Two weeks sailed by after the glasshouse, drawing nearer to port the day James would rejoin his crew for another hard year under the sail of a cawfin.
Two maddening weeks he'd spent sarnied between his own resolve and his father's passive aggression, as they spent hours up to dinner in Lord Grantham's library researching loopholes in the primogeniture laws binding the estate.
"Capital day, isn't it?" his father went on chelpin' cheerily, breaking the everlong silence between them as he glanced out the library windows at another happy sunset at Downton. "A gentleman's life in the quiet-and safe-countryside is surely all a man can ever dream of."
"Is it?" James muttered a dry remark, turning another page of his father's dusty old law books without ever glancing up at the window.
"I should say it is, dear boy," his father insisted gaily. "It's like the good old reverend once said, 'These young lads who go to sea, they expect lots of blood, wonderful adventure, gruesome illustrations, and a good deal of cheap sentiment. And they get it. Though as they get older, their tastes change'."
"You don't say," James uttered.
Because what hope was there in saying anymore otherwise?
The only "safe and quiet" he'd be getting was in putting the entire wide berth of an ocean between he and his father's mad ideas to marry him off to some other poor girl's old and proud family.
Just two more bloody days.
If papa wanted to spend all of their time together bickering about not staying in Yorkshire, then it was certainly his father's right to do with their quality "father-and-son time" as he pleased.
Even so, two days couldn't come fast enough for James.
With no gambles to place against a raging, unpredictable sea, James's lithe athletic mind was tormented by boredom. Absolutely sure he'd rather hang on a cross by both his lug'oles than keep listening to law learning.
And though he'd never admit it to his father, James's eyes wandered from the dry-as-dust law volumes to the door, each time a lady passed by the library.
Secretly hoping that lady was Millicent.
James knew it was brutal to himself and to her both.
That after meeting Miss Crawley, he couldn't stop seeing his girl from the graveyard in the heiress's eyes.
And for such a beautiful name like hers, surely, it had to be a lucky coincidence that she and Miss Crawley were both called Millicent.
"Are you sure you're not imagining her, Mr. Moody?" James couldn't stop thinking of the gravedigger's words. "Nice young ladies don't wander about cemeteries alone tendin' to the dead, ye know."
And wasn't he right?
Why would a Crawley socialite-all the more so, Patrick's little sister-care anything about a "commoner" like James's mother, or how much it meant to him that she be remembered?
It just wasn't what an upper class girl would do.
And what's more, James had already made it painfully clear to Miss Crawley that he intended to marry for love, not for anyone's prestige, and only on his own terms.
Had he left it at that and let them both go happily on...James might've stopped himself all those times he'd searched for Lady Millicent in every girl's face who walked by him at Downton.
Only to run into the smiling blue eyes of Lady Sybil sneaking by, or the soft pardon of a brunette housemaid accidently brushing his sleeve in the grand Gallery when hurrying about her laundry duties.
Whether it was Millicent's intention to avoid him, or just his luck that he missed any chance he might've had to catch her walk by, their respective schedules never allowed for even a brief greeting between them.
Sybil, after all, was a jealous cousin and arranged for all shopping trips and picnics with Millie to be far away from the coming-out frenzy at Downton.
Until by chance, James looked up again from his law books, and there she was.
Making her chic entrance through the eastern door of the library.
Her basil green jacquard skirt gracefully silhouetting her waist with twin rolls of brass buttons. Smartly dressed in a ruffled shirt the color of soft French beige with a dainty chiffon bow tied around her ruffled high-collar. Her brow wrinkled in deep concentration as her eyes eagerly scanned a book that was apparently so good, she forgot she wasn't actually the last soul at Downton.
So engrossed in her walking and reading was she, that anyone else in the room was just an afterthought.
Including that sorry idiot for a sailor, who had only just jilted her two weeks ago, and whose jaw now hung slightly parted and useless for reminding him of how to breathe as he studied her.
With eyes quick enough to spot a masthead light clear across the Atlantic-or so he believed-James could only just make out the title of her book.
Etiquette and Advice Manuals - The Housemaid and Her Duties and How to Perform Them.
'Odd,' he thought to himself. 'What would a girl like her want with a book like that?'
