Hello, lovely readers! Thank you so much for the reviews of the last chapter - it is one of my favourite chapters, so I'm very glad people enjoyed it. This time, we're back in 1919...

Chapter Seven: Not Beyond Repair

Downton Abbey, 1919

The worst thing about the war's end, Mary decided, was the return of Mama's matchmaking endeavours. She had not particularly enjoyed having her home invaded and overturned when it had been transformed into a convalescent home, but at least it had given Mama something else to think about and manage than the lives of her daughters.

Now, Mama had apparently decided that the war had been over long enough for her to resume her matchmaking in earnest, and in her first foray into finding a husband for her youngest daughter, she had invited the two most suitable men she could find in the county to dinner. They would, of course, be seated on either side of Sybil.

They would, of course (although only Mary knew this for certain), be rejected.

The first, a Russell cousin, was perhaps the most eligible, and was probably the one Mama was actually hoping to catch for Sybil. His resemblance to his dead cousin Billy had unsettled them all for a moment, until the contrast between his shyness and Billy's brash confidence made it possible to set aside painful memories. As far as that was possible, anyway.

The second was a Mr Wilcox, a son of the family who had recently bought Haxby Park after the Russells had sold up. He was new money, and showy about it, and the family name never failed to make Mary think of Howards End.

Both of them reminders of all that had been lost. Neither of them Billy.

Achieving equal numbers of men and women for dinner in the country was considered rather a coup, and Mama evidently held out high hopes for the success of the party, even if she was rather less certain about the chances of succeeding in her endeavours for Sybil. To at least make a nod towards disguising the true intentions behind the party, however, Edith and Anthony had been invited to Downton too, along with Cousin Matthew and his infuriating mother.

It was all making for rather a trying evening.

Mary had come down late after taking longer than usual to settle Lily, who had been particularly tearful and clingy since a new tooth had started to come through the day before. After spending much of her day trying (and largely failing) to soothe a screaming baby, she was not in the best of humours to converse politely with unwanted guests, but she had hoped her tardiness would at least spare her the agony of the interminable pre-dinner conversations.

She had been sadly mistaken. Sybil had been desperate to try the new fashion for cocktails before dinner, and Thomas had been equally eager to make them, and as it was Sybil's night and they had guests of an age that might enjoy it, neither Papa nor Carson had objected too strongly. Dinner would be later, and the evening stretched out interminably.

And now she had been cornered by Cousin Isobel the moment she had arrived in the drawing room, and had yet to find a means of escape.

Cousin Isobel seemed to have taken Mary on as some sort of charity project, which might have been amusing had it not been so infuriating. She appeared to think that all Mary's problems could be solved with some friendly guidance, positive thinking, and plenty of charity work, and had taken up this cause with missionary zeal. Ever since that painfully awkward conversation at Crawley House, she had been making ridiculous and entirely unhelpful suggestions regarding what Mary ought to be doing with her time, and providing her with an endless supply of dull, pointless pamphlets that Mary took a great deal of pleasure in burning.

Nobody seemed to understand that Mary did not need distractions, or a change of scenery, or something to lift her mood. Nobody seemed able to acknowledge that of course she was angry and unhappy, but her dark moods stemmed from the realities of her situation, and only changing these realities could possibly improve anything for her.

Nobody, that is, except Cousin Matthew. He was the source of her problems, the man benefiting from her misfortune, and yet he had apologised, sincerely, for the situation and for his own behaviour.

She no longer knew how to feel about him. It had been far easier to detest him, to see him only as the hated middle class interloper, here to steal away the life that should have been hers. Now, however, it sometimes felt as if he was her only ally. She was not entirely certain when it began – perhaps that conversation in the church? – but there was something between them now, something neither of them quite understood and that baffled the rest of the family. They were lost, both of them, in this new post-war world, and in each other, they had found something to hold on to.

