"Where is everyone?" Mary asked, her voice dripping with curiosity, when she entered Rosamund's sitting room at Belgrave Square and found only her aunt sitting in an armchair near the window. The small table next to her had some leftover tea in a delicate cup sitting on it, as well as a tumbler and one of Rosamund's nicer carafes of what Mary assumed to be whiskey. Her aunt barely looked at her, keeping her bright blue eyes fixed on the world outside her window instead.
"Edith is at the office working on the new edition that needs to be finished by tomorrow. She said she would be home in time to join us for dinner, though. Bertie got a call just after luncheon and had to urgently go home to Brancaster to deal with some important business, and Robert is still at the hospital with Cora, I assume, "she said rather absent-mindedly, reaching for the tumbler next to her to take a sip of the amber liquid. "But I thought you'd be with the children? They picked out a new book to read when we were out yesterday."
"Ah, I see. Well, Nanny said she wanted to take them on a walk just now, they needed some fresh air. It is just us until dinner, then?"
Mary sat down in the armchair closest to her aunt, eyeing her suspiciously.
"Yes, in that case, it is just us and Mead for now."
Rosamund still refused to turn and look at her, and Mary wondered what could possibly be out there that held her so captivated and enthralled. She tried to follow her aunt's gaze but saw nothing of particular interest. Everything seemed like it was just another busy afternoon in London. Motorcars were driving around, people walked from one end of the square below to the other. It was nothing particularly interesting, she thought.
"What exactly are you looking at out there?"
"Nothing in particular. I am just observing. I do that from time to time. London is busy, loads and loads of people pass by here every day. And yet, if you look closely, you can recognise the same faces day in and day out after a while. See that man down there in the grey coat, who's carrying that leather briefcase? He's a lawyer, working just down the street in a big office. And that woman clad in all black at the corner there? She's a nurse on her way to the night shift at the hospital."
"How do you know that?" Mary asked surprised. She had followed her aunt's finger pointing to the people she had singled out from the crowd, and her brows furrowed further.
"Simple, I observe them from time to time. I don't have much else to do nowadays."
Silence fell over the two women again. Both kept staring out into the afternoon, looking at the many people passing down below. Mary even saw the Nanny take out George, Marigold, and Caroline for the mentioned walk and she smiled as she saw the small children walk amongst the many grown-ups surrounding them, disappearing around the corner soon.
Suddenly, Mary asked: "Aunt Rosamund, are you lonely?"
At this, her aunt's head spun around and she finally faced her. "What makes you think that?" she asked almost breathlessly, her light-blue eyes wide. She seemed caught. Shocked. Called out.
"Well, this for instance," Mary said, motioning rather aimlessly between her aunt and the window. "Spending days looking out the window is not necessarily the usual pastime for you."
Rosamund quickly looked away again, a blush creeping up on her cheeks. Her dazed gaze followed a bird flying past the window front at that moment. She followed it with almost yearning eyes and watched it fly away into the afternoon sky.
After a while, the bird had long since been gone, she said: "What if I am?"
Mary had already suspected her aunt was lonely, living all on her own in this grand house with nobody but the servants around, that was why she had even posed that question. Hearing her admit to it, though, made the younger woman's stomach drop.
Gently and even more tentatively, Mary replied: "You know, once upon a time I said that I envied you. Living all alone in a great house like this one with plenty of money to spend, back then that sounded like paradise to me. But now I realise that I don't think I have ever been more wrong about anything in my entire life."
Her aunt looked at her again, saw the sadness and pity in the younger woman's eyes, and she also thought she saw her own sorrows reflected in their brown depths for a second.
"It is not so bad as long as one has something to do; and you and everyone else came to visit often enough throughout the years to make me feel less alone," Rosamund said, refilling her glass of whiskey and offering Mary some as well. When her niece shook her head no, she set the decanter down on the table and took a big sip. "But recently it has got a bit harder, I'll admit it."
Mary had sat up and watched her aunt putter around nervously to get to the rather strong alcohol and avoid looking at her niece. Calmly, and with great concern evident in her tone, Mary said: "There is nothing wrong with feeling lonely, that is not what I mean. But you are all alone here and you don't have to be. You will always have a home at Downton, I hope you know that."
Another sip of whiskey. Another quick glance out the window, directed at the darkening sky with its soft orange and pink hues peaking out from behind the grey clouds.
"You all have your lives to lead, you have your families. All I would do would be to intrude and interfere."
"Nonsense!" Mary quickly exclaimed, appearing appalled at just the notion that her aunt might be feeling that way. "You are family, too. You are my aunt, and you could never intrude in the house you grew up in. I do not think anyone would object if you were to move back, we would all be thrilled to have you with us again."
"Being back at Downton for the holidays felt good, that much is certainly true. Maybe I will come visit you all more often," the red-head conceded.
