Fic: A Girl in Black (18/?)
Title: A Girl in Black (18/?)
Author: mrstater
Fandom: Downton Abbey
Characters & Pairings: Mary Crawley/Richard Carlisle, Cora Crawley, Edith Crawley, Sybil Crawley, Rosamund Painswick
Chapter Word Count: 4522
Chapter Summary: During a trip to London for Christmas shopping, acquaintances with a flair for the dramatic, and a dressmaker's error, force Mary to consider what role she must now play.
Author's Notes: This chapter not only features the return of Lady Diana Manners, but her mother, Violet, Duchess of Rutland, who, like Diana, is larger than life and stranger than fiction, and also prominent fashion designer of the era, Lady Lucy Duff Gordon, who seemed a most appropriate choice for the Crawleys' dressmaker because they share a Titanic connection. Also, Liberty is still very much in existence today, though the department store as described in this chapter was in a different location. (Much to my chagrin as I had so looked forward to describing the Tudor revival building!) As always, many thanks to ju_dou for research assistance and beta reading.
Previous Chapters |
18. The Costume
Liberty.
The bold black lettering stands stark against the white façade of the neoclassical building upon which it is painted. Like a newspaper headline, Mary thinks, proclaiming some military or political revolution victorious.
As she stands outside the entrance of London's most fashionable department store, peering up at the Liberty & Co. sign and the two storeys of soot-stained stone that rise above, she wishes for freedom. Not, for the first time in months, from the patriarchy that denies her a birthright, against which Richard Carlisle seduced her with promises to fight. Instead, Mary battles against her own body, a heightened sense of the dizziness and nausea that began on the drive over from Aunt Rosamund's holding her captive on the pavement.
"Mary?"
Drawing a steadying breath of the London air which is, if not wholesome as the air back home, at least refreshingly chill, crisp with the possibility of a frost, she drags her gaze downward to Rosamund, who has fallen back to wait as Edith and Sybil follow Mama into the store.
"Why are you gawking, dear? Someone might mistake you for a country bumpkin who's never seen a store larger than the village shop."
"Me, a country bumpkin?" Mary draws back her shoulders and takes careful steps across the pavement toward her aunt. "In this hat and coat?"
She momentarily forgets her nausea as she glimpses her reflection in the glass door: her new scarlet winter walking costume, trimmed with sable fur at the collar and cuffs, so bright against the grey backdrop of the wintry street scene.
"And here I was just thinking how festive she looks," says Edith waspishly. "The red really offsets the green of her complexion. One can't help but think of holly and ivy."
In other circumstances Mary would come back with a retort to make Edith's weak chin wobble. With all eyes on her now--especially Mama's--she is too mindful of the suggestion Anna made about her health, and of the credence her queasy stomach lends it.
"It's Aunt Rosamund's new chauffeur," she says, rolling her eyes. "If you had to get rid of your old one, couldn't you at least have found someone who knows which side of the road to drive on?"
"Why did you fire him?" Sybil asks.
Rosamund arches her brows at Mary and answers, "He was a spy."
"A spy?" Sybil echoes, incredulous.
Edith snorts. "What, for the Germans?"
"Really, Rosamund," Mama says, thankfully shifting her gaze to her sister-in-law, "why did you let Jenkins go? He always seemed an excellent driver."
"If only his ethics were not so dubious."
Rosamund throws a glance over her shoulder that makes Mary swallow a lump as she watches her push into the throng of Christmas shoppers gathered around displays and moving en masse toward the staircases. Her aunt may have sacked a chauffeur, but it's Richard's ethics to which she refers.
And she doesn't even know by what means he procured his Marconi scoop.
"Shall we get started?" Mama asks Mary and her sisters. She checks the ornate brooch-style watch pinned to her coat and frowns. "We haven't as much time as I'd like for all our shopping before your dress fittings with Lady Duff Gordon. And of course it'll be too late after tea with Sir Richard at Fortnum's."
