Fic: A Girl in Black (7/?)
Title: A Girl in Black (7/?)
Author: mrstater
Fandom: Downton Abbey
Characters & Pairings: Mary Crawley/Richard Carlisle, Violet Crawley, Cora Crawley, Edith Crawley, Sybil Crawley
Chapter Word Count: 3891
Chapter Summary: Following Mary's return to Downton in disgrace, her grandmother, mother, and sisters are all keen to offer commentary on her behaviour in London with Sir Richard--and, in the process, provide unintentional insight into her heart.
Author's Notes: Once again, huge thanks to ju_dou who encouraged me to try something a bit daring with this chapter, and then helped me get it right, and also to all of you who continue to be the best, most enthusiastic readers ever. Also to my British friends, hope you all have a lovely weekend celebrating the Queen's Diamond Jubilee--in true Downton Abbey style, of course. ;)
Just in case you're missing Richard in this chapter, I posted a little smutty one-shot, Bold and Modern Plumbing, that will hopefully tide you over till his next appearance in AGiB. :)
Previous Chapters |
7. The Talk
"If we examine the situation from a purely aesthetic standpoint," says Granny, eying the cover of The Sketch, which goggles up at them from the tea table in the sunny morning room of the Dower House, "which I believe is the proper way of looking at it--"
"Aesthetic?" Mama repeats, and Mary thinks, with some annoyance, that her mother's expression matches the one on her own face captured forever by a tabloid photographer, gawking at the well-endowed cow on the sign of the Cave of the Golden Calf.
"Yes, aesthetic." Granny presses her thin lips together into a colourless line. "From an objective, aesthetic standpoint, Sir Richard Carlisle is a handsome man." She looks at the newspaper again, her eyebrows arching high on her forehead. Mary notes a tinge of pink on Granny's wizened cheek as she continues, "Such striking bone structure. Are you certain he's not aristocratic stock? His bearing is certainly proud and distinguished."
"Oh, he's very proud." Mary sips her tea. "Who wouldn't be, to rise from selling newspapers on the streets of Edinburgh to publishing a million copies a day? And that's only the Daily Telegram, not the evening edition or his other papers."
Granny's mouth opens in a small o as her eyes dart from Mary to The Sketch and back to Mary again. "You don't think he's handsome? I suppose he must be near your papa's age, but--"
"Didn't you say he was objectively handsome?" Mary catches her mother's eye, twinkling for the first time since her return in disgrace. Always willing to form an alliance with anyone who will side with her against her difficult mother-in-law.
"If you're saying you're considering him for his money, Mary," says Granny, "that's an even more vulgar reason than the one I suspected. But I know that's not the case. Don't pretend otherwise."
"I'm not considering him at all, Granny. I've scarcely met the man half a dozen times."
"The most recent, unchaperoned at a place of dubious morality."
Mary purses her lips; obviously Aunt Rosamund neglected to mention Richard's rather dramatic appearance at the train station before they left London.
"Dubious?" echoes Mama, her voice taking on that choked quality that gripped it yesterday; Mary sees the blue eyes well with fresh tears, too, and barely restrains herself from rolling her own. "I should say that the morality of any place called the Cave of the Golden Calf is rather decidedly lacking."
So much for allies.
Granny hmphs and takes a long drink of her tea, as if to fortify herself. "O'Brien told my maid Simmons that when Robert saw The Sketch, he flung it down on the floor. A if he were Moses casting down the Ten Commandments at the sight of the Hebrews dancing around the golden calf."
"He probably saw them dancing the one-step," says Mary, "to a ragtime tune. Followed by an Argentine tango."
For a moment she thinks Mama might leave the tea table weeping. Granny, on the other hand, looks more triumphant than scandalised; she sits up straighter in her chair, as if she's a queen presiding on her throne, her mouth twisting into a smirk for half a moment before she pours herself a fresh cup of tea, dropping three lumps of sugar into it with the silver tongs.
"If tangos are being danced," she says, "then this unfortunate discussion is no longer merely a wise idea, but a necessary one."
"Discussion?" Mary says, feeling dizzy.
"Yes, my dear," Granny replies. "The one you would, ordinarily, have on the eve of your wedding, which circumstances now demand occur prematurely."
Mama draws in her breath through her teeth, through which she grinds out the words, "That talk may well be timely, but as Mary's mother I should still be the one to give it."
"Oh, you can still offer her whatever little gems mothers in America bestow upon their daughters on Mary's wedding night. Or whenever you deem it appropriate. But I think what she requires now is some sage English instruction."
Mary gulps her tea, and thinks longingly of the cocktail she drank at the Cave. And also that longing is perhaps not the ideal sentiment to express at this moment.
"My dear," says Granny, beckoning Mary's attention with the tink of her teaspoon against the cup, "I trust you have some notion that the male sex are afflicted with..." She raises her teacup to her lips, muffling her words slightly as she goes on. "...passions, which can only be satisfied by the feminine form."
When she lowers her cup, she looks as if she has swallowed something distasteful. Mary tries to glance away, but Granny's pale eyes pin her gaze like an insect on a school child's display board.
