III.

"I have a place for you here," Richard snapped at Mary, nearly as a command, his eyes flickering to her once before turning back to his dinner.

She'd entered the dining room and headed straight to Matthew's side of the table, obviously intent on the seat beside him. Mary's steps moved with a confident manner, as if it was all settled.

But Richard felt anything but settled. And he wouldn't stand for her blatant disregard of convention—not without saying something. God, for a woman with such an intense desire to keep her scandals hushed up, she skirted so close to entangling herself in yet another.

Sometimes he wondered if Mary didn't relish this sort of thing, despite her protests, secretly hoping to be called out on her minor sins as some act of domestic rebellion or mere distraction. He suspected as much. And under different circumstances, he might have kept his tongue silent, as he had absolutely no interest in giving Mary anything she desired this evening.

But if Mary would make a play for Matthew, she should have decency to do it elsewhere. In private. At the appropriate time.

And certainly not while Lavinia was convalescing upstairs. She owed Lavinia that much, at least.

Mary hesitated at Richard's curt words, but finally moved to take the seat beside him.

As she sank down into her chair, picking up her napkin and then the silver cutlery with a small sigh of displeasure, he bit back a few less charitable words that would not help matters. Besides, he was beginning to suspect it wasn't Mary he was angry with.

It was himself.

For thinking that any of this might have had a different ending. For thinking that Matthew would do the right thing. For thinking that Lavinia would be well taken care of, after all, and that his former sins against her (and there were many, he would never deny it) might be absolved by the love of another man.

A man so obviously in love with someone else.

"How is Lavinia?" Isobel wondered from the end of the table.

"Alright, I think," Matthew answered, with his usual, optimistic outlook. But then he added, almost woodenly, "The illness has made her rather confused."

"How do you mean?" Mary wondered, too intently, and Richard watched Mary and Matthew share a glance, the pregnant pause stretching between them.

Oh, Mary knew exactly what Matthew meant.

Richard imagined how Lavinia must have felt, coming down the front stairs and seeing them together. He imagined her change of expression, her wide eyes cast downwards and away, her breath hitching at the sudden knowledge of something that invariably changed everything.

He knew that look well enough. He caused it to grace her features once upon a time.

There's much to regret, Lavinia…

Richard clenched his fist beneath the table and again, questioned his motives for coming to Downton at all.

Dinner was a subdued affair as Lady Grantham's illness had progressed to a crisis point and the family was on edge, all waiting for news. There was little small talk and the sound of silverware scraping ceramic was the only thing filling the tense silence.

Until Sybil entered the room in a rush, her expression as dark and anxious as the news she brought with her.

"Is it Mama?" asked Edith. Mary's eyes turned a shade of fearful as well, her mother's welfare enough to rock her out of her usual emotionless state. So perhaps she wasn't all ice and stone. Richard had begun to wonder.

But Sybil was still speaking.

"That's what's so…," Sybil seemed to be biting back the words, afraid to say them. Her gaze flickered to Matthew, helplessly. "It's Lavinia…"

It's Lavinia…

Lavinia Swire has been taken ill…

There are moments in life when the light suddenly and irrevocably changes and whatever nonsense has been violently blinding a person sinks beneath a dark cloud or, in a rare burst of clarity, goes out completely. With the obscurity removed, the chilling truth is left behind.

The cold, bitter, damning truth.

Richard Carlisle had always prided himself on blunt honesty. Blunt truth. He'd built his fortune on it—not to mention his titles, his position, his very reputation. Everything that mattered to him was founded on the honest truth, no matter how ugly or harsh or inconvenient.

And at Sybil's words, one truth that had been hidden from him, or that he'd been hiding from for some time, suddenly became incandescently clear.

Lavinia, he thought, her face drifting across his mind too easily. Her red hair, her doe eyes. Her small, polite smile as she caught his eye across a room, pretending away the rest of it, begging him to pretend too. He had felt her eyes on him, watching him closely, the day he shook Matthew's hand for the first time.

Will you play nice, Richard?

Will you, Lavinia?

The day he confronted her in the garden…that was the last of it. That was the end. She was rigid, pulling back from his touch like she'd been burned. Her anger cut him a little. Whatever she might think, he took no joy in causing her pain.

That was never his intention.

Yet, he could see his very presence nettled her and so he left her alone, leaving her to Matthew's steady care and affection. And distracting himself with Mary at the same time. It was an uneasy truce but it might have worked, it should have worked—with the Crawleys healing the cracks and fissures that they'd never be able to heal themselves…

But then Matthew and Mary shared a dance. And Lavinia saw it.

Lavinia is dying.

Lavinia is dying because of Matthew Crawley and Mary and…because of me.

There was no denying his role in all of this. Truth, in all things. The past suddenly rushed over him, all that absolution he thought he'd achieved gone in an instant. Like vapor rising from boiling water.

There were times when he hated Lavinia almost as much as she hated him. She always insisted she was just an ordinary girl, terribly ordinary, but by God, there wasn't a more stubborn woman in the entire British Empire, he was convinced. And she was singularly infuriating in that stubbornness.

He found it charming that first time she came to see him, to barter with him for her father's debts.

I'm Lavinia Swire, Mr. Carlisle. I've come to talk to you about my father.

Your father sends his daughter to fight his battles?

My father doesn't know I'm here. And he would forbid it if he knew.

There were other things that her father would forbid if he knew. And as time went on, the list grew longer. But that was part of the game, wasn't it?

He'd enjoyed that part of it, indeed.

And so had she, despite her stubborn, endless protests that she didn't. That she was a good woman and that whatever nonsense she'd engaged in with him was a failing of her character that she wouldn't be engaging in twice.

It was a dozen times, Lavinia, but who's counting? He had replied, thinking he was being clever. Her answer was silence and a tense frown, chasing away any chance for levity or forgiveness.

And whatever spark had been between them once was now drowned out in the deluge of hate and bitterness they both poured on it with vigor afterwards…

Or so he had thought.

But there, in that dining room table at Downton, in the midst of his last ditch efforts to keep Mary on the path they'd all begrudgingly agreed, with their conventional futures set, all the old sins to be washed out by the passionless practicality of a good, solid marriage…

Lavinia is dying.

The mother of your dead child is dying…

The grim thought hit him so hard that he felt like he'd taken a blow. Matthew might as well have taken a swing at him, which honestly, felt inevitable. This dinner had been the latest in a long line of tense meetings in this grand house. If Richard was thinking clearly, he might wonder how it hadn't happened sooner.

At Sybil's words, Mary's gaze sought out Matthew, first and foremost, her dark eyes filled with pity, remorse, perhaps even guilt…but shared love too.

And Matthew met her gaze much the same. This time, Richard didn't scold Mary. He didn't even notice.

For the man was already out of his chair and bolting upstairs.