Til Chaque Souffle Quitte mon Corps
Previously:
Mary could only guess at what drove Matthew to such a height of anger. He returned to the music room.
"Mary I can't stay here any longer. I don't believe your father and I will ever come to terms. He's completely without any faith in me. And I …. Until I know what went on in the past, perhaps he's right to." He then seemed to realize the other women were in the room.
He took her aside to a quiet corner. "I'm going back to Manchester. But you can stay here. Live at home at least until all this is sorted out. Maybe it would be best..."
Mary stared at him. Astounded at his suggesting it. "Absolutely not."
"Are you sure?" He trembled and she caught him by the elbows. They gripped each other's forearms.
"Whither thou goest." Mary replied, calm and assured she was doing the right thing.
XX
Downton Abbey July 1919
In the end she convinced him not to return to Manchester. They should just stay here. She'd talk to her father. Maybe he was overreacting. She had just assuaged her mother and granny. He could do the same for his father-in-law. Papa's bark is worse than his bite.
"Besides" she said. "I was looking forward to you seeing my bedroom." And her eyebrows flashed up.
He sideways looked at his beautiful bride. "Oh really?" He inadvertently licked his lips.
"Yes my darling." She had maneuvered him into a window alcove, away from the family's ears. "What is the matter anyway?"
Only temporarily distracted, his thoughts turned back to the conversation in the library. Matthew sounded off, "Your father is impossible. He seems to believe I am some sort of wastrel who will ruin the estate as soon as he's cold in the grave." He shook his head in astonishment.
"Nonsense." She said sensibly. "You just need to prove him otherwise. We'll work on the rest of your wardrobe for starters."
Matthew rolled his eyes and scoffed. "What I am wearing should not reflect my ability to run an estate."
"You've not been around our lot." Mary quipped. "It means everything."
Robert had returned to the room just in time to see them. Mary caressed Matthew's cheek. He harrumphed and sat down next to Cora and began to mutter under his breath.
Matthew knew when he was being beguiled. His anger dissipated. "You are very good for me you know."
She knew. "I just want to maintain family harmony."
Matthew chuckled. "You're sure it's not because you don't want to go back to a house with a rising damp and no servants or hot meals?"
"Absolutely not." She smirked and looked aghast. "The Parisian walk up with no bath or kitchen was my ideal. I am the essence of resilience."
He knew when he was beaten. "Very well." His voice dropped an octave. "I will make more of an effort with your father." He lowered his face towards her ear. His seductive tone more of a whispered plea, "if my reward awaits up the stairs."
"Careful," she charmed. "I might want you to carry me up naked."
"I might just do it." He parried back.
Her hungry gaze knew the truth of his response.
He would never say no to her.
XX
Paris: La Rive Gauche. Night.
Matthew was sure he heard her correctly.
The whispered entreaty, scorching her tongue as the words made their way to his ear.
Did she say it?
Did she really ask for it?
A sexual demand of such charged eroticism he was told by his betters would never slip from the mouth of a woman of her station. They were demure, sedate even. Decorous but empty vessels ready to bear children or passive, eroticize subjects who exist solely for their husband's pleasures. Virgins in the boudoir. Letting their husband and master rule the bed.
This was not Mary. She meant what she said. She wanted him.
She asked for it.
Demanded it.
Badly. Madly. Now.
He found himself hungrier than ever. He became a man possessed.
Was that even possible given what they've already done?
Yet it was. Now that they were married, all things were possible.
Unlike the notion that marriage stifled one's sexual urges, he found it to be quite the opposite.
It opened them up to even more possibilities.
Not because she spoke a taboo word. Although that was part of it if he was completely honest with himself. It was the way she had said it. Sultry, licking her lips as she spoke it. Covetous eyes. Fierce and thirsty. Owning her need. It made him pant in anticipation.
No…that was not the only reason.
But that she had the confidence to speak claim on his body. Knowing that he'd more than meet her command.
They were equals. He may not be of her class. She was still high above him. She was stylish, always put together. Guarded and protective of her being, her identify, sharp and confident. He was, if not uncouth or loutish, impolitic and a bit rough. He had done his duty to king and country and looked where that got them all. He wanted time away. From the world he helped recreate.
He wanted to make it all right. But he could not. There was no bringing back the dead.
Mary cleared his head of all that. All the guilt. All the shame. She wouldn't let him wallow in the past.
She made his present the most important state of existence. No past. No future.
Just them.
In their sexuality, they found their balance.
She would make demands on him.
He would not hold back.