"A well-bred lady does not herself experience such passions--or should not." She glances down at the newspaper on the tea table. "No matter how appealing the notion may be when presented by a charming man who dimples beneath a stunning pair of cheekbones."
"Dimples and cheekbones? Heavens," says Mary, as coolly as the polished silver teapot reveals her complexion to be, though Mama blushes quite as red as the raspberries on the sponge. "Careful, Granny, or you may find yourself in danger of being swept away on a tide of passion and middle-class breeding."
"Mary," Mama chides, but Granny snorts.
"I paid my dues to your grandpa's passion forty years ago. Believe me, Mary, when I tell you that while men vow to worship women with their bodies, it is the wife who makes sacrifice on the altar of the marriage bed. It's an uncomfortable, untidy business, and whatever poets and gothic novelists would like you to believe, a woman's only satisfaction in the act comes when she produces an heir and her duty is thankfully at an end."
"I would have to respectfully disagree with your grandmother," Mama says through her teeth, leaning toward Mary as if Granny cannot hear this aside.
"Of course you would," replies Granny. "You're American, and you never achieved the satisfaction of giving your husband a son."
"That's rather a medieval way of looking at it, don't you think?" asks Mama, with no more reaction to the tweak than a blink.
Mary, however, winces. "It isn't, so long as medieval inheritance laws still rule the land."
Granny recoils in her chair as if serpents have sprung from Mary's coiffure. Her mouth hangs crookedly agape as her eye darts sideways at her daughter-in-law.
"It seems we have bigger matters than Mary's sexual education to concern us," says Mama, the glimmer returning to her eyes as she takes a bite of raspberry sponge. "She's made friends with Liberals."
Mary can only be grateful for her mother's bait-and-switch, though it doesn't extricate her from the subject of sex entirely.
"I probably shouldn't discuss this with you now," Mama says as they walk back to the big house from Granny's, "but don’t carry your grandmother's words with you to your wedding night. Too many girls meet their husbands in terror. And while the first time is uncomfortable, it's also a new and exciting time of learning to trust and letting your husband know you in a way no other person on earth does."
Mary fixes her gaze resolutely on the lane, the brim of her hat shading her face and hopefully hiding her flush as her thoughts instantly turn to Richard. Of how easily she opened her mind and her heart to him; of how on their very first acquaintance he pegged them as the same; of how she felt in his arms, pressed close to him, and of wanting to feel his mouth on hers.
"That's why it's so very important to choose a husband you can respect as a friend and grow to love," Mama goes on. "If you don't already."
"And I suppose you think that husband should be Cousin Matthew?" Mary pauses beneath the outstretched branch of an oak that sprawls over the lane. "Wanting his house and title is hardly a good foundation for friendship."
Mama turns. "If you don't think you can ever go beyond that, you're wise to steer clear of Matthew." With a sigh of resignation, she adds, "Much as I'd like to see you always settled here, as Countess. As would your father."
"He never will, though, as I can only be Countess in the event of his death."
Harsh lines tug at Mama's features, belying her age. "That's morose."
"Isn't everything," Mary says, walking on, palms open at her sides, "since Patrick drowned in a shipwreck?"
For a moment she walks in silence, but at the turning into the Abbey park, the crunch of Mama’s shoes in the gravel brings her alongside Mary once again. "What about Evelyn Napier?"
"What about him?"
"You're good friends, aren't you? How would you like it if I invited him up sometime?"
Mary's eyes smart; after a second of feeling as if the wind has been knocked out of her, she blinks back the tears and her breath returns in short gasps, which she quickens her footsteps to match.
"You're the Countess of Grantham," she throws back over her shoulder. "Invite whomever you wish to your house, regardless of whether I like it or not. But at least be honest about the fact that you're no longer concerned about marrying me off to get me out of the way. You're worried about my virtue."
~*~
Mary strides through the front door without her customary word of greeting and smile for Carson, only to feel the brush of his hand as he presses something into hers. She glances up at him in question, his face drawn into rather grim lines, though his dark eyes dart downward, directing her gaze to the slip of paper he's given her. Another telegram, she realises, her stomach giving a little twinge.
"What's that?" asks Mama, coming in behind her, arms raised to unpin her hat.
"Oh nothing," Mary answers, quickly, glancing up at the butler again and seeing his eyebrows twitch guiltily as he takes mama's hat. "Just a scrap that fell out of my pocket earlier. Carson thought it might be important. But it's not."
"Yes, but what is it?"
"My ticket stub," Mary lies, crumpling the telegram in her fist as Mama's gaze drops to her hand. "From Pygmalion. He thought I might want it for my treasure box. But I suppose you'd rather I throw it in the rubbish bin."
"If only you could do the same with the language you heard in that play," Mama mutters on her way to the stairs, though she puts on a smile for Sybil and Edith, who are, at that moment, descending. She sweeps Sybil back up with her, an arm around her youngest daughter's shoulders as she says it's been a while since they had a good heart-to-heart chat and won't she join her in her room for a bit?
