. Ladies like me may be either well-read or exceptional at embroidery; it is hard to do both at the same time, and I find sewing very tedious."
Matthew chuckled. "I see. Who do you like reading then if not Austen?"
She thought a moment before answering. He sounded genuinely interested which was surprising. She could not remember the last time someone had asked what she liked to read. Or her opinion on anything really. So she gave him an unusually frank answer. "I prefer more modern authors such as Henry James or George Eliot. I find their psychological exploration of character more interesting than Austen's satire. There is something very dry about that, however amusing it is."
"And what of Dickens and Brontë? Are they deep enough for you?" pressed Matthew. He still sounded interested though his tone was light.
"Ah, I like Jane Eyre very much but it is a very long time since I read any Dickens. However, I remember enjoying Great Expectations and David Copperfield when I was younger."
"And Gaskell? She is my mother's favourite but perhaps she is too Mancunian for you!"
Mary laughed at that. "Far too Mancunian, I am afraid! All those descriptions of union rights and the living conditions of factory workers... It is very wicked of me, I'm sure, but I simply have no interest in it. Please don't tell Cousin Isobel!"
"Your secret is safe with me, Mary."
He spoke facetiously but her heart skipped a beat in alarm all the same. It tended to do that whenever secrets were mentioned nowadays, and she quickly moved the conversation on.
"What about you?" she asked him impulsively. "I suppose you like Gaskell, and Austen too probably!"
"Yes, I do, though I confess I prefer Dickens to both."
"Even considering his prejudice against your profession?"
"Perhaps because of it; there's a good deal of truth in it!"
Mary laughed lightly again and noticed that during their discussion they had made almost three full laps of the room. No dance had ever gone so quickly and the thought rather disturbed her.
"But come, Matthew, what are we about?" she began again overly cheerfully. "As an admirer of Austen, you must realise that we have broken a cardinal rule of engagement by discussing books in the ballroom!"
"You identify with Elizabeth Bennet then?" asked Matthew with a smile as the music drew to a triumphant close.
"Almost as much as you do with Mr. Darcy, I think!" she replied, dropping his hand and stepping away from him, a knowing smirk hovering on her lips.
Then she realised they had to dance together yet again.
Listening to the strains of the same waltz drift across the Piazza, Mary remembered this dance. It stood out vividly from every other one. In hindsight, it was extraordinary. Matthew had been little more than a stranger, an obstruction, a nuisance then. Sometimes a curiosity. She had certainly been curious, though she had pretended she had not been; she could admit that now that she was far away in both time and space. She admitted nothing else beyond it, however, even as the music sent her the first pang of home sickness that she had felt in the two or three weeks since she had left Downton. Had it been the Overture to HMS Pinafore or a Serenade by Elgar, she could not have been more comprehensively transported back to England, back to the ballrooms of London and thus back to Matthew.
She suddenly missed them all. With great effort she forced Sybil and Mama and Papa and even Carson and Anna to the forefront of her mind, banishing Matthew from his predominance in her thoughts. She longed for the smell of English grass, for the ticking of the grandfather clock, for the pleasing familiarity of a gentleman with hat and umbrella, for Carson bringing in the paper freshly ironed at breakfast.
But in the meantime, there was Venice and a cafe band playing a beautiful waltz and an American girl she hardly knew swaying happily beside her without a care in the world. Mary observed her unnoticed for a few moments with amusement before she realised she was the not only one thus occupied. Two young Italian men were standing a few metres away and were watching them both with evident admiration. They were casually dressed in their waistcoats without jackets and their black hair was slicked back. Mary accidentally caught the eye of one of them and he winked at her. She was shocked though not as shocked as she should have been. Looking away immediately (only lingering a second), she nudged Hettie.
"Miss Bowen, there are two gentlemen over there who will dance the waltz with us if you want them to."
Hettie looked first at her, then at the two roués, then back at her with a distressing lack of subtlety.
"Do you really think so? They're awfully attractive, don't you think?"
Handsome though they were, Mary thought they looked rather slimy. She felt jaded and old in comparison with her companion's freshness and optimism and her heart rebelled against it. So she smiled widely and replied, "Extremely attractive!"
Then she turned the full power of her most charming come-hither smile onto the two men. It had never failed her before and it did not fail her now. They sauntered up, looking their prey up and down with that casual insouciance that Mary had almost got used to in Italy, but she was no longer afraid of such looks and stood her ground.
"Signorine!" they addressed them and raised their hats.
"Signori!" replied Mary with a calm nod. Hettie's eyes were round and wide and Mary really hoped she understood enough Italian to have followed their conversation, if such it could be called, so far.
The taller of the two held out his hand to Mary with a devilishly hopeful smile. "Lei vuol ballare?"
Mary blinked away her memories of a different hand and a different dance and tilted her head. "Questa signorina vuole ballare." She indicated Miss Bowen.
Immediately the other man offered his hand to Hettie. To Mary's surprise she looked up at her as if for permission before taking his hand and being swept into a vigorous waltz. She laughed out loud from the joy of it and Mary felt a quick pang of conscience that she was somehow responsible for leading her astray by allowing her to dance with this stranger. She squashed the feeling: Miss Bowen was not her charge and a dance was only a dance.
"Allora, Lei non va ballare 'sta sera?" asked the first man mournfully.
She shook her head in apology.
"Dai, signorina..." He spread his hands imploringly before her.
The music launched into its main theme for the final time, Hettie laughed once more and Mary changed her mind abruptly, allowing him to pull her scandalously close against him and whirl her around several times before the piece came to an end. He was... he was not quite right, and her heart beat fast out of fear or exhileration or both, but he was young and active and it had been a long time since she had been in a man's arms. When he finally released her, only squeezing her hand a little longer than would have been appropriate in England, she was flushed and energised. Her "grazie" carried an unusual weight of sincerity behind it and she might even have been tempted to talk to him more, using the importance of practising her Italian as an excuse, if her grandmother and Mrs. Bowen had not joined them. The combined force of two chaperones bearing down on her partner and his friend was enough to scare them both off and Mary rolled her eyes at how harmless they had turned out to be in the end. They might not have been quite right but, Mary was surprised to realise as she watched them melt back into the night, they were not so very wrong either.
A/N: I fully expect flames for Mary's literary preferences (not a fan of Austen! Slagging off Gaskell! Sacriledge!), but I've thought a lot about it and can defend my position, if you want a good argument about it! In the mean time I shall sit her with a brazier, toasting fork and marshmallows and wait for the complaints to roll in! However, if you did enjoy this chapter, why not check out the story I wrote last week for M/M Monday Madness ("mmmondaymadness" LJ): The Change in the Game? More banter to be found there!
Next chapter: I actually don't know, but it will involve Sybil. And probably Matthew - in real time! And maybe, if you're very lucky, Branson as well.