The last night together, he thought. Back from Biarritz, they had agreed. But yet they could not part.
The tug of skin, of touch, of kiss was still there. Lingering on lips, on their body, in their soul.
He knew he would never see her again. This kind of bliss was out of his grasp. Ephemeral, it had to be savored. For it would be gone. Soon.
She was making overtures even now. Even as they lazed about in the rumpled bedsheets of his hotel room once again. She had said the night before that she had to go.
But instead had stayed one more night. One more day.
Truth be told she also wanted to retreat from life into this world of two.
But it was not to be. Her real life, if not beckoning, rather pulled and tugged her away from him. Responsibilities. As few as they were, and internally rolled her eyes, nagged at her.
Her mother would worry as well.
Except…
Except she wanted to give in to total abandonment. Give in to the rich, beguiling sound of his voice, reciting a poem in French from memory upon a challenge from her
She could always put off for another day her decision to return to England.
…. She looked at him. He scrunched his face in a delightful contortion of concentrated effort and unassuming charm.
She hated him….
Puisque j'ai mis ma lèvre à ta coupe encor pleine;
Puisque j'ai dans tes mains posé mon front pâli;
Puisque j'ai respiré parfois la douce haleine
De ton âme, parfum dans l'ombre enseveli;
In French any word out of his mouth sounded like an utter seduction. His words, his tone, his inflections and accent. She felt her body betray the last bits of her resolve made her essentially putty in his hands. Pliable. Practically submissive. She would do anything he wanted. Mostly because he would never take advantage such compliance. She knew his respect for her. His reverence for her body was in his tender touch. He would do nothing she did not want. Nothing to betray her trust.
That's what made her even more his than ever. She sighed deep and pulled herself closer to him.
He stopped… stumbled on the next bit "Puisqu'il me fut donné de t'entendre me dire …
"Entendre…. " He opened his mouth but nothing came out. His hands started to gesture out in front of him as if trying to grasp at the words.
"Ha." She said gently mocking. "You can't remember it."
"Wait..." He said. "Wait…" He stumbled a bit some more then said. "Well I remember this bit…" And kissed her with a fierceness. "Ta bouche sur ma bouche…"
And both were lost to their bodies need again.
Later, much into the night, too late for her to return to her own hotel as she had initially planned, she said, "Tomorrow. Tomorrow I must go back to… to where I was staying before we met."
His hum of understanding in her ear danced and tickled her.
"I see." He said.
"And." Here the resolve stood. "I will need to go back to England. Very soon."
The sigh of resignation pained her. But it had to be done.
"I know." And his arms encircled her.
They slept.
XX
She packed her few belongings back into the case she had brought with them to Biarritz.
He sat on the end of the bed. Watching her.
"Why don't you come to my hotel?" She turned to him. He quirked an eyebrow in enquiry.
"Room 312 Hotel Royale on the Place de la Vendue."
He was impressed. But not surprised. "That's a nice address."
She shrugged studiously. "You knew that."
He nodded. "I'll wear my uniform. Be less conspicuous."
She understood and silently agreed without having to humiliate by putting it into words. His suit was worn, and would draw attention to himself if walked into a luxury hotel and caught the eye of the concierge.
She left abruptly. Their good-byes would be later.
A couple hours later he followed her. He spent the times polishing his boots and shining his belt buckles.
No one asked him or questioned his right to be at the Hotel Royale. An officer in the British Army, with the rank of Captain, wearing the ribbon of the Victoria Cross could stride across the lobby and take the grand staircase two steps at a time without a glance of disapproval or a sniff of censure.
The fact that such snobbery, such elite arrogance still existed after the supposed war to end all wars did not really surprise him. The notion that everyone would come out to a golden sunrise of equality and freedom was utter bollocks. What was it President Wilson had said, "Only a peace between equals can last. Only a peace the very principle of which is equality and a common participation in a common benefit." Yet veterans were met with the same old resistance upon returning home trying to find jobs to feed their families. "A Home fit for Heroes…." With unemployment and labor unrest aplenty, all of that still seemed very much a dream. At worse people 'back home' wanted to forget the war. Get on with life… The soldiers had yet to learn how. It was as if life at peace was still a dream. Reaching out…something they could not yet grasp.
He had written about it more than once in the months since the armistice. But he had no answers either.
Instead he drifted. In a fog. Of indifference and ennui.
Until now. This woman. This time. Could he let go? He had to. It would be painful. Perhaps even break him further. But he knew that going into it.
And he was willing to be torn asunder by her. To have the last of his breath taken by her.
She had become his life. He would survive without her.
But he'd never love again.