Truly, there was nowt so queer as rich folk.
''What might she think then of Briscoe Fletters, I wonder?'
Lady Millicent slipped into a seat at a writing desk across the room, cozily guarded by aisles of tall bookcases around her, and an inspiring reading view of the estate through three long bay windows in front of her.
And wasn't that just what he'd asked for?
After the glasshouse, Miss Crawley had carried on, not even bothering to acknowledge that the sailor existed in her uncle's house anymore.
James might as well have been the footman or the gardener, as much as she seemed to care.
And wasn't everything so nice in her garden, that she enjoyed the privilege of living so obliviously with the rest of the world revolving around her?
At least, that's what James told himself to sleep better at night.
' I can't face her again. She's perfectly unapproachable,' he'd argued with himself endlessly. 'It won't change anything. Even if I wanted to marry her, what sort of world could I offer her that would compare to the one she has here? I can't give her a world like Downton, even as an officer. This one is the only one she knows, and one day, she'd resent me for it.'
And besides, Millicent hadn't officially made her debut in society yet, which made it more improper for a debutante to be alone with any man, and least of all, the least respectable ones like James.
It was for the best then that she barely noticed him in that library.
But it couldn't stop James from unconsciously closing his law book, as he took her in.
His heart dropping anchor for those soft sunlit eyes, full chocolate lashes, and the "well-to-do snootish" way her chin curved into her kissable neck, where her golden brown hair fell in a soft country French braid over her shoulder.
A spoiled little rich girl or not, Millicent was stuff for a man's dreams.
Tearing him to pieces between that beckoning pull toward the young heiress and his own refusal to accept Sir James's insulting bribe.
After all, like him, wasn't Millicent also caught in the middle of all this?
She was so tragically a pleasant girl, and had they been allowed to meet by chance rather than bribery, perhaps she would've made him a happy husband, had it not been for that cruel twist of being a Crawley.
And how was it James believed so strongly that he had to have this allusive girl from the graveyard anyway?
With each fading year, he'd likely never meet her again.
Would it be so bad then to give his heart to someone else and still be happy? Could a girl like Millicent really be so hard to love?
James glanced across the table at his father, as a darker realization fell like a cold dead weight into his stomach.
I will not be the man you were when you abandoned mama.
Despite all the things his father failed to mention since mama's death, Miss Annie was one of those things James already knew about long before his father suddenly remarried.
And mama, after all, had a gentler forgiving nature than James.
But it wasn't until that moment, watching Millicent from afar, that James realized it wasn't just his father he was going to war with by refusing to marry her.
And all for what? That villainous ha-ha! moment when he proved he was the "better" man?
Was it any fault of Lady Millicent's that she should think herself undesirable because James never let go of the grudge against his father?
Undesirable was anything but the truth.
As another Lady Crawley, "Millie", as everyone called her, was already rumored to be a promising debutante this season.
And the wolves were closing in on her.
Quite a number of respectable monied gentlemen dropped in to see Sir James to "catch up" for a game of cricket or shooting.
A bid for her hand could always be counted on.
'Limey bastards,' James thought to himself. 'At least, she shouldn't be married off to some tosser who's only interested in getting heirs out of her. Ah'm not any too polite for being able to take my own part, if any man so much as steps out of tow once with her, I should think myself no kid to bash a penny-chucker straight into his-"
"If you continue to sit here brooding ineffectually rather than going after her, I will have nowt else to do with you," Mr. Moody muttered as casually as if they were still talking about the weather. Not even looking up at James as he continued underlining passages in his old law volumes. "Don't let her get away from you again, James. Take it from your old father, who is so full of regret. Time is so regrettably brief."
"Sir?" James was caught off guard by his father's abrupt utterance.
"If you won't take my word for how I know she's the one for you," Mr. Moody said. "Then go and ask her why yourself."
And with a rather suspect knowing look in his eyes, the older Mr. Moody closed his law volume, and removed his spectacles.
"I'm feeling that pinch in my legs again. I'm off for a walk before they announce dinner," he said, as he stood from his seat to take his leave. "Carry on proper, James."
And as Mr. Moody's feet shuffled slowly away from their table, James sat perplexed over his father's cryptic meaning.
