A/N: I realized about eight chapters into this story that I should have been posting each individually and letting them stand on their own (each vignette certainly seems to come with the birthing pains of an entirely new story, but too late to turn back now!). Some chapters have been designed to be quirky, others angsty, some as episode re-writes, and others just to provide some general fluff and fun. Even though this one may not appeal to everyone, I indulged with it a bit, to test the edges of my comfort zone (part of the fun of writing).

I do a lot of traveling for work, and I've found it gives the brain ample time to ruminate about stories, even chew on a crack idea or two. This is one of the latter, and was briefly hinted at in Chapter 15: the first lumps in the honeymoon mattress, so to speak.

Thanks for the reviews, both public and private, and as always to foojules for taking the time to beta.

One final note: with the chapters being presented out of order and characters appearing intermittently (especially the Branson clan), I posted a family tree of sorts on my profile page (I've had to refer to it myself), along with bullets for each chapter's story.

EQUALITY

Dublin, Early August, 1919

Since their marriage in June, the Bransons had grown accustomed to the city's morning bustle welcoming them awake. Engines whirred along the street below, horns beeped irascibly at pedestrians, and fellow Dubliners jostled and bumped one another on their way to work. Standing in the parlor at a street side window, Sybil sipped a cup of coffee and thought of how much her life had changed. In just a few months, she'd transitioned from earl's daughter – having once been presented to Their Majesties – to this: an anonymous voyeur in a city verging on a new dawn.

It was a new dawn for her as well, she realized, listening to Tom humming behind her. Back in Yorkshire, his lilting voice had conveyed history lessons and lots of opinions (political and otherwise), along with the occasional declaration of love. But once they had arrived in his homeland, she'd discovered it was just as apt to carry a tune. When she heard him sing for the first time – at a family gathering at his mother's house a few days after they arrived - she had realized how much they still had to discover about each other. Perhaps that was what thrilled her the most: peeling back the layers that class division had applied.

She followed the timbre of her husband's voice, a striking tenor that made her own heart sing, and laughed once she recognized the tune.

And as I went home on Saturday night as drunk as drunk could be

I saw two hands upon her breasts where my old hands should be

Well, I called me wife and I said to her: Will you kindly tell to me

Who owns them hands upon your breasts where my old hands should be

Good Lord, he's terribly full of himself after last night. She'd heard "Seven Drunken Nights" before, on the same night she was introduced to his family. It came by way of her future brothers-in-law, whose jubilation at being reunited with "Little Tommy" occasioned a tableful of empty bottles. Tom's ears had gone purple when they'd started belting out the last lewd verses, but beside him Sybil laughed and clapped along with the beat, nudging his ribs and urging him to lighten up. I certainly heard worse during the war, she'd reminded him.

She leaned on the washroom doorframe, watching Tom lather his face in preparation of a morning shave, and a slow burn worked its way up from her toes. That had been another surprise: she had never expected time alone spent with her husband to be such...fun. As they navigated their first two months of marriage, they typically surrendered to their natural impulses whenever they could. Watching the muscles of his back, Sybil remembered the way they had rippled beneath her fingertips as they rocked together the previous night and her mouth curved in a wicked smile.

Tom caught her reflection in the mirror, the thick layer of foam only partially masking his grin. "What?" he asked.

"You look like the cat that got the canary."

"I certainly feel like it," he replied with a wink. His practiced hands scraped the razor along the leather strop.

Slipping in behind him, she set her coffee cup down. "Here, let me." His fingers clutched the razor. "I'm a nurse, remember? I used to do this all the time."

Reluctantly, he loosened his grip. "How do I know you're not just looking to do away with me and run off with my money?"

"You'll just have to trust me, won't you?" She started on one cheek, smirking as he went rigid as a statue. "I wish you'd give the safety razors a go. The soldiers in the war found it quite convenient not having to carry a strop around."

Tom waited for her to pause and slosh the razor in the sink before daring to speak. "It belonged to my father. He didn't have much, but Joe got his watch. Sean got his Bible, and Andrew and Kieran each got a set of cufflinks. Mam saved his razor for me."

