A/N: I suppose the one benefit of taking so long between "Skipper's Bridge" and this vignette, is that I at least got to fix a bit of Season 5 nonsense. Spoiler: Pip's Corner makes an appearance...

WHEN IRISH EYES ARE SMILING, PART II
Yorkshire, 1926

Summer

I've been thinking on what you said when we parted, Tom wrote Sybil after one of their rare interludes that summer, That you couldn't do this without my help. He nibbled the end of his pen before daring to contradict her. I deserve neither such praise nor generosity for doing what is right, not only right by you, but by the generations of women who have been denied such opportunities. I see you, and I see the future: for us, for our children, for others who need only a sliver of hope to follow their conscience and dare to dream of a better world.

Daylight waned into a rose gloaming in the southwestern sky and Tom pulled the chain of his desk lamp. Do you remember, love, not long after we married, your grandmother sent you a letter filled with antiquated advice on how to be a proper wife? You read it to me and asked: "Does Granny honestly believe I'm going to sit at home and darn your socks?" We'd both laughed at the thought you darning anything after your first attempts went horribly awry. Tom chuckled at the memory again – she'd shortened one sock by a full inch and left an uncomfortable knot in the toe.

I reminded you then, as I remind you now, of the words of Woolstonecraft: "The man who can be contented to live with a pretty and useful companion who has no mind has lost in voluptuous gratifications a taste for more refined pleasures; he has never felt the calm and refreshing satisfaction of being loved by someone who could understand him." More than that, my darling, we understand each other, and I trust that our love will continue carrying us through the inevitable moments of loneliness, until you can come home to me.

Tom sighed at the brief letter beneath his fingertips. Even with his nest scattered, it seemed all he could manage these days. Just as he scrawled out a closing endearment, a high-pitched squeal spiraled behind him. The pen scratched wildly across the paper and he turned in time to see his daughter, in stark naked flight, splatter a trail of wet footprints in the hall.

Kitty was hot on her heels. "Come back here and put on your gown, you little mouse!"

Saoirse had turned two with a vengeance earlier that year and had, in all her turbulent energy, made Tom question why he ever thought it would be easier to raise daughters than sons. Delicate little flowers they most certainly were not. This one had a recently developed partiality for the word no, usually spat in tandem with a stamping foot. If that didn't get his attention, she'd erupt into a thunderstorm of tears. Just a week before, he'd taken her into the village to post a letter to Sybil, but he made the mistake of returning by Mr. Marsden's store front. One minute, his little darling had been sweetening his cheeks with kisses, but after spying a shiny dollhouse and being informed she couldn't have it, she transformed into something out of Mary Shelley's imagination. By the time they reached the cottage, the hiccupping sobs had slurred her vocabulary into a different language entirely. Tom was nearly in tears himself, not to mention half-deaf from her shrieks.

It's just a phase, Sybil consoled in a subsequent telephone call. And a damned expensive one, he'd quickly replied. I can't keep enough whisky in the house! She'd laughed at his bluff, knowing full well that for an Irishman, her husband was rather a lightweight.

For Tom, the evenings were the hardest to bear. Once Saoirse had gone to bed, it was only him and Kitty roaming in the quiet. They'd swap turns on chores, and then perhaps settle in their respective parlor chairs to read. More often Kitty dove into her own studies – preparations for medical school entrance exams next spring – which sometimes required the assistance of Miss Bunting for the science and mathematics. On those nights, Tom was left to his own devices: estate work, snapping out a new journal article or speech for a political meeting, a bit of heavy reading – anything to drain his mind before confronting an empty bed. If he was lucky, sleep came quickly; on other nights, he simply stared at her photograph on the bedside table. It was taken at Edith's non-wedding to Sir Anthony and despite the unhappy ending that day, the picture remained one of his favorites. Even in the palette of grays Sybil was vibrant with impending motherhood.

He missed her.

He missed her warmth, her touch, her theft of the covers, her dainty little snore in his ear – just the presence of a body he knew as well as his own.

But God knows I'd never give her a reason to question her decision.

Sometimes he'd bypass the bed altogether and open the armoire, where he'd stand and mull the mad prospect of donning his formal wear and seek company up at the Abbey. Usually, just one touch of the starch would reel in his sanity, but other times the need for Sybil, even a bygone extension of her, won out. On one particular summer evening, rumor filtered down through Miss Bunting, who'd arrived following scheduled lessons with Daisy, that Mrs. Patmore was whipping up her famous trifle.

Tom slipped silently from the parlor and rang the house, sending word to Mr. Crawley that "I wouldn't mind a game of billiards this evening."

"Shall I set an extra place at dinner, Mr. Branson?"

Carson's tone hinted he was onto the ploy – the old chauffeur's addiction to Mrs. Patmore's trifle was legendary both upstairs and down – but Tom paid the old butler the courtesy of innocence. "That would be very kind, Mr. Carson, thank you." So, he dusted off the tuxedo and strolled up to the Abbey on foot.