He knocked on Room 312. A soft voice beckoned him to enter. He did so. He walked into the luxurious suite. Rich decorative molding in geometric patterns, Louis quartorze chaise longue with sweeping S shaped curves, fauteuils surrounding a dark colored table. She was in the doorway to the bedroom. Framed by its dramatic curves and fleur-de-lis motifs, she appeared as a goddess about to greet a supplicant.
Her beauty, her intelligence took his breath away. This was her turf here. She was in her element.
She wore a Chinese tunic dress. He had seen some window shopping on a rainy day not too long ago. Ivory lace with a short silk brocade skirt of blue, embroidered with flowers and butterflies. She did not, however, wear the corset so her breasts, full and enticing could be seen underneath the sheer ecru silk of the bodice.
"Is this for my benefit?" He could hardly get the words out, his mouth already dry from desire.
"If you like it?" She said, feeling the softness of the silk against her skin as she walked towards him. "I just bought it."
"I like it very much." His lips crushing hers. His fingers touching the delicacy of the brocade. The expertise of the embroidery. The small tassels on the sleeves.
He reached up under the skirt and felt her naked skin. She wore no undergarments at all.
She had been waiting for him. Wanting him to touch her.
He obliged.
A crashing, burning love making session began. First against the door frame. She was wet, ready for him. Needing him to put his fingers into her opened thighs. Ready for him to push her against the hardness of the wood. His lips tearing into hers. She whimpered in delight.
Making every part of her body tremble as she shucked his clothes off and he continued to pry open her mouth and felt his tongue push its way down her throat.
She opened herself to him when he was as naked. She felt along his tight torso. The muscles twitching beneath the goosebumped hairs. Down to his bellybutton and to his taut erection. Her touch made him groan into her ear. Soft grunts of about a second interval each followed as her hands massaged and manipulated his arousal.
"Lift up your arms." He both asked and commanded, his voice once again that guttural sound as if his life depended upon her acting as he wished.
She raised her arms up for him to lift off the tunic. He grabbed both and put them in a tight vise grip behind her. Using one hand he kept them there as he spread open her legs and pushed inside her. His thrusts made her lose all sense of balance. His grip was hard, but pleasurable against her bounded wrists. She cried out as he reached into her with his own bucking, thrusting needy exertions. He would not let go. They were tied together, body and soul. She was all his. He was all hers.
This was as it should ever be.
When each had satiated other, they lay entwined limbs and arms and hearts on her soft bedcovers. The feel of the material, the sensuality of the woman beside him, her hair splayed magnificently aware against the brocaded pillowcase, made him inarticulate. He was incapable of thinking he'd ever be this happy again.
So of course it had to end. Just as it had begun.
"I will not stay the night." He said. "I'll leave you to your packing."
She turned.
"I'll say good-bye now." He tried to keep his voice from cracking. He failed.
She heard it. Bit her lip as a tear unexpectedly formed at the side of her left eye.
Without any resistance from her, they both knew it was the end, she let him get up. He kissed her one last time. Dressed. And closed the door behind him. Pausing, one hand on the handle, one eye half in the room, the other already out the door, "Good-bye." Grating, hard, only half spoken.
He left.
"Good-bye." She whispered to the man who was no longer there. No longer in her bed or her life.
But remained in the heart whose existence she used to doubt.
She doubted no more.
XX
That was what Mary's was thinking at dinner. As the soft, polite conversation flowed around her she remembered her heart.
And that the man seated across from her possessed it.
Without a twinge of guilt, she also realized she would never regret that. She had given it to him freely. As a lover and as a gentleman he had accepted it with respect. With reverence and esteem.
Even as he tasted her body, entered her with tongue and brought her to peaks of ecstasy no woman of her class and station was supposed to enjoy, he never betrayed her.
She had been shameless with him. Yet felt no shame. Was this what they called love?
As if to they were subconsciously connected, she felt his eyes on her. As if he knew her thoughts. Her cheeks flamed a bright red.
He grinned privately. Mary his only line to life at the moment. And he clung to her.
The moment passed as Robert spoke and Matthew tried to give him full attention. But Robert's pomposity was more than grating on him at the moment. It was as if the sense of noblesse oblige forced his distant cousin into grandiose salutations as an act of informing the less fortunate relation of the newly acquired station he now possessed. And one in which he should be more than a bit grateful in having bestowed upon him.
"Downton has over 31,000 thousand acres of farm and grassland. It is a deep and important responsibility." Even as he spoke the words, Matthew sensed he was a disappointment to Robert. That he didn't cut the mustard, come up to snuff or whatever other pathetic phrases the aristocrats threw about to put people like him in their place.