Mary isn't sure whether it's the notion of eating that turns her stomach at the mention of tea, or the prospect of seeing Richard for the first time since their awkward goodbye at the train station six weeks ago, when he was already too absorbed in writing up his story about Mr Pamuk's death to even say the words. Although, if she considers the scenario fairly, she hardly gave him a chance to say them, before she whisked off to be Evelyn's moral support as he telephoned the Turkish admbassador.
And now Mama's informed him of their shopping trip to down, less than a fortnight before she is to see him anyway at Downton, and accepted his invitation to afternoon tea at Fortnum and Mason..
I thought your plan was to show me how he doesn't fit in with our kind of people? Mary asked when Mama informed her of the plan
You're confusing me with your father again, Mama replied, but added, sincerely, Whatever it is you like about Sir Richard, you saw it in when you were in the company of his kind of people. I want to give him a chance to show me, too.
By taking tea with him, your three daughters, and your sister-in-law? Mary flung back with her usual sarcasm. Mama's support comes as too little, too late; even if she does decide Richard is all dimples and charm, she'll deny ever having such an opinion if she learns about his ultimate breach of etiquette. Never mind that he did so at Mary's suggestion.
"In that case shouldn't we start with Granny?" Edith's suggestion draws Mary back to the current dilemma of Christmas shopping. "She's always the most difficult to find presents for."
"What a practical idea, Edith," says Mama--though the middle daughter wilts slightly when Sybil elicits a similar reaction from their mother.
"Don't you think we ought to save her for last? So we don't run out of time trying to make up our minds and come away empty-handed?"
Some debate ensues, during which their voices recede, of no more consequence to Mary than the din of their fellow shoppers' conversations blending together all around them. They must reach some consensus, because she soon finds herself following them in a weaving path through the maze of people and display tables and cases, then shuffling down a flight of stairs to the basement level of the store. Too much Nuit de Chine wafts from the fox stole of a jiggling woman in front of her down the stairs, and to escape the nauseating odor, Mary looks up--but this proves a mistake as the view of the oak staircase spiraling overhead forces her to close her eyes and cling to the banister as she completes the descent by feel.
At the bottom, her state only worsens when she is confronted by Liberty & Co.'s most dizzying feature of all. Which is not the Eastern Bazaar with its eclectic display of Indian and Oriental-inspired decorative goods and furniture, but by a blur of frowsy hair and trailing silk that nearly knocks the off-balance Mary to the floor as a pair of arms embrace her and lips peck each of her cheeks.
"Mary darling!"
"Hello, Diana." Mary delivers an unsmiling greeting, though in true Diana Manners fashion, the other girl seems hardly to notice the lack of warmth as she draws back, her hands sliding down Mary's forearms to grasp her hands.
"Fancy running into you here, when I was just thinking of you!"
"Were you?" Mary thinks it unlikely.
"What a fetching coat. You are the daring one, going out in red after..."
The sentence trails off, and Diana's clear blue eyes turn into a suddenly glassy gaze; Mary, heart pounding and palms perspiring inside her kid gloves, cannot decide whether Diana said more than she intended, or if she is simply distracted by something shiny.
"I was going to say the same about your...kimono." Mary recovers a little as Diana takes the bait, tugging up the silken lapel that has slipped off her shoulder. Or perhaps it was really nothing more than Mary's own guilty conscience.
"Isn't it just a dream?" Diana releases Mary's hands and twirls, striking a croise derriere which somehow, for all her eccentricity, shows the garment's busy floral and bird print--and her full figure--to great advantage. "I found it upstairs and thought I'd ask Mama to buy it for me for Christmas...Only I can't find her anywhere..."
The vacant eyes scan the crowd around them as if to emphasize her point, but they do not alight on Lady Rutland.
"Ducky," Diana addresses a flushed and flustered Edith observing them from nearby, her face drawn uncharacteristically into disapproving lines that remind Mary of the Duchess of Rutland. "The Christmas season brings so many unexpected tidings from old acquaintances. I think yours might be the most surprising of all."