Tom wasn't accustomed to a five-course meal and the serving of duck and game chips landed heavily on his stomach. Once desert arrived, he had to sneak a hand below his waistcoat and release the top button of his trousers. Beside him, Cora casually remarked his portion of trifle was rather generous compared to everyone else's. He made a mental note to pop by the kitchen and thank Mrs. Patmore.

It was a surprisingly pleasant evening, at least to start, and a part of him rather enjoyed being fussed over by the ladies, who seemed to be on a mission to help him forget his present loneliness. Even Matthew made an effort to put a sunny smile on everything, particularly estate matters, which dominated most of desert.

"Robert," chimed the future earl, "This Pip chap whose corner Mr. Wavell has offered to purchase. Is he anyone I should know?" Across the table, Carson bobbled the claret decanter and righted it in time to save Mary's new Madeleine Vionnet dress. Matthew grinned. "Did a skeleton just rattle out of the family cupboard?"

"Of course not," Lord Grantham stiffly replied. "Pip was my late father's Brussels Griffon."

"Pip was a dog?" asked Tom.

"Grandpapa thought so," Mary supplied. "He was rather attached to that vile, barky little thing. It used to torture us as girls."

"Basil is an angel by comparison," added Cora. "That piece of land by the village is the only place he left a puddle he was supposed to."

"And then he had the impertinence to carry on after Grandpapa died." She threw Tom a smirk. "Although his demise ultimately came under rather peculiar circumstances."

Her father frowned. "Mary, there's no need to dredge that up."

"He was found beneath the dumbwaiter."

"Ahh!" Matthew arched. "The plot thickens."

"Any suspects?" Tom asked.

Mary smiled furtively. "Plenty! Everyone reviled that dog, upstairs and down. Even Carson was under suspicion for a time."

The old butler stiffened and turned, his jowls purple. "As milady is well aware, it was a spurious accusation..." He lofted a bushy brow. "...and there were no witnesses to Pip's tragic end."

"Hmmm," she mused. "Me, I always suspected Granny. She had particular motive after he shredded the fan Prince Thingamajig gave her at St. Petersburg."

Tom grinned into his glass. "Well, dead dogs tell no tales."

Matthew nodded gravely. "I suppose we should just let sleeping dogs lie."

"Honestly," Robert scolded as the younger men snickered into their serviettes. "You two are incorrigible!"

"Perhaps it's for the best, then," Matthew suggested after a cough, "if we sell his little patch of land and let Wavell develop it independently..."

Oh God, thought Tom. Not this bloody mess again. The earl and his heir had been at loggerheads over Wavell's recent proposal and had been trying to draft Tom for negotiations. He threw back the remainder of his claret and threw piteous eyes to Carson for more.

"...Mr. Wavell's offer would be a godsend for the coffers, Tom. We've no capital investment except the land and we get a percentage of the sales."

Robert mulled aloud. "So we're paid once and in return, the field is lost and the village is spoiled."

"That's a rather pessimistic view."

"I won't have fifty ugly modern houses built over a field of mine, and that's final. We can develop it ourselves."

"Robert, we don't have the..."

"Tom, if you wouldn't mind setting aside time next week, I'd like your opinion on how best to go about..."

"Enough!"

Carson, who was in the midst of refilling the Irishman's glass, threw a hand to his chest and glowered at his former charge.

"I apologize, Mr. Carson."

"That's quite alright, Mr. Branson," he droned, squeaking a finger in his ear.

Tom's neck boiled beneath his collar and his eyes snapped between Robert and Matthew's flustered glares. "Wavell's right to see a profit in Pip's Corner," he told his father-in-law. "Because of all the new shops and jobs popping up in the village, thanks to me and Matthew I might add, we've need of housing. But for that, you need land and guess who owns it all? The village is hemmed in thanks to the bloody aristocracy."

"I see," Robert said calmly, setting aside his fork. "So the resident socialist sees a chance to divest the bloody aristocracy of its property."

"I didn't say that. In fact, I don't trust Mr. Wavell or his terms. Remember those cottages we've been forced to re-roof this summer?"

Lord Grantham's brows bolted together. "One has nothing to do with the other!"

Eight years ago, and without Matthew's knowledge, the earl fell victim to a shady salesman who'd "gotten a deal" on "quality" lumber. He should have known better, given the war-time lumber shortages, and the estate was now forced to repair more than two dozen cottages.

"A deal too good to be true usually is," Tom said. "And that's precisely what could happen again. In this case, Robert-" God, he still struggled with calling him that. "- I agree with you. The estate should develop Pip's Corner. And in the process, we can build houses that will last an age, ones that the new owners can be proud of. Otherwise, they'll be fixing their own roofs and everything else when it falls apart in ten years."

"You've forgotten one critical detail," Matthew said. "Money. And there's damned little of it to spare."

"Poor Tom must feel like a mouse between a pair of barn cats," Cora cut in, frowning at her husband and son-in-law. "Let him have an evening of peace. Tom dear," she said, "Have you seen Sybil this week?"

His mother-in-law's reprieve only served to remind him of why he dared tramp up here to begin with. Tom spooned up the last of his trifle and sighed. "No, I'm afraid not. Just before I arrived yesterday, one of her assigned patients went into labor..."