He was infuriating, ridiculous, out of place, and terribly, irredeemably middle class, and yet there was something about him that inspired a sense of kinship, fellowship. Understanding. He was an easy man to argue with, and he seemed to know exactly how to provoke her fury, but he was not an easy man to hate.

Without ever discussing it, they had devised a strategy for getting through family dinners. They directed any frustration they felt at each other, rather than the rest of the family, and although their discussions could get rather heated and often went far beyond what was considered polite dinner-table conversation, it was somehow better to be angry with Cousin Matthew than to seethe silently.

They argued with each other over anything, from politics, to literature, to fashion, as long as it didn't concern personal feelings. They insulted each other in every possible way, but never mentioned Lavinia and Patrick. They always took opposite positions even when they agreed, and the last time he had been up for dinner, Matthew had told her he had begun to think that despite her overt disdain for his profession, she would have been a formidable opponent in the contract negotiations he used to enjoy at his old firm.

She had been oddly flattered.

But most important in their unspoken arrangement was the certainty that if either could see that the other was struggling, they would ensure that they attracted all the attention.

She could see that it confused the rest of the family, and she was sure they all felt that the situation made for uncomfortable dinner conversations, but somehow, it made things just a little more bearable, and she refused to feel even the slightest bit of remorse over it. Especially not when the rest of the family, Cousin Isobel foremost among them, seemed so eager to make her feel uncomfortable.

"I spoke to the organiser," Cousin Isobel said with her usual boundless enthusiasm, "and she said they would be delighted for you to come to the next meeting. So I told her you would."

Mary suppressed a weary sigh. She couldn't even remember which charity Cousin Isobel was talking about, and now it appeared she was going to have to come up with yet another excuse not to go to some pointless meeting.

"I'm afraid you will have to tell her that you were mistaken. I will be otherwise engaged," Mary said coolly. How dare Cousin Isobel answer on her behalf? Did she think that just because her son was heir to the estate she was entitled to interfere in the lives of the whole family? She wasn't even a Crawley by blood.

"But I haven't even told you when the meeting is yet," Cousin Isobel protested.

"I'm sure Sybil would be happy to accompany you," Mary said wearily. "I'm quite certain she would be more suited to it than I."

"You never know what you're suited to until you try," Cousin Isobel said.

Mary disagreed, but knew that saying so would get her nowhere. She said nothing, and looked down at her beaded black dress, trying in vain to think of a means of escape.

Surely it must be time to go through to the dining room by now? Cocktails might be a novelty, but surely they couldn't be eating much later than usual?

She looked around the room, desperate for any sign that the servants might be preparing for them to go through to dinner. No such luck.

She sighed, and turned back to Cousin Isobel, resigning herself to her situation and trying not to scream in frustration as the interrogation continued.

Matthew sipped his drink, taking more pleasure in the effects of the alcohol than the flavour of the cocktail.

It had not been a good day, because last night had not been a good night. He had managed perhaps four hours of sleep altogether, each attempt at rest having been interrupted by nightmares, and as a consequence, he was exhausted, and had been jumpy and on edge all day.

Mother had clearly been practicing her best attempt at restraint, as she had only commented twice on his obvious exhaustion, although her worried frowns had followed him all day.

And now he had dragged himself up to the big house for Cousin Cora's dinner party. If it weren't for the fact that his dark thoughts had been worse company than the guests at the Abbey, he would have refused to come.

And yet now he was here, and with half his strong cocktail inside him, he realised he felt a little better.

He tried to convince himself that it was Cousin Robert's enthusiastic greeting, Cousin Cora's kindness, the liveliness of the two young men who were apparently being flung at Cousin Sybil that were the cause of the lightening in his mood, but if he was honest with himself, he knew better.

The reason he had come at all, and the reason his thoughts were now so much more pleasantly occupied than they had been all day, was simple. Lady Mary was here.

