Author's Note: I had posted about eight chapters to this story from last December until March, when the story stalled on eight reviews and seven followers. In the three months that have passed, I've spent my free time (that is, free time after writing, exercise, and hanging with friends and family lol) studying early twentieth century English culture to attain, hopefully, as accurate a depiction for the rest of the story. Plus, after seeing the success of another story, I decided to opt for a different format. This story should feel like a TV series, since it is based on a TV series, and I should have been telling the stories of multiple characters, framing them around the central romance of Mary and Kemal.

My apologies to anyone who was following the original story, but I hope that you all will enjoy this rewrite more than the original. Please, please, PLEASE review and follow.

Chapter 2: Of Sailships and of Sultans, Part One

Episode 1x04, Part One

April 1913

Downton Abbey, two weeks later…

Before the sun caressed the polished parquet floor of Downton Abbey's main hall, the downstairs staff had lit fires, begun to cook breakfast, had brought in fresh firewood, and cleaned everything visible in the main house to achieve the superb quality of spotlessness expected by Lord and Lady Grantham. Fresh flowers filled the vase in the main hall. Anna Smith's meal with the rest of the downstairs staff was constrained by the ringing of the bells for the Lady's bedroom and Lady Mary's bedroom.

"I suppose that's the end of our break hour." Anna dabbed at her mouth with a cloth napkin and rose from the table. Mr. Carson had already departed from the room to check the silver and set the table.

"If Her Ladyship is calling, His Lordship shouldn't be too far behind." Bates grunted as he stood. Anna came around the table and helped by pulling out his chair. "I'd better head up before he rings for me."

"Better to be where you're wanted than staying where you're not, I always say," Thomas said, folding his newspaper. He didn't have to look at Bates. The direction of his words was obvious.

"Then where would that put you?" Bates queried before he limped from the room.

Upstairs in Lady Mary's bedroom, Anna found the young woman standing nude in her bathtub. Anna gasped with surprise at Mary's brazen stance, and Mary defiantly put her hands on her hips. "I felt it was within reason to bathe myself this month, since it isn't essential any way, but it seemed a bit presumptuous to dress and do my own hair."

"Your Ladyship, it's not that. I didn't expect to walk in and find you in such a state."

Mary turned her back to Anna. Her ebony hair contrasted sharply with her creamy smooth skin, and dripped still from her bathwater. Glancing over her shoulder with her hands still on her hips, Mary could have been a graceful oil painting by one of the impressionist masters.

"Quite right, Lady Mary, I suppose it is a bit wrong to dress yourself." Anna hurried to unfold a towel from the freshly laundered stack she had brought with her, and wrapped it around Mary's nude body. "What would you like to wear today, your Ladyship?"

"As Papa and Mama are still offering me like Isaac to the god of marriage and comfort, I should think the blue silk frock is the most suitable."

"Perhaps you should wear something brighter during dinner, Lady Mary. Forgive me for speaking out of turn."

Mary stared out the window on the far side of her bedroom, as she dried and slipped into her petticoat. Even from the bathtub she could see through the window to most of the ground of Downton. The grounds were shrouded in a light blanket of fog that reached into the trees bordering the well-kept Grantham estate. 'When I was a little girl, I could not bear the thought of going into those woods, especially when it was a foggy morning like this one. Now I'm not afraid of the unknown anymore.'

"Who will be the guest at dinner tonight? Mama told me, but I'm certain the name is forgettable."

"Lord Evelyn Napier, I believe, milady."

"Then I forgive you for speaking out of turn, Anna, but blue it shall be all day and all night."

Anna went to retrieve a thicker blue dress from Mary's wardrobe. Mary sat at her makeup table to begin applying color. Once she had laid out Mary's dress, Anna picked out a set of pearl earrings and an understated gold necklace to compliment the dress.

"Milady, you were so excited to see Lord Napier before his last visit. And you two were such good friends when you were children. I was certain you were waiting for his proposal. What happened?"

Anna put the earrings and necklace against the dress and held up the outfit for Mary's approval in the mirror. "That's fine, Anna." She stood up, and Anna eased the dress onto Mary's body without even ruffling her petticoat. "Lord Napier is really duller than I remembered, Anna. He's like any childhood toy: When I was younger he was quite entertaining, but since my tastes have matured, his haven't.

"I require someone more intriguing. And that won't be Lord Napier."

Branson Manor

The Home of the Napier Family

Kemal was alone in the sunroom overlooking the grounds of Branson Manor, surrounded by light flooding in from every window. A canvas propped on an easel was in front of him. Kemal's left hand danced across the canvas to choreograph a sketch with the charcoal pencil in his hand.