Robert coughed on his drink. Carson tsked disapprovingly near the door.

"...and she has to stay with mother and child until they're released from hospital."

"I know you miss her terribly, as do we all, but she's to be finished in August?"

"That's right, and while the next six weeks can't pass quickly enough, I continue to remind myself what a remarkable woman I married."

That earned an indulgent smile from Cora, but not Robert, whose eyes shot to the ceiling. Why Sybil felt compelled to leave her husband and daughter was beyond him – something he'd inquired about with her at the start this midwifery madness and quickly regretted. This evening, he simply changed the subject. "Were you at least able to see Bobby while you were in York?" he asked.

"He's doing wonderfully. He even won second prize at his last spelling bee," Tom replied, which garnered a round proud hums and smiles. "Bobby enjoys your visits, you know, and told me that you bought ice cream for all the children last week. That was very kind of you."

Robert pinked under the blitz of flabbergasted expressions.

"Visits?" Cora asked after an awkward silence.

"That's right," Tom sputtered as the earl's scowl slowly descended on him. "Bobby said they have lunch. Every Thursday."

"Robert, why would you keep such a secret?"

"It isn't a secret exactly, I..."

His wife's eyes slitted ominously. "You said you had a regular luncheon with your military associates in Ripon."

"Yes, I suppose I did."

Tom, Mary, and Matthew glanced from the earl to the countess and back again. Tom supposed he just put extra work on Mr. Bates, who no doubt would be freshening Lord Grantham's dressing room for the night.

"We go fishing," Robert groused uncomfortably. "We have lunch and then we go fishing. There you have it. Cat out of the bag! Carson, my glass has gone dry..."

"Apologies, milord."

Damned English, thought Tom with a twitch of the head. More concerned with losing their emotions than their bloody shirts!

"That seems to be a rather trifling thing to keep private, Papa," Mary said. "And entrusting secrecy to a six-year-old was certainly ill-advised."

"Well, someone has to teach him how to fish, since his father refuses to do so."

"I teach my son plenty!" Tom finally snapped, reaching for the last of his drink. "And much more useful things than that! How to be kind and have respect for others and..."

"Respect for others? Hmm," the earl mused crossly. "Then why does Saoirse call me Donk? And Teddy's such a mockingbird, now he's picked up on it!"

"It's that game you played," Matthew muttered in his glass. "Pin the tail on the donkey."

The claret singed Tom's throat. He wasn't accustomed to it, certainly not the endless supply, and while it had buffed the edges off the meal's starched propriety, now he was feeling rather pert. He tipped his glass. "Besides, milord, if the shoe fits..."

Tom didn't get his game of billiards that evening, nor anytime the next week. Sometimes, he'd learned, the better part of valor required a bit of distance in the Crawley family.

"Oh Tom," Sybil giggled when she rang the cottage a few nights later. "You didn't?"

"I'm afraid so. I suppose I'll have to apologize."

"It would be the diplomatic thing to do, darling. For both of you, I might add."

Hissing matches, joint apologies, and bygones under the rug were nothing new for he and Robert, but both typically avoided impudence. Tom pulled at his hair and sighed. "I don't know what got into me."

"I do," came her soft reply, "and I miss you terribly as well, darling." She chuckled then. "By the way, it seems the nut isn't falling far from the tree – your son is turning into quite the rabble-rouser. Mrs. Glennon called me in for a meeting yesterday."

Bobby had been an exemplary student, so Tom couldn't begin to imagine what he'd done. "What happened?"

"Well, the school was planning a pantomime for the Wilberforce feast day at the end of the month. They asked Bobby to play the part of the bear in Snow White and Rose Red."

"That's rather a large role for a little boy."

"Yes, and it was meant as a reward for all his hard work, but he refused! He said he didn't want to kill the dwarf, no matter how mean it was, that the girls could jolly well take care of themselves, and that he certainly didn't want to turn into a prince!"

"And why not?"

"Partly because he's too young to get married of course and partly because he didn't want to oppress anyone...Tom, stop laughing!" Still, she couldn't help snickering herself over their little rebel. "It caused such a fuss that no one wanted to participate!"

"He's entitled to an opinion, love, no matter what his age."

"Except this wasn't the first time he'd stirred the pot."

"Oh?"

"No! Their original choice was Goldilocks and the Three Bears, until Bobby questioned why Mama Bear and Papa Bear didn't share a bed like his own parents."

Tom hesitated to ask, "Is that all?"

"Apparently he explained that's where we cuddle, and if Mama Bear and Papa Bear hadn't done that, how could they have Baby Bear?" After Tom whimpered, she said, "As you can imagine, that generated rather a lot of questions among the younger children."

"I'm not to blame for that, love. You were the one who insisted on telling him about babies..." From somewhere on her end of the line, he heard disjointed voices.

"Darling, I'm holding up the queue. Did you get my letter? There's a note in there from Bobby – he's done really well with his Braille slate and wanted you to see."