Sybil glances back at Mary with a round-eyed look that says she'd rather have a heart-to-heart chat with her big sister--they've hardly interacted since her return, almost as if their parents are keeping the impressionable younger girl from her corruptive influence--but Mary's interest is more piqued by the absence of jealousy on Edith's face as she continues downstairs without a glimmer of her usual resentment at being the overlooked middle child. In fact, her lips twist in the same self-satisfied smirk Mary imagines Edith must have worn as she penned her letter about dear Cousin Matthew.
"You're losing your edge," Edith says, pausing on the last red-carpeted step, her hand resting on the finial of the banister, as if to diminish the advantage of height Mary has over her. "A theatre ticket fell out of your walking jacket pocket? Really, Mary? Lucky for you, Mama was distracted by the hope that you've seen the error of your ways. I, on the other hand, saw the boy from the telegraph office deliver that." She nods at Mary's fist clutching the crumpled telegram. "And the other one yesterday."
A glance at Carson reveals him to blanche as he sidles past the girls toward the servants' staircase, presumably to give Mama's hat to O'Brien. Mary rolls her eyes and steps around Edith to mount the steps.
"Who's sending you telegrams?" Edith calls after her.
Mary stops on the first landing to peer down over the carved railing at her. "Believe it or not, Edith, some of us correspond with people who aren't our sisters. Much as I appreciated the charming letter you were so good as to send me."
"I imagine a newspaper magnate doesn't have much room in his schedule for lengthier correspondence than a telegram."
Bristling, Mary tries to convince herself the reaction is due to Edith's having guessed the author of the telegram, and not that she feels slighted by Richard's abrupt form of communication. A letter would be too slow, and Downton's lack of telephone leaves no other option.
"I do wish you'd stop boring me and come to the point," Mary says; Edith, like a cat, always did like to play with her food. "Which, presumably, is that you intend to tell on me. Just like when we were children, and your greatest delight was in getting me in trouble."
"On the contrary," Edith replies. "I think you're doing quite an admirable job getting yourself in trouble without my interference."
Mary watches from above as Edith turns and walks smugly across the hall; when she's just passed beneath the archway to the saloon, Mary calls out, "It's from Diana Manners. She remembered you to me the other night--as the débutante who attended Lady Sheffield's charity ball as the Ugly Duckling."
Without waiting to see Edith's stricken expression, Mary turns and resumes climbing the stairs, unfolding the crumpled telegram that is not, of course, from Diana Manners.
MARY. STOP. SKETCH EDITOR FINISHED. SEE TOMORROW'S DAILY TELEGRAM. STOP. RICHARD.
Outside her bedroom door, one hand on the knob, she re-reads Richard's telegram, trying to work out the reason why her stomach has tied itself into a knot. Is it because she is disappointed in this businesslike follow-up to yesterday's missive? Or because this is not at all what she'd imagined when he told her he would--how had he put it?--make The Sketch's editor "aware of his feelings" about their photograph being disseminated to the masses as something depicting scandalous behaviour?
Not that she's entirely sure what this means. What has Richard finished? The man's career? His reputation? Either seems rather an extreme reaction.
On the other hand, her family seem to believe her reputation may be finished.
Just as she turns the doorknob, she glimpses Mama's bedroom door down the hallway swing open.
"Mary!" Sybil stage-whispers, stepping out and quietly shutting the door behind her before fluttering over the carpet toward Mary, a newspaper to her chest.
"That was a short chat," Mary says, tucking the telegram into her pocket and turning to Sybil, eyebrows raised. "I apologise for weighing so heavily on her heart that she hasn't room to be more concerned with you."
"I think she had quite a lot to say, actually--which is why I convinced her she looked tired and should have a rest before dinner."
Sybil's blue eyes sparkle conspiratorially, and a throbbing in her temples which Mary was not till now aware of ebbs as the taut lines of her face relax into a small smile.
"It's the most likely outcome of tea with Granny."
"I hope you're not too tired for a chat with me." A tinge of uncertainty colours Sybil's breathy girlish voice.
"Never for you, darling." Mary slips an arm around her little sister's shoulders as she guides her into the bedroom.
"Good," says Sybil as they enter, uncurling the newspaper she clutches to her chest to reveal yesterday's Sketch, "because I sneaked this from Mama's dressing room. I thought you might want it for your treasure box. To go with your theatre ticket."
Leaning back against her bedroom door to shut it, Mary contemplates for a moment the difference between her two sisters: Sybil, in whom there is no guile, accepting her words at face value, while shrewd Edith cannot be fooled, only hurt.
"I haven't kept a treasure box since I was your age," Mary says, "and even if I had, why would I want to fill it with mementos of the night that got me into the worst trouble of my life?"
"Because it was worth it," says Sybil, her voice and eyes rich with earnestness. "Wasn't it? For one night, you chose exactly what you wanted to do and who you did it with. When else have you ever been so free?"
Home was a cage, Mary told Aunt Rosamund, and the words swell in her throat again now. I wanted to be free. She reaches out her hands and presses the corners of The Sketch gingerly between her fingertips. I hope it was worth it, Rosamund replied, doubtfully as Sybil is certain. Mary doesn't know what answer to give either of them. Or herself. Was one night of freedom worth being imprisoned in her own home, shackled by her parents' disappointment?