Sybil glanced down, saw DB carved in the ivory handle, and smiled before working along his jaw. "If we have a son, perhaps you can pass it on to him." It was the first time she'd really spoken about children. "Don't forget we're having dinner at your mother's tonight. Andrews's birthday, remember?"

"Right, so that means tomorrow's Sunday." His hands drifted down, resting on the curves of her hips, the heat blooming under her skin as his eyes locked with hers. "No work."

"Stop that."

"Stop what?"

Carefully scraping down his neck, she quirked a brow. "Looking at me like that."

His fingers ventured to loosen her robe, gently so as not to startle her, and settled on her waist with a light squeeze. "I can't help it." When she moved to rinse the razor again, he tugged her close, leaving a swath of foam on her cheek in the wake of his kiss.

Sybil squealed when he lifted her in his arms, carrying her towards their room. Giving his shoulders a half-hearted push, she laughed, "Tom, you look ridiculous..."

He rubbed a cheek against hers, coating it with foam, before landing clumsily on the bed. Pinning her legs between his knees, he smeared the remaining foam wherever he could, until her hands started returning the favor, smattering it across his chest. Before long they were both sputtering from laughter and misdirected foam. Sybil lay a palm against his cheek, a low chuckle in her throat as it brushed first along smooth skin, and then along a patch of stubble.

"Lie back." She gave him a little push. Sitting on his thighs, she bent to kiss him, her newly cropped hair tickling his cheeks. He moaned into her mouth, his hands pushing the robe from her shoulders, and further still until they rested on her backside, squeezing gently. Yes, she thought, this is what we've learned to enjoy. She nipped her way down his throat to his chest and Tom chuckled, the vibrations tickling her nose as she nuzzled down along his breastbone. Her fingers hooked in his bottoms and tugged, her kisses following the dark trail of hair lower. His breath quickened beneath her lips, his abdomen rising and falling as she continued down her path. He was obviously ready. Sybil gave a little smile and took a breath – she wasn't sure if she was, but it was just kissing, only in a different place. Besides, he had done this for her, and they were partners after all: equals in everything.

But then his hand pulled at hers, directing her back up.

"Sybil," he groaned. "We don't have much time..."

Her protests stalled when he kissed her, his tongue pushing stubbornly against hers as he rolled them back over, settling comfortably. Her mind was not so serene, vacillating between the need to draw him into her and the feeling of something being amiss. He'd deflected her with a similar pallid excuse the last time, and the time before that; every time she'd tried to go below his belt, so to speak. She didn't understand why, when he seemed more than eager to go below hers.

His legs made their way between hers, his erection hard against her. "Tom..." She gasped, "...wait..."

He pulled back, breathless. "Do you not want to?"

"Yes, very much. Always." The question was on the tip of her tongue, but as her eyes locked with his her courage faltered, surrendered really, to sheer need. Smiling, she pulled him to her. "Kiss me." Sybil groaned into his mouth as he pushed in, beginning languid strokes, and decided the conversation could jolly well wait.

Their lovemaking had become one of her favorite parts of marriage. They'd shed modesty on their wedding night – and all of the next day – learning and loving as she had never dreamed possible. With each time they were bolder and more playful, with an enthusiasm that bordered on impatience. They found they could bring one another to an exhilarating peak, sometimes only with whispered words or – one time, she remembered – with a simple stare. She had learned to recognize that erratic hitch signaling his release was near, and she would concentrate on going over with him. Their timing remained imperfect, they were novices still, but this morning – perhaps it was the hands of the clock working against them – they came together quickly. The euphoria made them drowsy, their mouths slack with clumsy kisses. He pulled out and away from her; she rolled with him, draping a leg across his hips.

"Its mornings like this when I hate having to go to work," she murmured, her fingers twirling absently on his chest.

Tom pressed them to his mouth. "I know."

Her limbs felt a bit like pudding, but she managed to prop up on an elbow. "Tom, before... when I..."

"Jesus, we'll both be late," he said, glancing at the bedside clock. He scrambled up and turned with an impish grin. "Shall we continue this evening?"

