1913
Her harsh breaths blew out in visible puffs, mingling with the bitter night air as she ran. Night had fallen long ago and, despite the early hour of the morning it must have been now- one or two at least- Mary threw caution to the wind as she ran at full pelt through the woods. They say the darkest hour is before the dawn- and yet if that were true it can't have been long to go by now. It was pitch black, and Mary could barely see a thing, having neglected to bring a candle in her haste. The biting cold chilled her limbs into clumsy numbness as she stumbled in the thick snow, her thin nightdress doing nothing against the frosty air and blowing winds. Cold seeped through her slippers and spread painfully through her feet as if they were bare on the ice but she kept going. Sprinting in her desperation.
Mary's lips were blue by the time she reached the door, tinged with a violet hue as her teeth chattered like a drill and her body quaked, wracked by shivers. The frigid wind gripped her and whipped her pale skin as she banged her fists against the wood and yelled.
"Reggie! Isobel! Please! Help!" Her plea embodied her distress. As if her position couldn't get any more unladylike, she worked herself up into a frenzy, screaming and shouting for help, pounding the door with every ounce of energy she could muster.
After a minute, maybe two, that felt like hours, the door opened and the tiniest wave of relief hit Mary. But, to her surprise, it wasn't Reggie or Isobel or even one of the servants that opened the door. It was Matthew; stood in blue silk pyjamas with his blonde hair messed and sticking up at all angles, his bright eyes tired and drowsy yet wide with anticipation and fear.
He opened his mouth to speak but, as words evaded him, they did not evade her.
"Matthew, please, get Isobel and Reggie. Sybil's not well." She pleaded with him, eyes swimming with terror and appearance rather wild.
"They aren't in." Matthew stammered, pulling Mary inside the house with an arm around her shoulders. "They went to London for the count with your parents."
His words sent her stomach plummeting and she pressed a hand over her eyes, her desperation increasing tenfold.
"Is nanny not with you?" He asked.
"She doesn't know what to do..." She broke off.
The next time she spoke, her voice had cracked and broken into hysteria.
"I need a doctor!" Mary wailed, short of breath. "It'll take hours to fetch anyone else! I'll have to journey to Ripon and Mama and Papa have the car!" Her chest shuddered and she struggled to keep a grip on herself, barely noticing Matthew hastily toeing on a pair of shoes and throwing on a coat.
"She can scarcely breathe, Matthew, I don't know what to do!"
Matthew took in Mary's shaking visage and rested a hand on her shoulder.
"I'm going to do the best I can. When we get to the house, ask one of the footmen to employ the governess cart to take them to Ripon to fetch doctor Clarkson. It won't be any less than four hours before he can get here but in the meantime, I think I know what to do- it sounds to me like it's croup."
He grabbed one of his coats off the stand and wrapped it around Mary's shoulders. "Now put this on before you catch your death."
"Matthew, you are NOT a doctor," she challenged, panting as she watched him grab his keys off the table.
"Both of my parents are, and I've seen this illness before." He told her, ushering her outside as he locked up. "I can do my best, or you can wait for the doctor- god knows how long it will take him in this blizzard, it's the worst storm we've had in years!"
She didn't challenge him again, putting all her energy instead into keeping up with his fast pace as they both ran back to the big house.
When they got there, Mary did as instructed (for once) and sent the footman out for doctor Clarkson at once before joining Matthew and her sisters in the drawing room where Matthew held Sybil on his lap next to an open window, head hanging out.
"What on earth are you doing?" Edith asked him, her voice desperate.
"The cold air might help her breathe," Matthew explained as Sybil took horrible, rattling shallow breaths. She was horribly pale and running a high fever, sweating and drowsy as she tried to fight unconsciousness.
The young girl was quite clearly terrified, and Mary watched as Matthew rocked her gently in his arms, reassuring her with murmured words and soft lullabies. It softened her heart to see him so tender toward her, as it always seemed to when she saw how he was around Sybil – caring, loving, brotherly. She hated the guilt that gripped her when she realised it.