Mary draws in a sharp breath through her teeth. Edith wrote to Diana? Apparently so, given the way Edith steadfastly ignores Mary's attempts to catch her gaze. But why? In all the times they've been in each other's company, the younger girls have never been what anyone would call friends, and Diana was quite mean to Edith when they were débutantes together.
"Sybil!" Diana cries as the younger girl turns to show Mary a brooch she's found. "Haven't you grown into a beauty? It's lucky for Mary she's already caught a husband, because all the eligible bachelors will be breaking their hearts over you! Do you come out next season?"
"Not for another year." Sybil shakes her head with a slightly dejected manner, as her eyes glitter with amusement at Diana who, seeming not to have heard her, chortles as she adjusts her kimono.
"Though perhaps Mary needs to look out--I've never heard Richard speak so highly of anyone as you, Sybil. Mama had him for dinner not long after he stayed at Downton, and he quite raved about your mission to liberate girls from the drudgery of service.
"Did he say anything about Gwen?" Sybil asks, all eager earnestness.
Diana blinks. "Gwen?"
"Dawson. The housemaid he's hired on to train as a secretary."
"Lord, I don't remember!" Diana's giggle stops abruptly as she threads her arm through Mary's and leads her apart from her sisters. "And I was only joking, Mary, about Richard. What are you getting him for Christmas?"
"I hadn't thought--"
"Well you'd better think. He's your fiancé!"
"We're not engaged. It's hardly appropriate--"
"Isn't it just a formality at this point?"
Would it be possible, Mary wonders, to scandalise Diana by stating that in fact the wedding would be just a formality.
"And I know just what you should get him!" Diana giggles again. "Don't worry, Mary darling! It will be completely within the bounds of propriety."
Mary doubts that, but does not express such verbally, just as she says nothing on the subject of what Diana means by at this point. Whatever she knows--or thinks she knows--it can't be so sinister as her remark about wearing red if it operates on the assumption of forthcoming nuptials. Can it? And anyway, how could Diana know anything?
"Look, Mary, there's your Mama!" Diana bolts forward, dragging Mary toward a fabric counter. "Lady Grantham, you've exactly the same idea as me--nothing but a Liberty print for the fashionable Englishman."
"How lovely to see you, Diana." Mama's expression doesn't indicate she thinks it lovely at all as she watches Diana flit about in the kimono she hasn't actually purchased. After a moment she turns to Mary to solicit her opinion the length of printed silk she was admiring before Diana interrupted.
"I was considering this for the lining of a smoking jacket..." Eyeing the silk draped over Diana's frame, Mama notices it's the same as the one in her hands, and moves further down the silk display. "Perhaps a paisley would suit your papa better...If there's even time to have one made..."
"A smoking jacket, yes! Oh, Mary, that'd be simply ripping! You know how Richard is about his cigars!"
She does. In fact Mary has a more intimate knowledge of Richard and his cigars than Diana can likely imagine, for all her penchant for being featured in newspaper gossip columns. She tasted Richard's cigar when he kissed her that night in the library, the musty smoke on his lips, the bittersweet oaky tobacco as her tongue glided along his in his warm mouth.
"Don't you think that might be a little personal for a man to whom I am not formally engaged?" Mary asks, avoiding eye contact with Mama.
Diana throws back her head, a few strands of rebellious hair falling loose from the pins, and laughs--loudly, turning a few heads, which is just what she intended. "I suppose a dressing gown is out of the question, too! All right then, what about a nice respectable boring...scarf?"
Mary balks--but only because of the particular printed silk scarf Diana points to in a glass display case. Her eye is caught by a different pattern.
"Excuse me, Miss?" Diana waves to attract the attention of a salesgirl--and a number of passersby. "My friend would like to purchase a gentleman's scarf. That one, the peacock feather print." Chortling, she grasps Mary's hand and bounces on the tips of her toes as if she's wearing a pair of pointe ballet slippers--which, a downward glance reveals to actually be the case. "Oh, Mary, it's the most perfect present for Richard. He's such a vain darling!"
"You don't think Sir Richard will find it insulting?" Mama asks as the clerk holds out the scarf for Mary's closer inspection.