Ever since their strange conversation in the church, there had been a sort of truce between them, and the last few times he had been up at the Abbey for dinner, they had formed a strange sort of alliance against the world, a companionship in grief, and sometimes, with her, he had been able to forget that he was a broken man who was out of his depth, and to take some rare pleasure in testing his wit against hers.

She was still sharp, angry, and often cruel, but when they were both riled up and deep into one of their frequent arguments, a little colour would appear in her cheeks and her voice would lose its apathy, and she would remined him of how she had looked that day he had surprised her and Cousin Sybil near the village.

She had looked so impossibly lovely that day, so alive and free, and so much part of the world from which she so often seemed to being trying to withdraw. Seeing her find that life again, even if it was to argue with him, gave him a strange thrill every time.

He had nearly despaired when he had arrived to find that she was not there, but when he had inquired about her absence, Cousin Cora had said something about the baby teething, and Matthew had almost choked on his drink in shock. It was strange enough to hear the baby spoken of at all, never mind to picture the elegant Lady Mary, who had never even spoken her daughter's name in his presence, sitting upstairs soothing a crying baby.

He wondered, not for the first time, if he knew her at all. They had certainly spoken more words to each other in the past few weeks than they had to anyone else, but the unspoken rules of their interactions precluded discussions that touched on anything too personal. He had assumed her to be almost indifferent to her own child, but now, he realised that his judgement of her may have been based more on prejudice than any actual evidence. She had never spoken of her daughter, but why would she speak of her to him, a man who was barely more than a stranger, and worse, who was here to steal her inheritance?

When she had finally come down, however, she gave no indication of having been occupied with a teething baby. Her clothes were unruffled, her hair perfect as ever, and her expression as closed off as he had ever seen it. But Matthew wondered still.

His first instinct had been to go and speak to her, but Mother had intercepted her almost immediately, and then Cousin Robert had asked him a question about one of the farms they had visited the previous day, and it had all become impossible.

He managed to just barely keep up his part of a largely one-sided conversation with Cousin Robert until Sir Anthony came over to join them and Matthew was able to disengage a little. Released momentarily from his social duties, he found his eyes drawn yet again to Cousin Mary, perched on the edge of the sofa and still being monopolised by Mother.

She was stiff and tense, her expression carefully blank as Mother talked at her with her usual enthusiasm. Her replies were brief, almost mechanical, and Matthew wondered what they were talking about.

He watched as she looked down, tracing the patterns of the beads on her dress, then looked out across the room, her carefully controlled expression slipping into what Matthew recognised instantly as a desperate plea for rescue. She so rarely displayed her emotions, and he felt his heart clench in sympathy.

He hardly registered that he had made the decision to intervene until he had already abandoned his drink and reached for his stick. Pushing himself up to stand from the too-soft armchair took a couple of tries, but once he was up, he made his way quickly across to Cousin Mary.

Only when he was standing awkwardly in front of her did he realise he lacked any plan for how to rescue her from Mother's interrogation, and he had never been more grateful for his mother's concern over his comfort than when she stood up from her armchair immediately and bullied him into sitting down in her place. She sat down at the far end of the sofa, and was immediately drawn into conversation with Cousin Cora and Cousin Edith.

That had been almost too easy, he thought, until he realised he now had to speak to Cousin Mary, and he had no idea what to say.

"Cousin Mary," he said awkwardly, unsure if she had understood that this was a rescue mission, and whether he needed to find a way of explaining his sudden desire to sit near her.

A rescue mission. God, how ridiculous that sounded, even inside his own head.

"Cousin Matthew," she returned. Her voice was stiff and clipped, but he thought she seemed a little more relaxed than she had looked only moments before. Wishful thinking, perhaps, but he hoped it wasn't entirely imaginary.

He couldn't think of a single thing to say to her.

"I suppose I ought to thank you for rescuing me," she said eventually.

"Not at all," he said, perhaps a little too quickly. "I'm only sorry I left it so long. I should have known that she was… that is, I…"

"That I was being subjected to yet another interrogation about everything I'm doing wrong with my life." She sighed. "I suppose I ought to be used to it by now."

