A/N: First, do not get used to this updating schedule. It is a combination of a training week at work (so it's slowER but still crazy), incredible reviewers and supporters (and some crazy twitter discussions), and tumblr encouragement. I think this is the moment a lot of you have been waiting for...
I'll let Mack tell you about it.
Chapter Twelve
For Mack, it all feels a bit like a fairytale. Except when it doesn't. Like, for example, when the Dowager Countess (though truthfully he can only think of her as Granny) took Mary aside by the elbow and without lowering her voice announced, "Mary, you're positively glowing."
"Granny," Mary censured as she blushed. "I'm not."
"You are," the Dowager continued so that everyone could hear. "I have eyes, Mary."
"Well, if I am glowing, it's not what you think. It's simply because I am happy and for no other reason."
The Dowager then turned to Mack and looked him up and down appraisingly. "He doesn't look like the type to wait," she whispered to Mary (but not softly enough that everyone could not hear).
"Granny," Mary hissed. "He has. We have. Stop. Please. I'm so happy to be with you, Granny." And Mackenzie, the infamous boy who could not be made to blush over anything all of prep school, blushed like a school boy.
"Hmph," The Dowager snorted looking him in the eye, her lips thinning. "We'll have to see, won't we?"
But the house is unlike anything Mack has ever seen, like out of a fairy tale or one of those Jane Austen books his sister is so fond of. Mary takes him around and shows him the paintings and explains each of them to him. He is delighted to find that her accent has only become more exacting and English. He is happy to listen to her but all he can think is that normally their hands would touch all through the lecture of the house and now he is lucky if they even graze, electricity running up his arm.
No, Granny, we have definitely not done what you think. Believe me.
Mary's mother loves Mack. She is so happy to see her daughter and to see her daughter happy that Mack could be a ghoul and the Countess would still cling to his arm and look up at him adoringly. Her father is more difficult to read, more reserved, or perhaps somehow resigned to Mack's presence and what it can only mean. Edith calls Mack the Baron and laughs at her own joke.
He is quieter than usual. This is about Mary seeing her family again, for now. Their time, together, will come. He remembers the first time he saw her, in the shade, holding her champagne, so aloof and so sad. Alone. He remembers her drunken admission that love is like dying and he cannot imagine what state Mary was in when she left her home and family. As for the person who made her feel that way, Mack has other feelings about him all together.
"You're quiet," Mary whispers while showing him a tapestry.
He smiles in his familiar expression, his eyes warming. "I'm taking it all in. This place. It's where you grew up. It's a part of you. I want to know things."
"What things?"
"Did you ever play hide and seek with your sisters?" He places his hands in his pockets to keep from touching her as she grins.
"Of course not." Her accent and diction are perfect and he would like to teach her dirty words just to hear her say them and laugh together until his belly hurt. "Especially not in the attics. And especially not when we wanted to hide from the governess."
She winks at him.
Mack wishes he could tell her father the truth of it all: I love your daughter so much that when I look at her my heart nearly bursts and I didn't think I was capable of this until her. Her laugh is my favorite sound. I will never make her cry because I could not bear to shred my own heart in two.
But those words hold too much sentiment for an Englishman. They hold too much sentiment for Mack too. It took him a very long time to realize it and admit the truth even to himself. He knows that Mary loves him but he also knows she will never love him as much as he loves her and it is all right because just to hold her, to know she is his and he is hers, is enough, is more than enough.
He tries to get through dinner with the family as best as he can. The Dowager continues to watch him. The Countess continues to smile at him. Edith continues to call him the Baron. And Mary's father will not look at him at all. It is as if Matthew's name is floating around them and the Earl would like to grasp it in his hands and remind everyone that Matthew is close by, Matthew is his surrogate son (so Mary has told Mack), Matthew was supposed to marry Mary and now there is this other character at his table, in his house, with his daughter. And of course, Mack and Robert both know what is coming, after the dinner, when it is just the two of them, over port and cigars.
Mack is not someone who gets nervous. He wasn't nervous to talk to Mary in the first place when all the other fellows were intimidated. He wasn't afraid to tell her she was being ridiculous when she was being so. And so far those nerves of steel have only given him good things. But Mack is not stupid either, despite his foolish, joking manner. He knows that in the dining room, over port and cigars, it will not just be Robert and Mack but also Matthew–the impossible dream.
And Mack can tell that it doesn't matter to Robert that Matthew chose someone else. It's that now Mary has chosen someone else–that's the real end to the dream. It's over, completely and totally. And that is who Mack is to him, the end of the dream.
Mack can feel compassion for Mary's father but at the same time, it is Matthew. It is the man who left the woman Mack now loves torn up on the beach, talking about love and dying inside. He is the ghost that chased Mary, so stubborn and proud, all the way across the Atlantic. Mack does not consider Matthew competition in anyway; Mary has been very forthcoming but Mack hates the man for what he did to Mary and yet he must forgive Matthew in the same breath because the best man won and Mack has Mary and Matthew does not.
There is only one spot of trouble at dinner and it comes from Edith. Mack knows Mary is thinking: of course.
"So," Edith begins, "Won't you ask after Cousin Matthew, Lavinia, and Isobel? They'll join us tomorrow, you know."