"Edith, fetch a cloth and wring it in cool water," Matthew commanded, "Mary, pass me the bottle of Ipecac in my coat pocket. She's struggling to breathe."
"Ipecac?" Mary questioned, frantically. "Won't that make her sick?"
"She's got a build-up of mucus in her throat, vomiting may help her clear it so she can breathe normally, it should also reduce the swelling in her epiglottis." He said, holding Sybil upright in his arms against his hip like how one might hold a baby. "On the second thoughts, ignore that, I'm taking her to the kitchen, it'll be easier to get things done in there."
After an hour of Matthew trying and trying to reduce the swelling and comfort the cries out of Sybil, as well as keep her fever under check and make sure she drank plenty of fluids, Sybil started to spit out the water that Mary was trying to coax into her and fall even more limp in Edith's arms.
Matthew, who was over by the sink, came rushing over and placed a hand on her forehead.
"Her temperature is getting higher." He noted, voice cracking.
Mary and Edith watched in horror as Matthew tried to get Sybil to sit on a chair, holding her head in both hands so it didn't loll back in her weakened state.
"Come on Sybil!" He begged. "Come on, breathe!"
It was terrifying, the breaths she had taken before had been weak, rattling and shallow but nonetheless audible. There. Now she was silent, convulsing in her difficulty to obey the commands that thundered in her ringing ears. She tried, she tried as hard as she could but it hurt. She couldn't do it. She shook, writhing and twitching as her sisters looked on in absolute horror, her, to all intents and purposes at least, brother shaken to the core with a fear and a uselessness. It was up to Sybil now. The silence emanated, breaking only with Edith's sob.
"She's not breathing."
Mary's lungs ceased up as the wind was knocked from her in a single moment. She couldn't breathe. That made two of them. She struggled to contain her panic, looking despairingly at Edith and gasping "not now," to herself as she shuddered in fright. In Edith's face, she saw reflected her own horror, and she managed to pull herself together just enough to follow Matthew's shouted orders.
"Lie her on her front on the table and hold her legs."
The two girls did so, hanging Sybil so the front half of her body hung down. Matthew knelt on the floor, holding a cloth to Sybil's mouth, patting her back firmly to try and get her to cough.
"Come on Sybil, cough." He pleaded. "Cough, please god cough!"
There was a terrible ghastly silence. But Sybil was strong.
"Cough!"
There was a terrible ghastly noise. And Sybil coughed up the obstruction in her throat, as Matthew's hand rubbed her back in helpful circles.
Once it was all out, Matthew carefully lifted her up and Edith took the little girl into her arms as Mary looked on, unable to do anything due to the shaking of her limbs.
Sybil's breathing rate returned slowly back to normal, her fever remained however, as Matthew managed to get more fluids down her.
"The worst is over," he declared after a few minutes. "Most cases relieve after a day or two and I believe she'll make a full recovery."
Mary was relieved, she really was, but for some reason it did nothing to slow her own heart rate.
"You two should go to bed, I'll stay with Sybil for a while. Just until she gets to sleep." Matthew carried Sybil upstairs, whispering to her how brave she'd been and how proud he was of her as he went.
Edith followed and collapsed wearily on her own bed, a rest well earnt, while Mary escaped to the library to catch her breath.
When Matthew had put Sybil to bed and tucked her in, he stayed with her for a short while, confirming his belief that the worst of it was over and she would indeed make a full recovery. He came down to the library after some time to find Mary stood, leaning on the desk and staring into space. As he approached her, moving nearer and nearer with each quiet step, he realised that she was shaking.
He laid a hand on her shoulder and smoothed over the jacket of his that she was still wearing.
"Mary, you're shaking, you should sit down." He guided her to the sofa, hoping that the heat from the fire would warm her.
They rested in the quiet, the flickering warmth licking over them and giving a little help to tie the ends of her frazzled nerves. She didn't know why this was affecting her so. Sybil would be alright, she knew that now, so why did she still feel so frightened? So on edge. So terrified.
"Do you need a hug?"
