AN: This is in response to the EAST tumblr prompt (EAST = Edith, Anthony, Sybil, Tom) and I thought it would be interesting to explore the situation that might develop if Edith, rather than Mary or Sybil's parents, was the first to find out what she was up to. Especially if Edith had her own secret...

Edith watches her younger sister scamper up the drive, a dark shape against the gravel's white glow in the pale light of the stars. She stands with the curtains open, knowing she won't be seen with her bedroom light off. Anyway Sybil is too preoccupied with glancing over her shoulder every few steps, to where the car still waits. Edith can just see the stream of exhaust rising from the back of it.

Sybil approaches the house and Edith imagines rather than hears the sound of the front door opening and closing. The car at the end of the drive pulls away, lights still off. A hundred yards down the road, they flare into life and then disappear over a rise.

She really should be more careful, Edith thinks. She does not know how many times Sybil has slipped out, but this is the second time Edith's caught sight of her in as many weeks. If she doesn't start being more discreet, she's going to get caught.

Edith smiles at the thought of what Mary would say if she knew her innocent, serious darling was sneaking out to meet a boy, and at the knowledge that for once she herself knows something that Mary doesn't. She is less gleeful about their parents' likely reaction. If Sybil is keeping her relationship a secret, whoever drives that car—twenty years old if it's a day—must not be someone who would meet with their approval.

Edith has no plans to expose her: not to Mary, certainly not to Mama and Papa. After all, she's in no position to judge. As it happens, Edith has a secret of her own.

-ooo-

It's wildly inappropriate, of course. He's her professor. Or was, before the term finished, but he remains skittish about making their relationship public. Being the sort of man he is, he's been scrupulous about not creating an appearance of favoritism: in fact, he gave her a poorer mark on her last paper than she thought she deserved, though it was high enough that she only sulked a little. Later, in bed, he told her that her citations had been sloppy and her use of comma splices distracting. I expect more of the students I know have more to offer, he told her when she complained, before he cupped her cheek to bring her lips to his.

Edith never set out to begin a liaison with Dr Strallan, and the idea of herself as youthful temptress is really quite laughable to her. Likewise, he is the furthest thing from the cliche of the worldly seducer that she can think of. She likes to think it was fate, that winter day in the market, that made them look up at exactly the same moment to meet each other's eyes over the produce bins. Not only did he recognize Edith, he actually recalled questions she'd asked in lecture. For twenty minutes they lingered by the apples, their conversation quickly becoming tangential to topics brought up in class. Finally Edith gathered up her courage and asked if he might like to go for a coffee.

"Oh, I don't know if that would be quite..." he trailed off, his kind, sad eyes skittering away from Edith's face and over her shoulder, and that was when she knew for sure he'd felt it too: something too deep to call mere attraction. More like two souls calling to each other, if you wanted to be poetic about it.

"Quite what?" She asked, smiling innocently. "We're having an interesting discussion and I'd like to continue it. What could anyone think was wrong with that?" Maybe it was disingenuous of her, but sandwiched between two such sisters as Mary and Sybil, having a man's attention was a rare enough occurrence that Edith wasn't inclined to give it up lightly. Besides, even though she has read her share of romance novels and she firmly believes in soulmates and the power of chance meetings, she is pragmatic enough to admit that sometimes kismet needs a little help.

Since then their relationship has progressed as if on rails, thanks in no small part to Edith's determination. A week after coffee they had dinner at his flat; a week after that they slept together. She is his first since his wife died, he told her afterward, looking as though he expected her to laugh. Edith's heart broke a little for him, especially when he followed up that admission with "I do hope I haven't disappointed you. I'm not very good at this sort of thing." She'd been wavering over whether to tell him just how little experience she had to compare him with but she wanted them to be on equal footing again, so she went for it.

"So you see, I can't possibly be disappointed," she laughed, and he rewarded her with a grateful smile. In the intervening months they've spent quite a lot of time together and practice, as they say, makes perfect. If older men are truly less virile than younger ones, Edith thinks that Anthony Strallan must have started out with a prodigious supply of vigor.

But conflict looms now that the term is over. Edith has never found the secrecy alluring and would like nothing better than to bring things out into the open, but Anthony argues that they should allow enough time to pass that it will be plausible that they didn't start up while she was still his student. She has agreed... grudgingly. It'll be a different story when autumn returns, if things haven't changed before then, and she hopes there will not have to be an ultimatum. She doesn't know if she has it in her to issue one.

