A/N: Happy Monday!

Thank you again, so much, for all your brilliantly thought-provoking feedback, it means the world to me. Thanks as ever to EOlivet for her endless support, and for making sure this chapter was coherent as I wrote all but the first 300 words between midnight and 6am this morning... Slightly idiotic of me, perhaps, but if I hadn't finished it then I wouldn't have had another chance till Thursday, and I didn't want you to have to wait that long!

Without further ado, enjoy...!

Chapter Twelve

Sleep fled from Matthew too early, as it had for weeks now, and the burgeoning spring sunlight seemed to him like a personal insult in the face of his own miserable state. He squeezed his eyes shut against it. With the beginnings of springtide, life seemed to be blossoming everywhere, in stark, rotten contrast to how hardened, dulled… deadened, he felt himself. Mary…

He heard her rise in the next room, heard her gasping, ragged breaths followed by the splash of cleansing water. As always, he felt an accusatory, unforgiving clench of his gut in response. As always, he quickly gave up on trying to reclaim any lost sleep as the thoughts that taunted his restless, inactive mind were too cruel to bear.

Wearily hauling himself out of bed, he rang for Molesley and waited, his head dropping into his hands.

Mary, in the room beside him, rose as well. She was tired, so… dreadfully tired. Of all of it. She passed a hand over her face and sighed… It wouldn't be getting easier any time soon. She had to talk to Matthew… Whether he would listen or not, she really didn't know. It pained her to see him so distant, so withdrawn. And she was so terribly confused because he wasn't angry with her, that she could tell, but then… she didn't know what he felt. To see his face would be to judge that he felt nothing, almost, as if to feel anything at all would simply be too much and so he had just… stopped. And it was that, more than anything, that broke her heart, day after day.

Still, no matter how her husband felt (or she, for that matter), there was something they couldn't very well avoid for very much longer. As Anna dressed her, and she tried to pat some colour back into her cheeks and mask the tired circles under her eyes with powder, she thought hard. It seemed a nigh on impossible task to actually have a moment alone with Matthew to talk to him at all, these days. There was no opportunity among their family in the evenings, and at night… No. She couldn't face his rejection in the false, mocking intimacy of what should be their bedroom again. She closed her eyes and sighed heavily, and in the quiet that followed as Anna wordlessly set her hair, she faintly heard Matthew's usual, kindly dismissal of Molesley as he finished his morning preparations in the next room.

When he heard a quiet tap on the door, Matthew naturally assumed it was Molesley who'd forgotten to take his shirt that needed mending downstairs.

"Come in," he muttered distractedly, peering through narrowed eyes at the reflection of his fingers working the knot in his tie, which he'd decided to re-do himself not because Molesley had done it unsatisfactorily but simply because he found it comforting to do so, which was hardly something he could share with his valet.

His fingers stilled as Mary came in, a chill tension making him incapable even of breathing for just a moment.

"I hope I'm not disturbing you," she offered softly. Her fingers lingered on the doorframe, flexing anxiously, before she came fully in and closed the door.

"Not at all, it's quite alright." His eyes swept over her, and a shadow of concern crossed his expression before it set again to a despondent and forced neutrality… a depressing necessity of his shame. "You look tired," he murmured. "I heard you being… unwell, this morning, do you think you should see Doctor Clarkson?"

"I am tired," she shrugged, and dropped her eyes from his face to her own twisting hands. "And sometimes 'unwell', as you so delicately put it; but it's hardly worth worrying poor Clarkson over. I'm with child, Matthew, and it's only to be expected."

He flinched defensively. "I know that! It's just…" For a moment his voice softened, before he seemed to lose his nerve and turned stiffly away from her, making a study of his cufflinks on the side. "It doesn't matter. But I hope you're alright."

She wanted to shake him. Alright? How could he hope that she was alright, and be so disinclined to do anything about it if she wasn't? Fobbing her off to Clarkson for her sickness was hardly caring, and her throat stung with bitterness.

"I suppose I'm managing. But I suppose that's what I'd wanted to talk to you about – as you say, I'm sure I do look tired, and you can't be the only one who might notice it."

"What do you mean?" he frowned, looking back at her, and her hardened expression made him cold.

She spoke carefully. "I mean that we must announce it soon."