Andrew's birthday dinner was not well attended by the Branson clan – I might as well try and herd cats, Cathleen quipped – but it provided a merry conclusion to a long workweek for both Sybil and Tom. Sybil loved the warm, familial setting of her mother-in-law's cottage and vividly remembered her first visit. She'd stood nervously beside him as he rapped the knocker, wondering how it could possibly take so long for anyone to walk to the door. The narrow one-story façade crammed between dozens of others along Fontenoy Street suggested little more than a single room – at most two – behind the arched doorway. But when Tom's mother appeared in the threshold, light glittered forward from a series of deeply set rooms. There was even a stairwell snaking its way to a hidden second story. Not an inch of wasted space could be seen, but while small, the place was not oppressive. Unlike the cavernous interior at Downton Abbey.

At Downton she would not have been able to volunteer for dish duty either, but here it was expected. So after dinner, while Tom joined his brother and brother-in-law outside for a drink, Sybil wedged into the small kitchen with his sister Betsey. As the oldest of the Branson siblings, nearly eighteen years separated Betsey and Tom, and she'd recently become a grandmother. Tom joked that she had doted on him so much as a baby that it was as if he'd had two mothers.

Sybil glanced over her shoulder into the small sitting room and saw Cathleen pulling a batch of sewing from a nearby basket. "It's a shame Joe and Sean couldn't make it this evening, for your mother's sake if nothing else."

"Those two do as they please," Betsey grumbled, scrounging for a towel in the cupboard. "And Kieran's just like them."

Sybil nodded quietly; she'd only met Tom's oldest two brothers a few times, and only once since the wedding. Both were entrenched with the Irish Republican Army, so she didn't ask too many questions. And she'd yet to meet the stodgy Kieran who seemingly vexed everybody; he'd been too busy for a visit when she and Tom passed through Liverpool on their way to Ireland.

"Are you enjoying your work at the hospital?"

"I am." Sybil plunged her hands into the sudsy water. "I'm in the general ward for the moment. Apparently it takes some time to work your way into another."

"Which one would you choose?"

"I don't know. Maternity, perhaps."

Cathleen's hopeful sing-song pealed from the adjacent room. "Any particular reason?"

Betsey and Sybil shared a smile. "Mam, are you eavesdropping on us?"

"I'm not deaf."

Sybil laughed; her mother-in-law might have been nearing seventy, but she was still known to cuff an ear on occasion. "I'm sorry to disappoint you, but no. No reason in particular, except to see life after so much death during the war."

"They've only been married two months, Mam," Betsey tsked.

"Well, that's four months behind your father and I." Holding up Andrew's threadbare jacket, Cathleen gave a doleful shake of her head.

Sybil's jaw dropped, but Betsey just grinned. "The family Bible may say I was two months early, but to hear Mam tell it, she gave birth to a calf..."

"Eight and a half pounds on a blistering July afternoon," her mother called. "'Twas the only time I ever wondered if sleeping with a man was worth the effort." By then, all three women were giggling like little girls. "But I promise you a cold winter's night is best spent in the arms of the one you love."

Turning back to dry a copper pot, Betsey looked askance at Sybil. "Here she goes..."

"Your father and I may have been poor as church mice, but we had each other," her mother continued, threading a needle to begin patching her son's jacket. "We almost didn't, though, if my family had had a say in it. My sister tried to talk me out of marrying him."

"You never told me that."

"I was a school teacher at the time in Galway and wasn't dependent on anyone or anything as fickle as masters or the weather. And your father had been bouncing around from one patch of land to the next. When my father found out, he was furious. Said I didn't have the sense God gave a potato for wanting to marry that man."

Betsey's eyes made a playful roll. "But she loved him..."

"God help me, I did. He was full of mischief, ideas, and saw nothing but a brighter future for Ireland. And I fell for it." Craning back in her rocking chair, she caught Sybil's glance and smiled. "Reminds me of someone else I know."

"Tommy's always been a bit of a romantic like our Da," Betsey said. "He sees hope where others see suffering. He believes in people, not types." She lowered her voice to a whisper and winked. "I think that's why Mam dotes on him so much."

"Well, he certainly believed in me more than some people did," Sybil said quietly, her hands slowly scouring a plate.

Betsey pulled the plate from her hands with a soft smile. "Do you miss your home?"

"No. My home is with Tom. As much as I miss my family, that life just wasn't for me. I wanted something more."

"More than a castle and tons of money?" Betsey quipped. "You won't be hard to please."