By any chance, does he know something I don't?
And knowing that he'd be damned to at least not try out his father's advice, James stood and steadily made his way toward Miss Crawley.
Still a Nervous Nelly as ever for following after a woman he'd refused to be promised to, but knowing that now was as good a chance as any to make bold and ask Millicent Crawley that burning question that had anguished him for years.
That question only hindered by his mind racing, as he wondered how he of the middling class might properly greet the heiress, according to the etiquette of her gentry society.
"Miss Crawley, your grand lady-ness, by any chance, have you ever dug a grave before...no."
"Lady Crawley, what I'd said before was not a reflection of what I meant, in such a way that...no, no, that's yonderly. I should say less, not ramble on."
"Miss Crawley, would you do me this kindness in promenading with me around your garden, so that I might prove to you again what a reet berk ah'm?"
James stilled in his steps, realizing all at once that he was standing right behind her, and being so near to her, he couldn't hear the noise in his head anymore.
Tracing his skipping heart with her finger following across each line of the page she was reading.
Her hands so much like the girl's from his memory that had gently touched his back when she whispered, 'I'll stay here with you and keep watch.'
Millicent stopped reading, picking up her fountain pen to write down some quick notes, giving James a chance to read the passage she was studying so eagerly.
It is pretty clear that a young girl going into the service of victualing, must be very vain if she thinks she is likely to know best how her work ought to be done. She is far less likely to improve than if she had the disposition to compare and practise different methods, and so prove to her own satisfaction which is best.
And finally seeing his way in, James rambled off in jitters to her all at once.
"Nar'n, Miss Crawley, if it's maid's work ye fancy thi'sen learning, there's a reet grand fella I once passed a pipe with back end in South America, who wouldn't shut thi' cake 'oil, braunging on 'bout how he knew a waller who knows a waller who was swab-maties with a ship cook, whose sister's brother's lass, just gotten her'sen off t'werk as a matron aboard a Cunard. He's a reight un, that un is. I can dash off a letter t'him fer ye, once I've gotten away back to ship, should ye want me to?"
And completely caught unawares, Millicent's eyes dragged away from her book into his, realizing all at once that she was no longer alone in the library, and with none other than James Moody.
"What?" the stunned lady mumbled faintly.
And recognizing the confusion in her eyes, James remembered all at once he was still at Downton, and that he should remember what mama had always said about poshing up his way of speaking when in the presence of a gentle-lady.
"Eh, um," James scrambled his brain to try and translate for her. "If it's the way of a housemaid you wish to know, I once made the acquaintance of a shipmate in South America, who couldn't shut his mouth up, bragging that he had a mate, who knew a mate who knew a cook, who had a sister, who had a brother all her own, whose wife was only just employed in service as a matron stewardess with Cunard Shipping Line. If it pleases you, miss, I can write to this gentleman I know and ask him on your behalf more about the profession of victualling."
"Yes, thank you, Mr. Moody. I understood your meaning the first go around," Millicent said, daintily folding her written notes and slipping them between the pages of her closed book. "What I failed to understand, is why you'd assume I'd want any help from you, when I never asked for it?"
"You seemed keen on learning it, was all...and lost," James guessed. "And I know something about that sort of thing. So, I couldn't toil with not offering it to ye. What's the point of knowing anything, if you can't use it to help another along the way?...Though, if you don't mind me asking, why are you so interested in housemaids, miss?"
"It's none of your business what I read," Millicent said, dropping her copy of Persuasion by Jane Austen on top of the advice manual, and pushing the stack out of James's way to the other side of the table. "I'm not your..."
She left that sentence painfully unfinished, reminded again of those last miserable words he spoke to her in the glasshouse. Stopping herself just short of using the word "wife".
"Yours to command," she finished quietly instead.
But James's eyes were soft with understanding as he said to her, "You've nowt to fear from me, Miss Crawley. Whatever your reasons are for having that book, I won't tell a soul...Our secret, it is...Just you and I."
Leaving her struck by those same words she had spoken to him when they met as children in the graveyard.
Was it just a lucky coincidence...or did he somehow recognize her, after all these years?
James waited for her answer.
