Chapter Ten: Dead Men's Shoes

Yorkshire to London, 1919

Mary breathed a sigh of relief as the house disappeared behind the trees. She had not yet left the grounds and already she felt as if she could breathe more easily than she had in months.

Even as she had carefully planned it all, it had seemed sometimes as if her head was underwater, thick and heavy and slow. London had seemed so distant, and the idea that she might actually be able to do something about her situation seemed foreign when her choices at home were confined to her clothes, the direction of her walks, and some small parts of Lily's life. Even those trivialities were questioned more often than she would have liked.

But now, having evaded the parental inquisition one final time, she felt herself slowly surfacing from the smothering protectiveness of a household that still walked on eggshells around her. There were few enough advantages to being a widow, but the freedom of owning a house in London where she could come and go as she pleased without being subjected to Aunt Rosamund's endless questioning and judgement was something she was determined to take advantage of. By this evening, she would be settled in a house where she was mistress, free to use the telephone without being overheard, leave the house and return at whatever hours she saw fit, spend as much time with Lily as she liked. Even the town gossips tended to leave widows alone unless they did something truly scandalous.

Of course, she had still been questioned and cajoled and warned she was making a poor decision. Everyone thought she was mad to take a baby to London with her to stay with a skeleton staff in a house that had not been properly lived in for years, and if she was completely honest with herself, Mary could see that they had a point. But leaving Lily behind with a family who could not look at her without disappointment simply was not an option.

Then there was the timing of it, which Mary had to admit to herself had not been entirely coincidental. She would miss Papa's birthday, Mama had lamented (Patrick's birthday, a few days before that, went unacknowledged, as if not mentioning it made it less real). She would be lonely, Mama insisted, all alone in an empty house (Lily and Anna and the other servants, apparently, did not count).

Of course, all these complaints did was confirm Mary's reasons for going and for keeping her reasons for going secret; her family believed she could not be trusted to make even the most simple decisions about how she lived her life, and if she remained at Downton for two birthdays that would surely feel more like funerals, she felt she might go mad under their oppressive scrutiny.

Once, she might have fought for her right to do as she liked, asserted her freedom bluntly and pointed out with a few well-chosen cutting remarks quite how ridiculous they were being. Now, Mary had endured it all passively, knowing there was nothing they could do to stop her, and too tired of hearing the same concerns endlessly repeated to grace them with a serious response.

Now, finally, she was on her way, and nobody seemed any the wiser that her trip had anything to do with lawyers or entails or seizing back control of her life. She would count that as a victory.

She stared out the window as the familiar view slipped past, the last time she would see it for at least a week.

It was a strange feeling, to be leaving, even for a short time; she had not gone further than York since the early weeks of her pregnancy, before she had even admitted to herself that she had known.

Soon after Patrick's last leave (although of course she could not have known then that it was his last), in a desperate attempt to distract herself from the subtle shift in their relationship that had taken place and the intensified ache of his absence, she had stayed a week with Aunt Rosamund. She had not gone quite so far as to go shopping for baby clothes, but she had bought the toy horse that was now Lily's prized possession, and had ordered several dresses made in looser, modern styles, never quite acknowledging to herself that she had anything in mind for them other than keeping up with the latest fashions.

She had never had a chance to wear them, of course. Even when Patrick had been missing, before they were certain enough of his death to go into full mourning, she had been unable to wear bright, beautiful gowns chosen when she had been so full of hope. After the awful day when his death had finally been confirmed (a year ago this week), she had worn nothing but black.

As they passed through the village, Mary's eyes and thoughts were drawn to Crawley House. Matthew would be at work at this time, she thought, and Cousin Isobel at the hospital, but she found herself looking at the windows all the same, as if she might catch a last glimpse of him before she left.

She had not seen Cousin Matthew since he had surprised her at her favourite bench, and it made her feel rather vulnerable to leave now, after having said more to him than she would generally have considered wise or desireable, and without knowing how they would speak to each other when she saw him again. She had not said goodbye, had not even told him she was going away.

She had enjoyed their conversation, strange as it might have been, but thinking about it made her feel oddly unbalanced. Cousin Matthew did not understand her or her life, and was in so many ways the antithesis of the world she had grown up in, with his grubby little solicitor's office and his strange, quiet pride in his middle class ways. Yet he was the first man who had ever seemed genuinely interested in what she had to say, who listened with bright, clever eyes, and seemed to hear her.