Something inside him contracted in sympathy with her at the thought, and he was suddenly furious with everyone and everything that had made her feel resigned to being told she was wrong. Of course, the feeling was made infinitely worse by the knowledge that he had judged her as harshly as anyone when he had first arrived. How had he been so unfeeling?

"I'm sorry about Mother," he said after a moment. "She likes to… fix things, I suppose. Although sometimes I think she forgets that people don't work like that, that they're not problems to be solved. But she tries. It's just who she is. She means well."

"Everyone means well," she snapped. "That doesn't mean they understand."

He swallowed hard, unsure how to respond. "They can't understand," he said eventually, searching for the words to express the unspoken truths that had weighed him down for months now. "They can't see that it's not just grief as they know it. That every certainty we grew up with has been shattered. That some of us are broken beyond repair. That you're doing your best in an impossible situation."

She stared at him for a moment, apparently shocked out of her frustration, and he felt suddenly too warm. He had said too much, given away too much of his bitterness which was much better kept hidden, he was a fool, he had…

"Nobody ever says that so plainly," she said quietly. "Nobody ever wants to acknowledge that there's anything wrong with my situation. It's always me who's wrong."

"You're not," he said immediately. "You're not wrong." How could she be, when there could be no fixed idea of what was right anymore?

"Thank you for that." She looked down, playing with the black beads of her necklace. "I suppose she's trying to fix you too?" she asked after a long pause.

He blinked, then shook his head, torn between fondness for his mother and the familiar pain and guilt of knowing that she had set herself an impossible task. "I think I'm beyond fixing. But yes, she tries her best."

She looked up quickly, anger flashing in her dark eyes. "Oh, would you stop?" she said scathingly. "You can't say that people aren't things to be fixed, and then the next minute lament that fact the you, specifically, are beyond fixing."

Matthew looked down, unable to decide whether he was amused or impressed or offended. She was right, he supposed, but he resented it all the same. He never could find the right words to explain that there really was something broken inside him, something lost and irretrievable, something that all Mother's considerable efforts could not reverse. He might have expressed himself poorly, but he knew it to be true all the same.

But then she spoke again, her voice losing some of its harshness. "And… it's not been a year. Perhaps too soon to say for certain that anything is beyond repair."

He swallowed hard, his throat suddenly rather tight. Had it truly been less than a year? It seemed like he had lived a lifetime since Amiens, as if each long week of his recovery had been at least a year, as if each interminable day after Lavinia's death had been somehow outside of time.

He spent so much of his time frustrated with the seemingly glacial pace of his recovery, certain that his mind was irreparably broken, resigning himself to the fact that if it had taken him this long to make so little progress in pulling himself together, it must be an altogether hopeless endeavour. But the way she put it, he could almost believe her. Perhaps a year wasn't so terribly long after all. Perhaps it really was too soon to despair so completely.

And what a year it had been for her, he realised. He had received that first letter from Lord Grantham only weeks before he had been injured, which must mean Mary's daughter was not yet a year old.

He looked at her for a moment, trying and failing to picture her as a mother, then ventured, "Cousin Cora said your daughter was teething. I hope she… that is, I hope it's not too terrible for her. Or for you."

Cousin Mary stared at him in surprise, and he realised he had violated one of the clauses in their unspoken rules of engagement.

He tried to backtrack, wondering why he was so hopeless at conversing with her that evening. "I'm sorry, I know it's none of my business, it's only that Cousin Cora explained why you were late, and I wondered… if all was well?"

God, he was making a mess of this. He should never have stepped outside the boundaries of their usual conversations. They had been doing so well these past few weeks, getting on so much better so long as they were careful about what was discussed. Mary's child, like Lavinia and Patrick, had always been quite clearly out of bounds.

