A/N: First, thank you all for your support as my personal life implodes a bit and for your thoughts and love about my family member with cancer. And for your patience.

Oh, this is a tough one. Especially since no one read it before I am positing it. (EEK) Like I have said many times, this plot very much plotted itself and appeared in my mind over a year ago. That said, knowing what is going to happen does not make the writing of it any easier. I give you Mack's death as a perfect example. It had to happen and yet I hated to write it. I hated to write this chapter too. For so many reasons. I hope that somehow I have shown the complexity of the situation and feelings involved, that we are deeply in the gray, and in the weeds, as Kavan would say (perhaps she will be the one to make sense of it all as she so often does in her "meta way" ;) ). I would very much like to know what you think. Also, I wasn't going to address it, I was going to let the writing speak for itself but on my tumblr, ladonnaingenua, there is a note about Mary and Edith's fight in the last chapter, if you are interested.

Here we go...

Chapter Twenty Seven

Matthew hangs back from the tented party and dancing, just as dusk falls. The occasion is smaller, perhaps a bit more somber than it would have been, but Edith looks happier than Matthew has ever seen her as she twirls in Evelyn's arms. No one planned on a wedding in the height of summer and the thought of all the guests inside Downton made both Cousin Cora and Cousin Violet break out in sweat so they decided on the present theme, after the church–a variation of the garden party with candles and lanterns and tents and laughing and champagne.

In the weeks since Edith's announcement, Mary quiets in a way that makes Matthew worry. Her stillness returns; she could be a statue. But Edith approves and in a gesture of sisterhood pushes the wedding out another week. When Edith and Evelyn repeat their vows to one another, Mack is dead just over two months. Matthew watches his widow in church, head bowed in a black dress, different from the one at the funeral but still ill fitting. He knows from Tom (who he shares a cigar with most nights), who knows from Sybil, that Mary refuses to go dress shopping for her mourning period. She is making do, she claims. She won't spend money on dresses that proclaim her husband is dead. So it makes sense that this dress, too, is a little big. The lace overlay is beautiful and thankfully with it, her dress is more demure, the gape in the front of the bodice is hidden.

Tom is actually a fount of information. He tells Matthew how Mackenzie's family asked her to return with them, how they left the invitation open, how kind they were, how understanding, how Mary opened her mouth to respond when her papa began to speak for her and said of course Mary would stay with her family. When Mack's grandfather spoke up to say, but we are are Mary's family too, Robert shook his head and Mary bowed her head and did not lift it. "Jaysus, she looked so sad, like everything was so heavy on her shoulders she couldn't lift her own neck." But while Mack's family stayed, Tom said, Mary spent as much time as she could with them. Running after Declan one day, he found Mary crying into Mack's grandfather's arms. "She won't cry in front of Sybil though," Tom said as he shook his head. "Sybil says it's like watching Mary, the very essence of her, just dry up and evaporate. And I can see...God, I can't even imagine losing my wife." He looked at Matthew then, remembering Lavinia as if her memory is cold water thrown on him. "I'm sorry, Matthew. I only meant–"

"It's different," Matthew said. "That was my fault. This is...senseless."

So yes, Edith does look happier than Matthew has ever seen her before, dancing, face aglow by candlelight and the setting sun. He spies Mary across the way, hip cocked in an unusual posture for her, champagne glass nearly empty. Their eyes meet and she toasts him, smirking, drinking the last bit from her glass then replacing it with a new one from Thomas' tray. She won't come to him, Matthew knows. He doubts he will ever have that singular pleasure again. So he meanders nearer, sweating in the humidity, ignoring his mother's watchful gaze.

"How are you?" he asks Mary.

She sips. "How do you think I am?"

"You look well."

Mary laughs. "D'you know I once told Aunt Rosamund you could end up Lord Chancellor. I should have said you could be a diplomat."

He dips his head, unsure if this is a compliment. "When was that?" His shoes scuff at the grass.

"Oh," she takes a deep breath, sighing. "A very long time ago."

"It is good of you...I mean, Edith looks very happy," he replies awkwardly.

She ignores him, drinking her champagne. "It was before the war. I was a different Mary then. You were a different Matthew too. You'd asked me to marry you and I asked for time." She touches the spot on her back where her injured kidney still bothers her. "Just another bump in our stupid saga."