-ooo-

University breaks before college and Sybil still has one more week of school, but the next day is Saturday and she sleeps through breakfast. This is not typical of the youngest Crawley and, judging by the talk over the dining room table, the oddity is not lost on their parents. Curiously, Mary dismisses it, saying that Sybil is probably just adopting the university student's schedule ahead of time. Edith wonders whether it's Mary's protective instinct leading her to deflect attention from Sybil's behavior, or if she actually suspects something.

It doesn't matter. Edith and Mary have never gotten on well, and Edith sees little point in speculating with her elder sister when she can get the real story from her younger one. After breakfast she goes upstairs to do just that.

Sybil is still in bed, but her door is unlocked. Edith closes it behind her loudly enough that Sybil stirs and rolls on her side, raising a face clouded in dark curls. "What time is it?" She moans peevishly.

"Late night?" Edith leans back against the door, folding her arms and fixing her sister with a significant look.

Even half asleep, Sybil covers rather well. "I was up until three studying for that bloody calculus exam I've got on Monday," she mutters.

"You were up until three in the morning studying. On a Friday night." Even if she hadn't seen Sybil sneaking back in, Edith wouldn't have bothered to hide her skepticism.

Sybil does not embroider. "Yeah. I was."

At least she's a decent liar, Edith thinks. The complete lack of outrage is what rings false. "If you acted like that with Papa he'd know something was up," she remarks. "If he as much as accused you of lying and you didn't even get a little tetchy."

Sybil sits up slowly and swings her legs over the side of the bed, pushing her hair out of her face. "I don't know what you're—"

"I saw you," Edith interrupts, "last night. Coming back in." Sybil's shoulders sag and the color goes out of her face, and Edith knows that it's even worse than she thought.

Wordlessly, Sybil gets up and goes into the bathroom, shutting the door behind her. A couple of minutes later water rushes into the sink. The door opens and she comes out looking marginally refreshed. "I'm not going to tell anyone," Edith says quietly.

This does not make Sybil's eyes any less wary. "So why tell me?" She asks. They've never been particularly close either, though there's not the rivalry between them that there is between Edith and Mary.

Edith shrugs. "So you'll know to be more careful next time." She turns away, pointedly refraining from looking at Sybil to gauge the effect of her words, and strokes the fringe of an afghan laid over the back of the armchair. "So who is he?"

"What makes you think there's a he?"

Sybil's right: she could be sneaking off with a girlfriend or a gaggle of them, to parties or the clubs in town. But she would not look back at the car of a platonic friend that many times. "Just a feeling," Edith answers, nonchalant, but Sybil remains silent. Apparently she requires a show of good faith. "I'll tell you about mine if you'll tell me about yours."

Edith keeps her face turned away, but she can almost hear Sybil's ears pricking up. "All right," she agrees, flipping the duvet up over the wrinkled sheets and pulling herself up to sit cross-legged on top of it. "You first."

Edith perches a few feet away on the foot of the bed and gives Sybil the outline of her and Anthony's saga thus far. She is surprised by how good it feels to talk to someone about it. Sybil is a sympathetic listener, nodding and maintaining the right amount of eye contact, making the right noises.

"But after a little while longer he wants to tell people you're together?" She asks after Edith has whinged a bit about Anthony's reluctance to break secrecy. "He's said that?"

Edith drops her gaze. He hasn't said it in so many words, but he's danced around it. I think my sister would like you, he told her a few weeks ago. As his sister is his closest living relative, this means something. "He's just said that we should 'allow a decent interval to pass,' whatever that means."

Sybil chuckles. "Well, if you don't mind me saying, he sounds overcautious."

"Not like you," Edith replies with a laugh, and knows she's said the wrong thing when her sister's face goes still. Nevertheless, she plunges ahead jovially. "So what's so awful about your boyfriend that you can't tell us about him?"

"Nothing," Sybil answers. "He's just not..." her shoulders rise and fall.

"I saw his car," Edith says after a moment. "I think I can figure out from that what he's not." She circles back to an easier question. "What's his name?"

"Tom."

"And how did you and Tom meet?" Sybil tells her and Edith's heart sinks a little. Oh, Sybil, some random in the street? And a mechanic? She almost groans.