He sliced open the envelope, pulled out the small sheet and ran his fingers over the embossed print. "I've not had a chance to read it, but you've given me something to look forward to this evening."

"I love you, Papa Bear."

Tom smiled slowly. "Likewise, Mama Bear." The line deadened and silence resumed, reminding him of the miles and the days still ahead. His eyes swept over the desk calendar and he scratched off another date. Opening his Braille translator, he muttered each letter of Bobby's note aloud, but after several reads, one word still didn't make sense, so he wrote them all down.

My Da is Oyrish and so am I.

Blinking back tears, Tom whispered, "That you are, my boy," and pressed the paper to his lips. That you are.

August

Bobby's term at Wilberforce was scheduled to end the second full week of August and so Saturday the fifteenth had been circled on Tom's calendar for some time. Sybil's studies were to conclude earlier that same week, but she volunteered to stay on at the hospital a few more days. "We've a new mother who's just delivered a month early and I'd like to stay and help," she told Tom just as he was setting out to collect her. "It's struggling to eat, the poor little thing."

He'd had his heart set on a special homecoming – dinner in York perhaps, or an early evening at the cottage behind closed doors – but rather than disappointment, he was overwhelmed with pride. "Stay and do what you can," he replied, and they settled on her coming home with Bobby on Saturday instead. "We've all the time in the world after that."

Still, for Tom the clock slogged toward the end of the week as if the wheels had been greased with glue. On Friday morning he woke from a dream – of her, of them, writhing and bare in an unfamiliar bed – covered in a sheen of sweat. He raced through the rest of his day's to-do list, and late in the afternoon he bathed and shaved and dressed in his finest tweed suit before kissing his daughter and Kitty goodbye with a small suitcase in his hands.

When Tom knocked on the door to the nurses' quarters at the maternity hospital, one of the young midwife trainees greeted him with a smirk. Annie, was it? Or Sally? He couldn't remember and politely doffed his cap. "I'm here to see..."

"Sybil!" the young girl threw over her shoulder. "Your handsome devil of a husband is here!"

Tom went crimson, a flush that swept clear down to his toes when he saw his wife emerge from the shadows. His eyes softened and he blinked; she'd just come from a bath and was toweling her hair. That selfish part of him breathed a sigh of relief – he'd prayed on the drive over that she'd not be tending her patient – and he felt a hastened thumping in his chest.

"I thought we could have dinner," he squeaked out, eyes flitting between her and the simpering young girl still holding the doorknob.

Sybil seemed not to notice the girl, or perhaps she didn't care, and rushed through the threshold and into his arms. Her bare toes brushed the tips of his boots when he lifted her for a lingering kiss. "Just dinner?" she asked when they'd finished.

"I've taken a room at a hotel." His breath trembled against her mouth; his forehead lay heavily on hers. "Please tell me you'll come."

"Oh, I will," she whispered, giggling into another kiss. "More than once."

Sybil hustled through her packing and farewells, and paused only express a debt of gratitude to Dr. Fraser for all of her instruction. Before leaving she made a final check on her latest little patient, whose appetite and prognosis had improved as the week went on.

The Black Swan was more of an inn than a hotel, and was situated near the northeastern edge of the old city where the River Foss made a sharp bend. They hurried through dinner, rather middling in Tom's opinion except for the quality of the raspberry tarts, but food was the least of the items on their collective menus. Later, after she'd made good on her promise and they'd redoubled their efforts to make up for lost time, they cuddled with hands tightly laced as one, as if reminding themselves the sting of separation was truly at an end.

Last minute booking left Tom with few affordable options, but what the old medieval building lacked in opulence, it made up with a cozy ambiance. Their room was tucked in one of the front-facing gables and the white-washed ceiling was broken with roughened timbers. By the time night had fallen, the downstairs pub buzzed with life; laughter and tinkling dishes and the gabbing of ale-laden patrons filtered up through the floorboards. A storm had rolled in. Rain pelted the roof and trickled down the leaded glass windows.

"I read on the advertisement that this place is haunted," she murmured.

"The only ghosts in this city that I care about are the ones we'll leave behind." His mouth landed on her neck, watered from the sweet hint of lavender on her skin. "God, Sybil, I've missed you..." One hand slipped from hers, found a breast and kneaded gently before settling between her thighs. "But I'm so very proud of you." She arched into his palm, a small cry of desperation escaping when he clambered over her again.

The storm raged on, as did they, the sounds of their lovemaking drowned out by a rowdy horde seeking shelter in the pub room below. Too many nights, he thought as she later slept peacefully his arms; too many nights and mornings alone in their bed, when he tried not to drive himself mad at the thought of her – of them – like this. Her breath evened against his chest, her arm clutching him as if he might slip back into a dream. God, how did we manage? Those stolen afternoons and infrequent weekends had been like little oases: dampened by brevity, enriched with promise. His heart thumped a bit harder, quickened at the thought of tonight and tomorrow, and the days to come when time and distance conspired no more.

