A/N: I talked about this in my tumblr and I hate to repeat myself so for expectations of posting and all that for this story go there. Also, THANK YOU so much for your support. I worked hard for every word in that chapter to be intentional so your support was like a giant hug. In fact, it encouraged me to take the outline I had for this chapter and turn it into a chapter. Again, if you've read Grace, shake that Matthew out of your head. This is the Matthew who danced with Mary and kissed her. The Matthew who then (AU) married Lavinia. You might not like him. I'm not sure if I do. (Okay, I do, but it's against my will). Just know that this chapter and the characterization of Matthew in this chapter is just as intentional as the other chapter. Each word, or lack of them, matters. Again, thanks for the support. I just couldn't help but write after seeing your excitement since I have been excited about this story for months!

Chapter Two

Robert sends a car for them when they arrive at the station. As Lavinia accepts the driver's hand with a shy nod, it is one last hurrah to the newlyweds, the honeymooners, returned from a fortnight in Italy. Matthew helps load the bags in the car. He wants to be outside for a moment longer, to move his arms, and shake his shoulders. The status of newlyweds allows for a certain closeness when riding on trains and in automobiles. Lavinia's navy gloves look lovely against his camel colored suit, tucked along his wrist. They look very fine against the gray, as well. But they clash with the black. Today, he wears the black and her tiny hand, so fine boned and small knuckled, entrapped in its navy leather, winds itself around his arm. He stares at the blue on black, while she sighs with a delightedness that makes him smile a smile that is half a grimace.

"Back home." She squeezes his wrist. "It was a wonderful time. I think I could have stayed with you, there, forever." Pausing, she looks up at him through her lashes and he smiles at her coyness because they both know what she is talking about and it isn't Italy. "But I suppose...the honeymoon doesn't really have to be over."

On the honeymoon, Matthew found himself at a loss, a drift, as if all his limbs were paper thin, momentary objects, as if the whole of him could be washed away. Though Lavinia was beautiful that first night–waiting for him– especially sitting in the nightgown stitched with blue, her copper hair around her shoulders, his hands did not feel like his hands. His lips did not feel like his lips. He had to think about everything before he did it–his palm on her waist, removing her clothing, kissing her until she let out a contented sigh, using his tongue, almost as an experiment.

It was the first time he made love with a woman and that woman was his wife. But he did so with so much thinking throughout the act (and in the subsequent acts) that he woke up each morning, in Italy no less, feeling as if he'd drunk too much wine–and not in a good way.

Comparisons are the root of all evil.

He never had to think with Mary. His hands were his hands and her waist was her waist and those two things were one in the same, the fabric separating them immaterial. Her lips were her lips and then they were his as well. When he pulled her closer, it just happened. His hand sliding lower along the satin of her gown just happened. His tongue was not an experiment. Things fell into place as if it were a dance. And when they danced, his arm pulled her closer until it was torture, so close he could feel every part of her and he knew...he knew she could feel every part of him...she knew how badly he wanted her...and he did not mind because her lips were his lips and there was nothing to do but to press together as tightly as possible. If they let go of one another, even a little, if they seperated in the slightest it would be like cutting his own body in half...The thought of it, even as they kissed, even as he placed her hand against his heart (could it beat any faster, when one finally did the thing one longed to do?) hurt him physically even as the pleasure of her traveled through every vein in his body.

I want you.

I want you so badly.

He had not said the words but he had wanted to. If he had time to drag his lips from hers (how much time would he need until he was satiated?) and find the curve of her neck to suck (the word alone made him weak in the knees) he would have whispered it, heaved it out into the open: I want you so badly.

Lavinia. It is very different with Lavinia. She welcomes him, her arms encompass him. She whispers words of adoration into his ears. But he wants her breasts to be Mary's breasts, her hip to be Mary's hip.

When they woke naked next to one another in their hotel room, he wanted to find the birthmark on Mary's shoulder (her cream dinner dress had revealed to him, dazzling him and making his throat raw so he had not been able to eat dinner at all that night).

It is wrong. The honeymoon was wrong. It is still wrong. His thinking is so very wrong.

Lavinia clings to his arm as they return. There is a spring in her step and she smiles at him as if he has turned back the sun and hung the moon in the sky and told her it was all for her. I am not a hero, he longs to tell her. I miss a birthmark I never knew in the first place, a birthmark I never had a right to in the first place. I miss a birthmark I never traced with my finger or kissed with my lips.

But Matthew isn't cruel; he does not say it; he is only entranced against his will. He never wanted this–to want her. He is honorable. He knows Mary is probably angry; she will probably make some cutting remark about his so called honor and that will be his excuse to grip her too tightly and then they'll...

It's like a disease.

No, but it is true. He expects Mary to be angry. She should be. They must talk. And they will. Away from everyone else. He will be honest with her.

I couldn't help myself.

Damn it, Matthew. Grow up!

He can imagine the curse curling from her lips, the disdain in her voice but the desire in her eyes. He wonders what it will be like to see her again, at dinner, tomorrow night. Of course, the newlyweds were invited to dinner...the day after their arrival, so they could rest up. So he can prepare for Mary's wrath. Matthew smiles thinking of it, knowing he has no excuse. It's a sad smile, the kind one gives beneath an umbrella at a funeral, while it rains.

Yet there are little reminders everywhere that he is a married man–the larger bedroom, for two to share, the ring on Lavinia's hand, how she pats him, like he belongs to her because he does. The navy blue gloves against his black sleeve. They belong to each other. Husbands and wives belong to one another. Yet, it makes the back of his head itch because this is touching that is allowed and what he would like, what he wants, is the kind of touching that is not allowed.

He never thinks the word affair.

He never thinks the word adultery.

