Updates will not be in chronological order, but it won't matter, because this collection has no plot.
Sybil surveyed the contents of her wardrobe with growing consternation. The problem was this: Sybil did not own any simple nightdresses, nor any simple undergarments at all as matter of fact. Well, if she had her own way, she would have, but heaven forbid the Right Honourable Lady Sybil Crawley be asked to sleep in a nightgown that was not silk, or to gird her loins in knickers lacking even one lace ruffle. It was not to be thought of, and so it hadn't been. Her intimates were a sea of fine fabrics and froth.
It was different with the dresses, of course. She had old dresses and plain dresses: a pink gingham, a purple check blouse, a brown wool skirt, her nurse's uniform. She pushed aside tea gowns a-quiver with lace and evening gowns of blue-gray silk and even her beloved old bloomer frock with its embroidery and gossamer and matching beaded tiara without the slightest twinge of regret to find the simple, practical clothes (even an Earl's daughter has need of a few) that she would take with her to Ireland and her new life. (She kept a dark blue silk for best. It was modest and subdued and she didn't expect much use out of it but you never knew, did you: once at the hospital in Kent a handful of hospital orderlies had asked a handful of trainee nurses to a dance and she'd been glad to have a fine dress then.)
So that was the dresses sorted, but undergarments remained another matter entirely. She considered one nightdress: it had short sleeves and a wide neck decorated with French lace, and it was made of clinging silk so soft and fine and sheer that she might as well be naked, wearing it.
The thought gave her pause, and she allowed herself for a moment to imagine herself in that dress, and Tom's eyes on her. Now there was a warming thought.
If she had married Larry Grey, or one of her other suitors, or indeed anyone at all except Tom, she would have had a trousseau any princess might envy: silk and satin and fine cotton batiste, and more lace and ruffles than a laundress's worst nightmare. Nightgowns, corsets, camiknickers. A peignoir set in peach or pink or mauve, if she could get Mama to agree to it. ("Lingerie doesn't have to be white!" argued Sybil, passionately, age 14. "Yes, it does," said the Countess of Grantham, putting an end forever to young Sybil's dream of a lime green petticoat.) And all of it packed into trunks with labels on them for Paris or Rome or Geneva.
Sybil did not regret the laden trunks or their alluring contents. There were a number of reasons for this but one, of course, overshadowed all the others. She was an innocent, of course, but not so innocent as to not know that a honeymoon was more about taking clothes off than about putting them on. When she contemplated that with, say, Larry, her stomach turned. When she considered Tom, well…
Her sisters were unmarried. Her maid was married, but with Anna's husband in jail on murder charges Sybil did not think her questions would be either welcome or appropriate. Her mother was tolerant in a strained, tight-lipped sort of way and was in any case not the person whom Sybil would prefer to ask.
She packed the silk nightgown, and hoped (not for the last time) that the coming weeks would pass quickly.