Tom might have slept through the next morning had it not been for a hyper blue jay on the windowsill above his head. It twittered a greeting to sun's ascent, which struggled through a heavy fog left in the wake of last night's storm. His eyes rolled behind leaden lids and swatted at the cobwebs in his head. When he dared to peel back an eye, Sybil was grinning down at him cat-like, not a hint of exhaustion on her features.

She brushed his lips, once to moisten them and then again to probe him awake. "Did I wear you out last night?"

"Hmm." He sighed into the warm velvet of her tongue. "It seems...it seems that I didn't...return the favor." A leg slithered over his hips and he hardened against her, warm and – "Oh, God...Sybil" – already moist with anticipation.

"We've a few hours yet."

They sacrificed breakfast that morning, even though his stomach lurched greedily when Sybil's lips grazed across it on a downward trek. She laughed, offered to collect a tray, but he merely flipped her over, thrust them together with a ragged, "I've not gotten my fill of you yet."

Much later, once they'd sated the most pressing appetite and purred into drowsy contentment, he reached blindly for his watch. "Jesus, love, it's nearly noon! We've got to go pick him up!"

What kind of father am I? Tom berated himself as they queued a quarter-hour later to pay the bill. His feet shifted anxiously, and he rolled his eyes heavenward at the couple in front. They were solidly upper-middle class, he surmised, based first on their fashionable clothes and then on the wife's definition of how an establishment should dust its rooms. She condescended to the clerk that their usual preference, the Royal Station Hotel, was regrettably full and dear Raymond's last-minute business trip landed them here. On she went, nitpicking every conceivable item the Black Swan had to offer – or didn't offer, in her opinion.

Beside him, Sybil was rather busy fussing with her hair, which in their haste to dress and pack had been left to its own devices. "It's not an utter disaster, is it darling?"

Tom wisely answered no and he craned a glance between the stuffy couple to the clerk. The besieged man could only shrug, his voice hitched with desperation as he sputtered his most profound apologies. "But the lack of refinement aside," the cow blabbered with a disgusted tsk, "was nothing compared to what went on next door."

The husband reached forward to sign the check and, in an effort to rescue his wife from mentioning the unmentionable, glared over the rim of his spectacles. "Yes, whoever it was spent the better part of last night and even this morning rutting around like a pair of tenement rats."

Tom went the shade of a beet, but not Sybil who, when the couple turned round, threw them a disarming smile and quipped, "Sorry about that."

When they finally arrived at Wilberforce, Bobby was waiting in the front corridor, chin in his hands and feet dangling beneath his chair. His little shoes thump-thump-thumped against the trunk in front of him and Tom swallowed back a surge of guilt. Sybil squeezed his hand, rushed forward to draw her son into a great hug, and smothered his cherubic cheeks with kissed apologies.

Tom knelt down beside them, rooted in for his own hug and kiss. "Let's get this Irishman home where he belongs!"

When Sybil emerged from Mrs. Glennon's office a few minutes later, Bobby's release papers in hand, she was met with a matching pair of impish grins and her little boy's chirp: "Da said we were going on a picnic!"

Leave it to Tom to find opportunity in guilt, Sybil mused as they strapped Bobby's trunk to the back of the Model T. Not that she minded, not in the slightest, and even suggested their favored spot at Kirby Hall: "To give it a proper farewell," she told her husband.

"I'm not sure how proper it can be with a six-year-old within earshot," he teased, which earned him a sharp elbow in the ribs.

An impatient Bobby bounced on the seat. "Mama! Da! Let's go!"

"Tonight," Sybil promised into his kiss.

"And tomorrow."

With a bagged lunch between their feet, the trio of Bransons whisked northward, leaving the prison of separation behind. The outskirts of York, its rail yard of glittering steel and belching stacks of steam, soon gave way to the countryside. The morning fog had burned away, and the emergent sun flickered a picture show of light and shadow in the canopy of trees above. Sybil thought it a rather splendid canvas for the moment, which served to animate her husband's choice of song:

When your sweet lilting laughter's like some fairy song
And your eyes twinkle bright as can be.
You should laugh all the while and all other times smile,
And now smile a smile for me.

Sybil had always adored Tom's voice. It was a bold sound, honest and pure as a perfectly aged whisky, and never more so than when he serenaded their children with some old Irish ballad. Today he was making quite a production of it, punctuating the melody with laughter and a smattering of kisses, and he had to pause for breath to needle their son.

"You know it as well as I do – help me sing the chorus!" he told Bobby. "You too, love!"

"I'm not sure I can improve on it!"

He winked. "When Irish eyes are smiling, sure 'tis like a morn in spring..."

The song had always been one Bobby's favorites – it was the first he learned with his Da and the first Tom had purchased for their new gramophone. But when Bobby lost his sight, Tom had been reluctant to sing it. The little boy finally brought him round, requesting it one night not long after Christmas. We can still sing together, Da, he'd said. Tom's voice had shaken then, but not now.

"In the lilt of Irish laughter, you can hear the angels sing..."

He reached over to tickle the little boy's tummy. Bobby snorted with infectious giggles and to Sybil it was more musical than any of the operas she'd been subjected to in her youth.