Matthew never crowed on about his achievements in life. But it was as if Mephistopheles sat on his shoulder, whispering he should put this member of an archaic class that no longer mattered to anyone in his place.
He resisted doing that out of sheer politeness. Especially to Mary. He would focus his attentions solely on Mary. The branch of the Crawleys' that Robert represented had been almost wholly unknown to Matthew. He had heard his parents whisper, saw his father cringe and get angry at the mention of certain family names. But he did not really know the reason why.
It was partially why he was here. Sheer curiosity. His father's death, ghastly in its method and completely unexpected, left Matthew at sea. It wasn't as if the two were particularly close. Especially in later years, as Matthew had been away either at school, university, or war. But he loved and admired his father. Both men had taken Isobel's death hard. Both had dealt with it by essentially not dealing with it at all. Reggie had retreated to his books and his quiet library in Manchester. Matthew had sought to disappear into the Génération au Feu after the war. To use the war as an excuse to do nothing. To think nothing. To remember nothing. To love nothing.
He tried to drag his attention back to Robert. "Of course so many of the better families have lost heirs. We've all had to go search into the dusty parts of the genealogy." Robert tried to jest. "And here we've found you."
The strained chuckle from Violet was meant both as a warning and a reprimand to Robert. No need, she seemed to say, to insult the new heir just as he arrived to save the family.
Violet had driven up in her chauffeured car just in time to greet the new young heir upon his return a second time to the big house. Matthew had taken the train back to Manchester to scrounge his upstairs bedroom closet for clothing more suitable for the dress code required of the dinner to which he had been invited.
Showing up in the best he could find amongst his old, prewar clothes, the evening jacket and white tie were presentable. If a little wrinkled. And loose fitting as he had lost weight while at the front.
Violet, having been forewarned on the telephone of Matthew's invitation, tried to keep her opinions to herself. He was shabby and out of fashion. A bit rough around the edges. And distant in any affection towards the family. At least that was a blessing. So many others in his position would have been full of false charm and bravado. Simpering and affected they would greet and compliment effusively to insinuate themselves into the family of the class they desperately aspired to join.
This young man appeared quite the opposite. Undaunted by the presence of the Dowager Countess, he greeted her simply as "Cousin Violet." He appeared indeed as if he wanted to be anywhere else but here.
Mary felt at a loss to help. Without giving herself away.
Robert wanted to get Matthew to open up more about his background. He knew well enough to not bring up the topic of his father's death, but as Robert had been only briefed on the elder Reggie Crawley's education and work, he knew next to nothing about the son's. Only that he lived away in France as a kind of bohemian dilettante since the war ended. Not really the man he wanted as his heir.
"What did you do in the war, Matthew?"
Robert's question was first greeted with a blank stare. As if he was reluctant to say.
"Your cousin Patrick was Mentioned in Despatches several times for gallantry at Ypres then later at Amiens." Robert boasted. He had been so proud of Patrick. His death a severe blow in so many ways.
"Oh yes." Matthew replied cautiously. "He died at Amiens I gather. Ghastly business. I was well out of it though. I was with the War Office by then."
"Really?" Robert inhaled. "Red tab were you?" A bit disappointing that his new heir was not a line officer, but a pencil pusher.
Matthew's short breathed reproach was unambiguous. Coldly he said, "No. I was not one of the yellow brigade." He gripped his fork tight in his hand just as one of the footmen approached him with a tray of food.
"Do you need me hold it steady? You can help yourself." He intoned making Matthew that much more angry.
"No you bloody peacock I can fucking well serve myself," he wanted to say. But turned his face up to greet the unctuous bastard in the eye, and said instead, "Yes I know. Thank you." Clipped and coolly spoken as the officer he was, the footman retreated.
Robert seemed not to notice Matthew being put out. "You'll soon get used to the way things are done." Which only made Mary audibly groan at the other end of the table.
Matthew's hand continued to tremble though; he felt as if he was on display. On approval to this family he did not even want to be a part of.
So he began to set the record straight.
"I was an infantry officer to begin with, in 1915 when I volunteered for service with the Duke of Manchester's Own Light Infantry Brigade." He said it direct to Robert, getting the older man's full attention finally. "But I was severely wounded at Fromelles, in the Somme. My men were rather lacking in experience, and in trying to save one of them from an enemy shell, I sustained a spinal bruising when we both fell into a crater atop a mass of debris that penetrated my lower pelvis and left me paralyzed for several months until it healed."
Everyone was listening now. Matthew, however, kept his head bowed over the table. Not wanting to look up and see the pity in their eyes. If he did, he'd never get through the telling.