'Oh my love, I had to capture this as soon as I completed my morning ride,' Kemal thought as he laid out the fine details of his subject's features. 'As soon as I mounted a steed, you were foremost in my thoughts. It was so reminiscent of the day we met. How could I not think of you?'

"Father thinks your art could have waited until you changed clothes to be expressed." Kemal turned and spotted Evelyn Napier standing stiffly in the doorway between the sunroom and the library. He wore a light plum traveling suit and dapper white-and-black wingtips. The sunlight on his pale skin did nothing to enhance his features, the way it made Kemal's olive skin turn bronze.

Kemal looked down and examined his clothing. He wore a cream silk riding shirt, a pair of red riding pants, and black knee-high leather riding boots, all splattered with mud. None of the mud on his clothes had touched the floor. He stepped back to study the sketch. It was almost complete but he felt that it lacked something.

"No artist worthy of his skill would waste a moment of inspiration, Nappy. I hope I haven't offended Viscount Branson?"

"He's too afraid that international relations would be damaged by any complaint to express those thoughts."

Evelyn stood on tiptoe to peek at the sketch, although from the doorway, he doubted Evelyn could see the details. "Another debutante?" he chuckled. "If your sketches were poetry, Kemal, you could become a Turkish Lord Byron."

"My sketches and paintings are far better than Byron's poetry. There aren't any complicated words to stand in the way of the emotion and beauty of a painting. There's nothing to interpret with a painting."

Evelyn stepped closer and studied the sketch. On a bed of the Branson estate's lively flowers, Lady Mary lay and stared at the viewer with a half-lidded, slightly lustful gaze. Her lips pouted, as though she were a girl from the scandalous magazines that Evelyn swore never to read. She wore a simple tea dress that humbly covered her bosom and clutched a flower to her breasts in a paradigm of innocence. Mary's loose hair curled about her shoulders with grace and elegance. It was perfectly tasteful and slightly erotic. Evelyn cleared his throat.

"You've drawn the subject in a most compromising position."

"I was inspired by the romance of Europa and Zeus."

"If you mean the rape of Europa by Zeus, then where is the bull?"

"He is somewhere off the canvas. And it was more romantic than a rape. Europa yielded herself willingly."

"Zeus was king of the gods, and Europa was a mere mortal princess. She did not yield. You know, in our many years of friendship, you've never once mentioned that you were a reader of the classics."

Kemal turned fully to Evelyn, who stood on his left. "You've met my father. You know his ways. He insisted that I should learn European history, languages, and classics. 'We are as much a part of their culture as we are part of their land!'" Kemal chuckled. "You know how he is. He would love if I found a European wife."

"Even an English one?"

"When Zeus seduced her, Europa yielded willingly, Nappy. And this is just a picture."

Evelyn held up a hand. "I cannot pretend to be unaware of the effect you have on women, Kemal. When you walk into a room of the creatures, they stop breathing. They smile. They court you and fawn over you, even if you don't have any title. And you weave a spell over them with your words."

"I possess none of your charms, Kemal. And I know Lady Mary seemed scarcely interested in me after that dinner, but I deserve another opportunity. I mean to travel to Downton tonight for dinner. I hope to win her over. With that woman as my wife, I can go quite far in this world. All I ask is that you support my effort to win her over. Stay out of the room this time."

"You must truly care for her, to insist that I stand aside. What if I want to draw her again?"

"When she is my wife, I will have none of that. You may draw her one last time on our wedding day."

Kemal's jaw clenched and the muscles in his cheek moved sinuously between the fine bones. "Lady Mary is not a racing horse to be bought, sold, and traded at will, Nappy. She's a woman with her own thoughts and desires."

"Her thoughts are her father's thoughts, and her desires are her mother's desires. And they would rather have me as their son-in-law. I am an English lord, after all."

Kemal turned back to his sketch. "Am I permitted to accompany you to this dinner? Or does my base Turkish blood dictate that should lock myself away?"

"You may come, if only to stoke the fires with Lady Edith." Evelyn smiled. "In fact, yes, Lady Edith is more a match for you, Kemal. She's a lovely girl, if a bit vulnerable."

Evelyn left the room. 'What this sketch needs is my signature.' Mary's torso extended to the lower right corner of the canvas, and Kemal had drawn her hips and the beginning of her legs. Where her legs met her hips, Kemal erased part of the sketch with his fingertip and wrote his signature where her legs began. 'There. Now this is perfect.'