But rather than push him away, or punish him for his transgression, Mary's expression softened a little. "She's having rather a rough time of it, I'm afraid, but she was sleeping when I left her," she offered. "Nanny says it's all perfectly normal…" She trailed off, clearly unused to speaking about her daughter like this.

"Well, don't tell Mother, unless you want a barrage of remedies thrust your way," he said, trying for a little levity. "She's a wonderful nurse, but I'm afraid that if you give the slightest indication of needing assistance, you won't be rid of her for the foreseeable future."

Cousin Mary smiled wryly. "I had worked that out for myself, actually. But give it another week, and I might be desperate enough."

Then, finally, blessedly, Carson announced that dinner was served.

Matthew pushed himself to his feet, and after a moment's hesitation, offered Cousin Mary his arm. She looked at him for a moment, her expression unreadable, before taking it. His breath caught for a moment as he tried to accustom himself to this new proximity. Her perfume was warm, spicy, vanilla perhaps, but she was close enough that he caught a slight hint of the milky, powdery smell he associated with babies. Something inside him tightened at the thought that she had surely been holding her daughter close less than an hour ago.

She gave a slight pull on his arm, and he realised they had stood still together a little too long. He glanced at her and tried to look apologetic, before inclining his head towards the dining room.

She matched her pace to his, and together, they followed the rest of the party through to dinner.

Mary was unsurprised when she found herself and Cousin Matthew seated at the opposite end of the table from Sybil and her suitors. She knew how this game worked, after all. She had been Patrick's since before she had been old enough to think about marriage, but it had never been official, and Mama had played the marriage game with her and Edith until the day they were securely engaged. She knew very well that she and Matthew were kept as far away as possible so as to ensure comfortable, light conversation at the other end of the table, where it mattered.

Mama really was barking up the wrong tree, thinking light conversation was the way to Sybil's heart. No, her sister had already been won over by talk of politics and revolution. She almost laughed aloud.

She glanced briefly at Edith, who was breaking all conversational rules to talk across the table to Anthony, bypassing her and Matthew who were between them. They were discussing farm machinery of all things, although the dullness of their conversations had long ceased to surprise her. She would never know how they had managed to stay married without boring each other to death.

At least the presence of men who weren't related to her had dampened Edith's need to discuss the ailments of pregnancy. Mary thought it pathetic. She had carried Elizabeth while her husband was at war, then missing, and finally confirmed dead, and not once had she complained about it.

Edith, however, liked to make a fuss. They were all intimately familiar with her aches and pains, her tiredness, the frequency with which the baby moved and kicked. She was on a special diet on the advice of her doctor, she had told them a few weeks ago, and so of course whenever she visited for dinner, poor Mrs Patmore had to go to the trouble of accommodating her.

If it were up to Mary, it would be far easier to simply not invite Edith and Anthony to Downton until the baby had been born and they could all go back to normal.

She turned her attention to Sybil, who was apparently holding forth on Ireland again. Mary had to smile. Sybil was making no effort whatsoever to attract suitors, and was secretly planning her wedding to the chauffeur, but her passion and soft beauty had a rather magnetic effect, and the men on either side of her were watching her in awe. They would, of course, be disappointed.

"Cousin Sybil is in good spirits, it seems," Cousin Matthew said quietly, echoing her thoughts. She turned to him in surprise, confused by the banality of his comment and the lack of challenge in his tone. They had never simply made conversation with each other, especially not over dinner, and she didn't know quite how to respond. The ability to converse easily that had once come so naturally to her seemed to have been lost long ago, and now Matthew had stepped outside their usual combative script for the second time that evening, she felt a little lost.

Cousin Matthew looked as surprised as she felt at his comment, and she felt an odd softening towards him. He was as out of practice as she was, and after he had intervened earlier and saved her from Cousin Isobel, she was feeling rather more charitable towards him than usual.

"She's rather passionate about Ireland," she said wryly, and the thought brought an unexpected smile to her lips.