She hadn't missed that he looked at her with the interest of man in a beautiful woman, that he noticed her as men had always noticed her. Yet he did not do as Patrick had done so often and nod along adoringly, did not do as Kemal Pamuk had and watch her with such intensity that what they spoke about was of no consequence.

Cousin Matthew, strange and quiet and middle class as he was, listened to her and heard her, and even went so far as to say he enjoyed listening to her.

And something about his openness, his willingness to listen to what she was saying instead of what he wanted to hear had led her to confide in a man she had known for only a few short months, yet who seemed to see her more clearly than her family ever had. His occasional flashes of blunt honesty betrayed a soul as broken as hers, and showing it to her when her world had always told her such grief and brokenness should remain a shameful secret seemed almost an act of courage rather than weakness.

Her family saw and understood her as they always had, and it seemed there was nothing she could do to change that. But to Matthew, she was not a wayward child or a lost cause. She may not have made the best of first impressions on him, but he had been no better, and it seemed they were both willing to reconsider their views on each other.

Instead, Matthew was coming to know her as a widow, a mother, a grown woman who had survived a war. He would never know the stupid girl who had fallen for a stranger's good looks and charming manners and destroyed her own life, or the fearful and mercenary young woman who had married Patrick because he seemed to be a life raft in a world that was threatening to drown her. He would never know the mother who had failed to love her child until far too many weeks after her birth. He would only know her as she chose to show herself to him, and something about this freedom invited an uncharacteristic honesty that surprised even her.

What she felt when she was with him… it was new. Different. He did not understand her or know her. Yet she knew, somehow, impossibly, that he could know, that he wanted to, that he would listen to her until he did.

She was so lost in her thoughts, she was quite startled when the car stopped and she realised they had arrived at the station. Too quickly, there was the usual flurry of movement and hurry as they got out of the car, and Lily started threatening to cry, and it took a few moments of standing aimlessly next to the car for Mary to pull herself back to the present to deal with it all.

She hung back as she sent Anna to manage their luggage with the porter and Nanny was sent off to board the train with Lily. There was one last thing she needed to do before she left, and it needed to be done without an audience.

Branson had obviously guessed her intentions, not that it would have been difficult. She had spoken to him the day before, under the pretext of taking a trip to Thirsk. Sybil had promised her not to do anything rash in her absence, but Mary feared that if Branson said the word, Sybil would vanish to Ireland without a second thought.

He had been terribly arrogant about it, determined to show that she had no power over his choices or Sybil's, but he had agreed nevertheless that he would wait to hear back from the jobs he had applied for before even considering leaving, and had said grudgingly that they did not plan to leave in a rush. Mary dreaded to think what they might have done if she had not found out what was going on between them months ago, but at least they were both capable of listening to sense.

Now, in such a public place, she could do little more than to catch his eye and give him a meaningful look. He held her gaze in a manner than would have been unforgivably insolent in anyone else, but which struck her as almost brave.

"I'll see you when I return, Branson," she said firmly.

"Of course, Lady Mary," he said, just respectfully enough that nobody else should notice the way the corner of his lips quirked up in a conspiratorial smile. "I hope your business in London goes well."

Mary narrowed her eyes. Had Sybil told him what she was planning to accomplish in London? About the entail, and her determination that it must be broken? Yes, from his expression, it appeared she had. Mary was not entirely surprised, and felt a flash of irritation at Sybil for sharing her private concerns, and really, she had a right to be far angrier than she actually was, because what business could it possibly be of Branson's?

But somehow, it made her feel a little stronger to know there was one more person who seemed to be on her side. Even if it was rather disconcerting to be on the same side as a socialist revolutionary. She tried not to think about what it said about her predicament that she was so desperate for allies.

"Thank you, Branson," she said more quietly. "I hope so too."

He gave a smile - far too familiar, but at least it seemed genuine - then inclined his head slightly: a small nod towards a respectful bow.

She left him at the car, and made her way across the busy station, trying to decide just how she felt about her future brother-in-law as she finally accepted that this is what he would be. Sybil, it seemed now, would not change her mind, and Branson would not be cowed or dissuaded.