If Lady Crawley was really the girl he remembered from the graveyard, she would know those words.
If she showed any sign that she recognized them, then he would know at last that he'd finally found the one he'd been looking for after so many long years.
And if that were the truth, for the sake of feck, why wouldn't she just say-
"You shouldn't be here," Millicent told him firmly, scanning the empty library. Wary of the afternoon shadows of trees playing against the library window, as if at any moment, one of them might materialize into a snooping servant hunting for blackmail-or even worse-another Crawley. "I am alone and unchaperoned."
And unable to stand his hypocritical and maddeningly confusing gazes any longer, Millicent stood to take her leave of him. Eager to shut out James's infuriatingly beautiful winter-blue eyes that ran after in quiet pursuit of her.
"Are you asking me to leave you, Millicent?" Moody questioned her gently. "You may ask anything of me plainly, miss."
And she knew she should have stopped it there.
How dare he call her by her given name like a familiar, as if they were chappies in the schoolyard?
As if...he knew what her hearing him say it would do to her, in that charmingly working-class accent of his.
Just as if he'd spent years swearing all of his affection into every syllable of that one name.
As though he'd go under the earth to take on the cold rigid walls of class between them, and show her just how much a man could make her fall in love with the sound of her own name too, just by the way he whispered it back to her.
"If putting us both in a bad way didn't stop you from cornering me like this, I imagine sending you away won't stop you either."
"You said it yourself, Miss Crawley. Sailors are notorious gamblers. I'd take the risk on it, no matter what it is, and may the devil hold it against me," he said. "The truth of it is, I've wanted a chance to speak to you since that day in the glasshouse. I never imagined this would be my only one, but as you can see, I'm an opportunist."
"Quite," Millicent agreed, her brow perking questionably at him. "I presume then that you have something more to add on the topic of my snootishness?"
"I've come to apologize."
"I never asked for that either."
"But I want to," James said. "I know you never wish to hear from me again, but I've decided that though a snoot you may very well be, I don't give a damn. I can't stop making these maddening comparisons of you. I need to know the truth about us. Because no matter how much I fight it, my heart swears that it loves you, Millicent."
"How dare you," Miss Crawley set him straight. "It was only two weeks ago that your heart was someone else's, and now that you've found out I'm a Crawley and that my name is tied to some bloody fortune, suddenly you've changed your mind?"
"Well, what am I to say for myself then?" James remarked with a coquettish wink at her. "You're a cinder for me, Miss Millicent."
"Get out," she ordered him.
"I was here first."
"No, his Lordship was here first, and being his lordship's niece, I hold dominance over you here."
"Says who?"
"Says everyone!"
"Oh, is that what they tell you at your soufflé?" James returned, making that last word sound huffishly snobbish.
"Pardon? Don't you mean a soirée?"
"Aye, lass, just as I'd said."
"I'll be going now, Mr. Moody, and for your sake, I hope this is the last we'll be seeing of each other," she sternly informed him. "Please forget about what happened in the glasshouse, and understand unmistakably that I no longer wish to know your acquaintance. I warn you to keep your distance, or I will be forced to act accordingly."
And having nothing else to use in making good on her threat, she held her fountain pen en garde against James's chest, which truly made her feel good and powerful in the moment. Though it only made the bellicose Miss more endearing to the solidly built sailor, with only a tiny feeble pen holding them back from each other.
"I go away to sea in two days' time," James continued, as he stepped toward her, unbridled by her menacing pen. "I intend to study as an officer, and be taken on by a White Star ship. I won't be coming back to Yorkshire. So, if there is owt you wish to tell me, Miss Crawley, you won't have another chance after this."
"I took fencing lessons, you know. I could take both of your eyes out in one go," Millicent warned him in a whisper, as her wandering gaze advanced over the strapping, hardened seaman from the bottom-up. "Don't underestimate me."
"I never once had," James's own whisper was husky and honest. So near to her now that Lady Crawley's back was pushed up against the bookcase firm behind her. Pinning her safely between the classic ballads of torrid erotic poetry...and him.
Her hands still squeezed tightly around her pen, that kept her soft breasts from smashing into his rock solid core, as his gaze dallied with her stunned pretty eyes.
