November 1918, London.
Mary sat idly at her dressing table. There was a brush in her hand, but she wasn't using it. Open at the table before her was a newspaper, outlining the details of the armistice that had been agreed upon a week ago between the Allies and Germany. There was a picture of some of the leaders, standing beside a train carriage with very serious expressions on their faces. The headline above it read:
GERMANY SURRENDERS! VICTORY FOR BRITAIN AND HER ALLIES!
Mary's brow furrowed as she studied the photograph. She wondered how these men could sleep at night, with the ghosts of so many dead weighing on their shoulders. She wondered why they hadn't just met like this four years earlier, sorted out their grievances and spared the lives of their countrymen. She wondered, if she ever met any of them, whether she could control herself enough not to spit in their faces.
There was a knock on her door.
"Mary?" came Sam's timid voice through the crack. They were always timid when they spoke to her these days, as though she were a China doll that would break if they raised their voices. "Mary, there's someone here to see you."
She glanced up. "Colin?"
Sam stuck her head in further. She looked at once afraid and excited. "No, it's… come down and see, won't you?"
She didn't want to, but a visitor was a visitor, and if finishing school had taught her anything, it was that nothing came of shirking your duty except more discomfort. So she got up and followed Samantha down the stairs. She stopped short when she saw the man standing in the hall.
He was a soldier, tall and strapping and still wearing his uniform. He turned, and gave her a smile, and Mary gaped at him, speechless.
"It's lovely to see you again, Miss Lennox."
She was still gaping; she couldn't help it. Of all the people she had been expecting, Basil Crawford hadn't even crossed her mind.
"I – I – "
He cleared his throat uncomfortably. "I'm sorry if this is a bad time."
She recovered herself abruptly and hurried down the stairs. "It's not a bad time. Come, let us sit in the drawing room. Samantha, can you tell the maid to bring some tea please?"
Basil followed her into the visitor's room, his gaze travelling around him as he did so, taking in the ornate vases, gilded portraits and the plush, embroidered Persian rug covering much of the floor. He gave a soft whistle. "Nice place."
She perched herself on the edge of the settee and gestured for him to join her. He sat down opposite, looking as awkward as she felt.
"It's good to see you again," she said. "I'm glad you didn't…. I'm glad you're safe."
He nodded. "So am I. But I must say – I heard the news of your loss. I'm so sorry, Mary."
Her face fell, and she took a deep breath, determined not to lose her composure in front of him. Don't think of him, don't think of him, don't think –
"I'm sorry," Basil said again, his expression very serious. "I've upset you. That wasn't my intention."
"It's all right," she said tightly.
He ran a hand through his hair, mussing it up unconsciously. "I'm hopeless at this," he muttered, and his tone was so earnest that Mary looked back up at him. There was a faint blush colouring his cheeks, and he looked desperately uncomfortable.
"Hopeless at what?"
He moved abruptly to sit beside her. Mary watched numbly as he reached for her hand. His fingers curled over hers, and she blinked, wondering if she should be responding in some way; whether she was meant to feel something other than emptiness.
"The thing is, Mary," Basil began, clearing his throat, his thumb moving ever so slightly against her knuckles. "The thing is… you see the thing is I am quite - "
The front door of the manor crashed opened with a bang. Pounding footsteps echoed in the entrance hall, and before either she or Basil could think to move the sitting room door flew open and Colin strode in, red faced.
"Mary!" He stopped abruptly at the sight of her and Basil sitting on the couch, their hands clasped together. A brief look of astonishment flitted across his face, and he opened his mouth as if to speak, his gaze darting back and forth between them. But Mary had eyes only for the scrap of paper he held clenched in one fist.
"What is that?" she demanded, her heart squeezing with a strange combination of alarm and confusion. It couldn't be news, could it? It couldn't be -
For a moment Colin appeared not to know what she was talking about, before his expression sharpened. "Oh, this?" He held up the crumpled letter. "It's news from the front. It's - " he winced, and Mary felt her heart jump painfully - "it's Phil, Mary. He's alive."
The air left her lungs in a rush. The room span and for a long moment it was all she could do not to slide off the settee and settle into a puddle on the floor. Phil was alive. Phil was alive. Her heart clenched, with joy and longing and hope and despair and -
"Phil?" It was Basil who spoke, his voice oddly stiff, and muffled, as if it came from a long way away rather than right beside her. "Is that your friend, Mary?"
Colin looked at him sharply. "I'm sorry, who are you?"
Basil coughed. "Captain Crawford. We were introduced at your cousin's debutante ball." He glanced at Mary briefly, and cleared his throat. "She and I are very old friends."
"I see." There was a rigidity to the way Colin held himself that was all too familiar, but Mary didn't care about whatever was passing between the two men. She didn't care about anything except -
"And?" she whispered, her eyes imploring her cousin for an answer. "What about - what about - "
His face creased. "Nothing," he said, the word falling like a stone between them. "The letter only mentioned Phil. I'm sorry, Mary."
She shook her head, trying to swallow the lump in her throat, to blink away the tears she hadn't thought were left to shed. Phil is alive. She clung to the thought like a lifeline. His brother, his brother would be coming home. Oh, Dickon…
"Perhaps I should go," said Basil. He relinquished Mary's hand - she hadn't even realised he was still holding it - and stood up, facing Colin. "I'll return soon, at a better time. Farewell, Mary."