She still didn't like it, but she had to admit to herself that the more she came to know him, the more he made sense to her as a strange but not impossible choice for Sybil; idealistic, but bold enough to see his idealism through even when it was frowned upon. Incendiary in his ridiculous politics, and hostile to the aristocracy, but apparently on her side when it came to her right to Downton, and kind and sensitive enough to have known exactly what to do to help Matthew when he had needed it.

If he wasn't the chauffeur, and didn't want to drag Sybil off to a country on the brink of civil war, he wouldn't be the worst choice Sybil could have made. As it was… well, at least it seemed she could leave without having to fear something truly drastic would occur before she returned.

And now Matthew knew everything, and would surely stop them from doing anything too stupid if he suspected it. That thought settled her concerns more decisively, and she stepped onto the train confident Sybil and Branson would still be there when she returned.

In an ideal world, Mary could have looked forward a few hours of peace. She had always enjoyed train journeys, particularly when she was alone and free to spend a few hours watching the countryside speed past

This was not an ideal world.

The worst of the Spanish Flu might have moved on from Yorkshire, but she was not yet willing to risk Lily's or anyone else's welfare by allowing any member of their party to share a compartment with strangers. Which meant that Nanny, Anna, and a whining baby were her travelling companions. It was eminently sensible, the only possible choice really, but that didn't mean Mary had to be pleased with the arrangement.

Half an hour after pulling away from the station, she was forced to admit to herself that much as she loved her daughter, she preferred spending time with Lily when they were not confined to a small compartment of a moving train for several hours. Lily had cheered up and no longer seemed to be on the verge of tears, but her new over-excited mood was no more bearable in a small space. She was babbling to herself loudly, waving her little horse in the air and obviously eager to play. While it was really very sweet, the thought of bearing it for the next few hours made Mary want to groan.

She had always been rather puzzled about what to do with small children, and although she was becoming more comfortable playing with Lily in private, somehow she couldn't quite work out how to do it with Anna and Nanny watching her, both of whom were certainly better with children than she was. She would do somehting wrong, would make Lily cry or make herself look foolish, and then have to bear the awkward aftermath for the next few hours. She shuddered even at the thought.

But as she watched Lily play with her little horse, laughing and squirming in Nanny's arms, Mary thought of Matthew, sitting on the floor when it was so clearly a struggle for him just in order to play ridiculous games with a baby he had never seen before. He had no children of his own and no younger siblings, and yet he had spent perhaps half an hour in Lily's company and was better with babies than Mary was.

Not only that, but with her blue eyes and blonde hair, Lily looked more like Matthew's daughter than hers, or even Patrick's. Matthew's hair had not darkened with age as Patrick's had, and still shone with a sunny brilliance that matched Lily's almost perfectly, and his eyes were closer to the mesmerising brightness of Lily's than Patrick's darker pair had been.

And try as she might to imagine Patrick in his place, sitting on the floor and making a fool of himself playing with Lily's toys, her mind would not conjure the image. Patrick would have smiled at a baby, perhaps read to her, showed her off proudly to his friends, but he had never been any better with children than she was. Matthew, within a few minutes acquaintance with Lily, had proved himself to be a better parent than either of them.

Perhaps it should have made her feel ashamed, but when she had seen them together, it had only made her smile.

She's easy to play with, he had said simply, as if it could possibly be that simple. Babies are very sweet and easy to amuse when they're not crying…

And when Matthew had done it, it had seemed easy. And, she realised as she watched her daughter playing with the ribbon she had pulled out of her hair, Lily seemed happy enough that tears were not an immediate threat.

She reached out on impulse and took Lily from Nanny. Lily, apparently delighted, squealed happily and settled easily in Mary's arms. And after a few minutes of sharing a strange one-sided conversation about horses in which Lily's contribution had consisted of chewing her horse's tail and babbling incomprehensibly, Lily granted Mary's silent wish and fell asleep.

For a moment, Mary could hardly believe it had actually worked. Then she felt an unexpected surge of pride at having settled her daughter without relying on Nanny, and her first thought was that she wanted to tell Matthew. Her second thought was that she wouldn't have the chance to do so for at least a week, by which time it would be pointless.

She would miss him, she realised suddenly. She would miss him in London, and she would miss him if he left when she broke the entail.

She was glad to be escaping to London, glad to be away from the heavy grief and watchful eyes that were sure to accompany Papa's birthday (and Patrick's, of course, but that was unmentionable), glad of the freedom that was the one benefit of widowhood, glad that she was finally acting to take control of her own life.