Mary stood up and went over to another table set up near the fireplace that had the tea tray on it. She poured herself a cup of the still-steaming beverage and ate one of the delicious biscuits her aunt's cook always had on hand before she joined Rosamund near the window again.
After a while of sitting in silence yet again, she asked slowly and carefully: "Is it very impertinent of me to ask why you never had children?"
A sharp intake of breath. The quick and tight shut of her eyes, almost as if on instinct. The sudden trembling of her hands that still held the cut crystal tumbler. Small things she noticed. But they all told Mary that her question had struck a nerve. One that caused lots of anguish and pain to wash over her aunt's aged face.
"It is not impertinent to ask at all, but I think that the answer will surprise you," Rosamund replied almost inaudibly, her tone void of emotion, before she opened her eyes again.
"How so?"
"Marmaduke and I did have a child," Rosamund said matter-of-factly, shifting in her chair to now face away from the window at long last. "Or we almost did."
"What?"
Mary knew this was not at all how she was supposed to react. She had been taught better. She knew her question had been impertinent, and that her repeated short interjections spoke of poor etiquette. Especially with her incredulous tone and her undoubtedly more than shocked facial expression — she could feel her mouth hanging open, and there was nothing she could do to change that.
Rosamund was looking off into the distance somewhere behind Mary, she could not stand looking directly at her niece or she would not be able to say the words. Even after all these years.
"You couldn't have known. You were too young to understand, and I never told your Papa. In fact, I did not tell anyone for years. After we got married, Marmaduke and I struggled for years to have a baby and had already given up all hopes of it ever happening. But then I was suddenly expecting at long last. Everything seemed to finally fall into place for us, for our little family. That is until Marmaduke and Robert were called up to fight in the Boer Wars in the early summer of 1900. Only then, about three months after they had left, on a beautiful late September day, I went into labour more than two months prematurely. Our precious little baby boy was stillborn. The doctor said I could never get pregnant again without it being an immense risk to my health. Marmaduke never returned from the front, he died there in 1902, as you know. And then I was all alone from then on."
Mary was at a total loss for words. That did not happen often, but her aunt's revelation truly knocked the wind out of her sails. She had always assumed Rosamund simply had not wanted any children, that she was content with her life the way it had been.
How wrong she had been.
"And you did not tell anyone? Not even Granny?"
"Oh, Mama. She knew. I kept it from her for quite a while but I told her eventually, years later. It all happened just a few weeks after your grandfather had passed. I could not trouble anyone with that as well on top of everything, so I hid away here."
"And so you just went through all that all on your own?"
"I had to, and it made me stronger. It all seems like it happened a lifetime ago now, almost thirty years have passed since. And, for many, many years, I was fine; I had learned to live with it. But recently, seeing you and Robert and Cora, Edith and Bertie — seeing you interact with the children — it has become harder to deal with. It makes me wonder what could have been. I keep wondering how differently my life could have unfolded had Robert survived the birth or had Marmaduke not died at the front. Not that I was not content with the life I have led as the fun aunt living in the big city to take you and your sisters out shopping for new dresses and spoil you rotten every once in a while," Rosamund laughed. It was a hollow laugh, designed and intended to lighten the mood, but the redhead did not manage to cover up the emotional turmoil talking about this specific part of her past caused her.
Mary's mouth was dry. Her mind was racing with all sorts of thoughts and questions. But the most prominent one was one single, simple word; a name to be precise. A name she knew only too well. "Robert?" she breathed muzzily, her frown causing her forehead to wrinkle more than usual.
Rosamund looked away again, this time she focused on the carpeted floor to her feet. She desperately wanted to hide her dewy eyes. She was not weak, she was never this emotional. She had been taught well by her mother. She simply refused to be seen as weak, even by her niece.
Taking in a shuddering breath, she replied: "Yes, we had discussed names before Robert and Marmaduke left. We knew he would not be here to witness the birth. It was very early on, possibly too early. Maybe that jinxed it, maybe it did not. But we discussed it and we agreed that, should it be a boy, we wanted to name our child Robert. After Marmaduke's late grandfather and my dear brother. Robert Marmaduke Painswick was the name I had the doctor write on the birth and death certificate that day."
She could not blink away the tears any longer and Mary was about to reach out to her when suddenly, the gong was rung out in the hallway. The sudden sound caused her aunt to bolt up and all but run out of the room. "Goodness, is that the time already? I better go up and not let my maid wait," she said hoarsely, the slightest quiver in her voice, without turning to look back.
Mary was left stunned in her wake, something that happened rarely.
Anna would have to wait a bit, she reasoned with herself, and she went to fetch a tumbler from the table holding appropriate glasses and several different carafes of wine and other spirits from somewhere behind her aunt's armchair. Without even thinking about watering it down, Mary downed a generous portion of the strong alcohol she had refused not too long ago. Nothing could have prepared her for the revelation this conversation had been, and she could not help but feel horribly for her aunt and her hidden tragic past.