Stunned, but not frightened.
Relieved, more so, that she no longer had to hide that undid ache for him that matched the longing in his own eyes.
Her heart pounding in breathless anticipation as Moody leaned into her, with both his hands steadied against the bookcase, so his arms rested over either of her shoulders. Caging her in such a comfortable way that made her feel rather safe than confined to her own private Bastile. His lips so dangerously close to hers now that their breaths mingled as one. She could feel every beat of his heart hard against her beared fist, as he whispered, "Even after a hundred years, I couldn't ever again take you for granted, Millie, in the same way as I did in that glasshouse. Allow me to make good by setting it right between us."
"Don't look at me that way," she beckoned him breathily. "It's driving me mad."
"How should a moneyless seaman look at a spoilt little princess as high and mighty as you, Miss Crawley?" he asked her, his tenderness in constant tension with his resentment for her highborn society.
"Not like that. It's so cruel," she insisted. "Because I wonder if it's the same way you look at her."
"Darling, don't be a fool. That woman I told you I had loved," James confessed to her. "Was a girl from a graveyard."
Millicent stilled.
Her hands gradually loosening around her pen, as her eyes earnestly searched his, grappling with the realization that steadily came together for her.
"A graveyard, Mr. Moody?"
"If you are her, miss," he told her. "Then I've always just been James to you."
"James." Hearing herself say his given name aloud, rather than just in the illicit affair of her intimate fantasies, excited her more than it scared her into remembering her modesty. Even if she wanted to believe all that she was hearing, she wouldn't be damned to make the same mistakes she made with him in the glasshouse. "What exactly do you remember about a graveyard?"
James rested his head against her dark wispy curls, the golden sunset through the library window setting fire to the hints of blonde in his brown hair, as his nose only just touched hers.
"Everything," his soft murmur tickled the tip of her nose, bringing her to chills. "I've not forgotten a moment. Since the day I met her, I've wanted to find her every year since, and thank her for never forgetting me either...Was it you, Miss Crawley? Had you come to the graveyard for me while I was at sea?"
"I don't know how to answer that. Not while knowing how it will hurt us both in the end," Millicent whispered to him. "Because if I were that girl, I could never ask you to abandon everything you love at sea for me."
"Don't worry yourself about that now. The only question that matters to me is if you love me," James told her. "I've been going mad these last two weeks thinking of the way you looked at me in that glasshouse. I'm a bloody fool, Millie. I haven't stopped regretting everything I told you, and I've come back to make it right."
"We can't talk about this now," Millicent told him. "They'll be coming down for dinner soon, and anyone could be listening."
"Anno, I can't keep you long, but I'd be worked up in a humor all night until I've heard you say it," James replied. "Are you her, my love? Because if that is true, then I have made a terrible mistake. It was you that I meant I'm in love with. It was always you, from our very beginning. Tell me I'm not too late and that you'll still have me."
"I won't," she shut the idea down immediately, her answer burning with resentment and frustration that she knew wasn't really meant for him. But another look at him softened her into whispering more gently, "I can't have you, James."
"If you want me, Miss Crawley, I will promise myself to you, once I am done serving my indenture," he told her. "Just tell me you want me, and I vow to be yours."
"Please don't torment me with a choice I can't take."
"Is there another man who makes you feel this way?" his challenge to her was soft-spoken. "Am I too late to be him?"
"No," she couldn't lie to him about that. "There has never been another, save for you."
"Then won't you have me, Millicent?" he asked again of her. "I want to marry you straight away. I'll study law, or become a proper gentleman, or whatever it is I must do to make your family accept me. I don't care what I must do to have you for my wife. Tell me I've not lost my chance at happiness over my own ignorance."
"No, James. You don't realize what you're asking for."
"I'm asking for your hand," he said surely. "Marry me, Miss Crawley. I wanted no one but you, and that's my honest truth."
Millicent placed her finger against his lips before he said anymore.
"You can't make these promises," she stopped him. "There's no way for you to keep them. It wouldn't be easy for us to marry, even with my father's blessing."
"Then we will find a way together to live comfortably. I wouldn't be a cruel or demanding husband to you, and I intend to love you fully," James tried to convince her otherwise. "Whatever else you want from me, there's nothing I wouldn't do for you. It's as easy as that."
