AN: Thanks very much for your reviews! I really appreciate people offering their thoughts, even if they don't agree with the direction of the story. I'm not sure whether I think that it would be in character for Tom to live the rest of his life without remarrying, either, but I wanted to explore the idea... and I do plan to address his reasons for it.

June 1928

Cora glides up to the sickroom door and eases it open. It's late and she doesn't want to wake Sybbie if she is finally sleeping, but she doesn't feel she can go to bed without having a look at her.

A rash still mottles Sybbie's skin, but the sedative Dr. Clarkson administered seems to have helped. Her eyes are closed, breathing regular. Her father is seated in a wing chair drawn up to the bed, slumped forward over the coverlet on folded arms. It looks like he meant to rest a moment and was taken unawares by sleep. Cora makes a mental note to have a cot set up in here: it will be a long confinement, and she doubts Tom will listen to anyone who tells him to sleep in his own room. He's hardly left his daughter's bedside since four days ago when her temperature rose to an alarming level and Dr. Clarkson was sent for. Scarlet fever, he said, even though there was no rash yet. It was in the county: Irene Lamkin, whose birthday party Sybbie attended last week, had it. Dr. Clarkson did not tell them that one of the other young party guests had already died. For forty-eight hours there was nothing to do but sponge Sybbie's skin and dose her every hour, and worry.

Certainly God would not be so cruel, Cora thought, watching Tom stroke Sybbie's dry, hot forehead, singing his voice hoarse to try and soothe her. She couldn't sleep, couldn't lie still. She vomited until there was nothing left in her stomach. At first she whimpered that her throat hurt; later speech gave way to a monotonous, suffering whine. Cora tried to take over the vigil, but Tom would not leave, though he of all people should have known how little his presence would affect the outcome. What he'd said just after Sybbie was born surfaced in Cora's mind: She's all I have left of her mother. Certainly God would not be so cruel.

On the third day the child's skin erupted in an ugly maroon tattoo, and on the fourth her fever abated. Dr. Clarkson pronounced her out of the first period of danger. Though they must be cautious, he warned, as there were still many complications that could occur: her diet must be restricted, the windows must be kept shut, even catching a slight cold before she's completely well could kill her.

Cora can see a marked improvement in Sybbie's condition even now, just a day later. Her fever's gone down more and the vomiting has all but stopped. Finally they can all get some rest. Cora's eye lands on Tom again and she feels a rush of tenderness, brought on by her own sentiment towards him as much as her appreciation of his parental devotion. Though their relationship has remained somewhat formal, they've found much to admire in each other over the last eight years. He is no longer just a link with Sybil, the man with whom she shared the last year of her life; he is the closest thing Cora has to a son.

She resists the urge to enter the room and lean him back in the chair, tuck a blanket around him and a pillow under his head. Instead she closes the door and goes to bed.

-o-

Sybbie has risen back to awareness quickly, and her symptoms have diminished until they're no more than a mild misery to her. Now there only remains the long quarantine. Tom and Cora are the only members of the family allowed into the room, as no one else had scarlet fever in childhood, and Mrs. Hughes and the hired nurse the only staff. Fortunately Mary and her son have gone to London already, so there is no danger of Matt falling ill.

The novelty of staying in bed all day soon palls on Sybbie: she's used to having the run of the estate, and to have her world reduced to one room and a few books and toys makes her petulant. In her protruding lip and capricious outbursts her father sees evidence that some of his wife's less agreeable characteristics have been passed down along with the glossy brown curls and affectionate nature.

To make matters worse, she is often alone. The estate's business has not come to a halt to accommodate a child's illness, and Tom has had to return to work. Although Cora and Mrs. Hughes sit with her as much as they can, they have responsibilities of their own. So by the time her father comes in each evening Sybbie is vibrating with impatience, clamoring for stories. They've gone through every fairy story he knows, every folk tale from his childhood, until Sybbie knows them backwards and corrects him at the smallest omission. Finally she demands new material.

Tom draws on his forebears for inspiration. "Once there was a boy in Ireland whose father was a tenant farmer..."

"What's a tenant farmer?"

"You know what a tenant farmer is, love, he works on land owned by a lord. Like Mr. Drake works your grandfather's land."