But he was looking at her oddly, as if he was looking deeper into what she had said than he should have been, and her heart dropped as she remembered that he really might have understood her veiled comment.

It had been such a shock to see him that day on the path, she had been unable even to speak to him, and he had seemed just as stunned to see her. She and Sybil had been so sure they were alone, so glad to be able to speak freely out of the house, they had neglected to remember that the sharp bend in the path could conceal anyone who might be around the corner.

She was still unsure how much he had heard. She was certain it had not been enough for him to put together the truth, but she could not put aside the thought that he knew too much.

"Yes, I've noticed," he said slowly. "Does she… does she mean to visit there sometime? Ireland, I mean. As she seems so… interested."

Mary stared at him. He didn't know everything, couldn't know everything. But he was talking as if his words had more meaning than they should have done if he was wholly ignorant of the situation, and without knowing what he had heard and understood, she didn't know how to respond.

"She would like to," she said carefully. "And Sybil usually gets what she wants, one way or another."

The look he was giving her did nothing to reassure her. It was as if he were trying to decipher her somehow, and it made her feel rather vulnerable. She would have to talk to him about it, she realised, to find out what he really knew, and to tell him something that was close enough to the truth to stop him speculating too much.

But not tonight.

"Have you ever been?" she asked quickly, desperate to stop him looking at her like that. "To Ireland?"

"No. I… I've only ever been to France. And Belgium." He took a large sip of wine, and Mary saw his hand was whiter than usual as he gripped the delicate crystal too tightly. Her heart clenched. He hadn't said it outright, but she understood; he had only ever been abroad during the war.

"At least Ireland is a more interesting topic than farm machinery. I didn't know there was so much to say on the subject until I met Anthony." It was a transparent change of topic, but that mattered little if it could take Matthew's thoughts away from dark place she had unwittingly led them to.

He took her lifeline gratefully. "Sir Anthony seems nice enough," he said, glancing past her to the man in question.

"If you want to talk farming and foxes by the hour," she replied, rolling her eyes.

He smiled then. Just a brief twitch of the mouth, lopsided and barely there, but it was a smile, and Mary felt an answering twitch of her own mouth. They stared at each other for a moment, unused to such reactions in each other, then turned at the same time back to their food.

"I would have thought you wouldn't mind the talk of foxes," Matthew said after a moment, yet again making a new effort at cordial conversation, however awkward the effort might be.

She turned and raised her eyebrows questioningly.

"You hunt, do you not?" he asked in explanation. "Cousin Edith mentioned it."

"I do," she acknowledged. "Or I did. My horse, Diamond was taken-" She broke off, realising she was leading them back into dangerous territory; Diamond had been needed for the war, and had never come home. Perhaps this was why she no longer possessed her old skill at conversation. The war hid around every corner, lay behind every anecdote, poisoned every light-hearted comment.

His sympathetic expression told her he had understood. "I'm sorry," he said sincerely.

"I intend to find another, and soon," she said. "I have missed it." Speaking of it, she realised just how much she had missed it, how desperately she suddenly craved the freedom she had always been able to find on Diamond's back.

She took a sip of wine. "I suppose you don't ride?" she asked.

"I ride," he said defensively, before his expression softened a little and he shook his head. "Or rather, I used to. My back's not even up to riding my bicycle, never mind a horse at the moment, or for the foreseeable future."

"I'm sorry," she said with genuine sympathy, before her brain caught up with what he had said. "You used to ride a bicycle?"

He grinned properly at that, clearly catching her surprise and distaste. "I'm afraid I did, Lady Mary. Awfully middle class, I know, but very convenient, I assure you."

She returned his smile, feeling an unexpected fluttering of interest at his teasing. And at the way his face had opened up in a true smile. He was rather handsome, she realised for the first time, despite the ever-present dark circles under his eyes and the small creases of worry and exhaustion that lined his forehead.

