AUTHOR'S NOTE: I had an important professional exam in another city yesterday and I did better than I expected, so in celebration I finished this chapter on the train. I hope it lives up to the expectations!

Officers' dug-out, Somme, Northern France, March 1917

Davis was cleaning, while Matthew received a telegram.

"Fancy a tour in England, Davis?"

"I assume you're having me on, sir."

"Not at all. General Sir Herbert Strutt has asked for my transfer to be his ADC. He's touring England to boost recruitment and he's remembered that I know Manchester and Yorkshire pretty well. It'll mean a couple of months at home and a promotion to Captain. I can't object to that," he shivered with anticipation. He would be finally able to see Mary!

"So you're glad?"

Matthew sobered up, considering his conflicting feelings and obligations.

"It's an odd business. I should be glad, of course... and on one hand I am. I have some very urgent and extremely important matters to see to while I'm there."

"But?"

Matthew laughed self-deprecatingly.

"I feel like a worried father, leaving the men to a new officer."

"Orders are orders, sir. They'll understand."

"Probably rather better than I do."

His hand reached to his pocket, where a small box rested securely next to a toy dog. However much he was bothered by abandoning his men in this hell, he did have something extremely important to take care of.

His musings were interrupted by a rattling cough of his manservant. Matthew looked at him with a concerned frown.

"Have you gotten this cough checked out by a medic, Davis?"

Davis waved his free hand dismissively, his other one covering his mouth.

"Just a persistent cold, sir," he rasped when the coughing finally subsided. "Should be right as rain when I can finally breathe some clean air again and sleep in a real bed for a spell."

Dining room, Downton Abbey, March 1917

"Matthew is coming home in a fortnight. He's touring England with some general," said Mary with a brilliant smile, even though she felt like every nerve in her body was vibrating with the mix of excitement and dread.

"I was going to ask Sir Richard Carlisle about then. For Saturday to Monday," announced Cora brightly. Mary glared at her.

"That's the first we've heard of it."

"Nonsense. Edith knows, don't you?"

"Certainly," confirmed Edith, but she looked anything but. Mary rolled her eyes.

"Be careful, Cora, or he will think you're after him," said Violet pointedly, making Cora sputter with an indignant protest. Violet just raised her eyebrows.

"It's been over a year since Robert died and you're barely older than him. He might well suspect you have some designs on him."

Cora sent her a look of pure loathing.

"I asked Rosamund to handle the invitation," she said frostily. "They are pals. It'll be nice, like before the war. The only problem is how we manage a great pre-war house party without a single footman?"

"Going back to Matthew's visit," said Mary pointedly, ignoring her mother. "Have you heard any more details, Isobel? He only mentioned it in a post scriptum in his last letter to me, seems he received the news just before posting it and didn't have time to elaborate."

"Oh, very, very good news! He's been made a captain and he's going to be away from the front for two or three months at least! He's got a few days before he begins his tour of the army camps, so he will spend them here and then goes to London for his decoration by the King!"

"It's going to be on April 7th, isn't it?"

"Yes, just before Easter Sunday. That's why the ceremony is going to be held in Windsor instead of Buckingham Palace, from what I understand – the Royal Family is going to be spending the Easter there, as usual. I am going as well; he was allowed to invite guests to witness it," said Isobel excitedly. Despite the time passing, she remained close to bursting from pride whenever Matthew's medal was mentioned.

"You must arrange for a photographer," advised Cora sincerely. Whatever her misgivings about Matthew and Mary's potential relationship, she was very proud of him as well. "To have a proper memento of such a great day. And I assume he will be in his captain uniform already, won't he?"

Isobel nodded.

"Yes, his promotion will be already official."

"If he will be in England until June at least, then he will be here for my wedding!" exclaimed Edith happily. "Do you think he will be able to attend?"

"I sure hope so," said Isobel confidently. "It would be a different thing for him to get a leave from France, but since he is going to be in the north of England anyway, I cannot see why he would not have been released to attend his cousin wedding, at least for a few hours. His role here is important, but hardly vital."

Edith beamed.

Mary's thoughts drifted away from the conversation as it turned again to Edith's approaching nuptials. Matthew was finally coming home!

Downton Abbey, April 1st, 1917

Matthew walked into the Great Hall and blinked at the hive of activity he saw there.

He had been getting multiple reports of the convalescent home over the last six months and intellectually he knew it was there – and yet it was a shock to see the tranquil Downton Abbey so radically transformed. For a moment he had a dizzy feeling of his war reality, which he kept so firmly separated from the one at home, encroaching on his oasis and attempting to take it over.

