A/N Sorry about the delay in posting. This chapter just wouldn't co-operate, but in the end I decided to just let it go and bloody well post it. I know people wanted the night in the hotel bed to turn into rather more than sleep. Sorry to disappoint!
Some of this chapter might drift into M because of the language.
A morning erection is a young man's curse, or blessing, depending on the circumstances. If there is a warm and willing woman to oblige him it can be one of nature's delights.
Anthony had not been beset by a morning erection in as long as he could remember.
Not so this morning. He woke up with it tenting his boxers, as though he was some horny teenager fighting a losing battle with his base hormones. More worryingly, it pressed into Edith Crawley's small, but perfectly rounded, behind. His arm encircled her waist possessively and his hand rested on her stomach.
The pretence he'd manufactured to be able to touch her for some length of time - the need to warm up her cold feet - had long since fallen away. Their legs twinned together and her feet were jumbled with his, no longer blocks of ice, but entirely temperate. Her whole body was warm. Arousing too. A pleasing scent of lavender drifted from her hair to his nose.
The oversized pink pyjamas were an object of complete erotica to him now. The first nightclothes he seen her in. They pressed against his skin where he pressed against her. All her bodily promise hidden by a thin layer of cotton, alluding obliquely to the delights underneath. She could have been wearing a lacy corset and suspenders and he doubted it would have affected him to this degree.
That was a lie, but the contest was much, much closer than it should have been.
He prayed she wasn't awake. How terrible to put her in this position. Some randy old man taking liberties in the night and seeing fit to wrap himself around her as though he had a claim. And with all the evidence of his lascivious thoughts pooling in his groin and pressing into her back.
He was mortified. Mortified and turned on. He really was a teenager again.
He wanted to stay put and bury his head in her hair and his erection inside of her.
Obviously out of the question.
He took his hand from her body. Inch by inch, he worked his way out of the bed. He stood on tiptoes and arched his neck to try and see her face. Her breathing was deep and even. He sighed with relief when he saw that her eyes were shut.
The cold shower was a necessary relief.
He ran down to the Costa at the service station and acquired two large coffees and Edith's favourites.
She was sitting up in bed when he returned, rubbing her eyes and yawning. She clapped a hand over her mouth as she caught sight of him and then thought better of it and attempted to smooth down her bed hair, "I was hoping I'd have time to get ready before you got back."
"No such luck I'm afraid. You look fine, by the way." He handed her the coffee and she scowled. He clambered onto the bed, her underneath the covers, him on top. He cloaked the almond croissant in a white paper napkin and gave it to her.
A murmur of pleasure erupted from her throat, "oh, you're too good." She cradled the coffee as though it was a goblet of holy wine and shut her eyes as she bit into the pastry. The crunch of its crisp edges filled the quiet bedroom, small flakes drifted, feather-like, onto the pale flesh beneath the notch at the centre of her throat. He tracked them with his eyes.
Suddenly everything was a bloody temptation.
He forced himself to examine the peeling wallpaper at the foot of the bed.
"How's the snow?"
"Still pretty thick on the ground, but we should be able to manage a slow journey back."
"Good then." She was quiet.
The coffees and croissants were finished. She swung her legs out of the bed and stretched her arms to the ceiling. A human feline in pink cotton fur. He admired the view.
She caught him in the act, "the pyjamas look ridiculous, I know."
"I think they're quiet jolly actually."
Jolly? Had he ever said that word before in his entire life? He was utterly addled.
She looked down at herself, "I suppose they are rather fun."
He nearly commented that it would be rather fun to take them off, but he took a gulp of coffee instead.
She asked for twenty minutes to get ready, but she was dressed and at the door in fifteen.
On the way home Anthony tried to explain the nuances of the bad character applications he had to decide on Monday. Robust debate ensued about whether a Jury should ever know about a Defendant's convictions on previous matters. Anthony was pro, Edith was anti.
This dovetailed into debate on the question of the heart of it all: were the six defendants on trial guilty or not. He thought they obviously were and she was undecided. Well, she was undecided on everyone except Michael Gregson's client, who she was convinced had done it, which made Anthony smile like a fool.
Their conversation roamed from the trial, to plays and theatre, to his views on the latest book he was reading from Edith's list. She discovered he'd never seen The West Wing and practically shrieked when he was completely ignorant about a woman called Erin Brockovich. A list of films and television programmes was to be drawn up and worked through along with the list of books.
Anthony's road was a graveyard when they returned. Not a soul in sight, just the murmur of nearby busy roads. They collected their things, handbag, canvass, picnic basket, box of uneaten Fitzbillies treats. He tried to collect his thoughts, to make sense of the gnawing sadness creeping up his throat. This was silly, he would see her tomorrow. Barely twelve waking hours to wait. They stood awkwardly next to the car. He looked at the ground and the sky and the buildings and then finally, with a nervous laugh and a shrug, at her.