"I don’t really look as if I wanted to be at the Cave of the Golden Calf, there, do I?"
"You do look rather like a fish out of water," Sybil says, laughing softly, though she becomes serious again, giving Mary's elbow a little squeeze. "Even things we want to do can be a little frightening at first. And I've never known you to be afraid of anything for longer than a moment. I'm sure as soon as that camera flashed, you found your courage."
Yes, in a cocktail glass, Mary thinks, but deems sixteen too young to introduce sweet Sybil to the notion of liquid courage.
"Heavens, you make me sound like one of your suffragettes," she says, laughing a little as she pushes off the door and steps further into the room. She stops in front of her dressing table but doesn't sit after she places The Sketch on the tabletop, only inclines her head slightly so she can see her face as she carefully draws the pins from her hat. Behind her own reflection, Sybil takes a seat at the foot of the bed, her ankles crossing prettily where they dangle over the edge. "Although I did discuss inheritance laws with the prime minister's son. It seemed everyone I met at the Cave is a feminist. Including Sir Richard. He tells me he personally espouses the views published in Lady Fair."
"Does that mean from now on I'll have to fight you over who gets to read the latest edition?" Sybil leans to hug the bedpost. Her eyes shine in a way that Mary is intimately familiar with: she'll be peppered with questions on this subject, and she will answer--eventually. For now, she's much too tired to discuss politics. Even with Sybil.
She removes her hat, tossing it haphazardly onto the settee as she turns to face Sybil properly. "Thanks to you, I wasn't quite the fish out of water I might have been."
"Thanks to me?"
As Mary draws near, remembering how often she'd crept up beside the basinet and stood on tip-toe to stroke her sleeping baby sister's plump, rosy cheek. Sybil is almost a woman now, and beautiful, but her face still retains the roundness that belies her youth, though now instead of touching her cheek, Mary settles for stroking the thick dark curls that spill over her shoulders.
"You're the one who made me learn the Argentine tango with you."
"You danced the tango?" Laughing, Sybil hops from the bed, clapping her hands before grasping Mary's. "With Sir Richard?"
Mary rolls her eyes, but squeezes Sybil's fingertips before pulling her hands away. "Yes, with Sir Richard."
"Oh, I wish I could have been there with you," Sybil says, doing a little tango step over to the dressing table. "Promise me you'll never go to London and have so much fun without me again."
"I think Papa intends to make that a very easy promise to keep."
Sybil takes up the newspaper and studies the picture for a moment. "Does Sir Richard dance as handsomely as he looks?"
Mary turns away as heat prickles up her neck and into her face as her mind is flooded with both images and remembered touches of being swept with Richard's sure arm and fluid movements across the dance floor. She presses her cool fingertips to her skin as if doing so will stop the flush.
"Not you, too? Granny kept on about his bone structure. I think she's half-in love with him herself."
"And what about you?"
Mary glances over her shoulder and meets Sybil's gaze with an arched eyebrow.
"All right then," Sybil says, "what about him?"
Slowly, Mary turns fully around. "Do you mean did Sir Richard fall in love with me? In the course of three days?"
Sybil returns her attention to the The Sketch. After a moment, she says, "Look at his face, Mary," and holds it out to her.
Though Mary rolls her eyes again, she is, nevertheless, intrigued by whatever it is Sybil sees--or thinks she sees--in the newspaper picture, and considers it more closely herself. It's all she can do to contain a gasp as she notices Richard's expression for the first time. While she gapes up at the nightclub's sign, his gaze is entirely on her, the shadowy quality of the photograph failing to obscure that it's the same way he looked at her when he held her too long after their dance. When she asked why he kissed her on the cheek but not her lips. Warmth pulls at her belly, not unlike what she experienced as she sipped her before-dinner cocktail, as Granny's voice crackles through her memory about men and their passions.
I want to be with you, he told her in his telegram. I always get what I want.
The Sketch rustles as her hands begin to tremble, and she replaces it on her writing table, photograph side down. She stands chafing her thumbs over the outer edges of her curled index fingers as she looks into her dressing table mirror again.
"Perhaps he did--if love means finishing a man to protect a lady's reputation."
"What are you talking about?"
Mary lets out her breath, slowly, as she sinks down onto her dressing table bench. She doesn't know. She doesn't know if Richard did it for her, or for himself. Or what he did at all.
"We'll find out in tomorrow's Telegram."
"No we won't," Sybil says. "Papa cancelled his subscription."
In the mirror, Mary watches her jaw muscle work beneath her pale skin. "Of course he did."
As she slumps to rest her chin on her hands, Sybil squeezes her shoulder, the smile in her voice drawing Mary's brown eyes up to the gleaming blue pair. "Don't worry! We're bright, modern women. I'm sure we can find a way to read a forbidden newspaper!"
Mary smiles wanly at her pale reflection. "Sir Richard sells a million copies of the Telegram every day. I have bigger fish to fry than finding one of them."