But for the first time in longer than she cared to think of, she found she was already looking forward to returning home.

Northern France, Summer 1918

"Merridale, Johnston, Smith… what a fucking mess, what happened to alphabetical order?… Farrow, Carter, Skinner, Craw… Christ, even the bloody Cs aren't together… sorry, lads, Crawley…"

Matthew jumped to his feet and took his letters. There were three, more than he had been expecting given that he had received one from Lavinia only days ago, and he looked eagerly at the envelopes to identify the handwriting.

The first, predictably, was from Mother. It would be short, her letters always were now she was so busy working with the Red Cross, but he was always so very glad to hear from her.

The second made him smile as he took in the messy scrawl of his childhood friend Ned Reid. It was a wonder the letter had even reached him. When Ned had decided to follow his father into a career in medicine, they had joked that given the state of his handwriting, he had always been destined to be a doctor, while Matthew's elegant script made him totally unsuited to the profession. He would save that until last, Matthew decided. It was sure to make him laugh.

The final letter, however, was decidedly different. The paper was heavier and of higher quality than seemed appropriate for the trenches, where however careful he was, everything he owned somehow ended up wet and muddy (or covered in blood - that was always a possibility here too). He had no idea who might be writing to him on such ridiculous stationery.

Unable to contain his curiosity, and rather glad for any distraction from his current situation, he ripped it open, feeling unaccountably guilty for not having a proper letter-opener for an envelope of such different quality.

He read it. Blinked. Read it again. It was short, to the point, the language formal, impersonal. There was no way he could possibly have misunderstood, but surely, surely this couldn't be true.

He read it again. Of course it was true. He shouldn't even be surprised. The aristocracy might be privileged and pampered and protected in every other aspect of their lives, but the German guns didn't differentiate between viscounts and farm labourers. If anything, officers were being picked off quicker than their men.

He looked away from the letter, feeling sick.

"Christ, Crawley, you look like you've seen a ghost. I hope it's not bad news?"

Matthew blinked several times and looked up to see Lieutenant Ashton looking at him with concern.

"It's from Lord Grantham," Matthew said, staring at the letter in shock.

"Well, what does he want with his lowly middle class cousin then?" Ashton asked. He too was distantly related to a prominent and prosperous family, Lancashire landed gentry for him, and they had laughed about together it sometimes. It was not a laughing matter now.

Matthew swallowed hard. "He wants to change our lives. Mine, Mother's, Lavinia's." He shook his head in disbelief, trying to make himself wake up from this strange state. Was it a dream? A nightmare?

"You're not saying…"

"Yes. Yes, I think I am. Lord Grantham's heir has been killed, and now… well it looks like they've searched the family tree, and I'm all that's left."

"Christ." There wasn't much else to say.

They stared at each other for a moment.

"You've never even met them, have you?" Ashton asked.

"No. My father met them, before I was born I think, but I've only ever read about them in the paper."

Suddenly he saw in his mind's eye the breakfast table, his mother, the paper, an engagement announcement, a conversation he hadn't cared about, a family he had been certain he would never meet. He felt sick.

Those cousins he had cared so little for, who had never cared enough to know of his existence until now, were grieving. That young couple, younger than him he was sure, just starting their lives together with a proud notice in the paper, were dead and widowed. And the widow, he realised suddenly, would be dispossessed of everything. Because it would all go to him.

He startled as someone came up behind him and punched him lightly on the arm, a friendly, joking gesture that he generally didn't mind, but that made him furious in this moment.

"Should we start calling you milord now then, Captain?" It was Peterson, his sergeant, a cheerful lad who could never keep his thoughts or jokes to himself.

"No," Matthew snapped, unable to find the patience to deal with light-hearted banter in the face of this unexpected tragedy. "No you should not. I'm not a Lord, and if the world made any sense at all, I would have no chance of ever being one."

He stood up abruptly and walked off, desperate to get away. It was all so wrong, so terribly, terribly wrong, and despite the resigned and impersonal tone of the letter, Matthew suspected Lord Grantham thought the situation as ridiculous and nonsensical as he did.

But the world didn't make any sense, not anymore. It hadn't done for a long time.

So I'm just to be propped up in a dead man's shoes.

As long as I'm not dead myself by then.