"I know how it sounds," Sybil says, and Edith knows she has failed to keep her expression neutral. "But he's really very nice. And he's smart, Edith, he wants to be a writer. He got into university but after one term he realized it was all bollocks..."

Dropping out of university to become a manual laborer with delusions of literary grandeur doesn't sound smart, Edith thinks, it sounds callow and short-sighted. Who does this bloke think he is, Jack Kerouac? But one look at Sybil tells her it would be useless to say a word against him.

"He's fit, I suppose?" Edith asks with a smile, and is treated to a blushing recitation of the many physical charms of Tom the Intelligent and Mechanically Inclined Irishman. Oh, Lord, she's dead gone on him, Edith thinks. Then she really notices the dreamy look in Sybil's eyes and it hits her like a punch in the stomach. The first really wonderful time with Anthony wasn't so long ago; it's easy to recall that same look Sybil has now, because she has seen it reflected in the mirror.

She's not a child, Edith tells herself. But she is so used to thinking of Sybil as the baby, as an innocent. Her stomach flutters. What would Mary do in this situation, she wonders. Obviously the main concern is Sybil's happiness, and if she feels judged—or feels as though this Tom is being judged—she'll only shut down. Edith scoots closer to her sister, laying a hand on her knee. "I'm glad you've met someone you like," she says. "But think how it'll look if Mama and Papa find out without you having told them. Don't you think it'd be better to let them meet him and..." her hand rises to stir the air, fingers spread wide. "...Judge him on his own merits?" Sybil laughs and opens her mouth to retort, but before she can Edith adds, "I know, I know, glass houses, throwing stones."

Sybil laughs again and then the smile falls abruptly off her face. "Do you think they'd truly judge him on his own merits? A dockworker's son from Dublin?"

She holds Edith's gaze for a long moment before her eyebrow and the side of her mouth quirk up in tandem, and the sisters fall into a bout of hilarity together. "No," Edith admits. "No, I doubt they would. But you'll never know if you don't give them the chance, will you?"

"I suppose not." Sybil still has the giggles. "What a pair we are, with our secret affairs," she says, and Edith feels such a rush of warmth for her; she wants to protect and guide her but she doesn't know how, she can hardly conduct her own life. So she pulls Sybil into a hug. After a minute she realizes that she is drawing comfort as much as offering it.

-ooo-

A few days later Anthony rings her up and asks her to meet him in town. She takes the Mercedes, driving fast with the windows down, and by the time she reaches his flat her hair is a snarled mess but she doesn't care. He doesn't even ask her in. "Why don't we go out and have lunch?" He says, and Edith raises her eyebrows but leads him back to the car without comment. For once he does not remark on her driving, though she can see him white-knuckling the door handle whenever she crawls up the arse of the car in front, and she begins to worry.

They go to a restaurant he suggests that they've both been to before, though never together. It's popular with the uni crowd, students and faculty both. Once they've been seated and served drinks Edith leans forward and plants her elbows on the table. "So this is a change," she says.

Anthony's mouth folds in half in an awkward smile. "I know." He reaches over and brushes her bare forearm with the backs of his fingers, a gesture that releases a wave of pleasure mixed with relief. It's looking less and less like he's brought her here to finish with her. "I've missed you, these past weeks," he says, and the warmth radiating from his eyes makes her want to forget all about lunch and go back to his flat. Or the car, if they can't make it that far.

She resists the urge to drop her gaze. "I've missed you as well." She has not rung him since she moved home, nor texted other than to say she arrived safely. It's been difficult, hanging back, when she is so accustomed to being the one to take the lead in this relationship. But she has some pride.

"But I suppose you've been busy with your family," Anthony says, sounding a little forlorn.

The waiter comes back to take their orders and while Anthony is ordering his corned beef sandwich Edith realizes that she is not going to get a grand declaration from him. This is his declaration, taking her to a public place, touching her in a way that one lover touches another when there are other people around. It may not be grand, but it's what he can manage. As soon as they're alone again she smiles at him and says, "This is nice, isn't it?"

"It is," he agrees. He takes her hand across the table, where anyone can see.

AN: If this chapter seemed a bit critical of Tom, keep in mind that it's from Edith's POV. I may have to continue this... if there's interest... :)