Read Chapter 8
Author: mrstater
Fandom: Downton Abbey
Characters & Pairings: Mary Crawley/Richard Carlisle, Violet Crawley, Cora Crawley, Edith Crawley, Sybil Crawley
Chapter Word Count: 3891
Chapter Summary: Following Mary's return to Downton in disgrace, her grandmother, mother, and sisters are all keen to offer commentary on her behaviour in London with Sir Richard--and, in the process, provide unintentional insight into her heart.
Author's Notes: Once again, huge thanks to ju_dou who encouraged me to try something a bit daring with this chapter, and then helped me get it right, and also to all of you who continue to be the best, most enthusiastic readers ever. Also to my British friends, hope you all have a lovely weekend celebrating the Queen's Diamond Jubilee--in true Downton Abbey style, of course. ;)
Just in case you're missing Richard in this chapter, I posted a little smutty one-shot, Bold and Modern Plumbing, that will hopefully tide you over till his next appearance in AGiB. :)
Previous Chapters |
7. The Talk
"If we examine the situation from a purely aesthetic standpoint," says Granny, eying the cover of The Sketch, which goggles up at them from the tea table in the sunny morning room of the Dower House, "which I believe is the proper way of looking at it--"
"Aesthetic?" Mama repeats, and Mary thinks, with some annoyance, that her mother's expression matches the one on her own face captured forever by a tabloid photographer, gawking at the well-endowed cow on the sign of the Cave of the Golden Calf.
"Yes, aesthetic." Granny presses her thin lips together into a colourless line. "From an objective, aesthetic standpoint, Sir Richard Carlisle is a handsome man." She looks at the newspaper again, her eyebrows arching high on her forehead. Mary notes a tinge of pink on Granny's wizened cheek as she continues, "Such striking bone structure. Are you certain he's not aristocratic stock? His bearing is certainly proud and distinguished."
"Oh, he's very proud." Mary sips her tea. "Who wouldn't be, to rise from selling newspapers on the streets of Edinburgh to publishing a million copies a day? And that's only the Daily Telegram, not the evening edition or his other papers."
Granny's mouth opens in a small o as her eyes dart from Mary to The Sketch and back to Mary again. "You don't think he's handsome? I suppose he must be near your papa's age, but--"
"Didn't you say he was objectively handsome?" Mary catches her mother's eye, twinkling for the first time since her return in disgrace. Always willing to form an alliance with anyone who will side with her against her difficult mother-in-law.
"If you're saying you're considering him for his money, Mary," says Granny, "that's an even more vulgar reason than the one I suspected. But I know that's not the case. Don't pretend otherwise."
"I'm not considering him at all, Granny. I've scarcely met the man half a dozen times."
"The most recent, unchaperoned at a place of dubious morality."
Mary purses her lips; obviously Aunt Rosamund neglected to mention Richard's rather dramatic appearance at the train station before they left London.
"Dubious?" echoes Mama, her voice taking on that choked quality that gripped it yesterday; Mary sees the blue eyes well with fresh tears, too, and barely restrains herself from rolling her own. "I should say that the morality of any place called the Cave of the Golden Calf is rather decidedly lacking."
So much for allies.
Granny hmphs and takes a long drink of her tea, as if to fortify herself. "O'Brien told my maid Simmons that when Robert saw The Sketch, he flung it down on the floor. A if he were Moses casting down the Ten Commandments at the sight of the Hebrews dancing around the golden calf."
"He probably saw them dancing the one-step," says Mary, "to a ragtime tune. Followed by an Argentine tango."
For a moment she thinks Mama might leave the tea table weeping. Granny, on the other hand, looks more triumphant than scandalised; she sits up straighter in her chair, as if she's a queen presiding on her throne, her mouth twisting into a smirk for half a moment before she pours herself a fresh cup of tea, dropping three lumps of sugar into it with the silver tongs.
"If tangos are being danced," she says, "then this unfortunate discussion is no longer merely a wise idea, but a necessary one."
"Discussion?" Mary says, feeling dizzy.
"Yes, my dear," Granny replies. "The one you would, ordinarily, have on the eve of your wedding, which circumstances now demand occur prematurely."
Mama draws in her breath through her teeth, through which she grinds out the words, "That talk may well be timely, but as Mary's mother I should still be the one to give it."
"Oh, you can still offer her whatever little gems mothers in America bestow upon their daughters on Mary's wedding night. Or whenever you deem it appropriate. But I think what she requires now is some sage English instruction."
Mary gulps her tea, and thinks longingly of the cocktail she drank at the Cave. And also that longing is perhaps not the ideal sentiment to express at this moment.
"My dear," says Granny, beckoning Mary's attention with the tink of her teaspoon against the cup, "I trust you have some notion that the male sex are afflicted with..." She raises her teacup to her lips, muffling her words slightly as she goes on. "...passions, which can only be satisfied by the feminine form."
When she lowers her cup, she looks as if she has swallowed something distasteful. Mary tries to glance away, but Granny's pale eyes pin her gaze like an insect on a school child's display board.