"You can't put a price on freedom. That's all I wanted or could ever want. To be treated as an equal – by society, by the law, and my family. As a woman, I want my ideas and beliefs...and my desires to have value."

"Well, they always will with Tommy..." She caught the pinched look on the younger woman's face. "Sybil? He's not given you the impression otherwise, has he?"

"No," she sighed. "But sometimes I feel he still thinks of me as...Lady Sybil." She glanced up with a dismissive shrug. "I'm sure it's all in my mind."

"We've not known each other long," Betsey said, reaching for the drain plug, "but I do know that Lady Sybil didn't become Sybil Branson by holding her tongue."

Tom sat with Andrew and Michael by the front stoop of the Branson cottage. Summer's heat covered the city like a damp blanket and Fontenoy Street only offered a stingy, dank breeze. Seated in wooden chairs, the three men lazed back against the brick façade, listening to the laughter and fiddles unleashed on Saturday's evening. Tom remembered having seen a wedding party near St. Mary's Chapel when he stepped from the tram earlier. He supposed the revelers were spreading the celebrations along Mountjoy Street now.

Michael swigged on his drink. "How's work?"

Tom hummed around a mouthful ale. "Another day, another pittance. But if you've any interest in the startup of a trust fund for an Irish National War Memorial, Monday's paper will have a spellbinding article on the committee's first meeting."

"I know it's not covering the Castle or Sinn Féin yet, but its work. And you should be grateful and proud of it. Be patient."

"After forcing me to cover the Victory Parade a few weeks ago, I'm sure my editor thought it would be a fine joke; he knows my views on the war."

"A tribute to your countrymen is no joke," Michael chided. "Remember you lost a nephew over there."

Tom's eyes drifted down, watching the skittering orange sparks as Andrew flicked a cigarette butt into the dirt. He had forgotten about his brother Joe's only son, killed at Ypres serving with the 16th Irish Division.

Michael spoke back up before he could apologize. "Betsey said you saw Joe after work."

Propping a foot up on the chair rung, Tom watched a couple of boys kick a ball in the street. "He wanted to show me some things I missed, being away from Dublin."

"See that he doesn't show you too much, Tommy."

"I came back to Ireland expecting to do my part," he said. "I'd hoped to do that at the paper – I have opinions, you know, but nobody wants to hear them."

"Oh, for God's sake," Michael growled. "You've been away from Ireland all this time, working as a chauffeur for a bloody English earl, and you expect to..."

"Frank Meehan's dead."

On Tom's other side, Andrew's head whipped around. "From King's County?"

Tom nodded, reaching beneath his chair for another bottle. "They fished him out of the canal, near the Portobello Bridge."

"Him and me took the train to Cork once to look for work." Andrew crossed himself. "Jesus, Mary and Joseph."

"And Joe wanted you to see the corpse for yourself?" Michael huffed and muttered in Irish under his breath. "Leave Joe be." He punctuated the point with a stabbing finger. "He may be your brother, and I love him as my own, but he's got a cold place inside him."

Tom couldn't shake the image of his brother standing over the bloated body. Joe had been cool, indifferent even, as he hinted that Meehan's death likely came as a reprisal for something he and Sean had done. "What happened to him, Michael? I know he's never been the happiest of men, but he's changed."

Michael yawned and ran a hand over the thinning red hairs on his scalp before rubbing his eyes. Tom suddenly saw the age on him; he'd be fifty next year. "Started not long after you left, lad, with the lock-out. I had him a good job at the brewery, and told him not to strike with Larkin, but he did it anyway." He hacked and spat into the street. "Lost his job, couldn't make the rent, and then Clara up and left him." He swallowed the remnants of his bottle; the chair creaked in agony when he bent down for another ale. "Eh, never liked her much anyway."

Neither did I, Tom thought. Always barking like a mad dog at anyone within earshot, whether they deserved it or not. He remembered the letter from his mother detailing Joe's dismissal from Guinness. The brewery had a working relationship with the union, but frowned on sympathetic strikers, of which Joe was one and was promptly dismissed.

"...and then your cousin Bill was killed in the Rising, and his only boy at Ypres …Joe's a different man than the one I first met in King's County all them years ago." Michael took another swig with a shake of the head. "Not like your father at all. Got his beliefs, I suppose, but Dan Branson could take a punch and not let it eat away at his soul."