She looked down, unable to meet his gaze while her thoughts were turned in such a direction. But a moment later, she looked up again, determined not to let this moment go. Lady Mary Crawley did not look down in embarrassment when faced with an a man who interested her.

"When you're able, you must take one of our horses out. Our stables might be rather depleted since the war, but Lynch will find you a suitable mount I'm sure." She caught his eye. "And I would be happy to take you out, show you the best routes and views. And of course to convince you of the superiority of horses over bicycles."

He blinked at her, wide-eyed, then smiled again. "An easy offer to make, I'm sure, when it's likely to be a year or so before you will be called upon to fulfil your promise. But thank you, I might hold you to it." He took a sip of wine before turning back to her. "Although I warn you, you will find it harder to convince me to abandon my favoured mode of transport than you might imagine. I'm rather attached to my old bicycle."

"I can be very persuasive," she said, tilting her head slightly as she watched him.

His breath seemed to catch slightly, but just as he seemed to be about to reply, Anthony suddenly coughed, shouting "Good God!" in a tone of disgust. Startled, she turned to look at him, and saw him spitting his dessert into his napkin. Everyone's attention was drawn to him, and Mama and Edith voiced their concern in alarm. Alarm that proved to be entirely unnecessary, as it turned out it was only that the pudding had apparently been sprinkled with salt rather than sugar. How like Anthony to make such a fool of himself over nothing.

She turned away to hide a smile, and her eyes met Matthew's. She noticed with a jolt how blue they were, his eyes, and how different they looked when sparkling with mirth as they were now. His lips quirked up, and suddenly, quite unexpectedly, they were both laughing. She brought her napkin to her mouth to smother it, but it was just so funny, and Matthew's amusement was increasing her own, and she knew it was terribly rude, but she simply couldn't bring herself to care.

The fuss died down and everyone went back to their wine and to the fruit Carson had brought up, but every time she caught Matthew's eye, uncontrollable giggles would attack her again, and they would both have to turn away and try to regain their composure. Laughing at all was so unfamiliar now, never mind laughing with Cousin Matthew, and she felt almost drunk on the sudden unexpected freedom of laughing at something funny. She felt young and silly, and she hadn't felt like that in longer than she could remember. And Cousin Matthew, dull, morose Cousin Matthew, seemed every bit as young and silly as she was.

Cora's attention was being pulled all over the place, managing the crisis of the salty pudding and trying to keep Edith's fussing to a minimum, while always keeping a watchful eye over Sybil and her suitors.

But Robert looked across the table the moment he heard his eldest daughter laugh and couldn't take his eyes off the unfamiliar sight of her eyes bright with joy rather than pain. She had looked so tired and drawn for so very long, soldiering on through a difficult pregnancy while her husband was missing and then dead, and then somehow finding the strength to carry on despite the ruin of all her hopes and dreams… He had almost forgotten how young she was still, how lovely she looked when she was happy and unguarded and free…

Only when he heard a quiet sniff to his right did he tear his eyes away, turning to see his own wonder and pain reflected in Cousin Isobel's wet eyes.

"It's the first time I've seen her laugh since the telegram came," he said quietly, his throat feeling unaccountably tight.

Isobel gave a small sound, half-sob, half-laugh, and dragged her own eyes away from her son to meet his for a moment.

"I can't even remember the last time I saw him laugh."

He nodded stiffly, and turned his attention to his young heir. He had only ever known Matthew to look weary and sad, his features so frequently creased with pain that he looked older than his years. Now, he looked like an entirely different man. The blue eyes which ususally looked so eerily pale and lifeless were bright, and his features were transformed in mirth, making him look impossibly young and carefree.

It wasn't the end, he knew that, and it wouldn't be easy. Nothing about the wreck of a world that had emerged from the war was easy. But his daughter and his heir were laughing and they were young, and perhaps there was hope for them all yet.

A/N: I edited this in rather a rush to get it out today, so please forgive any errors, and let me know if you spot anything glaringly wrong!