She supposed she must have looked more forlorn than she thought. She was all wobbly knees and stinging eyes, afraid that the lump in her throat was palpable. She felt rather ridiculous, in such a state even after Matthew had assured them Sybil would be alright and her other sister had gone to bed with ease of mind.
"You look like you need a hug," he added, sitting down next to her on the library sofa.
She probably did look like she needed a hug. She was picking clumsily at the seam of the coat she was wearing and her usually perfectly brushed dark hair was mussed and wild. While Edith had gone to sleep, and Matthew was doing his best to ensure Sybil's safety, she was on her own in the library shaking, despite the warmth of the fire and the comfort of the large coat around her shoulders.
Matthew looked at her, an innocent blue-eyed yet forlorn smile on his face, even if it was a little more sympathetic than she would have liked. She may have been anxious, but the last thing she wanted was him feeling sorry for her- she couldn't stand it. She didn't like sympathy at the best of times, but if there was anyone she deserved understanding from less than Matthew- well, that would be impossible.
He'd never been anything but kind to her, and yet she always did nothing. She always made fun of him. Threw her careless jibes at him like it meant nothing, when that was really the opposite of how it felt. She teased him mercilessly, each time taking it a little further until it became too far. He gave as good as he got in that respect, he matched her and fought her, taking her quips and throwing back ones of his own to challenge her, but he was more reserved in his scruples. He never took it too far. Never started it unnecessarily. Never said anything if he could see that perhaps she wasn't having a good day, or if she'd been upset by something- most of the time when Edith had triumphed over her and she'd been stuck in a melancholy huff. But despite his sound and kind judgement, Mary turned a blind eye every time. Every time Larry insulted him at dinners, every time the village boys had tripped him or sent him crumbling to the ground at the bottom of the steps in the market Mary just stood by and did nothing. Eros, Matthew's wandering cat, would come up to her sometimes on her walks around the small town, and she'd stroke him and feed him, but other than their quick glances in the grounds and their infrequent conversations at dinner or in the drawing room afterward, that was really the only connection she had with him. Patrick's death had meant his visits to the house itself had thinned in the frequency. He came to see her Papa about books or the estate, or to talk to her Mama like he so often did. He shared a bond with her parents, one she couldn't understand, or didn't have the capacity to describe other that in the way that he was like a son to them and perhaps she didn't resent that as much now as she had done. He got on with Edith, Sybil adored him- going as far as to name him 'Bubba' to which he returned her affections of a sibling-like love. It was only Mary with whom he had a relationship that was at odds to all that surrounded it. She didn't know what she wanted anymore, and all the talks in the world with her beloved Carson could not have sorted her mangled feelings.
It wasn't that she wanted to have any kind of connection with him- absolutely not, she was already teased mercilessly by her friends because of the rumour that he was sweet on her - but she didn't believe he deserved all the bullying.
He irked her, the way he waggled his eyebrows at her across the dinner table and his unfailing ability to provide intelligent and interesting conversation to the point where he became the focus of all the adults' attentions. He was always there when she did something embarrassing. And he was middle class. That's what she kept telling herself, only now she knew she'd been lying to herself, afraid to acknowledge her own feelings; perhaps it was because of his friendship with Patrick, perhaps it was something else, but Matthew Crawley had become, despite the bullying, one of the most popular boys at his school. He was the star player in the first eleven cricket team. He had girls throwing themselves at him from every which way at house parties and dances. He had grown into himself between third and fourth year. He'd turned from a sweet endearing boy, to a rather attractive, handsome young man. He was the heir to her father's estate. Which only irked her all the more.
Because she liked him. And he was good to her.
She'd been so afraid to admit it, the prospect of liking someone that much terrifying her, that she'd buried it deeper and deeper and eventually come to lie to herself.