"I suppose I don't really know him very well."

"Well, he was almost grown when you were born. Didn't really get the chance, did you?"

"I can tell he's not too keen on having an English aristocrat as a sister-in-law."

"That wife of yours is no more an aristocrat than I am," Michael laughed. "She may have been born into it, but that's the end of it." He prodded Tom's elbow. "How's my advice paying off, by the way?"

Andrew had sat silent through the somber exchange, but craned his neck at Michael's lightening tone. "What advice?"

"I told our little Tommy here before he got married, that if you put a button in a jar every time you make love during the first year of marriage, and then starting the second year, begin taking one out...you'll never empty the jar before the angels call you home."

Andrew grinned at his brother's reddened cheeks. "Well?"

Tom mulled the thought before casting a tipsy smile. "Some of us have bigger jars than others."

Michael roared with laughter and slapped him on the back, causing the younger man to belch up a bit of ale. "That we do, my boy!" Taking a long pull from his bottle, he exhaled a happy sigh at the warm tingle in his limbs.

"I'm sure I would find that bloody hilarious if you weren't married to my sister."

Just then Sybil's head poked out the door. "Tom, we should go."

"Right." He leaned forward and nearly toppled out of his chair.

Sybil caught him just in time, scowling at her brothers-in-law. "How much did you three drink?" Both replied with innocent shrugs.

"I knew his going to England was a bad idea," Michael said.

Andrew nodded gravely. "Turned him into a feckin' lightweight."

Tom was not so drunk as to miss that. "Watch your mouth," he snapped, and then turned back to Sybil. "Pay 'em no mind." She slapped his hands when he reached clumsily for her waist. He retracted his hand, stinging from the sharp slap she dealt him. "Love, that hurt!"

Taking his cap from his coat pocket, she plunked it onto his head. "Well, I wasn't trying to kiss you now, was I?"

Michael snorted into his bottle. "Looks like that button jar isn't going to get any fuller tonight."

Back at their flat, Sybil dropped her bag on the table, the sound a muted thud in the small kitchen. Tom had gone straight from the door to the toilet; the last few minutes of the tram ride had been a battle between his body and the beer. He peeked around the threshold a few moments later, his expression tempered with relief, asking, "Would you like first go at the bath?"

She shook her head, offering a smile for him to go ahead. As the water ran, she tidied up their mess from that morning, washing the few dishes and wiping down the small counter. Her work schedule had turned her into a morning person, but those early hours were too often spent in haste readying for the day. After she married, she came to favor the evening, when the streets had gone dark, another day of work complete, and the world distilled down to just she and Tom. Saturday nights, when the clock became obsolete, were even more prized. Lost in her thoughts, she didn't hear the washroom door squeak open. A warm arm snaked around her waist.

"All done," came the murmur behind her ear. Savoring the moist trail across her neck, she was reluctant to turn, but grinned when she found him holding the towel ends at his waist, his mouth twisted in a smirk. "Do I have a clean pair of pajamas?"

"In all probability, no," she laughed. As a married couple, they had divvied up the washing and cleaning but often got their signals crossed on who was responsible for what during a given week. She shimmied out of the narrowing gap between him and the counter, giving him a playful pat on the rear. "But you won't need them tonight anyway."

After her own bath she found him propped in their bed, alternating between scratching on a sheet of paper and chewing the end of a pencil. He wasn't so engrossed in his work as to miss the light filtering through the folds of her robe. Discarding his notes on the nightstand, he lay back, hands behind his head, following her with his eyes. She perched on the window sill, toweling her hair in the light breeze. "Aren't you coming to bed?"

"My hair is still wet."

"Doesn't matter. It dries in no time now that you've cut it." His hand lifted the sheet and he gave the spot next to his bare hip a playful pat.