"Mary–"

"You might as well know, I am getting drunk," she tells him without looking at him. Her skin is flawless as shadows dance against it. "You might not want to be around me."

"Just because you're getting drunk doesn't mean I will, Mary," he replies cooly. "And besides, I would be the last one to lecture and tell you drinking never solves anything."

Her nose wrinkles. "Funny, that did sound like a lecture, professor." She pauses, cocking her head. "Edith does look happy though. And I am happy for her. It's only...Sometimes I am so angry, so very angry that I..." her voice peters off into the music.

"Well, drinking won't help with that."

"No, but I am a happy drunk," Mary says, grinning. "I've only ever been drunk once before, on champagne then too."

"On the beach, with Mack," he responds without thinking.

She blinks at him owlishly. "Yes. How did you–"

"The stockings."

She laughs and he has to clench his teeth because it is the kind of laugh that belongs in the dark, when two people (and in his mind he cannot help but turn those people into himself and Mary) are skin to skin. It's throaty and full of secrets. "Aren't you quick, professor?"

"You should know that you were probably a happy drunk because you were happy–"

"And you were a hateful drunk because...?"

"I was hateful." It isn't hard to say it now and he pushes his hair off his sweating forehead. The sun is nearly gone now.

"I was hateful too," she tells him, turning towards him. The glass is nearly empty. "This whole day. Watching Edith get ready. Smiling at the right times. Though I think she is a bit tactless with this affair, I won't ruin it for her. Isn't it awfully big of me that I decided that?"

"Awfully," he tells her. "What changed your mind?"

"Someday Evelyn will die." Mary switches out for a fresh glass. "And she will only have memories."

Matthew is at a loss for words. He swallows. That she would reason in such a way is unfathomable to him.

Mary leans forward and blinks up at him. "Anyway, what was I saying? Yes, I was hateful. In church, while they said their vows and so on. But now, this is my fourth or fifth glass, I think–"

"Have you asked Sybil, with your medication–"

She takes a step nearer to him, pokes him briefly in the belly, shocking him. "Mind your own business, professor. Anyway, now I don't feel so hateful anymore." She blinks and her eyes are like liquid chocolate in her face, the fire of the lanterns reflecting again and again in her pupils. Then she takes her glass and drinks it until it is gone. He tries to grab it before she switches it out again but he loses that battle. "Anyway." She lets the glass hang limply at the end of her casted arm. "I do believe I've had too much to drink. Would you mind very much walking me home?"

The house is only two hundred meters away but she is looking up at him and he feels as if he drank all the champagne. He remembers her fingertip pressed against his stomach. "All right," he agrees. It is dark and he is sure even his clever mother does not see either of them leave or how closely Mary walks to him. Their hands brush with every step, their skin touching then apart, touching then apart. She trips a bit in the grass and because he so aware of her body, he catches her without thought. They are hidden behind a large spruce, just a few meters from where the light of Downton would illuminate and reveal them. When Matthew releases Mary, she does not release him. She clings to his neck (her hands are ice cold against his neck; how can this be?) with one arm while she drinks with her casted arm (though most spilled on the lawn). When she is done, she drops the glass and turns towards him, hand still touching his neck. She steps forward and the lace of her dress touches his jacket. "You didn't ask me," she whispers. He can feel her breath against his cheeks.

He clears his throat. "Ask you what?"

Her hand with the cast reaches up to touch his chest. Her eyes are on his tie. "If I am not feeling hateful anymore, then what am I feeling now?"

"Mary–" he stutters.

"Shh," she tells him. "Only, let me just..." She leans forward, her lips so close to his, before she trips over her own hem. "Well, old chap," she laughs as she walks towards the house. "It looks like you'll be showing me to my door." She laughs again. "My lips are numb. Do you think that's a problem?"

"I'll walk you inside," he concedes. Every part of him feels stiff from disuse. He is older than ever before.

"And what if I trip going up the stairs?" Mary asks, turning to walk backwards. The house lights her and even in mourning, she so effortlessly gorgeous. "I don't know if this family could handle more death with how they are grieving the last." She holds her belly, giggling, and gestures to the party behind her. "Don't be priggish. I'm only joking."