In spite of the rumour that he liked her that she'd been told at Eleanor's ball, following the dance they'd all observed with giggling interest at the house party over two years ago now. It seemed much longer. So much had changed. Patrick, dear Patrick being chief among them. She missed him dearly, as they all must, and was sure that the feeling would never die as long as she lived. His absence had sparked something in Matthew, however. Where it had rendered him speechless and unreachable for months after the news, it had somehow changed him. Patrick had changed him. Had taught him his confidence, brought out his ability to charm. Matthew was the last person to try and fill Patrick's shoes- it couldn't be done, not ever, and they all knew that- but he had a part of Patrick in him, as they all did, and it had shown after his death. The mark he'd left behind, the values he'd taught his friend were not disregarded and his newfound confidence suited him well.
But she was still taken aback by his question. Especially after she'd been so unfaithful in his abilities earlier- when she'd ran all the way to Crawley house in a panic and he'd been good enough to come back with her and help. Matthew had noticed how terrified she had looked, stood in the freezing snow storm and dark air in just her thin nightdress, breathless after sprinting from her doorstep to his. And despite the late hour, his inexperience and how rude she'd always been to him, he ran back up to the house with her and proceeded to save Sybil's life.
And for some, unknown, reason she accepted his offer.
It was only after he wrapped his arms around her that she realised how much she had needed that hug. Matthew was warm. His arms were secure and strong and he smelt of a mixture of his cologne, soap, books and something else eminently… Matthewesque. It felt completely foreign to be so close to him- indeed to be engaging in any kind of intimacy at all- but she didn't dislike it. She most certainly didn't dislike it at all. Just as she hadn't disliked the kiss. Because, despite feeling strange, it also felt right and comfortable.
She didn't want him to let go. She let herself rest her face in his neck and relax as he tightened his hold around her.
"It's alright," he murmured. "Sybil will be alright. The doctor should be here soon and he can check her over." Mary nodded into him and he continued. "I'll wait up for him, you should get some sleep."
"No, that's alright," she said, decidedly, "I'll wait with you."
She moved back slightly, not out from his arms but leaning away fractionally to gauge his reaction to her comment. He smiled slightly, his eyes tired but paradoxically bright and glinting gently. She could feel his breath warm against her cheek and could almost sense the scene shift as she sunk further into his arms and wrapped hers around him in return.
When Mary opened her eyes blearily, she found herself lying on her side on the sofa, the coat she had been wearing replaced by Matthew's arms and her back pressed to his chest, his breaths tickling where his nose was nuzzled in the back of her neck. She didn't want to move away so she turned around instead, tucking her head beneath his chin and closing her eyes once more and pressing her cheek to his heart. She stilled after that, her bleary mind intoxicated by his calming scent, and chose to let herself drift back to sleep.
Only to be roused unceremoniously by a second, louder rap from the Doctor at the door a few moments later.
Matthew showed Clarkson into Sybil's room and stayed while he checked over the little girl, claiming that Matthew had indeed saved her life. Mary stood in the doorway with Edith, both still a little nervous as the fear from hours before had not quite faded away. Clarkson agreed to return on call in a few days, once Robert and Cora had returned, so he could provide explanation to them about the illness while Matthew insisted that both Mary and Edith go straight back to bed.
"Matthew, will you stay?" It was more of a plea than a question or even invitation when it came from Mary's lips. She didn't want to be left alone, not quite yet, and his presence was comforting as well as reassuring.
"I'll be downstairs if you need anything." He nodded. "Do you want a glass of water or some tea or something? I'm sure Mrs Patmore won't mind delaying breakfast for a minute or two."
Mary shook her head, then reassessed the situation and nodded, using the balls of her wrist to wipe her eyes.
"A cup of tea would be nice, actually."
He smiled and all too soon he sprang off down the staircase to the kitchens.
Mary went back into her room, putting on a shawl over her nightdress and sitting up against the headboard of her bed, legs tucked under her duvet. Somehow, it didn't seem as warm as Matthew's arms. Nor as comforting.
She ached. Her limbs felt like overstretched elastic bands. She was exhausted and, to be honest, quite shaken. Reminding herself to breathe, she wriggled her toes under the blankets and leant her head back, closing her eyes. The feeling of terror hadn't quite yet left her body and for that reason she felt a bit on end, sparks of anxiety shooting adrenaline from her chest to her fingertips and toes.