Dropping the towel on his face, she shrugged out of her robe and snuggled in beside him. The bed gave a squeak-squeak when he flopped to his side. Tucking her head into his neck, she breathed in the scent of fresh soap before her mouth found his throat. Their nights were nowhere near routine yet, but they'd learned to read the wordless invitations. His hand came to rest at her hip, fingers dusting over the skin, moving slowly down. They shifted and wriggled together until legs and arms were securely entwined. Their mouths descended lazily on one another. After this morning's hastened lovemaking, she sensed he was eager to savor it now. She pushed him back, kicking at the sheet as it tangled about their feet. Tom gave a heavy sigh beneath her weight, and another as her lips and teeth and tongue grazed his shoulders, his chest, his nipples. His palms brushed her arms but other than that he didn't touch her, content to lie back and enjoy the view with an indulgent smile.

He groaned as her hand brushed low along his stomach, teasing the skin on his hips, and coming to rest between his legs. Her fingers caressed him softly, and he squirmed a bit. He gasped when she pulled out of their kiss, and again when he felt the damp tendrils of her hair tickle their way down still until he felt her lips nip the skin at his navel. When he felt her breath, hot and teasing against his erection, he pulled her back up. Urging her mouth to his, he tried to roll them over, but Sybil pushed against his chest.

"What's the matter?" he gasped.

Her face pinched. Surely he's not that oblivious. "Tom...this morning, and just now...I don't understand. Am I doing something wrong?"

His ears flamed. "Of course not," he sputtered.

"Then what?" Tom's eyes went everywhere but to her and she scrambled to sit up, tucking the sheet beneath her arms. She suddenly felt vulnerable, apprehension worming its way to the surface of her thoughts. "You did that a few days ago too. Why won't you let me?" Her hand dropped to his, and his eyes slowly found hers. "Tom?"

He propped up on his hand, gave a little shrug. "Maybe you're not ready for that yet."

"I think I'm the best one to decide that," she snapped. "Besides, you did it for me!"

"But that was different!"

"How?"

"Well... because..."

"If you say because I'm a woman, you're sleeping on the sofa tonight." His mouth closed sharply. "It is, isn't it?" She shoved his pillow into his chest. "Out."

"Sybil?" The bed squeaked as she flopped over, snatching the covers with her. "I don't understand..."

"There's a blanket in the cupboard," she said, her voice cold as she switched off the lamp. "Goodnight, Tom."

Tom's feet hung over the edge of the sofa as he lay back, staring at the watermarked ceiling. In almost two months of marriage, the one thing that had come most natural to them was conversation. Well, second most natural, he thought with a rueful smile. He had been delighted to find Sybil a passionate lover with few inhibitions, jumping in with both feet as it were. He'd once teased her about it and she'd replied, Oh, darling, it's not the sex, it's us. He understood what she meant: whatever he'd done before her was nothing compared to what they had discovered together.

He'd come to their marriage bed with just enough experience to trundle through and they'd had a conversation about that, too, before they married. The subject had come up while they were picnicking at a grassy spot on St. Stephen's Green. With the last of the cherry tree blossoms floating around them, he'd pulled her into his lap for a kiss. The public park offered little privacy, but with their first few weeks in Ireland spent under heavy guard at his mother's cottage, they were quickly carried away. He'd groaned softly and pulled back.

Brows furrowed, she laid a palm on his cheek. "What?" When he tried shifting from beneath her, he gasped. Sybil bit back a smile, her mouth quivering, "Oh."

"Sorry."

A laugh bubbled up then. "It's not like I don't know."

He smirked. "Just what a bridegroom wants to hear. How many naked men his fiancé has seen." He scooted a safe distance away and rummaged for a glass of lemonade; she'd made it that morning and he nearly choked on the sugar.

"Tom, have you..."

An almost clinical curiosity accompanied her sudden question and his eyes wandered back to hers. When he answered with a quick nod, she gave a soft smile, and waited. After a moment, he explained that his brother Andrew – ever the fun-loving bachelor - thought his inexperience was a disgrace to Irish lads everywhere. So, at eighteen, Tommy Branson had been introduced to Katie O'Byrne. The confession seemed to relax him – or maybe it was the honesty with which they discussed it - and he laid back, his head resting in her lap.

"Andrew thought she'd be perfect for me since she liked to read. Turns out she preferred novels," he chuckled. "But we became friends anyway."

"Quite good friends, I should say," she teased.

"I'd spent most of my life in the country, so when I came to Dublin to drive Old Lady Delderfield around I was rather shy."

"Tom Branson, shy?"