Downton Abbey, 1919

Matthew looked down at his drink and tried not to think about the oblivion that would be his if he surrendered to the desire to drain his glass and refill it and empty it again as many times as it took.

Cousin Robert had surrendered to the urge long ago. He had been drinking steadily throughout the painfully awkward dinner, and although it was clear he was accustomed to imbibing large quantities of alcohol, tonight he seemed to have passed his usual limit and was, for want of a more discreet word, drunk.

In other circumstances, in another time or another world, it might have been the result of joyful overindulgence. Tonight, in these circumstances and in this broken world, it was anything but joyful. It might be Robert's birthday, but nobody at Downton could find the will to celebrate. Not when Patrick's birthday had come and gone only days before.

Matthew understood. It was near enough a year since Patrick Crawley had been confirmed dead, and if it wasn't exactly the anniversary of his death, it had the same effect on the family that hadn't known the truth for months and had found out for certain so close to what should have been his birthday.

Mary was not there.

He had wanted to see her, to know how she was holding up through what must be a difficult week, and he had feared her absence meant she was unwell, or finding the whole situation too difficult to be able to face dinner.

But when he asked, it transpired that not only was she not at dinner, she was not even at Downton. She had gone up to London with Lily, Cousin Robert said, unable to face it all at home. He made no attempt to hide his disapproval of her actions.

In fact, nobody looked very pleased with her decision, from Cousin Cora to Carson the butler, but Matthew thought he understood; to have everyone watching her for signs that she wasn't coping, to have an audience to her grief, would surely be unbearable, and he was certain that had she been there, even he would have been unable to keep from watching her for signs that she was struggling.

And of course, it was here at Downton that she would have heard the news, here that she had spent most of her married life with him, here she would surely see his ghost around every corner. Of course she wanted to be far away.

The whole dinner had been tense, and he had wondered why he had been invited. There were no guests outside the family, and it was clear everyone was thinking of the man he had been forced to replace. Surely, surely his presence could only be making things worse. But now the ladies had gone through to the drawing room, he understood; Robert wanted male company while he drowned his sorrows.

"Even now, he would only just be thirty," Robert said when Carson left. "He was too young for war. Older than Mary, but he always seemed younger. His father…" Robert shook his head. "James was my cousin, and I loved him, but he was never cut out to be a father."

"So many of them were too young," Matthew said, his voice coming out strained.

"And yet they didn't want those of us who were older. I wore the uniform, but it was all for show. Ceremonial, keeping their spirits up, all of that nonsense. I wore the uniform and went to dinners, and Patrick was blown to pieces in some godforsaken corner of France."

Matthew's traitorous hand trembled violently as his mind conjured up images and memories that were a little too vivid.

Blown to pieces. It was not a figure of speech, certainly not an exaggeration. Sometimes there had been so many pieces, it seemed impossible that all that flesh had once belonged to a single person. Sometimes it hadn't. Sometimes it was several men, all their body parts so mixed up together, it was impossible to tell how many, or who they were, or which mutilated arm belonged to which leaking skull…

Matthew put down his glass before he spilt it, trying to remember how to breathe. Robert, thankfully, didn't notice, too intent on finishing yet another drink and immediately refilling his glass.

"I should have known we wouldn't escape unscathed," Robert continued. "No sons to lose, no nephews. Servants all survived, although it was a near-run thing with William, and you've seen Thomas's hand. So it had to be Patrick."

Matthew tried to reply, to say he was sorry, to say anything that might help, that might turn Robert's mind from the dark place it had found. The words wouldn't come. He hid his hands, still trembling, under the table.

"I should never have put so much pressure on Mary to marry him," Robert said. "I thought I was ensuring her future and the future of the estate." He gave a short, humourless laugh. "What a bloody mess I've made of things. A widow with a daughter before she's thirty."

Matthew didn't know what to say. He had hardly supposed Mary to have married purely for love, she seemed too pragmatic for that and the whole situation with Patrick as the heir was too convenient… but the thought of a younger Mary being pushed by her parents to marry her cousin made him unexpectedly sad. She still seemed young to him now, and this was after all she had gone through, all she had lost in the intervening years. Before the war, she could hardly have been much more than a girl.

