A/N M rated, scenes of a sexual nature below.
"Taste this would you?"
He levered a wooden spoon covered in sauce in Edith's general direction.
It was their last weekend together before he summed up the fraud. There wouldn't be many weekends left after that, or there shouldn't be. He had to let her go, he knew it, but he could barely breath when he considered the prospect. So he pushed it to the back of his mind, a matter for another day, a tomorrow which never seemed to arrive.
"God, that's good."
"More salt, you think?"
"Perfect as is, I'd say." She stole a brief kiss on the lips.
"Yes, but what about the sauce?"
She pinched his hip; it was gentle through the thick felt of his dressing gown, "yes, that's perfect too."
They divided the labour between them. She kept on top of the endless washing up - Anthony could never use less than three times the amount of utensils, bowls or pans than he actually needed - and he did the cooking.
There was another benefit to the system. As he stood at the stove tending his various concoctions he could admire the best view in London; Edith Crawley in one of his shirts, an apron and some thick woolly socks, leaning slightly into the washing up bowl. Nothing but an expanse of beautifully pale, slender legs and an arching neck. She had this delightful habit, of which she'd been completely unaware until he'd enlightened her, of standing on tip-toes even when not required. It had the effect of accentuating all of her best assets. Sometimes when she was scrubbing away at a particularly tough stain the hem of the shirt would dance upwards and reveal the line where her underwear met the soft skin at the tops of her legs. At this point he'd seen her naked on numerous, but he lived for those stolen glances in otherwise innocuous contexts. He couldn't imagine ever tiring of it.
"I feel your eyes on my behind Strallan!"
"Sorry, I'll stop."
"I'd rather feel your hands there." Coyly, she peered over her shoulder, a pink flush spreading up her neck from the flirtation.
The spoon was abandoned. The sauce would be fine without constant stirring, no matter what Delia might say.
"Happy to oblige sweet one." He stood behind her at the sink and gave her cheeks a firm squeeze before kissing her neck and wrapping his arms snugly about her stomach, "are you hungry?"
"Yes, not just for food as it happens."
"You're insatiable."
"Says the man who wanted to skip dinner entirely."
"Can we go back to bed after we've eaten?"
"Absolutely."
They ate quickly and did exactly as they'd planned. After snoozing off the effects of a decadent lunch, Anthony read out loud. Some weeks ago Edith had confessed in a post-orgasmic haze that she loved his voice. That it soothed and comforted and, if deployed at the right moment, turned her on. He'd offered to read to her nearly every day since. Today it was How To Be A Woman, it was difficult, to say the least, to retain any sense of gravitas.
As words passed into sentences, then paragraphs and, eventually, chapters Edith's caresses became more frequent, more urgent, more specific and ultimately, too distracting. Anthony cast the book to the floor and continued what they'd started that morning, and throughout Saturday, and on Friday night.
Some time later, he'd tidied himself and Edith up and clambered back under the white linen sheets, pulling her head to nestle on his shoulder.
"Have I told you that you're very good at that?"
"What? Reading aloud?"
"You know what I mean."
"Not a clue." She tilted her chin and scowled at him, he kissed her nose mischievously.
"You're going to make me say it, aren't you?"
"Yes, sweet one."
"Because you enjoy tormenting me."
"Because I enjoy hearing you say it, and I enjoy the lovely shade of pink it incites on your skin. So, yes, I'd like you to say it."
"Sex! You're very good at sex!" She shouted and threw her arms out above them in the bed as if exclaiming it to an audience on the ceiling. She cleared her throat and smiled sweetly up at him, "happy now?!"
"Ecstatic."
"Not that I have very much to compare it to. My experience is decidedly limited and extremely disappointing."
He exaggerated his sigh, "with one hand she gives, and with the other –"
She put her hand over his mouth, "hush."
He moved it away and turned to look down at her, "tell me about this decidedly limited and extremely disappointing experience."
"Oh, you know, the usual."
"No, that won't do. I'll try again: tell me about this decidedly limited and extremely disappointed experience."
Her hand shifted and covered her eyes. She mumbled, "kill all the lawyers." She cleared her throat and wiggled her way down the bed, the duvet tickled at her chin, "two guys. No orgasms with either, not even close."
Biting his tongue between his teeth, he tried not to look as pleased as he felt. He croaked a question, "Just two?" He was ashamed of his sex. She'd been in their midst this whole time. Men were stupid.
Edith shook her head from side to side and cast her eyes to the ceiling, "more like one and a half."
"A half? How can it be a half?"
"If it went in, I couldn't really tell." She flushed a bright red and covered her face with the covers. He laughed. She mumbled from beneath the thick quilt, "don't laugh!"
Digging around he revealed her face again, the white linen surrounded her, like some Eskimo, he kissed the tip of her nose.
She carried on, "So, including you, makes two –"
"And a half." They spoke in unison.
He brushed the hair from her forehead, "so, the half obviously wasn't all that good. What about the other one?"