"But I can't ask that of you, James," she sighed regretfully. "If you had to choose me over the sea, would you still love me in the end or only hate me for it?"
"I thought I could hate you for it, being a Crawley and all," he said. "I came here thinking I'd be damned to even try loving you, but you're all I can think of. Try as I have to fight it, I can not pretend any longer that being without you is the best course for us. So, if you are the girl I met in Scarborough years ago, please tell me the truth, before I go on searching elsewhere."
"I do not have an answer for you, James."
"Then think on this in the meantime."
And then James Moody's lips came crushing into hers, stealing away Millicent's next breath for any counterarguments she had left to put up against him. The lingering rich roasted notes of his afternoon tea traded on her lips, mingled with a hint of cigar smoke. Making her body surrender fully into his, as their heated argument continued fervently on in a contest of kisses, each trying to one-up the other in proving whose side of this debate was the most convincing. Until James's gradually deepening kiss left her breathless as much as it left her wordless. Gently nipping at her lower lip as his own lips dragged away from her mouth to her soft cheek. All so the girl could finally let go of a long-held shuddering breath she'd been holding all the while. Having never been kissed by any man before to remember when she should be bothered by something so earthly as breathing.
"I'll love you, no matter what should come between us," James committed himself to her. "Please accept me, Millicent."
"James," she implored him. "Please don't tease me like this."
And much to her regret, James would do anything if she asked him for it.
He let go of her.
Steadily pulling himself away as he took a step away from Millicent. Until it was only that pleaful look in his beautiful eyes left to make her second guess herself.
Damn being a lady. Damn her position in society. Damn settling for what others decided was best for her. She wished to be all her own and with him.
And if being Lady Millicent Crawley was the only thing keeping them apart now, then damn that name too.
Damn it all to hell, if her life wasn't one with him that she could choose for herself.
Except...for one more damning thing she hadn't counted on.
Life as "Lady Crawley " was so simple and straightforward before, with all of her decisions already made for her. Attend finishing school, mature into a lady, become a wife, become a mother...and then die a lady.
It was the same exhaustingly "safe way to live" for too many girls like her, and that might have worked just fine for Lady Millicent Crawley.
But the same couldn't be said for Mrs. Millicent Moody.
This new path for herself...it was so full of choices that only an hour ago weren't hers to make.
And many of them were frightening and confusing and tore her between two realities of the same dream that ruefully contradicted each other.
To be a woman all her own in the world...and to love unreservedly James Paul Moody.
Without her Crawley name to stop her anymore, there was only one ocean left to cross between her and James. Keeping those two precious halves of her dream from ever touching each other.
Neither Millicent nor James had reached their 20th year yet.
Though they felt they loved each other deeply...how much more grounded and happier that love could be once they were allowed to become the people they dreamed to be.
And once Millicent decided that there was only one way she could ensure they'd both be happy in the end, she stepped into James's arms again.
Her fingers entwining with the warmth of his, as she drew him closer to her.
Rather tenderly, he thought, as if he were everything in this world that meant anything to her.
And nothing prepared James for the gentle way she rested her head against his chest, allowing him to realize what it felt like to protect something so precious to him, as his nose lightly graze the crook of her neck. Having never done anything so intimate with anyone before her, James followed his heart into it. His eyes closing to the buzzing warmth sweeping over him, with every part of his body that surrendered to hers.
How effortless, it was, to be with her like this.
How much he would miss her at sea.
"I will marry you," she vowed to him. "I'd be very happy to become your wife someday, James...But not now...There are still things we both want for ourselves in the meantime. And no matter how happy we make each other, we will always be haunted by what we never got to accomplish. And so, after you've become the officer you hope to be, and you've made your name with White Star...Should you still love me the same, I will meet you in America after a year's time. Find yourself a ship that'll bring you to me at port in New York, near the Statue of Liberty. I'll wait for you there. Promise me you'll meet me there?"
James squeezed her tightly against him, leaving a soft peck against the loosen curls around her ear.
"One year it is then," her sailor gave her his word. "I promise to meet you there. I wouldn't miss it for the world, Millie."