He was gone before she had a chance to say anything else.
Colin waited until the front door had shut behind him, then turned to give Mary a quizzical look. "What was he doing here?"
She just shook her head, her thoughts too full of Phil and Dickon to answer his question. "Will you be going ?" she asked, staring at Colin as if seeing him for the first time. "To - to France. To find him."
Colin nodded. "Someone needs to go and confirm his identify before he can come home. I volunteered as soon as I heard. I'm leaving today." He studied her, frowning deeply. "Mary…"
"I'm all right," she repeated, trying and failing to give him a proper smile. "Go, Colin. Go and bring Phil home. It's - it's what he would have wanted." She turned away before he could see the heartbreak spill from her eyes.
"I'll write as soon as I've found him." There was the muffled sound of footsteps before Mary felt the pressure of Colin's hand on her shoulder. She closed her eyes, counting her breaths, waiting for the vice to release her heart long enough to form words. "Promise me you'll stay strong until I come back."
She nodded, tasting the lie on the tip of her tongue, and waited for the sound of his departure to tell her it was safe to break apart.
November 2018, France.
Dickon was slowly coming out of the fog of his drug induced sleep. He wasn't quite conscious yet, but he was forcing himself to wake, physically dragging himself out of the blissful oblivion he had been placed into. He had to… he had to tell them…
He tried to open his eyes, but they were like concrete and refused to obey his command. His fingers twitched, but beside that his body was frustratingly unresponsive. All he could do was wait while the effect of the drugs leeched slowly from his veins.
In the meantime, he could hear the noises of the hospital echo around him. They seemed louder than normal, somehow, as though there was a great hum of activity all of a sudden. Perhaps there had been another attack. Perhaps…
"D'you hear the news?" came a loud voice somewhere far down the hall. It was a man's, and raised in unfamiliar elation. No one spoke like that, these days. "It's over! The war's over!"
Cheers went up around the hospital, like a wave of celebration. Dickon felt them ring in his head, and his eyelids fluttered open for a moment. The war? Over? He struggled to make sense of the words, as the noise around him grew louder and louder, until it was overwhelming. How could the war be over? Didn't these people understand it could never end. Never.
Later, when he was finally able to keep his eyes open longer than a second, Clara came and gave him the news herself. She was smiling, and looking very pretty because of it. But he couldn't share her joy.
"I'm not Phil," he deadpanned, interrupting her spiel about the Armistice and what it would mean. Clara blinked in confusion.
"W-what did you say?"
"I said I'm not Phil."
A look of blank surprise crossed Clara's features. "You're – you're not Phil Sowerby?"
He shook his head. "Sorry t' disappoint you."
Suddenly she looked frightened. "Oh dear…"
He was instantly alert. "What is it?"
"It – " she gnawed her lip. "It's just that… well, Dr Hamlin already sent the – the telegraph. To your – to Phil's – family."
Dickon stared at her, his heart beginning to thump loudly in his chest. "What?"
"We – we have to get official confirmation of your identity," explained Clara, wringing her hands. "Since there's no photo of – well, we had to ask someone from the Sowerby family to come and identify you. We wrote them two days ago."
He glowered at her. "All this without even checking?"
Her eyes filled with tears. "He – he was so sure."
Dickon lay his head back against the pillow. He wanted to be angry but somehow he didn't seem to have the energy for it. "Well, they'll 'spect one son an' get th'other," he said darkly. "Spose it's all th' same, in th' end."
Clara's eyes grew wide. "You mean… you mean you're Dickon? Dickon Sowerby?"
He gave a sort of half-nod and closed his eyes, not wanting to see her face.
"So… so Phil was your brother," she said, understanding making her voice soft. "Oh Dickon, I'm… I'm so sorry."
He shrugged, and his ribs throbbed in complaint. It seemed ironic, in a way, that events should have played out like this. So his family thought he was dead. And Mary… he wondered how she had reacted to the news of his disappearance in battle. All at once he felt wretched, lying here wallowing in self-pity while those he loved grieved for him. Mary would… Mary would think he was dead. She would find somebody else and – and then he would be truly alone. Dickon's eyes flew open. He was a fool.
"What is it?" Clara felt his forehead. "What's wrong?"
"I need t' go home."
She smiled wryly. "Finally come to your senses, have you?"
"I need t' go home righ' now."
"You can't," she said. "Not until your identity's been confirmed."
"An' when will tha' be?"
"As soon as the person your family sent arrives." There was something about the way Clara said this, and the look in her eyes, that caught his attention.
"Th' person my family sent," he repeated. "Wha' does tha' mean?"
Clara quirked her eyebrows at him. "I thought you said you were a gardener, back in Yorkshire. But it seems you've got some friends in high places."
Dickon stared at her. "I don'…."
"A Lord's son is coming to get you, I believe. A Lord Craven."
Dickon felt his heartbeat stop momentarily. "C-Colin?"
Clara laughed. "My, but you are strange. There's more to you than meets the eye, make no mistake."
She bustled off, leaving Dickon alone with his thoughts. Colin coming to get him? Colin, whom he hadn't seen or spoken to since… since that fateful conversation in the library. Colin who thought he was coming to collect Phil, not Dickon.
"Oh, God…"