"I wanted a son," Robert continued, almost as if Matthew weren't there. "I wanted Patrick to be the son I never had. James had never been much of a father in the first place, and when he died, we were the only family Patrick had left. With him and Mary married, it would be as if I'd managed to produce a boy. And they could give me a grandson and everything would be alright." He gave a bitter, humourless laugh. "Selfish of me, I suppose."

"I'm so sorry," Matthew said awkwardly, his voice tight and wrong. He hated this. Apologising over and over again to everyone who had lost family and loved ones in the war, while he was still here. God, it was so unfair. He would have swapped places with any one of these dead men if he could. Especially the wonderful Patrick, the perfect heir missed so much by everyone who had known him.

Matthew was a poor replacement and he knew it. Even the man he had been before the war would have been a disappointment to his aristocratic relatives. Now, as a faded shadow of the man he had once been, he had no hope of living up to the standard set by this cousin he had never known.

"Oh, don't be," Robert said. "It's hardly your fault. And I'm glad you made it through."

I'm not glad. The thought came instantly, automatically, and Matthew tried to push it away. But couldn't quite convince himself that it wasn't true.

"Patrick left her next to nothing, you know," Robert continued sadly. "There's a house in London Mary hasn't sold yet, but not enough money to keep it open properly. She's staying there now, but half the rooms are shut up."

Matthew's traitorous imagination conjured up an image of high-ceilinged rooms with white sheets over the furniture, with Mary drifting through in her black dresses like a dark spirit. Did that house carry as many memories, as many ghosts as Downton?

His heart clenched at the thought, but he pushed it away. She would not be alone. She had Lily, and who could possibly be sad and alone with that delightful, happy baby to keep her company?

Perhaps he had been reading too many novels.

Robert, oblivious to the direction of Matthew's thoughts, was still talking in the same rambling tone.

"James was so sure of his right to Downton, he lived above his means without a thought to the future. He was always clever with investments and all of that side of things, but he always spent too much. I never thought it would turn out like this. There's no provision legally for the wife of the heir. It was all such a waste…"

Matthew took a sip from his glass. How on earth did Robert expect him to reply to all of this?

"We hope she will marry again, of course," Robert continued, staring down into his glass. "She's too young to be alone, and she will hate to be dependent on you, or one of her sisters. But there are more young women needing husbands than there are men looking for wives these days. The war…" he broke off, shaking his head. "With a daughter and no real inheritance, she's hardly in the best position."

Matthew's heart clenched. What was it she had said to him? Women like me don't have a life, and certainly not a life of our own… it's just another waiting room… waiting to remarry, or die… always dependent on someone else…

Of course he had been aware that women's lives tended to be far more precarious than men's, that their lifestyle and privileges were often wholly dependent on their male relatives or husbands. But the uncertainty of his cousin's future was too immediate to push aside or forget about, and he was painfully aware of all he was gaining at her expense.

And he knew, as Robert did not, that she could not rely on Sybil for a secure home, and would never ask for Cousin Edith's help.

"If she married for love…" Matthew began weakly.

"Love and marriage are generally kept separate in our world, I'm afraid. I know it sounds harsh and unromantic, but there are other considerations, and plenty of estates will be in enough trouble that the sons will need to marry fortunes. And she has hardly been eager to meet anyone."

Matthew pushed away his discomfort at the thought of Mary meeting and falling in love with another man. He had no right to an opinion on it, none at all.

"She will always have a home here, as long as I'm alive," he said after a moment.

He would hate that she would be dependent on him, but it was not such a terrible thought. He had no intention of marrying, not anymore, and certainly not soon, and it was a very large house. And he would be able to see little Lily every day if he liked, to have a child around the house even if he might never have one of his own. To take walks with Mary and learn to see the estate through her eyes. To see her at dinner every evening, to share conversations over breakfast, debates over drinks in the library…

For Mary, of course, it would be deeply unfair to be a guest in her own home. But for him… it was not such a terrible prospect at all for him.

"Thank you for that," Robert said. "You're a good man. She won't like it though. She should have been a countess, and if she'd had a son… but there's no point wishing for what can never be. I failed to make a son in nearly thirty years with Cora, I can hardly blame them for the same failure when they had so little time…"

Matthew stared at him. Failure?

"She has a daughter," he said. "If the law were fair, their future and that of the estate would be secure."

"But the law is not fair, and I'm afraid that even if it were possible to leave Mary the money, and even the estate, I couldn't leave the future earl without the ability to keep up the lifestyle the title demands. I couldn't leave you a landless peer."