"Oh. Didn't the farmer want his own land?"

"Well, yes, love, but he didn't have enough money to buy it."

"Why didn't he have enough money?"

Now there's a question. Because of an unjust system that keeps the wealthy on top and the poor struggling beneath their boot-heels seems like a rather harsh thing to say to an eight-year-old girl, so Tom just says, "That's the way the world is. A lot of people don't have very much money."

"That seems rather hard. How do they buy clothes and books and toys?"

"Sometimes they don't." She still looks perplexed, and he feels a twinge of discomfort that his daughter has so little idea of the way other people live. Nevertheless, he continues the story, making it up as he goes along. "And this boy, one day he -"

"I don't want a story about boys," Sybbie interrupts. "Boys are boring. Tell me about how you got Mama to marry you."

"I've told you that one lots of times. I thought you wanted something new."

"I've changed my mind." She cocks her head and directs a sidewise look at her father that still twists his insides a little: she's so like Sybil, he thinks for the thousandth time. "Great-grandmama says it's a woman's per... prer... that a woman can change her mind whenever she wants."

He supposes he shouldn't be surprised at such pearls, not from Violet. "Up to a point. Change it too often without reason and people will stop taking anything you say seriously."

She takes a moment to digest this. "All right, I'll just change it this once then. Tell me, tell me, tell me!" She bounces up and down in bed with each "tell me," not even backing down when Tom raises a disapproving eyebrow at her imperiousness. Not for the first time, Tom wonders if his daughter is just naturally headstrong or if she's getting spoiled. A bit of both, maybe.

Sybbie starts it off for him. "You were taking her to the school at York to learn how to be a nurse..."

"All right, all right. She didn't want me to take her things all the way to her room - "

"Because she was afraid people would think she was a spoiled little lord's daughter who couldn't carry her own bags - " Sybbie loves that part.

"Exactly. So I was just handing them over - "

"And she said it would be hard to let you go and you thought it's now or never so you said how you wanted her to run away with you."

Tom smiles at Sybbie's version of his proposal. What he's told her is mostly reconstructed from what Sybil told him: perhaps mercifully, he doesn't remember much of his speech that day. "But she didn't say yes for a long time after that."

"I know that! But she never said no and you said that even if Grandmama and Grandpapa wouldn't speak to her anymore you would devote every waking minute to her happiness and..."

"Who's telling the story here, me or you?" Sybbie shuts her mouth, looking chastened. "It's all right, love, I'm glad you know it so well."

"But you say the end bit. Where she did say yes."

"All right." Tom settles back in his chair. "She came into the garage..."

"Wearing a beautiful dress," Sybbie murmurs.

"... where I was reading the newspaper. And I put down the paper and stood up, and she told me she was ready to give me her answer." He's always edited the extraneous dialogue from this scene.

"And you were nervous. Your heart was going ba-boom, ba-boom..." Sybbie thumps her chest and giggles.

"Yes, I was very nervous. But she said, 'My answer is...'"

"'I'm ready to travel, and you're my ticket,'" Sybbie stage-whispers along with him. "And then you kissed her."

"Well, yes. After she said I could, of course."

She hugs herself, grinning. "And Grandmama and Grandpapa did talk to her again, after she married you, didn't they?"

"Of course they did. Your mama was so good and kind that no one could be angry with her for long."

"But why were they angry at all? Why didn't they want her to marry you?"

Another sticky question: one Sybbie hasn't asked before, surprisingly enough. He thinks a moment before answering. "They were afraid that she wouldn't be happy with me."

"Because she was a lady and you were a chauffeur."

Tom opens his mouth to say There was more to it than that but then hesitates. He thinks of the gulf that lay between him and Sybil on that day in York, and how long it took them to bridge it. He thinks of Robert, Earl of Grantham, taking out his checkbook in the room above the pub, saying You could start a new life in Ireland, as if money were what he'd been after all along. He thinks of some of the nastier rumors that got around about why Sybil Crawley had suddenly run off to Ireland with the family chauffeur, rumors that bothered her even though she tried not to show it.

For Sybbie at eight, her parents' love story is a fairy tale: there's no need to complicate it. Not yet. So Tom says, "Yes, that was it. But we were happy, darling. Very happy indeed."