"When Irish hearts are happy, all the world seems bright and gay. And when Irish eyes are smiiii-ling, sure they steal your heaaaarrrrrt away!"

They certainly do, thought Sybil, laughing at her two ridiculous Irishmen. At times she struggled to see any of herself in their son, save for the dark curls that twisted around the rim of his cap. He was so like his father, right down to that impish grin that started shy-like, and quickly wormed its way into his cheeks and eyes, where the skin wrinkled outward like rays of sunshine. Even now, with his sight gone, they seemed to have kept the Branson twinkle. Or maybe that was just her, finding beauty where others saw only infirmity.

Tom wrapped an arm around the little boy, pulled him onto his lap. Snug in his Da's embrace, Bobby listened attentively as he painted the landscape whizzing by. "There's just a block or two of brick-faced buildings," Tom said, puttering down the main street of Little Ouseburn, "and the road ends right at the old gate house, which looks like a miniature Greek temple." And on he went describing the rutted path through the open gates, the unkempt grass that whipped the side of the motor, and the narrow stone bridge that arched over a finger of the lake, which shimmered in the afternoon sun. Sheep had grazed to the water's edge, carving out a green mat for a picnic.

Bobby gasped. "Mama, can I go swimming?"

"May you go swimming...," she corrected, as Tom shut down the motor. "I'm afraid not, darling. You don't have a suit."

Tom plucked the boy from his lap and through the door with a groan. "Yes, he does! He's got his birthday suit, doesn't he?" He climbed out, offering her a hand.

"What's a birthday suit, Da?"

Tom flipped his cap to the seat and began stretching out of his jacket and waistcoat. "The suit you were born in, my boy!"

"He means no clothes, darling," Sybil explained.

"Da!" Bobby squeaked. "I can't swim with no clothes!"

"Why not? There's none here but us! Your Da used to do it all the time when he was a boy!" He tugged off his braces and shirt. "We couldn't afford posh things like bathing suits, so we'd strip down with nothing between us and the good Lord but our Irish smiles!" He hopped from one foot to the other to remove his shoes and his trousers.

"Mama, is Da getting naked?"

"Quite," she muttered when Tom presented his drawers.

"Be a dear and keep those dry for me."

Little Bobby was properly mortified. Mouth agape, he followed the shuffle of bare feet across the ground.

Tom dipped in one foot – not too nippy, he winced – and then the other before easing out to a deeper pool. Shite! A moment later he was sloshing back to shore.

"The water must be terribly cold, darling" Sybil laughed, her eyes dancing below his waist. "Your suit shrank."

"I'll have my tailor adjust it this evening." She squealed when he sprayed her with water. "Come on, lad, you wanted to go swimming, right?"

Bobby plopped down at the lakeside and methodically disrobed. First went his shoes, set neatly beside one another, and then his socks, each tucked in the corresponding shoe. By necessity, he'd become meticulous in the wake of his blindness and Sybil couldn't help but smile as he began folding his clothes. "I'll do that, darling," she said, taking his shorts and shirt, "You go on and play."

But unlike his father, Bobby was paralyzed with modesty and stood on the bank with artfully placed hands.

"Your mother and I have powdered you from stem to stern," Tom chuckled. "There's nothing we've not seen before. Want to jump?" Bobby gave a hesitant nod. "Here take my hand so you can tell how far to go." On a count of three, Bobby gave a mighty leap towards his father, who told him to "Hold your nose!" and pulled him under with a splash.

Bobby'd always been a fish at swimming, had taken to it easily when they'd taught him the summer before. But he'd not been since and Sybil wondered what those first moments in the water – unable to see and nothing beneath his feet – might bring. Fear? Panic? As expected, he proved apprehensive at first, his hands grasping for his Da, but Tom quickly calmed him.

"Now listen," he'd say, helping the boy float on the water, "I'll be just here in front and you swim to me – do you remember how?" Bobby splashed one arm forward and then the other, feet kicking behind. Tom floated backward, just out of reach but talking, always talking, and encouraging the little boy towards his voice. "That's it! You're doing it! Keep at it, lad!"

Bobby was soon lapping back and forth, once face down and once on his back, confidence unleashing him further from his Da. Tom would catch up, dive beneath and splash to the surface on his other side.

"Mind the fish," Sybil teased from shore, "They might try to nibble on something important!"

Bobby let out a horrified squeal and giggled back to the relative safety at his father's side. Soon the pair were swapping subsurface flips, their bare Irish backsides beaming white when they went bottom end up.

Sybil slipped off her shoes and stockings, bunched the hem of her dress at her knees. She relaxed on her elbows, beads of sweat trickling down her neck. Her men played on, their laughing and splashing and Bobby's Do it again, Da! and Watch me, Da! flooded her soul with a surge of absolute contentment.

It was a delightfully lazy afternoon for the trio, and Sybil was enjoying herself so she'd forgotten about the sandwiches and lemonade stashed in the back seat. But the Branson men had not, and after one last lap across the lake, both scrambled out and dripped over to retrieve their clothes. They dressed as far as their trousers and braces and made quite the comical duo. Peas in a pod, thought Sybil.