Matthew blanched, the colour draining from his cheeks.

"We can't, Mary. Not yet. It's too soon –"

"Too soon!" she laughed incredulously. "Matthew, after three months it's hardly soon enough! I won't be able to hide it for very much longer and then –"

"But we've only been married a month, and barely that!" His hands started to shake and he curled his fingers into tense fists. She was right, he knew that objectively, but even so every part of him screamed to maintain the protection of their secret. Things were difficult enough as it was without having to face the scrutiny of their family on this most intimate news. A cold, childlike fear seemed to grip him in a panicked vice, however vain he knew it to be.

He looked pleadingly at Mary. "They'll know, surely –"

His wife rolled her eyes, tiring of his resistance. "Well, yes, they probably might but I'm afraid there isn't a lot we can do about that. It will be obvious enough soon anyway, and we can hardly pretend it when the baby arrives a full two months earlier than it possibly could, don't you see that? It's best to get it done with."

"How can you be so uncaring about it?" Matthew exclaimed, struggling to quiet his tone in the awakening household. "Mary, if people suspected –"

"What?" she cut back at him irritably. "For heaven's sake, what do you expect will happen? Mama already knows my situation, though not about you, and as we are married there can be nothing to come of it but whispers, if that. The child will be legitimate as we are married, and after all isn't that what everyone had wanted for us?"

"That's – beside the point! I couldn't bear for them to think that… we were so immoral." He couldn't bear for his mother to think it, for Lord Grantham to think it, to have to face the shame of their knowledge…

Mary laughed harshly. "But we were! And there's no going back on it now, so you'll have to simply be a man about it and bear it, for there's nothing else to be done."

Matthew pressed his lips together, trying desperately to calm down as he reeled from her frankness. The fact that she was right only cut him more deeply with shame. The bitter and perceived slight on his masculinity wounded him, and more so as he thought of how she must hold him in comparison to… the other. And again, unwanted images pounded relentlessly into his mind as he withdrew from himself, despising the shell of a man he had become. She was right, and he was weak.

"I know," he finally bit out through clenched teeth, resting both hands on the table top as Mary wilted against the door. "I know, we have no choice, and that you're right, it must be soon. Just… not yet. I need some time to be able to face them all, it's… difficult."

"Difficult? And I suppose you think I find it all so easy!" She wanted to do more than shake him, now, she wanted to slap him, and hard. But… the ache in her chest at his anguish overwhelmed her anger, and she felt instead only terribly sad and run-down. She was so tired of it all. "Do you suppose I find any of this easy? Yes, Matthew, it is difficult, for you and for me. I made a – mistake, I made many of them, and you can well believe that I'm paying dearly for it every single day. Yes, it is difficult, but we are stuck with the choices we have made."

Matthew turned his face from her as his expression hardened bitterly.

"So it seems," he muttered quietly. Shaking his head, he straightened his tie, shrugged his jacket back on and walked to the door, his eyes downcast. He stopped beside her, body thrumming with tension. "I'm going down to breakfast, I can't think about this now. We'll tell them soon, I promise."

"Thank you."

As she stared blankly at the floor, she found herself noticing how close their hands were as he stood beside her, and a breath of a sigh escaped her lips. Matthew had seen, too, and as he watched her fingers flexing with an entranced fascination, the only thing he could think of was why this was only so difficult, this whole mess, because… he had fallen in love with her so hard, and so fiercely. If he hadn't… then he would not feel such an anguish that threatened to tear him apart, he was sure of it, and this would all be so much easier. If he hadn't allowed himself to believe…

"You weren't the only one to have made a mistake, you know," he whispered fiercely before slipping past her and into the coolness of the hallway.

Breakfast was terse, even more so than usual, and as Isobel sat down she could practically feel the unpleasant tension radiating from her son and his wife. They ate wordlessly between them, and she watched them… Mary's eyes cast despondently on her poached eggs and Matthew's with unnecessary fixation on his newspaper, though he had not turned the page for a full fifteen minutes.

She buttered her toast carefully. "Anything interesting in the paper this morning, my dear?" she asked when no more diverting conversation seemed forthcoming.

"What? Oh. No," he glanced up distractedly, then laid it aside and began tucking into his breakfast with unusual vigour as he answered her.