It only drove them on to further acts of recklessness.
Such as this night.
In a semi-darkened ruelle along the Seine. The moonlight being their only shadowed light. Shafts of which sliced down between the brick awning of the alley. Her dress already mussed and slipping. Her body up against the wall where he had pushed it, in his haste to shove his tongue even deeper into her mouth. Ramming it in as she lapped his tongue with her own. Snaking around his mouth. Moaning that she needed more.
They had gotten drunk on wine and dance. The last night of their honeymoon was upon them. Real life beckoned and loomed across the channel.
This was to be their most audacious reward.
She wanted to do it here. Now.
Her word spoke of it.
"Do I need to say it again?" Mary teased, pulling on his trousers, unbuttoning his crotch restraints.
He gave her what she wanted.
Matthew hiked her hard against the wall. She grunted in satisfaction. He tried to maintain his balance. He pushed the hem of her dress up. He approved of these new fashions. No more bulky layers or locked in corsets. This dress was silky, thin, inviting him in. In haste it got tangled in his fingers. He tore at the material and heard a slight rip. "Damn…" he whispered. But he kept going. Her tongue was deep down his throat, making him unable to speak any more. His lips, slick and hot, slipped around hers. Biting at the corners of her mouth. Nibbling and taking. His head dipped and he sucked and pulled on her lower lip. Mary's tongue escaped his mouth only to latch onto his cheek and neck. She felt his arousal, engorged and perfect, against her thighs.
Matthew's ears heard voices on the other side of the alley. Strolling along the Seine, other lovers spoke and laughed. He stopped, in case their groans were heard.
The unmistakable pulsating rhythm of making love.
And understood what they were doing.
What if they were caught? How would he ever explain this to her father?
But they could not stop. His body was in agony.
She had wriggled his trousers down so that his shaft was exposed. He shoved her thighs apart and she fit herself inside his groin. She felt him take her inside. Taut with desire, longing, and need she felt only relief from the torture of not having him. Of wanting him more than she ever wanted anything in this life.
He grunted and threw himself against her harder and harder. She would be bruised after this. The wall was unforgiving. Her slim frame, hiked up and balanced only by his hands on her rear end, squeezing and pressing. Her legs dangled around his hips and gripped his backside tight as she struggled to push him further and further inside her.
His shaft reached the ridge of her most sensitive spot. He began to grind against her as her body responded to his action. Her breaths came short and pulsating. She crested wave after wave of intense stimulation. Then felt all of him inside her. He was mindless now. In a state of such physical ownership of her body that he was lost to everything else around him.
His climax was excruciating. He was breathless. Hot. He slammed her once more against the wall as his body shattered into a million pieces.
Then slumped. His head on her shoulder. He eased her down. She melded into his body. His sweat soaked shirt feeling cool against her hot skin.
Matthew took a deep breath and, still shaken from the exertion, had the minimal presence of mind to affix his trousers back into place. And smoothed her dress down from where it still clung to him.
He did not want to make her any more untidy.
"Je t'aime Mary." He crooned. "Je t'aime tellement." He started to cry from the emotions churning inside him.
""Je le sais, mon amour, je sais"." She responded, holding him tightly.
Never letting go.
XX
Mary turned to her parents. "Matthew and I will stay the night after all."
Robert could not look any less enthused. "And the agreement?" His voice dripping disdain.
Matthew refused to rise the bait. Especially with Mary standing next to him, a death grip on his hand.
With only a hint of a forced smile, Matthew replied, firm but without rancour "In all good conscience I cannot sign the document as written."
Robert was about to protest but Matthew interjected with as much fortitude as he could muster at the moment. "Let's not be hasty. I think we've both said things we might regret later."
The older man broke off his initial retort. "Agreed." He said with a certain amount of resignation. "I'll tell Murray we'll put it off for another bit."
Cora changed the subject as she turned to her eldest daughter. "Sybil is arriving by the evening train. Edith has gone with the motor."
Mary let go of Matthew's arm to sit down next to her mother. "I didn't think she'd be able to get over before the autumn." She discretely patted the seat beside her. He knew she was reinforcing their decision to stay by her action, so Matthew did not protest. He was not, however, following this conversation.
"The birth has hastened their plans." Cora said. "So Sybil will get to visit before her confinement."
"So Tom is coming with her?" Mary lips puckered in delight.
Robert grumbled. "Yes. Our Fenian son in law will be in tow."
Matthew gave his wife a look of utter confusion.
Mary whispered, "Sybil's my youngest sister. She married the chauffeur in the spring and are now expecting their first child."