"Now, take the bandages to the green room, we're running low in there. Don't stand clogging up the doorways. There's lot to be done."

The familiar, imperious voice of Mother pulled him out of it. Dear Mother! How very glad he was to see her and so much in her element.

He walked towards her and tapped her gently on the shoulder.

"I'm very sorry but I'm - Matthew! What in the world are you doing here? I thought you were going to come tomorrow!" she exclaimed, her face radiant with happiness at seeing him.

"I managed to get a berth on an earlier ferry and took advantage of it," answered Matthew with a fond smile of his own. "And I hoped to surprise you."

"What a lovely, lovely surprise!" said Isobel, only to be interrupted by Mrs Hughes coming to ask about the changes to the nurses' schedule. It was clear that she needed to deal with it, but her son was here, after she had spent six months since she had last seen him in constant anxiety for his life.

Matthew smiled at her encouragingly.

"You go. I'm here for the whole week, we will have time to catch up properly."

He raised his eyes from his mother's retreating figure only to freeze when he spotted Mary, holding a tray of carafes and staring at him in disbelief.

Drawing room, Downton Abbey, April 1st, 1917

Mary's hands trembled slightly as she was putting out the carafes.

Matthew was here! He was really here, home, safe!

If they weren't surrounded by a crowd of recovering officers, nurses, orderlies and servants, never mind their own family, nothing would have stopped her from dragging him into her arms and kissing him madly.

Except... except she promised him a certain conversation, didn't she? A certain conversation which was months, if not years, overdue.

She startled when Matthew reached for the carafes to help her complete her task sooner.

"I hadn't cast you as Florence Nightingale," he said lightly, but she could tell it was forced. He clearly was just as affected as she was.

"I told you before, we can't leave all the moral high ground to Sybil. She might get lonely there... How are you? Why haven't you told us that you're coming? We would have sent the car."

"It is a lovely day for a walk and I wanted to surprise you all," said Matthew, putting the last carafe down. "In fact, how about we go for a walk now? You could show me the changes you have made in my absence."

Mary felt her stomach drop in dread but nodded.

"Let me just fetch my coat," she said with desperate attempt at composure.

There was no escape now. She was going to tell him all and pray that he didn't despise her completely when he knew.

Downton grounds, April 1917

Without talking about it, they immediately took a path which would take them far from the house and the people milling around it. It was not a conversation either of them was willing to risk being overheard.

As impatient as Matthew was to finally learn what Mary's bloody secret was, he forced himself to remain patient and silent a little bit longer. He could see how painfully frightened she was, hugging herself as if to keep herself from falling apart and it was breaking his own heart to witness it.

Finally, she started speaking, her eyes low and avoiding his face.

"I've always known I will have to tell you one day, ever since you proposed to me for the first time," she said in a voice barely above whisper. "I told Mama so that night, you know. She asked me, if it was really necessary and I said I could not accept you on a lie."

She laughed mirthlessly.

"But you see, I was a coward. I could not stand the thought of you looking at me with the contempt I deserved or the thought of losing your love. So I dithered and delayed and then Mama was pregnant, and everybody thought it was about your prospects – you thought it was about your prospects – and I still couldn't get the words past my lips. Of course, to be honest, the inheritance issue did not help – I cannot claim I was totally unaffected by it or didn't have any doubts if I was able to be happy as a solicitor's wife – but it was such a minor consideration really in comparison to the other thing. So I hid behind it until Mama lost the baby and, as the result, I lost you."

She swallowed, visibly trying to restrain her tears. Matthew bit his lip to keep silent. There were so many things he wanted to say to that – so many questions he wanted to ask, her statements to object to – but she still did not tell him what her secret actually was, and he would be damned if he interrupted her now.

"I am still a coward. See how I talk in circles, never touching it? Well, I ran out of pretexts," she took a deep breath. "Do you remember Mr Pamuk?"

Despite himself, Matthew nearly laughed. Did he remember Mr Pamuk? Oh yes, he did, very well. It had been the first time in his life he felt proper, bitter jealousy and he didn't think he was ever going to forget it, even if he by some miracle survived the war and lived to see eighty.

"Yes," he said, not liking where it was going at all. There was a reason he had been so jealous of the Turk, after all.

His face or voice must have betrayed some of his inner turmoil, because Mary seemed to shrink, her hands clutching her arms tighter.

