Thank you Naniee for all the corrections to my French! I'll work on editing them!
Previously:
"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
Later that same night:
Matthew moved to knock on Mary's bedroom.
Was he allowed to just walk in? They were married. So he could walk in. Right? He hesitated. What if her maid was still in there? Dressing her for the night. Could he just walk in the middle of that?
He stood, in the cotton pyjamas and satin striped dressing gown Mary had purchased in Paris as a wedding gift, in the hallway.
Unsure. And self-conscious. He had not worn pyjamas since childhood. Certainly not as expensive, and most certainly not in Paris with Mary. They had lain naked all night.
It was all going to be different from here on.
Which was why he was standing here having this argument with himself. The footman turned valet… uh…what was his name? Matthew thought as the rather jumpy man walked by with a quizzical look. He turned and said, "Do you require anything, sir?" Even then his voice tremored.
They eyed each other nervously.
"No." Matthew said, slightly clearing his throat. Then with a bit of false bravado, "Have a good evening."
The valet… Molesley! Matthew remembered, kept looking furtively back until he finally disappeared around a corner.
He couldn't just stay out here….so with a certain amount of trepidation he walked in. Ironic, Matthew chuckled to himself, as he knew her body intimately.
But not her bedroom.
They had made love in many places.
His small Parisian flat to begin with.
Then her hotel room.
The romantic maison in Biarritz.
Then of course the audacious encounter along the Seine. The mere thought stirred Matthew to arousal.
He walked in.
Mary was at her dressing table. Her hair braided, she rubbed cream along her left arm. She turned at the sound of the door knob being opened.
She smiled as Matthew popped his head around the door. He raised his eyebrows inquiringly.
"Coast is clear, my darling." Mary said with a light laugh. "Anna has left for the night."
He closed the door behind him. Matthew walked towards the bed. He tested the springs with a series of small jumping motions. He could get used to this after spending so much time on hard cots or a mud soaked bench with rain dripping down his Brodie helmet.
"I know it's ridiculous but I feel just a bit out of place." He admitted, his face flushed a bright pink.
"You mean in my bedroom?" Her eyes danced.
"And in your bed." He responded in kind of dark and seductive tone.
"My maid is made of stern stuff. I'm sure she'll survive you being en déshabille."
Matthew blushed again. "I mean do they all know what we… uh… we …"
"Made love all over France?" Mary replied, only encouraging his adorable mortified expression. It was so seldom she ever saw him without the protective armor that he cared nothing for the world as the world cared nothing for him. When he did break down, it was such an emotional tumult that they usually ended up rolling into bed in a tangled ball where one could not tell where one body ended and the other began. Sharing each other's heat, each other's strength.
It was why they were so good together.
"I'm quite sure we're the talk of servant hall gossip, yes." She disclosed. "But we did rather bring it on ourselves. After running away like that."
"Especially after your sister?" He asked, more than a little curious how that all played out in the family.
"Precisely." Mary continued her ablutions at the table. "And from me."
At his quizzical look, she replied. "You see me as impulsive. In reality I am not."
He found that hard to believe. "Don't play with me." He said, sidling up behind her. Rolling his fingers through her hair. "You must be speaking in a spirit of mockery."
The electricity between them threatening.
Mary sensed it. "What?" She said, languidly easing her head back so he could lose himself in a kiss. "You should have more faith. I am considered by everyone here as cold hearted. Impassive." Her lips soft as they released his.
"Nonsense." He said, dipping down for another kiss. "Shall I remind you how you most forwardly pressed your advantage over coffee? It certainly lives in my memory forever."
"Then you need to pay no attention to the things I say." Mary's arms lifted up to pull his mouth down onto hers for a long, penetrating kiss. Her tongue lapped his own. Her fingers played in his hair. She pushed a stray strand away from his forehead.
The frisson threatened to ignite into flame if they did not act on this fervor.
He swallowed his impulsive desire to lift her into his arms and set her down on the bed Instead he let the tension between them build some more.
He slid into a chair beside her night table. Matthew found it hypnotic watching Mary brush her hair. Rub various creams along her limbs and face. Her face glowed afterward.
"I'm not used to an audience." She said, knowing how much he was enjoying regarding her.
"I quite look forward to this being my new routine." Watching his wife was a balm to his troubled soul.
Their intimate interlude was broken by a rap at the door. Mary looked around inquisitively.
"Come in."
The door opened and Sybil walked in. She wore a snug dressing gown around her growing middle. "Matthew may I trouble you to retire for just a little while downstairs so I can have a long talk with Mary?"
Matthew tore himself away from Mary's face. "Of course." He said politely, getting up from the chair. "I'll just get a nightcap."