"A well-bred lady does not herself experience such passions--or should not." She glances down at the newspaper on the tea table. "No matter how appealing the notion may be when presented by a charming man who dimples beneath a stunning pair of cheekbones."
"Dimples and cheekbones? Heavens," says Mary, as coolly as the polished silver teapot reveals her complexion to be, though Mama blushes quite as red as the raspberries on the sponge. "Careful, Granny, or you may find yourself in danger of being swept away on a tide of passion and middle-class breeding."
"Mary," Mama chides, but Granny snorts.
"I paid my dues to your grandpa's passion forty years ago. Believe me, Mary, when I tell you that while men vow to worship women with their bodies, it is the wife who makes sacrifice on the altar of the marriage bed. It's an uncomfortable, untidy business, and whatever poets and gothic novelists would like you to believe, a woman's only satisfaction in the act comes when she produces an heir and her duty is thankfully at an end."
"I would have to respectfully disagree with your grandmother," Mama says through her teeth, leaning toward Mary as if Granny cannot hear this aside.
"Of course you would," replies Granny. "You're American, and you never achieved the satisfaction of giving your husband a son."
"That's rather a medieval way of looking at it, don't you think?" asks Mama, with no more reaction to the tweak than a blink.
Mary, however, winces. "It isn't, so long as medieval inheritance laws still rule the land."
Granny recoils in her chair as if serpents have sprung from Mary's coiffure. Her mouth hangs crookedly agape as her eye darts sideways at her daughter-in-law.
"It seems we have bigger matters than Mary's sexual education to concern us," says Mama, the glimmer returning to her eyes as she takes a bite of raspberry sponge. "She's made friends with Liberals."
Mary can only be grateful for her mother's bait-and-switch, though it doesn't extricate her from the subject of sex entirely.
"I probably shouldn't discuss this with you now," Mama says as they walk back to the big house from Granny's, "but don’t carry your grandmother's words with you to your wedding night. Too many girls meet their husbands in terror. And while the first time is uncomfortable, it's also a new and exciting time of learning to trust and letting your husband know you in a way no other person on earth does."
Mary fixes her gaze resolutely on the lane, the brim of her hat shading her face and hopefully hiding her flush as her thoughts instantly turn to Richard. Of how easily she opened her mind and her heart to him; of how on their very first acquaintance he pegged them as the same; of how she felt in his arms, pressed close to him, and of wanting to feel his mouth on hers.
"That's why it's so very important to choose a husband you can respect as a friend and grow to love," Mama goes on. "If you don't already."
"And I suppose you think that husband should be Cousin Matthew?" Mary pauses beneath the outstretched branch of an oak that sprawls over the lane. "Wanting his house and title is hardly a good foundation for friendship."
Mama turns. "If you don't think you can ever go beyond that, you're wise to steer clear of Matthew." With a sigh of resignation, she adds, "Much as I'd like to see you always settled here, as Countess. As would your father."
"He never will, though, as I can only be Countess in the event of his death."
Harsh lines tug at Mama's features, belying her age. "That's morose."
"Isn't everything," Mary says, walking on, palms open at her sides, "since Patrick drowned in a shipwreck?"
For a moment she walks in silence, but at the turning into the Abbey park, the crunch of Mama’s shoes in the gravel brings her alongside Mary once again. "What about Evelyn Napier?"
"What about him?"
"You're good friends, aren't you? How would you like it if I invited him up sometime?"
Mary's eyes smart; after a second of feeling as if the wind has been knocked out of her, she blinks back the tears and her breath returns in short gasps, which she quickens her footsteps to match.
"You're the Countess of Grantham," she throws back over her shoulder. "Invite whomever you wish to your house, regardless of whether I like it or not. But at least be honest about the fact that you're no longer concerned about marrying me off to get me out of the way. You're worried about my virtue."
~*~
Mary strides through the front door without her customary word of greeting and smile for Carson, only to feel the brush of his hand as he presses something into hers. She glances up at him in question, his face drawn into rather grim lines, though his dark eyes dart downward, directing her gaze to the slip of paper he's given her. Another telegram, she realises, her stomach giving a little twinge.
"What's that?" asks Mama, coming in behind her, arms raised to unpin her hat.
"Oh nothing," Mary answers, quickly, glancing up at the butler again and seeing his eyebrows twitch guiltily as he takes mama's hat. "Just a scrap that fell out of my pocket earlier. Carson thought it might be important. But it's not."
"Yes, but what is it?"
"My ticket stub," Mary lies, crumpling the telegram in her fist as Mama's gaze drops to her hand. "From Pygmalion. He thought I might want it for my treasure box. But I suppose you'd rather I throw it in the rubbish bin."
"If only you could do the same with the language you heard in that play," Mama mutters on her way to the stairs, though she puts on a smile for Sybil and Edith, who are, at that moment, descending. She sweeps Sybil back up with her, an arm around her youngest daughter's shoulders as she says it's been a while since they had a good heart-to-heart chat and won't she join her in her room for a bit?