"I was not discharged however, even during recovery. I was transferred to serve as a kind of senior liaison officer with the Secretary of State for War because of my legal training and knowledge of diplomacy." He continued. "Once I began to walk again, using a cane at first it was easier to travel back and forth between London and the front. Eventually as the war wound down, I found myself working with the French as Foch has been named Maréchal de France and Généralissime of the Allied Armies."
This prompted Mary to interrupt Matthew's monologue. "That's why you speak French like a native…."
At Matthew's knowing eye brow raising, she stopped. "I ..erm… mean… your accent is perfect." She groaned slightly at her faux pas. But frankly the entire discussion was making her upset. So much had happened to Matthew in the war that she knew nothing about. It had been their unspoken pact in France not to tell either anything of their past except in the most vague of memories. His speaking of his injury had conjured up the image of his naked back to her. She had been tickling him, he had turned over and she could see scars and patches of white. She had not asked how he had gotten those wounds.
She wanted to comfort him. Maybe she could, later on. In a private moment. But now she had to keep up the appearance that she had never met the man seated opposite her at the dinner table.
Matthew demurred, trying to save Mary from further revelatory embarrassment. "Thank you. I did have to learn it all again rather quickly after forgetting most of it after university."
Robert, though impressed by Matthew's accomplishments in the war, felt as if he was being put in his place by this young upstart.
"Such accomplishments speak well of you." He admitted, but only that. "Your wound? Is it fully healed now?"
Matthew again spoke plain. "Well the doctors who examined me say that I will walk fine for the rest of my life, but that …erm.. certain other functions might have been impaired. Might result in my inability to sire children, for example."
At that revelation a pin could be heard to be dropped. There really wasn't anything else to say was there, Matthew thought. The siring of children, of heirs and spares was the main reason for his existence at Downton Abbey.
Perhaps he wouldn't be welcome there after all. Just as well, as he didn't want to be their pet. The beneficiary of their noblesse oblige.
Mary, on the other side of the table, stared as well. She could hardly believe it. She knew herself that her infertility led her into the abandonment of their love making. It had never occurred to her that he believed the same of himself.
"That is disappointing." Robert admitted. He put his hand up to his brow and massaged it. This had been the most trying of dinners. And now to find this out.
"I thought you'd feel that way." So dryly spoken, it came out of Matthew's mouth before he could bite it back. "I don't think I'll ever be the heir you were truly seeking."
Violet and Cora tried to begin another conversation about the upcoming Garden Fete but the strain was felt throughout the rest of the dinner.
And when it was over, everyone felt a sense of relief. The ladies started to depart leaving Robert and Matthew to cigars and port, but Matthew could not take it.
He got up. "I don't mean to rush off after such a generous dinner, but I do have a train to catch back to Manchester. I have a great deal to do and I really must go."
Robert, for once, did not stop him. He had no stomach for after dinner conversation with this most haughty of young men.
Mary, however caught up to him as he rushed off towards the front door.
She tried to sound as if she was just being polite, but in her eyes he could see the pleading. "Do you really have to go? We've only just gotten to know you."
He said, "I must I'm afraid." He took his overcoat from the same officious footman that served at dinner, and walked out the door.
Mary, no longer caring about appearances, walked out with him. When the door closed, they were alone.
"Mary." He said, in a much more intimate voice. "I am so so sorry. It was a mistake coming here at all. It's clear I'm not the person your father wants. The less said between us the better, eh?"
"But when will I see you? We have to talk." She felt his trembling hand. He was barely keeping it together.
She ungloved her own hand, and entwined their fingers together. Her warmth flooded into him.
"I know. Can you come to Manchester? I need help in clearing out my parents' house. I don't think I can tackle it alone. Will you help me? I've taken rooms at the Manchester Arms. You could stay with me there. Or… uh… I mean take separate rooms. But I would very much like you to be with me. That way we could talk."
"How could I get away for more than a day?" She wanted desperately to be with him as well. To talk. To make love.
"You could say you've gone away? On a … a sketching holiday?" He tried to come up with an excuse for a young woman to get away from the prying eyes of her family.
She had to laugh. "I don't sketch."
"Then bird watching…" he had to laugh too. "Or think of something else. I need you." He kissed the palm of her hand. His lips were soft, making her tingle.
"I will." Mary replied, her own voice husky with intimacy. "I'll find a way."
"Good." And he put on his overcoat. "And I will try very hard to get on better with your family. But under the circumstances, I don't see much future in it."
She nodded with a certain resignation. Frankly neither did she.
XX
Ok. I had to get all that out…. What do you think?
The poem is by Victor Hugo.
I will now commence to think very hard about my other stories and not let this one fill my brain!