She drew her fingers through his chest hair, his muscles flexed and relaxed. No woman had ever petted him before, he never wanted her to stop, if he could have purred, that is precisely what he would have done. He settled for mumbled noises of satisfaction instead.
She answered his question, "My first time. Painful and messy – so bloody. Honestly, no one warned me, the bed looked like a war zone –" She scrunched her eyes shut and her hand stilled and moved to cover her eyes, "oh God, I can't believe I told you that, it just spilled out, forget I ever said it – forget I ever spoke – forget I even exist."
He gasped dramatically, "never."
She laughed and scrunched up her face, "I'm an idiot. Could there be a worse topic of conversation when you're naked in bed with –"
Anthony's heart thumped awaiting the definition, afraid she might make too much of him, terrified she'd make it all too little. In the back of his mind the flicker of guilt burned, dimly, quietly but insistently.
"With someone you're sleeping with."
Relief, or not. No definition. They could stay in this moment. He pushed at her hip and urged her onto her stomach. Pulling down the covers to just below the twin dimples on her lower back, he traced them and ran his fingers up her spine. He could map her body now, like some pornographic cartographer. He knew the arc of the curve where hip met waist. The wonder of her rolling shoulder blades, flexing to life with a touch in the right place. The beauty spots and the imperfections - chicken pox reminders, a scar from a bicycle accident, the white puckered snaking lines from a long-distant growth spurt. He'd memorised the landscape of Edith Crawley, possibly the best use of his faculties to date.
She turned her head to the side, her voice still slightly muffled by the pillow, "that feels nice. Suffice to say, after the virginity business, it didn't improve all that much. Until now."
His hands stilled and the sounds of their quickened breathing filled the room. He should stop it all. It meant so much to her, he could see that, he'd seen it for weeks. It meant just as much to him, although she wouldn't believe it, when she found out the truth. There couldn't be a future for them, she must know that. He should tell her, make absolutely sure that they were both on the same page. Turn her over and cover her up and tell her about the expectations on his shoulders, about Maud, about all of it and about why this was a beautiful, temporary moment in their lives. He kissed the nape of her neck, still slightly damp from their earlier exertion. The skin was soft and he was hard again. He said nothing.
"I will not be the only one to go through this mortification - what about you?"
"Well, I've slept with more than one and a half people, if that's what you're asking."
"Don't be coy."
"Well, you make twenty-eight."
"Twenty-eight!" She moaned comically into the pillow.
"You make it sound terrible. There were a lot of women at Cambridge, too many, I suppose, but nothing long-term." He pulled the covers off completely and started to trace his fingers up the Achilles tendon at the back of her ankle, "I slowed down a fair amount at the Bar, if you get a reputation it makes it more difficult to get Silk and go to the Bench." He smiled at Edith's little squeal as he reached the sensitive pit at the back of her knee and he kissed it.
A full account of his sexual history should, of course, include the decision to marry his closest friend and, probably, the fact that he was still married. He still said nothing and comforted himself that he told no lies.
She'd given him the truth earlier, an embarrassing recitation of a sub-par sexual history and only because he'd asked her too. She'd taken it with grace and wit. He owed her something in return, "You want the truth?"
Her voice – he knew all its tones now – was laced with arousal, "yes." He wasn't sure if it was an answer to the question or a response to his hands, which pushed her thighs gently apart.
"Sex was mechanics for me. A biological impulse which, every single time I sought it out, both during and after, never seemed worth it." His fingers reached the thatch of curls between her legs and the blessed woman arched her pelvis off the bed in invitation. The absolute truth of his words struck him straight through the chest, "Then I met you."
She was wet, so wet, he slipped two fingers inside her and she moaned into the pillow. His erection nudged insistently against her leg, but it was suddenly imperative she understood and in pleasure she might not. He moved his hand away and turned her onto her back to face him. Her cheeks were flushed and her lips parted in frustration, it was a look he knew well, "Did you hear me?" Her bottom lip moved but she was silent, "Edith?"
The words were whispered, "Then you met me."
He nodded his relief. She had understood. He leant over to the bedside table and grappled with the always-unbecoming necessity of protection. He pulled her legs around his hips and she whimpered as he settled the head of his erection at her entrance, "It's never been like this. Do you believe me?"
It was vital that she believed him. This was an absolute truth which passed from him to her. Perhaps if she understood that then it couldn't be tainted by what might come afterwards.
She shifted beneath him with a moan of his name and her heat begun to capture the head of his cock. It took all his strength to pull away, "Edith this is important – do you believe me?"
"I do, I promise, I do." Her voice cracked with emotion. He bent to suck her nipple just how she liked it – hard – and pushed his way inside her. She lifted her hips to meet him.
She was tight and warm and wet and everything. Of all the places he'd been, lived, existed – Locksley, St John's, Temple, Notting Hill, Sevenoaks, Snaresbrook – nothing compared to these moments with Edith. As she came so nicely around him he was acutely aware that he'd never belonged quite like this. He wasn't sure if the thought was one of pleasure or pain.