"Oh, you seemed to be rather engrossed, that's all," she said innocently. "I assumed it must be something fascinating!"

He chuckled lightly; a smile, at last. "Not at all… I'm just dealing with a – pretty complicated case at work, and it's distracting me rather." He shunted his food around his plate, not looking at either woman beside him.

"Well, I'm sorry to hear that," Isobel carried on in her motherly fashion. She was worried; he'd been working so hard recently and the effects were becoming palpable. "But you mustn't let it take up too much of your time outside of work, my dear; you've commitments at home as well –"

"Oh please, Mother…" he muttered brusquely, and she frowned. She wouldn't have thought she needed to prompt him to spend time with his wife, but at the moment he seemed almost entirely oblivious to her, and that certainly wasn't right. It troubled her, a great deal, but she was loathe to create a scene about it at the breakfast table.

Mary cut in. "I think dear Matthew has a tendency to see things as far more complicated than they truthfully are. But then I don't know, perhaps that helps in the field of law." She shrugged delicately and smiled, as if she'd hoped to pass off the comment affectionately, before spearing another forkful of eggs.

Isobel raised her eyebrows in vague amusement, noticing the tightness of Matthew's smile in response.

"On the contrary," he said slowly, still without looking at either of them, "I like to think that I pay things the due attention they deserve, that's all. Anyway I must go, I suppose I'll be back at the usual time. Goodbye…"

He folded his newspaper carefully, rose, and quickly kissed both his wife and mother on the cheek, only the barest brush of his lips as they bid him goodbye.

They finished themselves not long after, and went into the sitting room. Feeling too drained for anything else, Mary picked up a fashion magazine to flick idly through for a while, supposing that she'd do something more productive a little later on. Perhaps she'd distract herself by visiting with Isobel; the fresh air would probably do her some good…

"What are your plans for today?" she asked her mother-in-law brightly, thinking to that end. "Do you think you'll visit the Ambler's cottage again? I'd quite like to join you if you are, providing you wouldn't mind."

"I wouldn't mind at all, my dear!" Isobel looked quietly thrilled, and sat down across from Mary. Her needlework was in her hands but she placed it down into her lap, and suddenly looked very serious. "I do plan on going across later, but… if you'll allow me to be frank, Mary, I'd rather like to know what's wrong before I think of any of that."

"What's… wrong?" Mary blinked, wide-eyed and on edge."Whatever do you mean?"

Isobel's lips pursed in a manner frighteningly similar to Matthew's, and Mary saw at once that she would not get out of this easily. She moistened her lips and waited, mustering all the unaffected innocence she could.

"I mean, what's wrong between Matthew and yourself." Isobel saw Mary's mouth open to protest, so carried on before she could manage it, holding her hand up. "I'm afraid that I'm just as stubborn as he is, so there's no point pretending otherwise. You aren't happy, my dear, and neither is he, and I suspect that's been the case for some time. Am I right?"

Every ounce of independence and self-preservation within Mary urged her to hold fast to her pretence, but… Isobel was right. A pretence was all it was. But how could she admit that, to Matthew's mother? That their marriage was a miserable sham? She could argue, she could protest, she wanted to, but… she was so tired of arguing, of pretending, of being unhappy.

Exhaustion suddenly overwhelmed her, and when her lips parted to reply all that came out was a sob, before her head dropped into her hands. Every feeling, each one of disappointment or rejection or shame or guilt, that she had locked away within her breast and forbidden now released, in a wave of crushing misery that spilled out in her tears.

She was barely aware of the settee dipping beside her as Isobel moved to her side, or of the older woman's arm coming comfortingly about her shoulders. When she did notice it, Mary realised that it was the first real embrace with any affection that she'd received since marrying Matthew, and her sobs wracked from her shuddering chest all the harder.

"Oh, Isobel!" she cried, trying desperately to wipe the tears from her cheeks even as more fell. "I'm – sorry, I –"

"Hush, dear, don't apologise," Isobel soothed her gently, waiting for her to calm. Mary's heart swelled with her distress and Isobel's kindness, coming so naturally, and she wondered idly in the midst of her tears if she'd ever comforted Matthew such, when he was little. It led her to wonder how she would comfort her own child, but… she was not ready, not nearly ready enough to comprehend caring for it when she was so distraught herself. She couldn't do it, and not… alone.