She chewed the inside of her cheek and shook her head, "I'm going to head back then. I'll see you tomorrow."
"You're sure you'll be alright? I can drive you."
"No, goodness, no - through central London and then south of the river? It would take hours."
Hours in the car seemed like quite a pleasant prospect actually. The last hour had passed in the blink of an eye.
"Right."
She still wore his scarf; she put it on this morning with her coat and gloves and he said nothing. Pleased that some part of him, however ridiculous a notion this was, would return with her to Brixton and be in her flat amongst her things. He'd never ask for it back, of this he was certain.
"See you tomorrow then." She smiled weakly.
The day gaped in front of him. An abyss. He climbed the steps to his front door and fumbled for the key. He told himself he had work to do, concentrating on the six bad character skeleton arguments sitting in a file on his dining room table. At the back of his mind a voice whispered that they could wait. He'd heard a million of those arguments; he knew the law like the back of his hand. The feeling that glowed from within him when he was Edith, he didn't know that and he wanted to, he needed to.
He wrenched the key from the lock and spun around with frenetic haste, "Edith!"
The street was silent and empty. She must have walked fast to have already turned the corner. Disappointment curled in the pit of his stomach.
A small voice rose from the bottom of the steps, he looked down. She was swallowing a laugh, he could tell, she arched an eyebrow, "yes?"
"Oh – I –" Silly, how happy it made him to see her there, not walking away down his road, but on the pavement in front of him, instead.
"Shall we go to the National Portrait Gallery?"
"I've never been."
Her face was a pretty picture of taut horror, "well – that settles it then." She cleared her throat, "if you want to?"
"Yes. Absolutely."
She nodded her head down the road, "come on then."
He took the steps in just two long leaps, smiling – to borrow Len's phrase – like the proverbial cat who'd gotten the cream. Edith's hand hung down by her side and he had an overwhelming desire to take it in his own. He plunged his hand into his coat pocket instead and settled for the occasional brushing of her shoulder against his arm as they walked together.
"Remind me again why we're taking the bus?" She'd insisted that they walk away from the tube and head to the bank of bus stops on the main road.
"It's quicker than the tube to the gallery."
Skepticism laced his voice, "quicker than the tube."
"That's such a tourist mentality, to assume the tube is always quicker. It's often not. Honestly, how long have you lived in this city?"
He decided not to answer that particular question, the mental gymnastics required to calculate and then subtract the months he lived in Kent with Maud were too complicated, "Thatcher said that 'a man who, beyond the age of 30, finds himself on a bus can count himself as a failure.'" He nodded at the scowling man in a suit standing next to them at the bus stop. He was balding, and certainly over thirty.
Edith gave an apologetic smile in the stranger's direction and then grimaced a reprimand at Anthony, shaking her head, "yes, well, I'm 25 and a woman."
"Ah, quite – just me that's the failure then." And old. Older. Much older.
The bus squeaked to a stop perilously close to where the stood at the edge of the pavement.
They climbed the stairs to the top deck. Anthony wracked his brain trying to remember when he last took the bus; it had been a long time. The time since he sat on the top floor was longer still.
The crush of bodies in front of them came to a stop and Edith turned and peered down at him from her elevated step, "Thatcher was wrong about plenty of things you know – poll tax, apartheid, women in the Cabinet – perhaps she was wrong about this."
They were on the move again and Edith turned, her petite backside was level with his face. There were some benefits to this mode of transport. The seats were small and the length of his leg pressed against Edith's when they sat down. That settled it, Thatcher was an imbecile. He would take the bus more. If Edith was with him, he might suggest they always take it.
"I still cannot believe you've never been to the National Portrait Gallery."
"Can you not? You've masked your disbelief well by not looking utterly horrified." He laughed.
She punched his shoulder playfully, "alright, alright. Still, you claim to be educated - but there are such gaps."
Anthony enumerated them on his fingers, "literature, art, television, film, music." He peered out of the misty window at Nelson's column in the distance, "but, I have written three books on hearsay, one on fraud and numerous scholarly articles on the vacation of guilty pleas. Some say I am one of the finest legal minds of my generation."
"I am firmly of the view that no one should be able to claim a fine legal mind if they haven't seen Erin Brockovich."
"Well, we can remedy that one night this week after court?" She nodded, "And then my education will be complete."
She looked resolutely out of the window, "do you want it to be?"
It was difficult having a conversation with the side of her neck, not least because the beauty spots flashed, beckoning him to taste her skin. He went to answer, but she continued instead.
"I know I mock you for your lack of popular culture knowledge and I make bossy recommendations, but you don't have to do what I ask. I'll stop interfering if you want me to, I'll just paint the picture. We don't have to do any of this. You can just go back to life as it was, trials and scholarly articles"
A barrister knows a prepared speech, a Judge even more so. Perhaps she'd become bored with him.