Sybil glances back at Mary with a round-eyed look that says she'd rather have a heart-to-heart chat with her big sister--they've hardly interacted since her return, almost as if their parents are keeping the impressionable younger girl from her corruptive influence--but Mary's interest is more piqued by the absence of jealousy on Edith's face as she continues downstairs without a glimmer of her usual resentment at being the overlooked middle child. In fact, her lips twist in the same self-satisfied smirk Mary imagines Edith must have worn as she penned her letter about dear Cousin Matthew.
"You're losing your edge," Edith says, pausing on the last red-carpeted step, her hand resting on the finial of the banister, as if to diminish the advantage of height Mary has over her. "A theatre ticket fell out of your walking jacket pocket? Really, Mary? Lucky for you, Mama was distracted by the hope that you've seen the error of your ways. I, on the other hand, saw the boy from the telegraph office deliver that." She nods at Mary's fist clutching the crumpled telegram. "And the other one yesterday."
A glance at Carson reveals him to blanche as he sidles past the girls toward the servants' staircase, presumably to give Mama's hat to O'Brien. Mary rolls her eyes and steps around Edith to mount the steps.
"Who's sending you telegrams?" Edith calls after her.
Mary stops on the first landing to peer down over the carved railing at her. "Believe it or not, Edith, some of us correspond with people who aren't our sisters. Much as I appreciated the charming letter you were so good as to send me."
"I imagine a newspaper magnate doesn't have much room in his schedule for lengthier correspondence than a telegram."
Bristling, Mary tries to convince herself the reaction is due to Edith's having guessed the author of the telegram, and not that she feels slighted by Richard's abrupt form of communication. A letter would be too slow, and Downton's lack of telephone leaves no other option.
"I do wish you'd stop boring me and come to the point," Mary says; Edith, like a cat, always did like to play with her food. "Which, presumably, is that you intend to tell on me. Just like when we were children, and your greatest delight was in getting me in trouble."
"On the contrary," Edith replies. "I think you're doing quite an admirable job getting yourself in trouble without my interference."
Mary watches from above as Edith turns and walks smugly across the hall; when she's just passed beneath the archway to the saloon, Mary calls out, "It's from Diana Manners. She remembered you to me the other night--as the débutante who attended Lady Sheffield's charity ball as the Ugly Duckling."
Without waiting to see Edith's stricken expression, Mary turns and resumes climbing the stairs, unfolding the crumpled telegram that is not, of course, from Diana Manners.
MARY. STOP. SKETCH EDITOR FINISHED. SEE TOMORROW'S DAILY TELEGRAM. STOP. RICHARD.
Outside her bedroom door, one hand on the knob, she re-reads Richard's telegram, trying to work out the reason why her stomach has tied itself into a knot. Is it because she is disappointed in this businesslike follow-up to yesterday's missive? Or because this is not at all what she'd imagined when he told her he would--how had he put it?--make The Sketch's editor "aware of his feelings" about their photograph being disseminated to the masses as something depicting scandalous behaviour?
Not that she's entirely sure what this means. What has Richard finished? The man's career? His reputation? Either seems rather an extreme reaction.
On the other hand, her family seem to believe her reputation may be finished.
Just as she turns the doorknob, she glimpses Mama's bedroom door down the hallway swing open.
"Mary!" Sybil stage-whispers, stepping out and quietly shutting the door behind her before fluttering over the carpet toward Mary, a newspaper to her chest.
"That was a short chat," Mary says, tucking the telegram into her pocket and turning to Sybil, eyebrows raised. "I apologise for weighing so heavily on her heart that she hasn't room to be more concerned with you."
"I think she had quite a lot to say, actually--which is why I convinced her she looked tired and should have a rest before dinner."
Sybil's blue eyes sparkle conspiratorially, and a throbbing in her temples which Mary was not till now aware of ebbs as the taut lines of her face relax into a small smile.
"It's the most likely outcome of tea with Granny."
"I hope you're not too tired for a chat with me." A tinge of uncertainty colours Sybil's breathy girlish voice.
"Never for you, darling." Mary slips an arm around her little sister's shoulders as she guides her into the bedroom.
"Good," says Sybil as they enter, uncurling the newspaper she clutches to her chest to reveal yesterday's Sketch, "because I sneaked this from Mama's dressing room. I thought you might want it for your treasure box. To go with your theatre ticket."
Leaning back against her bedroom door to shut it, Mary contemplates for a moment the difference between her two sisters: Sybil, in whom there is no guile, accepting her words at face value, while shrewd Edith cannot be fooled, only hurt.
"I haven't kept a treasure box since I was your age," Mary says, "and even if I had, why would I want to fill it with mementos of the night that got me into the worst trouble of my life?"
"Because it was worth it," says Sybil, her voice and eyes rich with earnestness. "Wasn't it? For one night, you chose exactly what you wanted to do and who you did it with. When else have you ever been so free?"
Home was a cage, Mary told Aunt Rosamund, and the words swell in her throat again now. I wanted to be free. She reaches out her hands and presses the corners of The Sketch gingerly between her fingertips. I hope it was worth it, Rosamund replied, doubtfully as Sybil is certain. Mary doesn't know what answer to give either of them. Or herself. Was one night of freedom worth being imprisoned in her own home, shackled by her parents' disappointment?