Isobel rubbed her back in warm, wide circles, and passed Mary a handkerchief with which she dabbed quietly at her eyes. "Believe it or not, I very much want you both to be happy," Isobel said quietly. "It's very hard to see you both in such tension, and I simply can't understand what can have caused a rift between you so soon. Matthew loves you –"

"Does he?" Mary sniffed quietly. "I think he did, at one time. But now…"

Isobel frowned affectionately. "Of course he does! You know as well as I do the fuss he made over the prospect of you or one of your sisters being pushed at him, and I know how you were equally opposed to it – I don't know what you've argued about but you must believe that he loves you if he married you!" She thought back to Matthew's questions about love, and how besotted he'd been… Yes, she was sure. How could that have been laid aside? "Have you argued, is that it?" she asked gently. It could be an adjustment, she knew, to suddenly have to share your life with somebody, in all and intimate areas, and it wasn't uncommon that newlywed couples should argue. If that was all…

"Yes, we've argued." Mary twisted her hands in her lap, the delicate lace of the handkerchief twining around her fingers and sighed. Oddly, she felt a certain liberty in releasing this. For so long her troubles had consumed her from within, trapped and toxic, locked within her mind, with Matthew's scorn the only outlet. She shuddered again as she wept. "But it's so – hopeless!"

"Now, you mustn't say that!" Isobel tried to smile reassuringly. "I know that when you are newly married, all those little issues seem like the most important thing in the world and so you fight over them – but you are far more important than those things, and when you each remember that they will fall into place."

If only it were that easy! Mary's heart clenched.

"Please, Isobel – you're so kind, but you don't know –"

"No, my dear, I don't. And I don't need to, it's between you and Matthew. Whatever it is, though, will be put in its proper perspective if you let it. If Matthew loved you, enough to want to spend his life with you and marry you –"

"But he didn't!" Mary stood up, agitated, twisting her fingers together in distress as she paced to the fireplace. Another sob broke from her, and she turned to see the shock in Isobel's expression. Mary had grown fond of her, even so soon, and though she was trying to help, she… couldn't understand…

"What can you mean?" She said, as if to voice Mary's precise thoughts. As Mary's face crumpled again, the handkerchief lifting to her mouth, Isobel stood and came to stand with her, squeezing her hands tightly. "Tell me, Mary dear. I want to help you, please let me."

To let her, though, would be to destroy her opinion of her son. Her devotion to and pride of him was obvious, and Mary's heart broke a little even at the thought of tainting that with their broken truth.

She never meant to tell her. Certainly, if sound of mind and not fogged with anguish, Mary would never have chosen to. It wasn't fair. But standing before her now, seeing her imploring face, her body crying out for release… she couldn't hold it in any longer. She needed an ally, and while Mary knew that Isobel may well hate her for the truth (even a partial truth), she could hardly be more miserable than she was at the moment. And so, before she had even consciously thought of it, the words were tumbling from her lips.

"I'm so sorry," she said in a small, broken voice. "I wish that I could tell you otherwise, but Matthew didn't marry me because he loved me. It was because he had to."

At first, Isobel didn't understand. She frowned, confused, and as Mary's expression wearily resigned itself, Isobel noticed where her hand had instinctively dropped to rest. Clues began to slot together in Isobel's mind, all her instincts as a nurse on sudden high alert, and she realised how she could have missed the signs before now. She sat down again, dropping unceremoniously to the settee, her lips parted in shock.

"But, I –" she stammered, trying to wrap her mind around it even as her own mind pushed the very though forcefully away. Of course she knew these things happened, but… Matthew… That her own dear boy, whom she'd brought up to be moral and right and good, and caring and loving, that he should… She shook her head in disbelief.

Mary needed no mothering instincts to understand Isobel's sudden stupor.

"I'm so very sorry," she said quietly, making no move from the fireplace. "I can't conceive how disappointed you must be, and I can only reassure you that Matthew is in every way the gentleman and the… the good man that you have always believed him to be… and I love him very dearly." Her voice was choked with tears of shame and regret. "Please, you mustn't let this change your opinion of him, because he cares so deeply for it."