Matthew's lips pressed in amusement. "There's certainly more to you Crawley girls than meets the eye." No wonder Robert had hated him on sight.
"Just you remember it." Mary's eyebrows only slightly raised in jest.
XX
Several hours later and the family assembled in the dining room. Matthew always felt a sense of the surreal on such occasions. Whenever he remembered that civilians persisted they could sweep away that the war ever happened. Even in a house like Downton which had seen convalescing soldiers upend their lives and open the residents to the grim realities of the trenches, they calculatedly restored all prewar routines as possible. The footmen still in livery. The butler still fussing over the silver cutlery. The cook producing multiple course meals of the finest quality.
Beating back the future. Retreating to the safety of the past.
Matthew wished them all luck with that illusion. He could not do it.
The war was ever present. In his dreams. In his mind. On his body. Every step he took reminded him of the war. He was bitterly disappointed in the recent peace agreement. The Germans being forced to sign Article 231, already being referenced as the 'war guilt' clause, was the legal basis for the losers to pay the winners reparations. It was also, as Matthew and many others in the lower echelons of the British delegation well knew, a humiliation the Germans would not forget.
They had to sign it. No one wanted a return to war. But it left a disturbingly bitter taste in the mouth. And a conviction this peace was unsettled at best.
No soldier liked to believe their effort, their sacrifice went in vain.
But Matthew felt just that.
It didn't make the coming home any easier. Especially to a country that wanted, needed to forget.
He shook himself out of this self-pitying reverie. There was no point in it.
"So your sister made it?" Matthew asked his wife. He had heard the commotion down the hall as the footmen brought in luggage and hushed conversations indicated the arrival as well of Sybil's husband.
"Yes." Mary threw her eyes towards the library. "He's in there. Skulking. Can you go bring him in?"
"Me?" Matthew looked a bit panicky. "What am I to say to him?"
"I don't know, darling, you'll think of something." And she pushed him down the hall with a chuckle.
Matthew coughed to get the other man's attention. This Tom Branson was around his age it turned out. Stocky built, a bit shorter. Gulping down a drink at the table.
"Can I have one of those?" Matthew asked, walking towards the center of the room.
Tom turned around. "Help yourself." The light Irish brogue friendly enough. "It's not mine. I'm just the black sheep of the family."
Matthew took the proffered whisky. He downed it in one. "Just the ticket." He thrust out his hand in greeting. "Matthew Crawley. I think I've just supplanted you as the current persona non grata."
Tom accepted the handshake. "Tom Branson. I think I'll join you in that." And he took another swig from his tumbler. "So what makes you an outcast? They seemed to have let you in to the castle without much tumult."
"Looks can be deceiving." Matthew replied. "I stormed the battlements on a couple of fronts. I'm Lady Mary's husband for one thing. Of all of…" Matthew had to think about that. "Uh… five days."
Tom's eyes narrowed. "How can that be? I've never seen you around here. I used to work for Lord Grantham. Before…"
Matthew had gotten the whole story about the secret relationship between Sybil and the chauffeur from Mary while she put the finishing touches on her jewelry upstairs.
"I am very recent." He smirked. "I'm also the heir presumptive now. Now that Patrick's gone. They grubbed around the bottom of the pile and found me."
Tom was about to respond when a voice from the door interrupted their conversation. "Gulp those drinks down, both of you, we have to go in." It was Mary. She motioned for Matthew to follow her. And to bring Tom.
The two men knew when they were beaten. "Once more unto the breach, eh?" Matthew said.
"Hun or Black and Tan?" Tom sparred back.
"Pick your poison." Matthew quipped. He followed Tom out the door and down the hall. It felt good to have any ally in the family.
Matthew waited for Mary to be seated and then sat down next to her. It seemed that this was more informal gathering as it was just family. Mary had approved the black tie dinner jacket when he appeared at her door having been aided in dressing by yet another of the footmen the family employed.
The conversation flowed as Cora and Edith, who had arrived a bit late to the table, discussed certain new fashion trends they had noticed on a recent excursion to London.
"I don't know about the rest of you, but I sometimes think it's time we lived in a simpler way." Matthew offered. "I mean if the war has taught us anything."
"Is that how you will run the estate when the time comes?" Robert groaned at Matthew's suggestion. "We shall not deprive any employee of their livelihood when they've done nothing wrong."
"Yes. But surely…." Matthew tried again but was interrupted by Violet.
"It's our job to provide employment." She chided gently the younger generation.