"Edith," Mary warns. "Must you?"
"Of course I'll ask after them." Mack surprises them all. "How are the rest of the Crawleys?"
The table is agog.
The Dowager is the first to recover. "Aren't you the bold one?"
Mack smiles. "I don't think it's a topic that can be avoided for the totality of my visit."
"You're quite right," the Dowager (Granny) asserts and nods in agreement with him. "Isobel is the same, in love with her causes. Lavinia is unhappily married but bearing her cross. Matthew drinks too much."
"Mama!" Robert raises his voice at her in warning.
"What, Robert?" the Dowager (Granny) replies. "Should I lie?"
"Mama," he repeats.
"It doesn't matter," Mary interrupts. "That's what I want to make clear, here with all of you." She looks pointedly at Edith. "It doesn't matter. I wish them all well. But I don't think of them. I don't need to ask about them."
"Lavinia said you wrote to her," Edith retorts.
"Twice, before Christmas," Mary answers. "Lavinia wrote to me and I replied. As I said, I wish her all the best but–"
"But they aren't Mary's problem anymore," the Dowager completes and gives a silent cheers. "And in the time Mack has been here, I have seen Mary laugh more than I ever have. So, please, let's put this to rest. Let's put the idea of what could have been to rest."
"You know what I'm going to ask," Mack begins.
"I'm not stupid," Robert complains. "You want to marry my daughter. I don't know why you bothered to come all this way to even ask. She's lived her own life in America."
"Don't be ridiculous," Mack retorts and takes a sip of port. He won't be intimidated. "You know she loves you dearly. You know she would have stayed if she could. She couldn't. She just couldn't. Would you have wanted her to?"
Robert sets down his glass and sighs. "No." He shakes his head. "No, I wouldn't have wanted her to stay. Do you know what it's like to watch your daughter's heart break?"
"No," Mack replies softly. "I can only promise that you'll never have to watch that happen again in any way, ever. Again."
Robert is silent. His mouth is set. Then he meets Mack's eyes. There is a softness there for the first time. "Then you have my answer."
The next day is warm enough for a walk and when they are far enough away from the house, Mary takes his hand. "What do you think so far?"
"I think I like seeing you here," Mack replies, taking her other hand and moving her in a circle before pulling her towards him and framing her face with his hands. She is still shy with him; they've talked about it a little. He has never regretted his experience when it came to women until now, until Mary is anxious when they kiss, when their breaths mingle, that she won't be good enough and he has to reassure her.
But now here, she kisses him back, her lips cool from the spring air. Her hands find his waist and she holds onto him so that they are moving closer together, so they can feel one another, and his hands slip down to the diamond of her lower back.
She bites his lower lip.
Mack pulls back and looks at her.
"I'm sorry," she begins. "I didn't mean–"
But Mack is already taking her hand and pulling her along behind him, to a big tree, as wide as he is tall, where they will be hidden from the house. "Don't be sorry," he says and pulls her to him, closer than they have been before, so she is standing in the juncture of his thighs and they are kissing with tongues and lips and he tastes her moan before he hears it. "God, don't be sorry," he whispers against her mouth, his hands knocking away pins from her hair. He feels the desperateness in her own hands as they reach for the buttons of his coat so that she can slip her hands inside it, wrap her arms truly around him and he can press her to him, feeling her breasts against his chest and urging her even closer with his hands moving lower down her back.
A branch snaps. They wouldn't have even heard it (so lost in each other) if it wasn't followed by a loud curse and a slurred, "Well, I didn't expect this."
Mary drops her hands from Mack's waist but does not move. Mack keeps his hands on her. He knows how they must look, swollen mouths, mussed up hair.
"Matthew," Mary says.
"So, you remember my name. I wasn't sure if you would." He grins cheekily. "Just trying to clear my head before the congratulatory dinner tonight." His eyes are half closed and he won't look at Mary but Matthew does look at Mack. "Have you asked her yet?"
Mack is silent. There is not point in this conversation, no real outcome that can be good when the man is drunk and looking for a fight.
"Well, have you?" Matthew repeats. "Just be sure you get an answer right away. Just be sure she doesn't string you along for months and months for nothing. Then again..." and now Matthew takes a step forward though he is still yards from them. He looks Mary straight in the eye. "You never kissed me like that. Didn't need to, did you? To keep me interested. No wonder you rushed home. Probably had to get married."
"Matthew," Mary gasps.
"You're drunk," Mack says evenly. "And probably sad. More than that, you're embarrassing yourself."
"It looked to me like you two were the ones embarrassing yourselves," Matthew snaps and Mack reminds himself that Matthew may be drunk but he is not stupid. "Maybe I should go to the house and tell Robert what I saw."
"Matthew," Mary repeats for the third time and she starts to move but Mack holds on to her.
"Go," Mack urges. "I dare you. Your pathetic state speaks volumes on your motives." Matthew peers at him, watches him. "Well?" Mack asks.
And Matthew turns and walks toward home, toward his wife, toward his life. A coward.
A/N: So begins the first climax (there will be many, apparently I only write sagas). I really want to know what you guys think because I know you have been waiting for this. It's just a taste but I thought Mack deserved a say. Again thank you x24 for being so great.