IV.
The darkness beckoned to Lavinia—she was tempted to let it swallow her whole, if only to be done with it all. Her body ached with pain, her head was split open by incessant voices.
Her eyes couldn't focus, her eyelids were too heavy to stay open and she found herself drifting in and out of consciousness like waves climbing up a shore only to run back down again, all her jumbled thoughts too eager to rejoin the madness of a chaotic, stormy sea.
She was alone when the sea started churning. She hadn't been able to ring the bell. It was too far away, lost in the fog…
But now there were pulsing shadows on the water. No, not the water—the bedsheets. There was no sea. The sea was in her head. She was ill. A touch of influenza, no more, the doctor had said yesterday. She wasn't drowning. Why then was it suddenly so hard to breathe?
She caught her breath, coming up for air. Her eyes darted open before shuttering closed again, seeking landscape but finding nothing solid. Only passing shadows, dressed in black and white, a flurry of half-images imprinted beneath her eyelids—black suit jackets, white gloves, silver jewelry and pearls, all bathed in flickering lamplight.
There were others in the room with her. Someone was taking her wrist, then smoothing back the damp strands of her hair away from her brow.
But where was she? She reached out, straining against…what?
She felt a great weight on her. The blankets. The blankets would crush her. But only if the ponderous words in her head didn't do it first.
Matthew doesn't love you, Matthew doesn't love you, Matthew doesn't love you!
He was your one chance and that chance is no more. Because Matthew doesn't love you.
Matthew's love for you is dead.
Dead, dead, dead…
Dead as Richard's love before.
Dead as the child you bore him.
She heard herself cry out, her lilting voice twisted in physical pain, the cry more like a plea, as the fever continued to ravage her body. And she was helpless to fight it. She was too weak, too tired.
Oh, but it wasn't just the fever.
She bit at her lip to keep from crying out all her sad history, confessing the sins that fell on her with their full weight, crushing her like those blankets, as she felt the threads of her earthly existence coming loose, unraveling on those sweat-soaked sheets.
"This is how you would take care of your future wife?"
She recognized his voice first, piercing straight through the fog and shadows. She wondered if she imagined it. But no, Richard was here at Downton too, wasn't he? To wedge himself between Mary and Matthew, thinking she wasn't enough. Thinking she was too weak or passive or just…not strong enough to hold onto Matthew by herself.
And he was right in that, of course he was. Richard was always right in the end, oh damn him.
He could read a room in two minutes. It was nearly a parlor trick. Once, at a soiree in London, as he stood next to her under the marble arch of the ballroom, one hand around the stem of his cocktail glass, the other lingering at her forearm discreetly, he shared the key to his tricks—little ticks and twitches of the party-goers when they interacted with each, and how they wore their secrets in a stumbled word or a lingering glance, if only a person paid attention.
But surely not, Richard. She's a minister's wife…
Surely yes, my dear.
He was clever, so clever. Too clever to feel empathy. Too clever to care about consequences. Oh, she hatedhow clever he was. And how sure of himself…
The way he took her wrist in the Downton gardens was too familiar. And the way his fingers curled around her hand, retaining it even after she made as if to pull away, refusing to listen to any more of his cruel suspicions regarding Matthew and Mary.
He poured those suspicions on her like poison and she recoiled from it. She wouldn't listen to it. She was firm and strong-willed, as only he could bring out in her. She told him plainly—she would put her trust in Matthew Crawley and only him. She would put her trust in the man who had given her the chance to start anew.
Not the one who made a fresh start necessary.
"This is not our doing," Matthew managed a response, his voice far away. His soft voice was breaking on the words, unsure in their pronouncements and heavy with regret. There was a measure of guilt in that voice but Lavinia didn't believe he meant it. Not really.
Oh, she knew he would weep over her death. Matthew was no monster. But she knew whose arms he'd find comfort in when it was all over.
Matthew doesn't love you.
"We've done all we can," Matthew continued. "The fever has taken on a mind of its own…"
"You're a doctor!" Richard didn't wait for Matthew to finish. He was angry and shouting at Dr. Clarkson. Not the cool-headed, immovable newspaperman now. He commanded, in his dread-worn rasp, "Heal her!"
"It's beyond all of us now, Sir Richard," Dr. Clarkson agreed with Matthew, at a loss, shaking his head. "The crisis is upon us. There's nothing more we can do for her."
"I don't understand anyone in this house," Richard was dangerously close to causing offense. Lavinia wondered if he'd lost his mind. Or would have, had she not been losing her own to a spinning fever that made everything—the voices in that room, the faces they belonged to—everything seemed like such nonsense. Like a dream. She couldn't count to three. She barely remembered her own name.
Lavinia Swire. It came back to her in fits and starts, adding so cleverly, Sir Richard's secret mistress…and she wondered if she should laugh or cry at the improbability. That she was the one with the most secrets in that room. No, she couldn't laugh. Not while Richard's voice fell on her ears so sternly, so tortured and twisted up…with something.
What is he doing?
Richard continued, "You all go on about honor and duty and the proper way of doing things. Is this the proper way? You've put Lavinia on her deathbed, Matthew—"
"Sir Richard!" that was Mary's voice that Lavinia heard through the fog, cutting it shrilly. Mary jumped to Matthew's defense immediately. Of course, she did. "You are a guest here and I don't see—"
"Mary, if you think your hands are clean in this, you are a fool," Richard spat at her. "Not one of us can claim innocence in this mess."
"Richard, I must ask you to stop," Mary's voice turned cold.
"Yes, I think you've outstayed your welcome, Sir," her father, Lord Grantham, found his backbone, at last.
But Richard had no wish to stay at Downton anyway. Lavinia was surprised he was still here. The exchange with Mary was telling. They were done with each other. Had been, it appeared, for some time. Didn't he need to be back in London, peddling his papers, collecting his bribes? Why was he here? Why was he in this…
Suddenly, she felt strong arms gathering her up from the bed.
Familiar hands that she'd once felt running all over her body guided her arms around his neck, as he lifted her into his arms. Her weight was nothing to him. She grasped at the fabric on his vest weakly, barely comprehending what was happening. His scent made its way into the haze of her mind—tobacco, rosewood, the ink on his hands.
Richard, what are you doing?
Perhaps the Crawleys were too shocked at his daring. Perhaps they knew there was more to this scene than they might first have expected.
In either case, not a soul tried to stop Sir Richard Carlisle as he carried Lavinia Swire down from her sickbed and to the car waiting below, in a mad dash to snatch her back from the persistent knocking of death at her doorstep.