"Laugh, if you will, but it's true. And she was easy to talk to. We were only together – like that – for a few months, though."

"Do you think she loved you?"

"I doubt it. She was twenty-one, red-headed with a temper to match. I don't think she made a habit of taking men into her bed, though, if that's what you're thinking. She was just very independent. If she wanted something, whether it was a better job or another box of books, she made up her mind to get it. And she encouraged me to do the same."

"Do you know where she is now?"

"I saw her now and again around Dublin, at the library and such. I even got a letter from her once I'd moved to Downton. She'd left for America, Boston I think."

"I hope she found whatever she was looking for, then, and that she's as happy as you." She bent to kiss him, the late spring sun warming their hands, folded together on his chest.

"No one could be as happy as I am," he whispered as she pulled away. He'd sat up then, turning to face her. "You must think me quite the cad." The playfulness in his tone belied his worry that she'd think less of him, but it couldn't mask the apprehension in his eyes.

Sybil shook her head. "I think it makes you human. Who's to say I wouldn't have done the same, if I'd been raised in different circumstances?"

He wondered, but then again, he'd learned long ago never to doubt her. "There's been no one since, though," he felt the need to add. "Just didn't seem the thing to do. Besides, I caught the political bug and my mind was preoccupied with that, among other things." He'd emphasized the last part with a kiss.

On his lonely sofa Tom grinned, thinking of the beautiful spark of a woman who had occupied so much of his mind for so many years, with her jupes culottes and her determination to escape from a prison of propriety. Remembering what they'd done that morning, and had been in the process of doing not an hour before, he felt a stirring in his groin and groaned. Rolling to his side, he winced when a spring jabbed him in the ribs. Sybil had been much more than his lover; he'd trusted her with his dreams, his friendship, his future. He'd asked her to give up her old life – albeit one she wished to shed – and now he'd repaid her with the greatest sin: silence. He pushed up from the second-hand sofa and stumbled toward their bedroom.

When he switched on the lamp near the door, the light bounced off her open eyes before she turned away in a quiet huff. Suppressing a smile, he sank next to her on the bed. "I could hear you thinking from the other room." Leaning over, he pecked a kiss to her cheek – she didn't object – and slipped in behind her. "I'm sorry," he murmured, his hand sliding across her hip. "We should have talked about it." Slowly, she rolled in his arms. "I've never done that before...rather, I've never had it done to me."

He brushed a lock of hair behind her ear and she sighed quietly, the tension flagging a bit. "Do you not want to?"

"I suppose I do. But..." He hesitated, but her gaze was unwavering. "You might not like it, though, and I wouldn't want that to ruin what we have..."

"What we have is a marriage, Tom. A marriage of equals. And I only want to make you happy...just as you have me."

"I am happy," he assured her, and then sighed when she rolled her eyes. "Sybil, growing up as I did and where I did I heard a lot of lads bragging about their conquests with women. Anytime I ever heard...that... mentioned, at least in the context they were speaking of it, it always seemed a pretty degrading thing. I know it doesn't have to be like that for us, but I don't want you to do anything you might regret."

"Well then you still have a lot to learn about me, because you should know by now I wouldn't do anything I didn't want to." Her fingers trailed down his breastbone: a simple touch that made him shiver. "I want you to stop thinking of me as Lady Sybil..."

"Love, I swear, I don't..."

"Because I've been a nurse for a long time now, and as much as you may have heard from your mates in the pubs, my colleagues have just been just as keen to talk. Especially those I served with during the war, the ones that had lovers in the army." She laughed. "It was an extraordinary education listening to them at times. Some of them made pleasuring a man that way sound rather… fun."

He remembered Sybil stomping into the garage once, just before she'd gone to York, fuming at her mother's worry that she'd somehow be corrupted by the work she would perform as a nurse, the "types" she'd be associating with. My grandmother says my innocence will protect me, Sybil had said scornfully. Tom mused on the irony a moment before finding her hand, his thumb twisting the plain wedding ring she refused to remove even at night. "Can I ask you something...and I want you to be honest." She nodded. "When I did that to you...kissed you like that, did you really enjoy it?"