While Isobel was silent for some time, Mary could only assume that she was too consumed with disappointment to bear a response. Feeling weak with her own despair, and the fact that Isobel was now dragged into it as well, Mary turned her face away… and was startled when she felt a light touch on her shoulder.

"There is one thing I don't understand," Isobel said quietly.

When Mary looked at her, she recognised the light she'd seen in Matthew's eyes as he'd begged her to tell him he was wrong about what she had done. And just as she'd not been able to lie to him, she felt her resolve slipping into exhaustion as his mother now faced her.

"Only one!" she smiled wryly, at a loss for what else to say.

Isobel pursed her lips. "I know… that Matthew loved you. You needn't ask me how, but you said it yourself as well, and I believe that he must have for… things to have progressed between you in such a manner. You claim with such fervour that he is a good man, so I presume to understand that when you told him you were with child, he proposed to marry you."

"Yes, that's right," Mary nodded weakly. She supposed, at least, that Matthew now needn't worry about his mother's reaction to their announcement… but that was not to worry about now.

"I see," Isobel continued. It still did not add up, in so many ways. "Forgive me, my dear, but if Matthew loved you enough to – well – I can't understand why you've suggested he didn't want to marry you, despite the… unfortunate circumstance. The long and the short of it seems to be that you were both in love, and now you are husband and wife with a little one expected. And if Matthew is half the good man I have believed him to be, he wouldn't turn away from you now, he'd be overjoyed at the prospect of a child and a family with the woman he loves."

"I suppose you're right, he would." In fact, Mary knew instinctively, there was no suppose about it. She swallowed thickly past the lump in her throat. Despite knowing the desperate shame of her plight, she felt a sudden and desperate urge to rid herself of the secret. In a wild, reckless passion, she didn't care if Isobel would hate her. She didn't care if she would join with Matthew and look at her always with such reproach, she would leave if she had to, she simply… couldn't bear it any more. Not this awful misery, the rottenness of living as Matthew's wife only to feel trapped and shunned, knowing that he had loved her and now could not bear to look at her. It was intolerable, and if she had to bear this child alone, well, in this moment she half wondered if that might not be preferable. All she could think of was that she was sick of this.

Her lip trembled, and she led Isobel gently to sit down again before she stared into her lap. The words came as if not from herself, and she listened calmly to her own voice. "I wish I could tell you anything otherwise," she began, "but I'm afraid the issue is rather more complicated than that."

When Matthew arrived home from work that evening, not so much later than usual, the sun was beginning to set and his bicycle cast a long shadow on the gravelled roads. All the way home, he'd braced himself for facing Mary, as he knew he would inevitably have to this evening. He'd been thinking, in fact it had plagued him all day, and he'd come to see that they should simply bite the bullet and announce her condition. It was becoming more obvious, and at least once it was out, well… he could deal with it, then.

He pushed open the door with a sigh, smiled and Molesley and passed over his things.

"Thank you," he said gently. "Is my mother in? And Lady Mary?"

"Both are in, Sir, so far as I know," Molesley replied. "Shall I fetch you some tea?"

"Yes, please."

He wandered into the sitting room and found his mother, sitting pensively with some barely touched embroidery on her knee. The light wasn't even on, and he quickly rectified that.

"Hello," he smiled tightly, and kissed her on the cheek, surprised when she didn't smile back at him. He frowned, but didn't think much of it. "Where's Mary?"

"She's upstairs, resting." She waited until he had sat down, and looked at him, trying to understand him as she now knew him, praying that he might still prove her wrong.

"Are you quite alright, Mother?" Matthew asked, noticing the hard glint in her eyes and the set of her mouth. A look that had, as a small boy, set fear into his heart when he knew he was due to be scolded, and that sometimes – evidently – still could. "What is it?"

Isobel laced her fingers together in her lap and tapped her thumbs, waiting for a moment to best choose her words.

"I was wondering," she eventually said, in all manner of calmness, "just when you are going to stop punishing your wife for her one mistake of allowing the advances of Kemal Pamuk." As Matthew's eyes widened, his jaw slackening in desperate, humiliated shock, she carried on. "And when you are going to accept responsibility for her child, whether it is your own or not."

TBC

A/N: Thank you ever so much for reading. I hope you enjoyed it, and of course I'd love to know what you thought! And now I think I shall get some more sleep... :P Thank you!