"But there's more opportunities now. Outside of service." Matthew persisted.
"Yes but an aristocrat with no servants is as much use to the county as a glass hammer." Violet reminded Matthew. "It's part of the age old mutual dependence we have on each other."
"And the world's changed since then." Matthew kept on, despite the dirty look Mary threw his direction. "The new taxes and inflation from the war will make all sorts of trouble for our economy I'm afraid. We're all going to have adjust."
"We all have different parts to play, Matthew" Robert said firmly. "And we must be all allowed to play them. It is as it has always been."
"Look where that got us?" Matthew scoffed. "The war to end all wars? As if."
Tom grumbled assent but a look from Sybil stopped him compounding situation by talking about the yoke of the English king.
Mary stayed Matthew's hand. It was shaking. He looked to her, calm and loving, and nodded. He knew he had crossed a line. "Sorry. It's been a rather long day." He went back to cutting his meat in silence.
Sybil wanted to rescue him. "I do so want to welcome you to the family, Matthew. It's such wonderful news about your marriage to Mary."
"Thank you." Matthew responded kindly. They looked across the table at one another. "It's lovely to meet you and Tom as well."
"What will you do with your time?" Sybil asked. "I assume you have been demobilized?"
"Very shortly." Matthew smiled tightly. "I have one other function to attend to in London and then I am free. And as far as a job goes…" Here he licked his lips and paused. He had not told Mary of his future plans. Everything had been so whirlwind.
"I've got one or two lines of inquiry out there." He said finally. "But I've not settled on anything. Not yet. Mary and I will have to decide that together." He strummed his hand nervously on the table.
Mary and he exchanged glances. Hers was confused. She did not know he had any opportunities for employment in London. She had assumed they would settle at home.
Robert grunted at the opposite end of the table. "Perhaps it would have been wiser to wait then. This marriage is so hasty. It's unseemly."
Sybil got excited. "Yes. You must tell me all about this. How did you meet? Why did you not bring him back to Downton sooner Mary? After all he's a Crawley, however distant."
At that Matthew's eyes widened in horror. As did Mary's. Neither had told the whole story. If not lied, they rounded the edges of the truth out a bit more than they should.
"Well… uh…" He started to respond.
Robert caught on to Matthew's hesitation. "Yes Mary. Cora informed me you met Matthew last month while you shopped in Paris. Yet you never said anything. Why didn't you bring him home to meet everyone?"
The proverbial pin could be heard to drop in the silence that followed.
"Perhaps we can speak in private." Matthew offered.
"No." Robert insisted wearily. "We should get it all out now. I'm finding myself rather tired of secrets."
Matthew was stunned. He would never divulge anything to publicly shame Mary. What they did was private. He was not afraid or regretful. The anonymity of their initial relationship had been not to protect their identity. Or to heighten the sexual tension between them.
Neither had simply felt it necessary. Their connection went deeper than any name, or title could possibly give them. Their passion simmered and burned. It had been enough.
And it was not meant to last. Both had known it. She would return to her world, and he to his flat above the café.
Fate had chosen for them, however, a different path. And now they were wife and husband. Lady Mary Crawley and Captain Matthew Crawley. The future Earl and Countess of Grantham.
None of that had quite sunk in yet.
So he had no answer. Nothing to give Robert that would satisfy.
"The secret, Papa," Mary's voice, assured and rich. "Is that I fell in love with a man in Paris. Rather quickly and rather improperly. A passion, a lust you could say, a love I could not give up. So I pursued him. And to my great relief, it turned out he loved me as well."
Matthew could only smile in utter joy and awe beside her. He grasped her hand. She clinched his back.
"I hope that dispels all the secrets." Mary concluded. "It's really very simple. The age old story of boy meets girl." She turned to her father. "You wanted me to find a good man, Papa. And I did."
Mary got up and kissed her father on the cheek. He tried to smile.
Robert was happy for her. But more than a little relieved she did not elaborate on just how lustful the two of them had been.
He was eating after all.
XX
Many many thanks to everyone who has read, reviewed, favorited, or followed this story. It's much appreciated. Please continue to give me your feedback, opinions, and observations. I need these stories as a balm to my troubled soul with regards to canon events. Our MM live on in fan fic. And I appreciate every story, every reader, every supporter!
The next bit of this story will take place in London…seeing Matthew in his last days in the Army and being offered a lucrative job with the Foreign Office… one he's hesitant to tell Mary about… And one he's not sure he wants until he works out why his father committed suicide. That plot must be resolved before MM can move on with their lives.