Chapter 11

Lavinia April 1919

Lavinia knew what she had to do, and she felt surprisingly calm. She supposed she should be in a rage with Matthew, and Mary for that matter, but she wasn't. Perhaps rage would come in time, but for now she was simply sad. Heart-wrenchingly sad, and very very tired.

The truth was that Matthew didn't love her, not like she loved him, and not like he claimed to. Every time she closed her eyes she saw him with Mary: looking at her like she was the only person in the whole world and kissing her like he had never kissed her. Those images would be burned into her mind for all eternity. How could she have been so naive? How could she really have believed that Matthew Crawley, the future Earl of Grantham, would chose her over Lady Mary Crawley?

She was a little person, an ordinary person. She could never be Queen of the County like Mary, and Matthew's wife would be Queen of the County whether they wanted to be or not. Matthew and Mary made a fine elegant couple, and she suspected now that they had been in love with each other, albeit secretly, for a great many years. She still didn't know what had happened between them before she'd met Matthew, but, whatever it had been, it had obviously never been resolved. And now she was in the way. She'd always been in the way.

She had heard what Matthew had said: he was marrying because he felt obligated to, not because he loved her. She should never have allowed Sir Richard to talk her into coming back to Downton, and back to Matthew, but she had felt that God had wanted her to care for Matthew. And now she was ruining his life. He wanted to marry Mary and have the society bride his position merited and that his family wanted and instead he was saddled with her out of obligation and duty.

She had been able to marry him with only doubts, but now she had heard from his own lips that he wanted to marry another she knew she couldn't go through with it. Though she felt wretched now, she couldn't imagine how much worse it'd be after ten, twenty, forty years living with a man who she knew was in love with someone else; and someone who they couldn't cut out of their lives. She knew she would have a hard time convincing Matthew - he was a stubborn creature of duty, and he obviously felt she was his duty - but she would have to.

She suddenly felt overwhelmingly tired, her very bones ached. She wasn't sure if it was sickness or heartbreak causing her to feel so unwell, but she couldn't give in to it yet. Not until she'd spoken with Matthew.

Matthew April 1919

Matthew left Lavinia's room in a daze. He had to pause and lean on his stick as a wave of nausea came over him. He knew the cause was not the flu, but his own wretched guilt. He had no idea what to do. How had he become the kind of man who kissed another woman behind his fiancée's back?

He limped downstairs and into the library desperately hoping that he wouldn't see Mary, or anyone for that matter. He was in luck. He poured himself a whisky, eased himself into a chair and took a big slug. The whisky burned the back of his throat, but he knocked the rest back in one mouthful. His mind was racing.

He was in love with Mary. He had always been in love with her; there was no point in pretending anymore. But he was engaged to Lavinia; Lavinia who had been willing to give up everything for him when he had nothing to give her. And he did love Lavinia, just not in the same white-hot way he loved Mary. Ironically, given his earlier plans, he loved her like a sister.

The honourable thing was to be a man of his word and marry Lavinia, but she had given him a way out. She was willing to break their engagement so that he didn't have to; true to form she was willing to sacrifice herself for his happiness. His impulse had been that he wouldn't, he couldn't, let her. He couldn't allow her to sacrifice herself for him, he didn't deserve it, not now. He had betrayed her. But could he really marry her now? After how he had felt in Mary's arms? Wrong as it had undoubtedly been, it had still been truly beautiful. The culmination of so many long-suppressed and unspoken hopes and dreams. It had felt like coming home, not straying away. And he knew Mary had felt the same.

His heart ached with regret, and confusion. Even if he accepted Lavinia's proposal to end things between them, Mary was marrying Carlisle. Could he convince her to break things with Richard and marry him instead? Lavinia had seemed to think this was a given, but he wasn't so sure. If only he'd dared to fight for Mary before the war, instead of going off in high dudgeon. Back then he had thought life to be black and white, but it wasn't. There was nothing black and white about this situation. He had been so naive. Perhaps if he'd been able to get Mary to explain why she'd felt she couldn't say yes to him when he'd first asked then they wouldn't be in this mess now. But his pride had been wounded, and he'd spent the next six years pretending that he didn't really want to marry her in the first place. He was a fool, and he'd caught Lavinia up in his folly.

The gong rang. His head felt fuzzy from the whisky and he was no clearer and what he should do. He wanted to see Mary, to collapse into her arms and to have her tell him everything was going to be alright. He wanted her to run her hand through his hair, and whisper into his ear that she loved him and always had. He wanted to lie next to her holding hands and watching the clouds making shapes in the sky. But life was not black and white. What he wanted seemed to have little bearing on what he should do.

He supposed he would have to talk again with Lavinia when she was better and make plans - one way or the other.