"For God's sake, be careful," he cries as she struggles backwards through the gravel.

"Say you'll walk me to my room," Mary replies coyly.

"Someone could misconstrue..."

"Do you care? In the unlikelyhood that someone does see us, when everyone, all the servants too, are over there, do you honestly care what people think?"

No, he thinks. No, no, no, not at all.

"Mary."

She takes his hands in her own and pulls him to her, wrapping them gently around her waist. "Say you will." Her head tilts towards him, as if she might try to kiss him again.

"All right. I will." He takes a step back. He tries to picture her at Mack's grave, so alone and wanting to be that way. He tries to remember how he promised to be her friend, and an honorable one at that. But the problem is, he does not feel so honorable now and he thinks maybe that Mary, smart, charming Mary, with the aid of champagne, saw to that and he let her.

He lets her.

She hums in her throat, takes his hand, and leans against him as they walk. Her body sags as if all the fight, all the feeling goes out of it, a balloon deflating slowly. Her victory renders her limbs weightless. He doesn't know how she will manage the stairs now. She wasn't joking. Her eyes are closed and the smallest of smiles turn her lips upward.

"Mary," he whispers, as they approach the staircase. "Upstairs, now."

"I don't..." She raises an eyebrow at herself when she tries the first step and fails. "I seem to have...Well." She wraps two arms arms around his neck and curls her head to his chest, as if she sleeps. "Be a darling, won't you?"

He glances around to see if anyone observes them before rolling his eyes and girding his loins, lifting her legs so she is snug in his arms, while he walks up the treacherous steps. He is sure she is sleeping before he hears, feels, really, a little voice murmur against his neck, "To the left."

"I know."

She laughs a little. "You shouldn't. You really shouldn't know where my room is. But it's all right. I'm safe. I'm a widow now."

"Oh, and you were dangerous before?" he jokes. "A heavyweight boxer?"

She scuffs his chin gently with her cast. "You bet I was dangerous. Let's not forgot Kemal Pamuk and where he spent the last moments of his life."

Matthew rolls his eyes. "Do you have to do that?"

She flutters her eyelashes at him. "Do what?' she asks, biting her lip.

"Poke at people so efficiently, exactly where it hurts."

He sets her down gently right outside her room. She looks up at him, lip plump from biting it. "And why should Pamuk bother you? Especially now?"

He closes his eyes. He never expected, he never wanted any of this when he walked over to her. Or is that a lie? Hasn't he always wanted this? So when she takes his hand and pulls him inside her room, he isn't really thinking. He is exhausted from trying not to want her and when she closes the door and turns sleepily into his arms, he doesn't think she will really go through with the kiss until she actually does.

She presses her lips to his, her eyes closed, the hand without the cast moving into his hair. He remembers how she told him her lips felt numb. He does his best, with his teeth and then a bit of soothing by his tongue, to restore feeling to them. She hums in the back of her throat, curling her fingers into his scalp, casted hand unbuttoning his jacket and sliding beneath it.

He is dizzy on her perfume and she is dizzy on champagne and they stumble against her wardrobe. At the last moment, he turns her, so her back, her kidney does not slam against it. In doing so, his lips slip to her jaw and then her neck and he tells his brain to be quiet as he finds the hollow of her throat and draws his tongue against it while she breathes raggedly. Her hands leave him to pull at the lace collar of her dress, yanking it, as if this is the way out of the dress. "God, Matthew," she murmurs as her body twitches closer to his.

"Let me," he whispers against her skin. He kisses her again, on the lips, and his hands go to the tiny buttons at her back while she is crushed against him and their mouths open to one another again and again.

She is moaning in his arms.

God, Mary is moaning in his arms and her bed is only a twirl away.

They are kissing and Mary–

His hands go to her shoulders as he gently draws away. "We can't," he tells her.

Her voice is like a buzz in his ear. "We can. We are."

Her lips dip to his neck now, just above his collar, and she is walking him backwards toward the bed. His tie is lost but he does not know who removes it and oh, there goes his jacket. "Mary," he whispers as she pushes him back on the bed. He sits and for one, long luxurious moment, he press his face to her clothed breasts and drags his hands over her thighs, her whole back end, her waist, so slowly so he feels every bit of her, before pulling away. "We can't," he repeats. "You're not yourself. The champagne has gone to your head."