And he slipped out the door as Sybil took his place at the chair.
Mary turned to her most beloved sister, with a certain amount of concern. "You are looking rather peaked, Sybil darling."
Sybil shook off any concern. "Just tired from the journey."
Mary reached out to touch her hand. "I'm glad. I have to say I'm quite looking forward to being an aunt."
"And a mother yourself?" Sybil asked quietly. "Now that you've married again." She looked at Mary. "And this time for love I think."
"Whatever do you mean?" Mary side eyed her sister. "Didn't you think I loved Tony?" Even she had to say it with sarcasm.
"As much as anyone could love someone as dull as dishwater." Sybil responded in kind. "You know you did it just to spite Papa."
Mary face twitched in amusement. "And now we've done it again. It's a wonder Papa hasn't developed an ulcer after what we've put him through."
Sybil sighed. "None of what Papa worries about matters when we're in Dublin. Class and all that just seems to fade away. I'm Mrs. Branson and we just get on with our life."
"So you don't regret it?" Mary said. "Marrying the chauffeur?"
"He only feels patronized here." Sybil defended. "He's a wonderful man. But that's not what I'm here to talk about. I want to know more about yours. Is what Edith told me the truth?"
"What did she tell you?" Mary well knew Edith's knowledge came second hand. She had not entrusted any information to Edith about Matthew. Even on a good day she only half-tolerated Edith. The two, for whatever reason that had to do with Mary's endless needling of her middle sister in their girlhood, had never been on the best of terms as adults.
"That you met him Paris last month and married him within days of finding out he's the new heir."
"Sounds like how Edith would decipher it." Mary shrugged. "That's not exactly how it happened."
Sybil made a move towards the bed. "My back hurts, my ankles are swelling, and my head aches. Can we lie down?"
"Of course!" Mary said. She followed Sybil over to the bed where they both sat down amongst the pillows and coverlets. "Is that better?"
Sybil sighed. "Much. I'm the size of a house." She settled back. "So how did you meet? Is what Edith says close at all? That you only just met him? She said you were out for the main chance."
"Ugh…Edith." Mary was exasperated. "And I thought we were actually beginning to get along."
"I think she's just pulling at straws. Because you're being so mysterious."
"I'm not at all sure the truth is something any of you are prepared to take."
"Mary it cannot be that scandalous." Sybil was getting more excited. "Please do tell. I need some diversion. Tom is like a mother hen around me anymore."
Mary looked inscrutable. "Very well. I met him walking down the street in Paris. I had no idea who he was as he spoke French like a native but was wearing an English officer's uniform."
"Is that what drew you to him then?" Sybil pulled her legs around her and the blanket up against her waist. Leaned down into the pillow.
"He seemed different." Mary admitted. Thinking back to that day in Paris, not so long ago really. "They all have that so very lost look. But there was a strength about him. A confidence." She shook her head and confessed to her sister. "He invited me for a coffee. Then to his rooms."
That did it, it's all out now, Mary thought.
"And you went?" Sybil tucked in to the pillow further. "To do what precisely in the middle of the afternoon?"
"Sybil." Mary said with mockery. "Vulgarity is no substitute for wit."
She smirked. "You started it." Then more seriously. "I'm so glad we can discuss these things as two married women. I have so few confidantes."
Mary well understood. "Me as well." The two sisters hugged.
"You are glowing, Mary."
"We had a marvelous time." Mary remained enigmatic.
"Oh no. You can't leave it there." Sybil was on the edge of her seat to know more. "You usually leave your men panting on your every word while you walk away leaving them in your dust."
She sniffed. "There are very few that meet me as an equal." Mary said quite confidently. "Matthew did. We both knew what we wanted."
"I'll say you did." Sybil giggled. "But I still don't understand why you didn't bring him home to meet everyone. It would put to rest the notion you married him simply because he's now the heir."
Mary was exasperated with that notion. So she spilt the beans. "I didn't know his name, Sybil. I never asked him his name. I didn't know who he was until he walked into the library, threadbare suit and looking like a lamb going to the slaughter."
Sybil was flabbergasted. "You went to bed with a man you just met, whose name you did not know. He never asked? You never told him who you were?"
"No." Mary said with complete honesty. "Once it started, we just sort of got on with it. I turned my mind off anything else. We lived in a world of two. I've never experienced anything so intense. No demands. No expectations."
Sybil had to ask. "Didn't he expect to marry you? I mean what if … you know… something unforeseen happened?"
"You mean a baby?" Mary said. "He thinks he cannot sire any children."
Sybil obliquely glanced over at her sister. "Well…is everything working as it should?"