"So you must remember that I found him exciting and attractive," she said in a small voice, sounding so very ashamed. "He was so unlike any of the gentlemen I've met before, most of them so very dull and insipid. And you must remember that I flirted with him outrageously."

Matthew nodded in response to her questioning gaze. Her eyes fell back to the ground.

"After dinner he asked me to show him Della Francesca. When he got me alone, he kissed me," she rolled her eyes, but it was just a shadow of her usual snark. "Can you believe I did not expect anything so outrageous from him? I flirted with dozens of men, I even kissed a few, but somehow he got me completely by surprise. I was such a fool."

She fell silent. Matthew was barely breathing, afraid to do anything to stop her talking for good.

"He asked me to come to me that night," she started again with effort and Matthew's hands clenched involuntarily into fists. He put them into the pockets of his greatcoat, as ungentlemanly as it was, to hide them from Mary's sight. "I refused, of course. Told him Papa would cast him out into the darkness if I told him. I so wish I did."

She took a deep breath.

"As you can guess, he came anyway. And... he didn't die in his bed. He died in mine."

She didn't offer anything else and Matthew could not find words to ask any questions, if he even could form them in his jumbled mind.

Somehow he was not prepared for how very shocked he was going to be.

He expected Mary's secret to be bad. It must have been, considering both her overwhelming terror at the prospect of telling him and the fact that Vera Bates thought it worth of selling to the scandal sheets and to use as a blackmail material. He was not stupid; he did realise it must have been something sexual in nature. And yet, learning the actual details, hearing them from Mary's own lips... It shook him. Just as she predicted it would.

The fact that it was Pamuk, a stranger to her, made it somehow all worse. He thought with strange detachment that he would have found it easier to accept if it had been Patrick – somebody close to Mary, a man she had been expected to marry one day. He could understand if it had been out of love. But there was no question of love involved in any of it, not with Pamuk. So he had to accept that Mary had been willing to throw all caution, all principles to the wind, just for a tumble with a handsome foreigner who had turned her head.

Which seemed to contradict everything he thought he knew about her and her character. If anyone else told him that story, he would have dismissed it out of hand.

He didn't even realise how long he remained silent, but it must have been too long for Mary's endurance because she cried out desperately.

"Say something! Even if it's only goodbye!"

That startled him. Goodbye? It was the very last thing he wanted to say!

In a second, he was reminded that he was presented with a very simple choice: he could either accept Mary's past, as imperfect as it was, and be happy with her for as long as he had to live, be it just three months of his current assignment or fifty years - or he could give in to moral outrage and jealousy and lose her forever. When phrased like that, he was very sure which of those two scenarios he was able to live with.

"Of course it isn't goodbye," he said with conviction, a small smile on his lips despite the seriousness of the topic. "I love you, Mary. I told you I never could despise you and I meant it."

She stared at him with complete incredulity.

"You... Don't mind?" She whispered with bloodless lips.

"No," said Matthew, daring to touch her face slightly with his gloved fingers. "You lived your life and I lived mine and the only thing I was able to think about for all those months we spent apart was how much I wish we could spend the rest of our lives together. I am not going to throw away the chance to do so, for however long or short time we have, because of an incident which took place years ago and a man long dead."

Tears slowly leaked out of Mary's eyes, but he didn't think he had ever seen a smile as brilliant as hers in that moment.

"Truly?" she asked, her voice shaky, but her expression infused with growing, incredulous joy. He couldn't resist caressing her cheek again.

"Truly," he said, meaning it with his whole heart.

"Oh my darling," she exhaled and suddenly she was in his arms, kissing him and he had never been so sure he made a good choice, a right choice, as right in this moment, when he was kissing her back and was so happy, so very happy.

When they finally had to stop, finding themselves in need of air, the smiles they shared could only be described as exhilarated. And it was then that Matthew reached into his pocket and took out the small black box which he kept there for months in hope of this very day. Mary's eyes widened as he lowered himself to one knee.

"Lady Mary Crawley," he asked, his eyes doing their best to commit every detail of Mary's expression to memory. "Will you do me the honour of becoming my wife?"

"Yes!" Exclaimed Mary joyously, tears appearing again in the corners of her eyes. He felt his own eyes dampen while he was sliding the ring on her slender finger. He breathed a small sigh of relief that he remembered her ring size right and that the ring fit perfectly. He stood up and was so deliriously happy that he could not resist picking Mary up and spinning her around. She laughed, holding him tightly and he never wanted to let her go.