Matthew was stuck for words again. What did he care for the aristocratic lifestyle he would be expected to live now? He had no objection whatsoever to being a landless peer.

Robert sighed heavily. "Perhaps we should have done better for Mary before the war. But it's too late now." He refilled his empty glass yet again, his expression bleak.

He didn't say anything else for a long time, clearly lost in thought, and Matthew could think of nothing to say that wouldn't make things worse.

He looked down and studied the patterns in the wood of the table, torn between painful sympathy for Mary and Lily and indignance on their behalf. Of course their predicament was awful and deserving of compassion and regret, but that seemed a terribly inadequate excuse to give up and surrender to the tragedy of the situation.

But in the moment, he could think of no adequate alternative.

In the moment, that night could not be understood as anything other than a disaster, and Matthew suspected it must have felt even worse for Robert in the hungover hell he was sure to have woken up to the next morning.

But in retrospect, Robert's birthday represented a sort of watershed. It seemed that in that night of honest drunken despair, Robert had finally let Patrick's ghost go and accepted the reality that he was gone. His name was no longer taboo, his life and death no longer a constant shadow behind every conversation.

The next time they toured the estate, Robert started asking Matthew questions about himself, about his life, and Matthew felt for the first time as if his cousin was beginning to see him as the man he was, rather than an inadequate replacement, a representation of everything that had gone wrong for the Crawley family. They could not speak together of politics, and certainly not of the war, but they found a comfortable ease in discussing a newly-discovered shared interest in history, and their tour became less about necessary instruction and more about Robert sharing the workings of the home he loved in the hope that his heir would, in time, come to love it too.

Emboldened by Robert's new openness, Matthew began to inquire more closely into the way things were done, looking for the ways in which the tenants' lives might be improved and solutions to the financial difficulties that were becoming increasingly evident. He did not deserve this inheritance, and did not want it at Mary's expense. But if it must be his, he would do the best he could with it. The tenants needed it, and if he might one day be providing a home for Mary, she deserved for it to be in the best possible state he could manage.

There seemed to be an impossible list of things to be done to recover from the neglect necessitated by the war, and thinking about all the damage that had been done even in the quiet, idyllic countryside made Matthew feel rather ill if he thought about it for too long. But he was a lawyer, and experienced at taking apart large problems and solving them one step at a time.

By the end of that weekend, he had set his sights on the cottages, part-repaired but just on the verge of beginning to decay again as work had stopped on them sometime during the war. Robert seemed pleased to see him taking an interest, and allowed him, without hesitation, to take on what he soon realised had once been Patrick's project.

Perhaps it was impossible to avoid the awful sense of dislocation and intrusion that was inevitable as he tried his best to live the life Patrick Crawley should have had. But Patrick was gone, and these cottages and the people who were to live there had been all but abandoned, and in rectifying this, perhaps Matthew could find a purpose. He could not bring Patrick back, could not even begin to replace him, but perhaps if he carried on with something Patrick had once believed to be important, he could honour his memory and help the people about whom he was already coming to feel responsible.

And, if he could look after the estate for Mary's sake, and little Lily's, perhaps he could finally find a way of reconciling himself, his new family, and his future tenants to his new position.

Society, including the family who clearly loved them, seemed determined that there was no space for Mary and her daughter. Matthew couldn't accept that. He couldn't fix a broken world, but perhaps he could make space for Mary and Lily in it.

Perhaps, he thought tentatively, Mary might even be pleased with his efforts. Perhaps she would understand that his new interest in the estate arose at least partially from a desire to look after her home, to provide a secure future for her if she chose to remain at Downton. Perhaps she would guess that it was her love of the estate that made him want to love it too.

He could hardly wait for her to come home.

And so, as he made arrangements for a first tour of the cottages next weekend, Matthew began to believe for the first time since he arrived in Yorkshire - perhaps for the first time since he had gone to war - that there might be a way forward.

Author's Note: Thank you so much to everyone who read and reviewed the last chapter, and to everyone who is still reading, despite the longer wait between chapters. I love you all, and will have the next chapter out as soon as I can.

(Also, I'm posting and editing this in a rush and late at night, so I must beg forgiveness for any errors or passages that might not make as much sense to readers as they did when I was writing them.)