"I don't care," she pouts and he can picture her in miniature, a verifiable terror at a young age and now as well.

He holds her hands in his own. "You do though." And before he can think or wonder at what he is missing out on, he switches places with her, pushing her shoulders back gently so she can fall asleep easily in her bed.

"I only want someone to want me!" she cries out, her own teeth drawing blood to her lips, her hands, like claws, pushing him away.

The weight of desire goes out of him. "Someone?" he repeats. "Someone?"

"Oh, Matthew!" she says, rolling her eyes. "There you go again. Everything must be black or white. Well, the world...it doesn't work that way."

"No, it doesn't," he replies stiffly, as he stands. "Grief certainly is neither black nor white and that is what you are acting out of." His heart aches in his chest. I told you so, his mother would say if she ever found out. "You don't want me–"

"I do though!" she says loudly. "Who are you to tell me who I want?"

"You don't want me," he repeats. "You want somebody. Anybody."

"How dare you," she whispers before her voice goes shrill. She sits up in bed. "How dare you!"

"I didn't mean..." He pauses. He really didn't mean it the way it sounds and it does sound quite awful. "I only meant the real one you want is Mack." He winces at himself, his awkwardness, because this sounds more awful, more hurtful than his previous statement ever could.

"Don't speak to me about Mack!" she bats his hands away. He is only trying to soothe at this point. "Don't you even dare. And don't pretend that I didn't just give you something you've wanted for a very long time."

"You engineered this situation," he defends gently.

"Oh yes, and you certainly fought me off with a stick. But it doesn't matter." Her hair and eyes are wild. "After it was over I was going to tell you...I was going to tell you that I am going to Mack's family in America but I can tell you now instead."

"A parting gift?" he answers and it is small of him but he feels mean and hurt and the cruelty of her grief shocks him.

She lifts her chin. "If you like." She pauses, wincing at her back pain. Then looks only more cross because he knows she hates to appear weak in front of him. "They want me," she throws that out like a gauntlet. "They do more than tolerate me. They like me. Which is more than I can say for my own family, including you." It all makes sense now. She must have decided awhile ago; that's how she faded so easily into the background.

"Mary, you've twisted things–"

"Get out!" she screams, though she doesn't weep or cry. No, she saves her tears for Mack and her kisses for Matthew and now he doubts very much, he will get even those again. "You were right. I don't want you! I never have! I hate you! I hate all of you."

"You're drunk," he says quietly. He doesn't not feel right leaving her like this; though, there is a strange emotion finding its way into his chest. He doesn't like her much right now. He doesn't like her very much at all right now.

"You would know," she spits back, raising her eyebrow. "How does it feel? To have someone get drunk and take their feelings, their choices, out on you?" She throws her pillow at his face quite mightily but it barely touches him. "I bet it feels like you are being shred in half. Not cut," she smiles cruelly. "No, not cut because something cut could be put together again, good as new. But shredded. Like you will never find all the pieces of your own self again."

She is not wrong. In fact, she is exactly right. But still he says, quite helplessly, "Don't go. Don't go to America."

"Don't you understand?" her cast clunks against her sideboard as she stands. It is a difficult task. She is in pain and the drink is hitting her all the more fully. "There is nothing here for me," she whispers harshly. "There is no one–"

"Don't be an idiot," he snaps.

It's pity in her eyes now. She shrugs her shoulders. It's startling to realize that she is aware that he loves her. Even worse, he understands that she doesn't really believe him and probably never has. To her his love is vapor, or mist, imagined in his own mind, while everyone around him can see it's no stronger than some strange sort of attachment. "I'm going. After Edith and Evelyn leave for their honeymoon and Sybil goes back to Ireland. I'm telling everyone then."

"And if I would have gone through with this?" he gestures to the bed. "Would that have changed anything?"

His heart beats heavily in her silence.

"No," she tells him flatly, looking him in the eye and he hates her then, absolutely loathes her. Any compassion for her dries up.

"Go then!" he tells her. "If that's what you want, then go!"

"I'm glad we are in agreement!" she yells back at him. She takes a shuddering breath and her voice is level, without emotion. "Now get the bloody hell out of my room."

A/N: I would so very much appreciate your thoughts.