Small library, Downton Abbey, April 1917

Their news was unsurprisingly met with universal approval. Matthew supposed he should be grateful that nobody said out loud 'at last!'.

He did realize that there were less joyful undercurrents though. He knew Mother had never warmed up to Mary again after her hesitation to accept him before the war and he was not sure how to repair it. Betraying Mary's secret to her seemed unthinkable - Mary would have been mortified at the very thought - and of course it did not exactly paint a more flattering picture of his fiancée. But Mother was fair. When she saw with her own eyes how much they loved each other, how happy Mary made him, he was sure she would acknowledge it. He was not truly concerned on this point and definitely not now when he was still riding the high of Mary's acceptance of his proposal.

Cousin Violet had always been the biggest supporter of their union and was positively beaming at them now, even though she tried to tone it down. Sybil was right beside her, nearly jumping in her seat in excitement and prone to hugging Mary or Matthew in bursts of sincere happiness at their engagement.

Edith looked slightly sour, but Matthew wrote it down less to disapproval and more to disappointment that the reactions to her own engagement were much more subdued and mixed, as described in both Mary's and Mother's letters.

Then he turned his gaze to Cousin Cora and narrowed his eyes slightly.

She acted as happy as the others, exclaiming over the news and asking excited questions about the wedding, but he saw Mary's stiffness in response. He did not forget Cora's very much unwanted matchmaking attempts, even after Mary confessed to her that she was still in love with him. He could not guess what her objections to the match between them could be, but he knew there must be some.

"So when is the wedding going to be?" asked Sybil again.

"I will have to request leave from General Strutt," answered Matthew, abandoning for now trying to figure out the reasons behind his future mother-in-love's low opinion of him. "I might be back in England, but I am still under orders. I only have the week of leave here and have to report to him in Manchester on April 9th. But I don't foresee a difficulty with getting a leave approved before I have to go back to the front."

He saw Mary and Mother both stiffening at his words, the general atmosphere of happiness in the room dimming.

"Must you go back?" asked Cora eagerly. "Couldn't you request reassignment to the home front or the War Office? You're an earl and you will be just married. Surely something can be done."

He felt their expectant looks on him and nearly closed his eyes to protect himself from them and the horrible guilt they induced. How could he possibly explain that there was no way for him to make such a request and live with it? As much as he dreaded returning to the front; as much as his heart broke at the thought of leaving Mary just bare days after finally getting to marry her, he simply could not do this. He had already made General Strutt promise to send him back to France after he was done with him, even though he never intended to mention it to the women gathered around him.

"I'm afraid it won't be possible," he said only, but noticed Mary's wary expression and he knew that the topic was most definitely not over, just postponed till they had more privacy.

Matthew's bedroom, Downton Abbey, April 1917

It was only much later, after their joy had been shared with their family and the servants, champagne drunk and rudimentary plans made, when he was alone in his bed and had time to think for the very first time since finally, finally getting officially engaged to Mary - getting engaged to Mary! - that Matthew realised there was something bothersome about her confession.

At first, he could not put his finger upon it. It was not the fact that she had spent a night with Pamuk - as much as he didn't want or intend to dwell on it, he made his peace with it in that instant moment of clarity before he proposed and was glad to feel that it was a lasting one. Even now, reflecting on it calmly, he remained certain that his decision was the right one. So what was bothering him about it?

It wasn't the fact that the bastard had died in Mary's bed, although he shuddered at the thought how absolutely horrible it must have been for her. He made a mental note to be especially careful during their wedding night, mindful of the fact that with her first experience so traumatic, she might be apprehensive about this part of marriage. But as disturbing as the subject matter and the mental pictures it brought were, it still wasn't the reason his thoughts kept circling back to Mary's words.

He froze when he finally realised.

Mary said that she had clearly forbid him to come, but he had come anyway.

He had come unwanted and then he had died.

But what had happened in between?

As bad as it was to think of Mary forgetting herself so much that she decided to accept that bastard's advances, the thought that she might have not been willing... that it had been something else, so much worse... No, he couldn't think about it happening to Mary, it would surely drive him mad. He did not care if it had made her innocent of any wrongdoing, he just could not think about something so horrible having been done to her.

He tried to calm himself, to remain rational. In all her letters, all her hints, even in the way she had been telling him the full story today, Mary always clearly implied that she was at fault. She had never once suggested that she had been less than a willing and active participant. And yet the stubborn thought did not want to leave him, repeating itself in his brain in an endless loop.

He had come unwanted and then he had died.

He needed to talk to Mary.