Bobby was so ravenous that Tom spent much of the meal begging him to Chew slower! and My God, lad, swallow your food! The child had often complained that the Wilberforce fare was just dreadful. Nothing like Mrs. Patmore's, he'd whine, and for good measure would sweetly add, Or yours, Mama. Sated at last, Bobby popped up from the blanket, reached for his cane, and set off to explore the shore. Under his parents' watchful gaze, he'd stop at the water's edge and thrust in an arm to search for submerged treasures.

Sybil sat laughing at her little explorer's delight as Tom's head came to rest in her lap. She glanced down, chuckled softly as the sunbeams shifted across the bare skin of his chest. He yawned, looked like Barnaby the cat napping in the afternoon rays, and his mouth barely had time to settle before her lips descended on his.

"I remember coming here as a girl," she said after a moment, fingers sifting through his hair. "I always thought Lord Knaresborough was quite dashing..." Tom popped open an eye. "For an old man," she laughed. "He and Granny are the same age, and they never got on. He was a close ally of Prime Minister Gladstone: one of those mutinous liberal aristocrats."

Tom's gaze swept across his paunch toward the far side of the lake where the grass surrounded a mound of rubble. "By the looks of things, it hasn't been gone long."

"The Baron's only son was killed at Ypres and the peerage was rather a recent one I think. I suppose he didn't feel much obligation to keep things going. Lord, but it was a drafty old place," she recalled. "I believe Anne Bronte used it as inspiration for her novel Agnes Grey."

Tom's stomach lifted with a listless humph. "A day will come when that's the only place you'll find these old estates."

"Speaking of," she said, swiping a lock of dampened fringe from his brow. "I saw the roll of plans in the back seat. Is Pip's Corner still the topic du jour?"

"No," he grinned. "As it happens, your brilliant Mick of a husband argued his case well in front of the solicitor, Mr. Crawley. We're developing it ourselves."

"We? As in you and Papa?" she giggled. "Politics does make for strange bedfellows."

"Maybe," he yawned again. "How the estate evolves – for the benefit of the tenants and the village – is an important task, Sybil. If your father wants to spend the money, I'll not be shy about it."

"But I thought the estate didn't have the capital?"

"He decided to sell a painting," he said, and then huffed. "What is the aristocracy's fascination with art?"

"Which one?"

"What?"

"The painting, darling."

"The artist was named Francis, I think."

Sybil gasped. "He's selling the Della Francesca?"

"That's the one." When her brows furrowed, he asked, "Was it important?"

"It was to him. More so to Mama," she said. "There must be a story behind that. Did he mention anything else?"

His darling Sybil, released from the fangs of aristocracy, still had an insatiable curiosity for its rumor mill. "The story is we'll get close to eighty thousand pounds for the bloody thing. With that, we can make a solid investment of building materials and local labor. If we'd gone with Wavell's proposal, he would have brought his own people in, or if he did hire locally, would pay bottom wages to make the most profit. This way, we can ensure they're paid well."

"So, instead of tearing it down you favor squeezing the life out one pound at time?"

"Revolution comes in many forms, love. Your father wants to control the development because he feels an obligation to the estate as lord and master. I see it as Downton's obligation too, but rather a debt to be paid."

"A political calculation then! The same means to different ends?"

"You and I both know the estate – especially the way your father envisions it – won't survive the rest of this century. But in the meantime, we can build a community to take its place."

Building a community. Such a long-term prospect for a pair of exiled rebels whose pragmatism – borne of children, a home, careers – had forced them to cobble together an unexpected, but not altogether unpleasant, life back in Downton.

"Sybil...are you truly happy here? In Downton, I mean."

Tom's halting question caught her off guard and she smiled, curious. "Of course. Why would I not be?"

"There's something you should read." He motioned towards his jacket. "Inside pocket."

She retrieved an envelope addressed to her father of all people, her breath catching at the return address emblazoned with the crown and beneath it Home Office: The Right Honourable, Viscount Brentford, William Joynson-Hicks, Secretary. Tom's gaze had gone back to their son exploring by the shore, and Sybil flipped it open and read aloud:

"Lord Grantham, It will please you to learn that after re-consideration of your applications and in consultation with the Governor-General of the Irish Free State, your son-in-law, Mr. Tom Branson, formerly of Dublin and now of Yorkshire, will be permitted to travel freely, thereby reversing the restrictions placed upon him in June of 1920. He will receive official notification by His Majesty's Government in due course. Respectfully, William Joynson-Hicks, etc."

"I can't believe it," she said, reading it again. "Papa kept petitioning the government?"

"That seems to be the case." Tom had been astounded himself when the earl presented it to him on a rare unannounced stop by the cottage. It was a dreary afternoon, not long after the pair's blowup at dinner, and Robert had prologued the letter with an apology for his behavior. Never mistake disagreement for ingratitude on my part, he'd said, and trust me when I say that I certainly don't on yours. Robert had gone quiet, reflective even, standing there in the Branson's humble parlor as Tom read the letter. The earl's eyes had fixed to a series of photographs of his grandchildren, and glancing over his shoulder, asked I suppose you'll go back to Ireland? Tom hadn't supplied an answer then, only a vague It's not just me I have to consider, now is it?, and tucked the note in his pocket.