Only when Matthew came in and placed a saucer with a steaming cup of tea on the bedside table next to her, she gestured for him to sit down on the bed, and when he wrapped an arm around her she felt a little calmer. She leant against him.
"How're you feeling?" He asked gently. "You seemed quite shaken up earlier."
"I'm alright." She admitted, her voice an exhausted hum. "Tired, I suppose, and cold, but mostly I'm just relieved." She offered him a smile, nudging her nose against his chest. He rubbed her shoulder with his thumb, a tentative and thoughtful movement that relaxed them both.
"You should get some sleep." He said softly. "I don't expect the adults to be back for another few days yet, and that is if the storm doesn't delay their journey, so you can sleep through the entire day if you need to. I'm going to check on Sybil, nanny should have it covered but I want to make sure, and I'll make sure Edith is alright too." He removed the comforting arm from around her shoulders and climbed from her bed. "Carson has said that I might stay in the bachelor's corridor until everyone's back, but as the lady of the house I wanted to seek your permission first. May I?"
"You may," she smiled slightly at his acknowledgement of her position, even though, really, nanny was in charge until Papa and Mama came back, or even Matthew himself might be, as the heir. "But stay in the family wing; there's no need to be quite so far away in the bachelor's corridor."
He smiled back at her. "Thank you."
Then he left. And she wished he hadn't.
She wondered to her window after a few minutes, taking a shawl from her chair and wrapping it around her shoulders. The sheen of snow covering the sloping ground had been refreshed in the time she'd been sleeping; neither her nor Matthew's footprints could be seen and even the tracks from the doctor's motor had been partially covered. She watched as Matthew trekked through the storm, dressed in a thicker coat that was once Patrick's and boots that must have also belonged to her late cousin. He'd gone to collect his things, clothes and toothbrush and the like to prepare him for his stay, but she'd assumed he'd simply have sent the footman after them, rather than going to all the trouble himself.
She turned from the glass and wrapped the fabric more firmly around her, padding quickly away, through the corridor, down the stairs and out the door. The snow under her bare feet felt like knives to her skin and she regretted her actions almost at once, yet she didn't retreat. Giving up wasn't in her nature.
"Matthew!"
He whirled around, bewildered, and hurried towards her in shock, taking in her bare feet and light clothing with mingled horror and amusement.
"Mary, you'll freeze!" he called, nearing her.
She made no indication that she'd even heard him, closing the gap between them as fast as she could, despite the numbing pain in her feet and the shivers that wracked along her spine, and when she reached him, pale and trembling there was a smile on her face as she stepped off the snow, placing her feet on each of his and holding him by the lapels of his pyjamas.
Her lips were blue with cold, but they were warm when they touched his. They were soft and smooth, gentle and determined, meaningful and loving.
He took the openings of his coat and wrapped them around her, encasing them both inside the thick fabric and holding her to him. The whirlwind in his mind ceased almost at once.
He was lost in her. His every thought obliterated as her lips opened and the kiss deepened. She was intoxicating. Lady Mary Crawley had been born to be admired. Desired and loved inexplicably and absolutely- by him more than anyone.
He'd longed for this moment, to hold her against him and feel her impossibly close and yet never close enough. The temptation to continue this moment until forever ended overwhelmed him, the heady thrill of her lips moving against his, her tongue caressing his own, was so exhilarating that it took all his self-restraint to pull away. Even then he couldn't resist pulling her back once more, and just for a while they remained, contented and blissful.
Then he remembered how cold she must be, and pulled away reluctantly. With his forehead pressed to hers, he removed the coat and wrapped it around her.
"I never said thank you," she breathed, "for everything. For saving Sybil. For helping me. For being there." She couldn't articulate how much she owed him. "So, thank you, so very, very much. I'll never be able to thank you enough."
"You can thank me by going back to the house, sitting by the fire and warming yourself. Get some rest. I'll be back with my things soon."
She could feel his breath on her skin and she savoured the feeling immensely and unspeakably grateful for his unfailing compassion and loyalty. They'd reached a truce, and she was glad of it.