Mary gave an emphatic "Yes."
"And that doesn't bother you?" Sybil was suddenly saddened. "Despite what I say about not recommending this to anyone, don't you want children?"
"I've resigned myself to the possibility I will never be able to conceive. I never did in my marriage."
"That doesn't mean it won't happen for you." Sybil grabbed Mary's hand. "Maybe you should both visit a specialist?"
"It's not something I've allowed myself to dwell on." Mary admitted. "We were too caught up in each other. It didn't seem important."
"Why?" Sybil was so intrigued by her sister's confession. She had always thought Mary so cold and forbidding. To think that a man could touch her closed off heart and open her up to such passion. She loved Matthew just for that alone. Her sister deserved this happiness.
"Because I was returning to England and thought I'd never see him again. We'd had that time in Paris. And that would be it."
"And now?"
"Now…" Mary considered. "Now maybe I will." She did want to know if it was possible to have a child with Matthew. An heir. "To do our duty to the family? Papa would be over the moon."
"And Matthew. I know Tom is." Sybil smiled inwardly remembering how Tom liked to rub her belly and talk to their child in Gaelic. He would looked at her and say, "She has to know the language of her forebears." How he knew she carried a girl, she would never know. But he was so confident, she accepted it and loved him even more.
Mary darkened suddenly. Remembering Matthew's animosity towards her side of the Crawley family. "I'm just not sure…." She pursed her lips in sadness. "I'm not sure at all how he would feel."
XX
At that very moment Matthew sat in thought downstairs, a tumbler of whisky in his hand. He didn't deserve this happiness. And part of him was in absolute agony. His parents' death hit him in the most unexpected of ways. Watching Mary interact with her father. The ordinary conversations with her mother. Their easy affection.
He'd never be able to hug his mother again. Never tell her of his marriage. Of his gob smacked love for his wife. She'd have been thrilled.
A sad, slow smile crawled across his face at that thought.
Reginald Crawley's death was another matter entirely. He knew he would have to return to the Manchester house very soon. For one thing he wanted it on the market as soon as possible. It was clear Mary had no intention of making it their own home. And frankly neither did he.
It was too full of sad memories. Better to start afresh somewhere else.
And he needed the cash the sale would make. He wanted to make his own way in the world. Without any handouts from the Downton Crawley's for sure.
Which was, he knew, would lead him to accept the job offer by the Foreign Office. The one he had not yet told Mary about. When he turned in his final report on Alsace-Lorraine, he had been taken aside by Sir Eyre Crowe, the cantankerous but able head of the political section of the British delegation, and offered a job within his department as his assistant. "You're just the man Crawley." Crowe had said.
Matthew had looked doubtful. "I've just gotten married, sir." He had admitted. "I'm not sure I want to commit to another long term appointment just yet."
"Understandable." Crowe said. "Take a few weeks to consider it. Talk it over with your bride. But your qualifications are something we need at the moment. So many men lost. Needlessly lost. Others wounded either physically or spiritually. You give a think, eh?"
And Matthew nodded slowly. So much had happened in the weeks since he had met Mary. It had been heady, exciting. Allowing him not to wallow or drink himself into a stupor.
Crowe gave him another appraising look. "See you in London then? For the March?"
"Yes." Matthew nodded again. The reason they were to leave their honeymoon cut short and return across the channel. He had been summoned by his Colonel from the regiment. He was expected to be there. And it was not a request.
So tomorrow they were to go to London. 19 July was to be the Victory March. The procession of Army soldiers, Royal Navy sailors, VAD nurses and Queen Alexandra's Corps, allied and associate powers forces as well as colonials from around the globe. King George V and Queen Mary would be in attendance.
And surprisingly, he was looking forward to it. He'd meet up with some old pals from his regiment. Give praise to those who deserved it. Remember others who gave their life for a better future.
Lest we forget…. He tipped his glass in their honour.
Matthew's head turned at the sound of the creak of the side door.
It was Tom. "Sybil's not upstairs in our room. I thought she might be looking for some warm milk." He smiled. "She likes that late at night."
"She's up with Mary. I've been exiled here. Come and have a drink." Matthew got up to refill his own glass.
He handed one to Tom.
Tom asked. "You see action in France?" He noticed Matthew' wincing as he returned to his seat.
"Yes." Matthew eased down. "I had a spinal injury that acts up usually in the middle of the night when I'm not active enough." What he did not disclose was that his back was protesting all his recent exertions in Paris with Mary, as delightful as they all had been. The pleasure had been worth the pain, he reckoned.