He wasn't sure how to strike the right note. Surely it lay somewhere between the truth, which was that he was having the best time of is life and he was afraid of the day the painting was finished, and a lie of indifference, that they needn't do these lessons if she didn't want to.
He shrugged, "I'm enjoying myself." Then he feigned nonchalance, looking at his nails, "do you want to stop?"
A brief hand on his knee and a resigned sigh, "no. I should, but no, I don't."
They sat largely in silence for the rest of the journey. Those words rolled around his mind like marbles in an empty room. I should.
The National Portrait Gallery was tucked behind the National Gallery. If you didn't know it was there you were liable to miss it altogether, like the poor spinster sister, kept out of sight and out of mind. Anthony wondered if that's why Edith loved it so much (when asked she'd been unable to accurately count how many times she'd been) she somehow felt an affinity with what was obviously the Middle Sister of London's galleries.
She ushered him straight downstairs to the nineteenth century and they walked through room after room of statesmen and the occasional stateswoman. He was paying attention but it was difficult to concentrate on the pictures of dead men when Edith was in such close proximity.
He was supposed to be considering an intricate portrait of Queen Victoria, her garments covered in gilt and a luxurious bolt of deep red silk wrapped around a stone lion lying in front of her. Edith had told him to think about what he wanted in the foreground and background of his picture. He was trying to do as she asked but his eyes kept sliding away from the Queen and over to her. She was considering Lord Melbourne a couple of portraits over. She'd declared Melbourne 'devilishly handsome' and Anthony found himself ridiculously envious of a long-gone, nineteenth century Prime Minister.
He had the sudden urge to throw her over his shoulder and whisk them back to Notting Hill. He'd make it so that any thoughts of other men, alive or dead, were banished from her mind. Far from her mind, leaving only him.
He muttered an expletive and turned away from her to look at the next portrait in the row. He clattered straight into a small woman standing beside him, "I am sorry, I –"
Anthony felt as though he'd been caught truanting school by his Mother. He'd walked headlong into Mrs Hughes, she was looking up at him with slightly narrowed eyes and an arched eyebrow, "Your Honour, what a surprise!" She smiled and squeezed his arm, "I can't believe you're out of the house on a Sunday and with a legal argument to decide tomorrow."
"I, yes, well –"
"Mrs Hughes, hello."
There was a beat of silence, "Edith, dear, how nice to see you."
Mrs Hughes caught his eye and conveyed a world of meaning in a look and then he felt like he'd been caught with a girl by his Mother, a thoroughly inappropriate girl.
"Weren't the two of you in Cambridge yesterday?"
Edith revealed all his secrets, because, of course, to her the whole thing was innocent, "yes, but we ended up staying over after the snow hit and then we decided to spend Sunday here."
"How lovely." Another knowing look. Mrs Hughes could convey more information than anyone he knew without employing any words at all.
Then it was Anthony's turn to convey a wealth of meaning in a look, because from behind her Charlie Carson appeared. He wore corduroy trousers, a blue shirt and a v-neck pullover. In all the time Anthony had known him he'd either worn judicial robes or a suit. The revelation that he owned a casual wardrobe was a startling one.
Carson was too absorbed with looking at Mrs Hughes to notice that there were other people present. Anthony recognised the look, it was the look that had been on his own face all day, the look he couldn't help whenever he glanced at Edith.
He put his hand on her shoulder, "I have the tickets."
Elsie Hughes had been his Clerk for the better part of a decade, he'd never seen her blush, "oh, good." She cleared her throat and raised her eyebrows to her hairline, eyes wide, "look who I met." Her head jerked sharply in their direction.
Carson was a picture of embarrassed solemnity, he snatched his hand away, holding his arms firmly by his side like a Sergeant Major, "Strallan." He nodded seriously, "Ms Crawley."
Allowing himself a sidelong glance down to Edith, she caught his eye and bit the inside of her cheek, pursing her lips. Clearing her throat she asked, "what do you have tickets to?"
"The Virginia Woolf exhibition."
"I went last month, it's great."
They were a quartet of silence. Nervous glances and half smiles passed around the group.
Mrs Hughes's brisk Scottish tones took charge, as ever, "we should go. Enjoy the rest of your day you two."
Carson backed away as though retreating from the enemy. Anthony half expected him to salute. Casual clothes he could do, casual meetings were apparently a bridge too far.
"What was that?"
Edith laughed and shook her head, "Your talk worked."
"What do you mean?"
At the end of the gallery, between the steady movement of people coming back and forth, from picture to picture, Anthony saw Carson take hold of Mrs Hughes's hand. As they turned the corner to leave the nineteenth century section he bent down and kissed her cheek.
"That, Anthony, was a date."
He watched them disappear from view and stared at the empty space they'd occupied. Carson loved Mrs Hughes and he was finally taking action. A lump rose, unbidden in Anthony's throat.
He should kiss Edith.
But when he turned, he found she was gone, examining Disraeli and Gladstone at the other end of the room.