Thanks for your encouraging reviews! I'm so pleased you're enjoying it. I currently have 8 chapters written and imagine it will end up around 12 in length. As I'm primarily following canon, yes there will be a happy ending for them... eventually! Sorry about the previous glitch with this chapter. I have reported it.

Chapter 3

Mary November 1916

Mary felt as if her world had just caved in on her. Matthew was engaged. He was going to marry someone else.

Rationally she knew it made sense. She couldn't expect him just to live in limbo like she had been doing, especially when he might not even make it through the war. She wanted him to be happy, but thinking about someone other than her being the one to make him happy made her feel unbearably sad.

She wondered what Lavinia Swire would be like. No one seemed to know anything about her other than that Matthew had met her in London. Would she be just like her? Or would Matthew have picked someone completely different? Not that it mattered really. Matthew wanted to marry her, that was all that mattered.

A fresh wave of sadness engulfed her and she was glad when her mother and sisters made moves to leave the room. Somehow she had continued to have conversation with them following Edith's revelation, but she felt very close to crying and she knew she needed sometime to compose herself before going downstairs.

"Are you alright milady?" asked Anna when they were alone.

Mary stopped trying to hold it together.

"Oh, Anna" she cried burying her face in her hands.

It made everything so final. Matthew would marry Lavinia. There was not to be any second chance for her and Matthew. It really was over now.

She looked up, fixed her face into the smile she knew she had to wear, and went downstairs. Perhaps Matthew and she would be able to be friends.

Matthew November 1916

Matthew pulled his hat off as the train pulled out of Downton Station. He exhaled slowly.

"Damn it Mary!" he swore quietly to himself.

"Damn it!"

He was so confused. He'd gone to Downton with Lavinia full of hope that he and Mary would begin their new relationship as brother and sister, and now he was all at sea again.

He had been disarmed by Mary's friendliness towards both him and Lavinia. It wasn't that he was expecting a fight exactly, but he had thought there might be some challenge. Instead she had been all smiles and warm words. She had played her sisterly role much better than he had played the brotherly one. He had thought her different from the Mary he'd left, though. Softer perhaps, but also a little lost. He knew the war must've changed her, as it had changed them all, but he was sure there was something else as well; something he couldn't quite put his finger on.

All he did know was that he had spent his time at Downton wanting to make it better, and hating the fact that it wasn't his job to. And then she'd been there just now at the station. He pulled the little stuffed dog out of his pocket and smelled it; it smelled faintly of her and his head swam. He felt like her kiss had been seared into his neck. This was certainly not how one should feel about one's sister!

He pulled out from his bag the photograph of Lavinia which she had given him, at his request, before he left. Dear, sweet, darling Lavinia. He did love her of that he was sure, but it was a gentler, quieter, safer love than he had felt for Mary. His feelings for Mary had always felt out of his control, wild and dangerous. And he feared that he had felt that familiar fire licking around the edges of his heart as the train had pulled away and he'd watched Mary's lonely figure recede into the smoke.

"Damn you, Mary Crawley!" he said again.

She always made life so complicated.