"You?" Matthew asked back. He knew there were Irish volunteers in the regiments. Others had chosen to wait out the draft in support of Irish neutrality and home rule.
"I have a heart murmur." Tom replied. "But I helped out with the convalescing soldiers. Fetching them to and from the various hospitals."
"Is that how you courted Sybil?"
Tom gave a wisp of a smile. "More or less. She visited the garage and yard and we chatted a good bit. I drove her to her nursing course. She was keen on getting out and living a little."
Matthew well understood. He raised his glass. "To the Crawley sisters. What have we taken on?"
Tom laughed. "Mary wasn't too keen on the idea of a chauffeur for a brother in law. But I'm grateful that she's come around to our side."
"She's very much a pragmatist." Matthew raised his eyebrow.
"And tough." Tom said. "We tried to run away to Gretna Green but she brought Sybil back as none of your business. Mary was right in the end. Better to do it out in the open. We were married in Dublin in the spring."
"Did her sisters and family attend the wedding?" Matthew asked.
"Mary and Edith did." Tom answered. "Sybil loved having them there. And now we're testing the waters back here with her parents."
"The Irish mick and the Manchester wastrel. Not quite the sons in law the Earl was expecting." Matthew turned his eyes towards Tom. "We better stick together."
Matthew sipped his drink. "When is Sybil due?"
"Within the month." Tom got up to get a glass of water to bring back to the room he shared with his wife. "Are you thinking about children?" Tom asked.
Matthew gave a hard pause before answering. "I'm not at all sure." He admitted without disclosing too much private information. "I know it's important to the family."
Tom reacted with an emphatic nod of his head. "That's not why you do it. Children bring love with them. You have got to want to give all the love back."
Matthew was silent. Tom's unequivocal truth hit home. And suddenly he realized he wanted to have a family with Mary. He wanted it more than anything else in the world.
XX
The procession was well underway when Robert took his seat next to General Winchester of the Northumberland Fusiliers. The Earl was in attendance as the honorary Colonel of the North Riding regiment and as a guest of the king. Their majesties King George V and Queen Mary sat further down the row.
The king had already delivered a message to the wounded soldiers unable to march, "To these, the sick and wounded…I send out greetings and bid them good cheer, assuring them that the wounds and scars so honourable in themselves, inspire in the hearts of their fellow countrymen the warmest feelings of gratitude and respect."
The rest of the 15,000 troops marched. The Peace Day March was to be "The day when the boys came home."
It was said by many in attendance to the most impressive spectacle ever witnessed by Londoners and the world.
The sun was blazing. It was a perfect summer day. Sir Douglas Haig had already ridden by, but Robert was in plenty of time for seeing the soldiers of the northern regiments on parade.
Some of the Gurkhas of the Indian Army Contingent walked up the Mall as Robert sat down. The nurses had already finished. Sybil could have joined the other VADs but declined and stayed at Downton rather than walk the over six miles and perhaps make the baby suffer needlessly. Tom had stayed with her.
The band was playing the British Grenadiers March as divisions and regiments of soldiers trooped by and saluted the king.
General Winchester leaned in to shout in Robert's ear to be heard over the flutes and drums, "I see the Duke of Manchester Own's coming up next."
Robert gave a grumble. That was Matthew's regiment. He knew that he was marching even if they have traveled separately down to London. Robert had left on an earlier train to participate in the seating of various Allied and Associate dignitaries.
Winchester pointed out, "You should be right proud I would bet of your new heir."
Robert did not understand. "I suppose. He said he was injured on the Somme."
General Winchester grunted in riposte. "Well I would say so man. He saved the lives of four of his men under fire and still went out to fetch another corporal. Unfortunately the young soldier died as they both fell into a fetid smelling debris trench. Still and all, the Victoria Cross is the proper thing."
Robert was stunned. And he crooked his head to see the sharply pressed khaki colored uniformed troops of the Light Infantry march by the stand.
Apart and a step ahead was Matthew. In the spot of honour.
Winchester lamented, "So sad he's the only surviving honoree. He marches for them all."
Robert nodded in sheepish agreement. He had no idea of Matthew's accomplishments in the war. What had Matthew said at that dinner, he didn't think it necessary to have to prove himself?
Now Robert understood why. Matthew's service spoke for itself.
Captain Matthew Crawley, with command inflection, barked the order "Salute to the right. Eyes Ri-i-i-ght." And all the regimental soldiers behind snapped to his order to honour the king and dignitaries in the viewing stand.
He was wearing the Bronze Cross pattée with Crown and Lion Superimposed.
Robert knew the motto emblazoned on the Victoria Cross. "For Valour."
Perhaps he had underestimated this new son in law of his.
XX