Of course, he would never do that. That would be sordid. He wouldn't have tied himself in knots convincing himself he had to marry Lavinia just so he could...do that to her with Mary after the banns were read and the vows declared to a church full of people. He has responsibilities now. He is a husband. God, a husband.

But he remembers the dance, the silk of her gloves in his own hand. He wonders what her bare arm would have felt like, his hand skimming down it and into her hair, the pins falling out. And the music is playing...

He thinks of the birthmark on her shoulder and the cream gown.

We were the show that flopped. Her droll, cynical voice.

"We had a wonderful time!" Lavinia chirps to his mother as she pats his arm. Pat, pat, pat. "Although we're tired from the journey back," she admits their secret. We. Theirs. What strange words in a strange land. It was different in the church, dressed up as if it were a play. And it was different in Italy, her giggles over sharing a bottle of wine a night, and the comfort she gave him when he sunk into his arms. He never figured out what she was comforting him over, until the last day, when he realized he would be seeing Mary again. He'd been missing Mary and her arms, her skin, the golden peach flush that came to it, was a comfort. He should have hated himself more than he did, the flesh of his own wife a comfort for Mary. God.

Damn it, Matthew! Grow up.

Still, even his own admonishments are in Mary's droll, cynical voice.

"I'm so glad." His mother stands at a distance and watches the two of them as if they are a painting she will have to sketch later. Her head quirks to one side, watching his son. "It's so good to have you back, though. Really."

"Well..." Lavinia's voice hangs in the air, a question mark drawn there with her voice. And when Matthew doesn't answer it, she goes on, "I'll go up to bed then."

Matthew looks at his mother; her hands are folded in front of her. "I'll be right behind you," Matthew promises.

He promised her a lot of things, standing on the altar, the hairs standing up on the back of his neck, knowing Mary was watching and listening too, trying not to look at her but looking at her anyway. What was she thinking? Where was Sir Richard? All the while, reciting his vows.

If you were the only girl in the world, and I was the only boy...

When Lavinia is upstairs, and Matthew and his mother hear her heels click-clack on the floor above them, she speaks: "I have something for you."

"Oh?" he grins. "Shouldn't I be the one with the souvenirs? We got you this lovely..."

"Matthew," she snaps, under her breath, hushed. "I'm your mother and I love you. The only reason I agreed to do this is because she told me it would be the one and only time. She said she owed you an explanation and I happened to agree, even though I also happen to agree she owes you nothing at all."

His mother goes to the bureau and takes out an envelope. "She came to me and she said, Cousin Isobel, I'll never ask again. But this will be the only goodbye he'll get from me. There is nothing in this letter that Lavinia couldn't read, I promise...It's just...And her voice drowned off and she whispered–Matthew and I. Then, she shrugged, Matthew. Lady Mary shrugged.I don't know what–"

"Mary? What about Mary? What's all this you're talking about?" Panic is inside his adam's apple and all this time he thought there was no purpose for that bump in his throat. No, that is where panic lived and slept. His voice rises. "The last time? Goodbye?"

"Here," his mother says with as much dignity as she can muster. "It wasn't for me to read."

"Wait one second," he grabs his mother's hand. "Where has she gone? For how long? You make it sound...permanent. What's gone wrong?"

His mother sighs wearily. Above them, Lavinia click clacks and puts things aways. Their things. This is her home now. "It is permanent as far as I know."

Dear Matthew,

I debated whether to write you this note but however things ended, we were friends once. I'm going to live with Grandmother in America. I've broken my engagement with Sir Richard. It was time.

Brace yourself. You may recall Mr. Pamuk's death. He did not die in his bed but in mine. It's the secret I've been keeping for a long time, an expensive secret. It cost me you, once, before the war. It cost me two years of my life engaged to a man I did not love so he wouldn't print it in his newspaper. Don't worry; I do not consider myself a martyr.

I'm not going to America because of the story. I'm going to America because I want to go to America. But a consequence is that Sir Richard will probably print this story. The family knows and I thought you deserved to know as well. I leave it to you to brief Lavinia and your mother should any uncomfortable social situations result in my indiscretion.

It is my wish that this be our last communication. Maybe it seems odd, after what I told you in this note, for me to be concerned with propriety...but let this be our final private word with one another, as you are married now.

I hope your honeymoon was lovely and marriage is everything you dreamt it would be.

Most Sincerely,

Cousin Mary

Lavinia's hands, smoothed by her night cream, creep beneath his pajama top and press themselves against his stomach. His shy wife has grown more bold each night they've spent together and with each bottle of wine. But tonight there is no wine and Matthew is thirsty for it. He cannot. He cannot. He cannot. He grasps her hands in his own. They are warmed by his own flesh.

"Darling, today has been such a long day..." His ellipses hangs in the air just as her question mark did earlier. Is this how they will communicate? In the dark? Words left unsaid, written in smoke, in invisible ink, in the space between them.

Pithy letters written as if they are strangers with short sentences and signed most sincerely by a cousin?

Lavinia hides her disappointment, gathers her hands back to herself and presses her lips briefly to his. "Goodnight, Mr. Crawley," she giggles, not youthfully, but happily. She is happy; somehow he has made her happy even while he is imagining Mary's very porcelain skin against the tan of Mr. Pamuk's. Had the man seen the birthmark before he died?

Had he died happy?

Could she have written a more distant letter?

Matthew does not sleep. He finds port. He drinks a lot of it. Glass after glass, holding her short letter in his hand.

If Mary can do it, then so can he. If he can feel pain like this, a ripping pain in his chest, as if he is coming apart, then so should she. He betrays Lavinia and Mary in one foul swoop and writes a letter to America.

A/N: Could she have written a more distant letter? What do you think of this Matthew? Do you still want more? Even when he is not a knight in shining armor?