"Tom?"

"Sorry, love?"

"I said this letter is dated June third. Have you received your notification yet?"

"It arrived last month," he said, sitting up beside her.

"And you didn't think it important enough to tell me?"

"I didn't want to disrupt your studies." Stilling the protest on her lips with a finger, he smiled softly. "And to be honest, I needed time to think on it myself."

"You don't want to go back," she whispered, disbelieving.

"I want to go back more than anything, to see my mother and family, and watch my children take their first steps onto Irish soil, but..." Tom took her hand, thumbed the thin gold band on her finger. "Sybil, being separated from you and Bobby these past months – for our family to be separated – was almost more than I could bear. I kept reminding myself that if we were still in Ireland, we might not have afforded sending Bobby to a good school or hiring a tutor. And we certainly couldn't have done that in addition to your midwifery fees, not on what the papers would have paid me. We've come too far, you and I, to go back to that."

"You think so little of yourself that you'd still be earning a pauper's pension?"

"No, I think that little of the reality of the world," Tom replied. "I'm a hard worker – as are you – and I'll not be ashamed of earning an honest and decent living for my family. But I want that for everyone. Thinking over that letter this past month, I kept asking myself, Where can I do the most good? Well, I think that's right here, love, with the farmers and the people of the village."

With that, she couldn't argue. While the local residents often deferred to her father, as dictated by society and history, it was Tom that they sought for the first cut of advice, and the first they leaned on to out with their frustrations. They did so because he listened with a sympathetic ear and a mind awhirl with practical solutions.

"And I believe I can do the same for the people in the district," he went on. "One of the first things I'd like to propose on the council is ensuring that midwives are paid properly. They have the authority, and if they're charged with overseeing the quality of midwifery, why shouldn't they pay the women a living wage?"

Sybil was one of the lucky ones, to be sure. Midwives, particularly in the rural districts, rarely gathered enough patients to earn an independent living, but she'd had already arranged with Dr. Clarkson for the hospital to sponsor her services, as well as fund a new clinic for mothers and children.

She smiled as he rattled about other ideas, his voice churning with a confidence and enthusiasm as it hadn't in months. "That's wonderful, darling," she laughed, interrupting him with a kiss. "But you've forgotten one small item: you have to be elected first!"

"I'm a shoe-in," Tom winked. "Or so my beautiful wife keeps telling me."

"You will be, I promise, if you talk to the voters like you talk to me."

He grinned crookedly. "I'm not sure a shopkeeper in Malton would appreciate me commenting on lovely his breasts are."

"And I'd be rather jealous if you did! No, I mean from your heart. They might not agree with you on everything, but if they know how much you truly care, they'll at least listen."

"Then I suppose that's as good a start as any." He retrieved the letter from her hands, tapped it on the bridge of her nose before stuffing it back in his jacket. "But we'll always have Ireland if we want it, love. I'm a free man now!"

Shaking her head, she pulled his face into her palms. "You've always been a free man, Tom Branson, no matter what that paper says." They leaned in as one to seal the future with a kiss and, once they'd finally paused for breath, they laughed and settled in each others' arms. Sybil couldn't be sure if she'd drifted off, but the warmth of Tom's chest against her cheek was enough to make her forget most everything beyond the moment.

"Mama?"

She glanced over, caught Bobby trying to orient himself to the landscape. There was no panic in his voice, simply a request for an audible gauge. "Over here, darling," she called, and found menial things to say for guidance as he caned his way over. Mostly it came out as squeaks and giggles once Tom began nibbling up her neck. When he growled playfully against her mouth, she grinned and stretched one of his braces.

Snap!

"Ouch, woman!"

"Da, are you kissing Mama again?"

Tom rubbed his shoulder. "I was."

Bobby's nose scrunched as he plopped down beside them. "Blech!"

Ruffling his son's dampened hair, Tom laughed. "Someday, m'lad, you'll understand that the art of keeping a woman happy means kissing her, and kissing her a lot."

"Then Mama must be the happiest woman in the world!"

With a contented sigh, Sybil tucked her head beneath Tom's chin, and said, "I most certainly am."

A/N2: The story title of course is taken from the song of the same name. Published in 1912, "When Irish Eyes are Smiling" was first recorded during WWI by the famous Irish tenor of County Down, John McCormack (and his version of the song is worth you-tubing). In regard to Kirby Hall, like many English country estates it fell victim to bank debt and was demolished in the 1920s. Finally, the inspiration for the origin of Pip's Corner was a hat tip to one of my favorite films, "Gosford Park", in which Sir William McCordle's bothersome little dog was a Brussels Griffon named Pip. And, in regard to his tragic demise at Downton, I don't know if "the butler did it" or not. ;)

Up next (although no promises on timeline): The Bransons' first trip back to Ireland...