Sybil thought back to that moment when she'd realized what he was about to do, her blood tingling with trepidation and excitement. Just relax, love. "Well, it was a bit of a shock at first – I wasn't sure what I was supposed to feel." He could see her blush even in the dim light. "It was certainly different than having you inside me. But, after a while, yes...I did enjoy it. It was quite nice, actually."

"Just nice?"

"Oh for Heaven's sake," she said, burying her face in his chest and before long they were both shaking with laughter. "Had you ever done that before?"

"No."

"What made you do it?"

His fingers curled against her hip. "I don't know. We've been getting pretty familiar with each other's likes and such...I thought I would give it a go." It was a lame answer, but an honest one, and earned him a kiss.

"That's all I want to do," she said, and then grinned. "But if...if you don't like it, just tell me the truth. Like with my cooking..."

He snickered. "My darlin', there is no comparison between your lovemaking and your cooking."

"I'm doing my best!"

She gave him an indignant shove and Tom caught her hand, pressing his lips against her fingers. "And I love every...last...charred...morsel..." The promise ended with them giggling through a kiss.

"Now, can I ask you something?" A naughty twinkle flashed in her eyes.

"Anything."

Her fingers traced the neckline of his shirt. "What's it like for you...when we're together?"

"It's quite nice." He repeated her answer with an impish smirk, earning him a dainty pinch on the nipple, before he turned thoughtful. "It's far better than my dreams," he said. "And I dreamed about you a lot before you said yes."

She blushed a bit, but pressed further. "I mean physically. Only I know what it feels like for me..."

"Like warm silk." He returned her grin. "No, make that warm silk with honey. And when I'm inside you, all I can think about is us. I get a bit light headed just before..." He trailed off with a crooked smile. "And my toes curl."

She giggled, reaching down to lace their hands between them. "I make your toes curl?"

"Love, you make my toes curl all the time," he quipped, leaning over. His mouth brushed hers, his tongue trailing along her bottom lip. Pulling back, his eyes lit mischievously. "So?"

"What?"

"Shall we give it another try?"

She chewed on her lip. "Well..."

"Oh, so now that I'm practically begging, you don't want to..."

"It's not that I don't want to." Her nose scrunched. "You've ruined the element of surprise."

Both burst into laughter and they laid back, staring at the ceiling. He tucked one arm around her, crooking the other behind his head. "Of all the conversations for us to have..."

"Seems like that's all we ever did before...have conversations."

His head turned on the pillow to face her. "It's nice, though."

"Yes, it is."

"It's good to know that when we're old and decrepit we can at least talk."

Sybil pulled him over then, her fingers crawling like little spiders up his sides, making him yelp. "When we're old, Mr. Branson, I expect us to do a good deal more than talk."

Their laughter distilled into sighs, mouths merging in a slow battle. Unhurried, they retraced their earlier steps, tangling together, smiling, laughing, groaning a bit as their skin began to ripple with anticipation. She gave him a grin just before, whispering relax darling against his stomach as he had with her. His eyes held hers until the warmth of her mouth encased him, and then they simply squeezed shut and his jaw dropped with an escaped breath. Good God, he thought, wondering if that's what it had been like for her. His breath hitched suddenly when he felt her tongue swirl around him, and something akin to a small keen escaped his throat. No, I couldn't possibly make her feel like this. Time seemed simultaneously stop and start up again; it was too much, too new. His nerve endings on fire, he felt a tightening, concentrated on anything but letting go. She drew him in deeper, and he almost cried out.

Gently, Tom pulled her up into his arms, his fingers silencing the protest on her lips. "I don't know if I'm ready for that yet," he whispered with ragged breath. He rolled, settling above her. Brushing a hand up her leg, he hooked one knee around his waist, and then the other. "I enjoy being inside you when that happens," he murmured, burying into her. He dropped to his elbows, stilling a moment, before thrusting slowly. "I like being close to you..." His mouth dropped to hers. "Being able to kiss you."

She began meeting his hips. "You are a hopeless romantic."

"I'm afraid so."

"I love you."

"I love you back," he whispered, rocking with her. "And I promise you, we'll do a lot more experimenting. But right now, all I want is to hear you say my name when you come."

And she did.

A/N 2: I've got several chapters of angst in the works...but I'm not nearly as evil as Julian Fellowes, so I'll leave it at that.