"I don’t really look as if I wanted to be at the Cave of the Golden Calf, there, do I?"
"You do look rather like a fish out of water," Sybil says, laughing softly, though she becomes serious again, giving Mary's elbow a little squeeze. "Even things we want to do can be a little frightening at first. And I've never known you to be afraid of anything for longer than a moment. I'm sure as soon as that camera flashed, you found your courage."
Yes, in a cocktail glass, Mary thinks, but deems sixteen too young to introduce sweet Sybil to the notion of liquid courage.
"Heavens, you make me sound like one of your suffragettes," she says, laughing a little as she pushes off the door and steps further into the room. She stops in front of her dressing table but doesn't sit after she places The Sketch on the tabletop, only inclines her head slightly so she can see her face as she carefully draws the pins from her hat. Behind her own reflection, Sybil takes a seat at the foot of the bed, her ankles crossing prettily where they dangle over the edge. "Although I did discuss inheritance laws with the prime minister's son. It seemed everyone I met at the Cave is a feminist. Including Sir Richard. He tells me he personally espouses the views published in Lady Fair."
"Does that mean from now on I'll have to fight you over who gets to read the latest edition?" Sybil leans to hug the bedpost. Her eyes shine in a way that Mary is intimately familiar with: she'll be peppered with questions on this subject, and she will answer--eventually. For now, she's much too tired to discuss politics. Even with Sybil.
She removes her hat, tossing it haphazardly onto the settee as she turns to face Sybil properly. "Thanks to you, I wasn't quite the fish out of water I might have been."
"Thanks to me?"
As Mary draws near, remembering how often she'd crept up beside the basinet and stood on tip-toe to stroke her sleeping baby sister's plump, rosy cheek. Sybil is almost a woman now, and beautiful, but her face still retains the roundness that belies her youth, though now instead of touching her cheek, Mary settles for stroking the thick dark curls that spill over her shoulders.
"You're the one who made me learn the Argentine tango with you."
"You danced the tango?" Laughing, Sybil hops from the bed, clapping her hands before grasping Mary's. "With Sir Richard?"
Mary rolls her eyes, but squeezes Sybil's fingertips before pulling her hands away. "Yes, with Sir Richard."
"Oh, I wish I could have been there with you," Sybil says, doing a little tango step over to the dressing table. "Promise me you'll never go to London and have so much fun without me again."
"I think Papa intends to make that a very easy promise to keep."
Sybil takes up the newspaper and studies the picture for a moment. "Does Sir Richard dance as handsomely as he looks?"
Mary turns away as heat prickles up her neck and into her face as her mind is flooded with both images and remembered touches of being swept with Richard's sure arm and fluid movements across the dance floor. She presses her cool fingertips to her skin as if doing so will stop the flush.
"Not you, too? Granny kept on about his bone structure. I think she's half-in love with him herself."
"And what about you?"
Mary glances over her shoulder and meets Sybil's gaze with an arched eyebrow.
"All right then," Sybil says, "what about him?"
Slowly, Mary turns fully around. "Do you mean did Sir Richard fall in love with me? In the course of three days?"
Sybil returns her attention to the The Sketch. After a moment, she says, "Look at his face, Mary," and holds it out to her.
Though Mary rolls her eyes again, she is, nevertheless, intrigued by whatever it is Sybil sees--or thinks she sees--in the newspaper picture, and considers it more closely herself. It's all she can do to contain a gasp as she notices Richard's expression for the first time. While she gapes up at the nightclub's sign, his gaze is entirely on her, the shadowy quality of the photograph failing to obscure that it's the same way he looked at her when he held her too long after their dance. When she asked why he kissed her on the cheek but not her lips. Warmth pulls at her belly, not unlike what she experienced as she sipped her before-dinner cocktail, as Granny's voice crackles through her memory about men and their passions.
I want to be with you, he told her in his telegram. I always get what I want.
The Sketch rustles as her hands begin to tremble, and she replaces it on her writing table, photograph side down. She stands chafing her thumbs over the outer edges of her curled index fingers as she looks into her dressing table mirror again.
"Perhaps he did--if love means finishing a man to protect a lady's reputation."
"What are you talking about?"
Mary lets out her breath, slowly, as she sinks down onto her dressing table bench. She doesn't know. She doesn't know if Richard did it for her, or for himself. Or what he did at all.
"We'll find out in tomorrow's Telegram."
"No we won't," Sybil says. "Papa cancelled his subscription."
In the mirror, Mary watches her jaw muscle work beneath her pale skin. "Of course he did."
As she slumps to rest her chin on her hands, Sybil squeezes her shoulder, the smile in her voice drawing Mary's brown eyes up to the gleaming blue pair. "Don't worry! We're bright, modern women. I'm sure we can find a way to read a forbidden newspaper!"
Mary smiles wanly at her pale reflection. "Sir Richard sells a million copies of the Telegram every day. I have bigger fish to fry than finding one of them."
Read Chapter 8