"More insulting than the Papa and Edith about the shooting tweeds?"
Mama opens her mouth in retort, but before she can emit any sound, a fourth female voice joins the conversation.
"Diana! Diana my love. I told you not to run off." The Duchess of Rutland scolds her daughter as if she is two years old and not twenty--though she leaves off suddenly, with much the same distracted expression as Diana wore earlier. "Oh! What a lovely kimono." She herself is swathed in a chartreuse wool mantle over a trailing black dress, indicating that mother and daughter share an appreciation for Oriental fashions.
"Cora," she adds, by way of greeting, chin jutting at an awkward angle from her long neck to peer up at Mama from beneath the rolled mink band of the black and gold silk hat squashed low on her head. It strikes Mary as a cross between a turban and a Russian ushanka--apart from the large jaunty bow in the back, which recalls neither style of headdress.
"Lady Rutland."
Mama's smile doesn't reach her wide eyes as they dart downward to the hand encased in a long black evening glove peeping out from the wide yellow sleeve, which the Duchess pointedly does not extend to her. The tension between the two women perplexes Mary; even more so when she notices Diana bobbing on her toes again whilst her gaze darts back and forth between them as if she is a spectator at a tennis match. How alarming it is that Diana Manners is better appraised of the situation than she.
"Mama, just look what I helped Mary find for Richard Carlisle! A peacock print Liberty scarf! Isn't it cunning? Just like the old fox!"
"Yes..." Lady Rutland turns slightly toward Mary and expresses the same genuine admiration that she did for Diana's kimono, but she is only momentarily distracted from the company. "Richard told the Duke and me he'd accepted an invitation to your estate. I must say, Cora, I voiced my fear to him that he might find a country Christmas rather dull in comparison to what he's accustomed to in town..."
Or at Belvoir, Mary suspects Diana's mother wants to say. The antics at the Saturday to Monday parties the Duchess throws at her husband's ancestral castle are notorious for being even more theatrical than the productions at His Majesties Theatre, and grace the pages of less reputable publications than The Sketch.
"Then again," Lady Rutland goes on, her shaded gaze locking on Mary. "I suppose Downton played host to scandal during Richard's previous visit with appeal enough for even a newspaper magnate's lurid tastes. Though I take it you'll avoid the traditional Boxing Day hunt?"
Mama splutters a response about Mr Pamuk's ghastly accident and Sir Richard's tasteful coverage of the tragedy, of which Mary can register no more than every other word for the roar in her ears of a hot sick wave rolling over her. Pressing her fingers in the cool kid leather glove to her lips, she again tries to convince herself it's only her own guilt. Not the possibility that Diana or Lady Rutland really knows anything. Certainly not that she is...afflicted with the condition Anna suspects.
But then the Duchess tells her daughter to come along and, as they pass by, leans in to Mama and squeezes her hand.
"I'm so sorry for you, Cora," she says as if she is offering condolences at a funeral. "But at least she'll be married off to a husband who can minimise the scandal for your family. Small comforts."
"Merry Christmas, darling!" Diana calls out, pirouetting to blow kisses.
Mary removes her hand from her mouth in a rather weak wave, though the pressing urge to be sick recedes along with their acquaintances into the mass of shoppers.
"My," she says, her voice slightly too tremulous to qualify as the blasé tone she has polished with as much care and precision as Professor Higgins buffed the London grime from Eliza Doolittle's until the syllables shimmered from her lips like cut glass. "The Mannerses never miss an opportunity to be dramatic, do they? All the world's a stage, indeed."
And the role that Mary must play, for the moment, is that she is not about to be sick on the stage because of a choice even Diana has not been foolish enough to make.
~*~
"What do you mean, Mary's gown doesn't fit?"
The Duchess of Rutland and her daughter are not, it seems, the only ones prone to theatrics. Fingers pausing on the buttons of her blouse, Mary tilts her head toward the exterior of the dressing room, straining to make out Mama's dismayed stage whisper through the heavy velvet drapery that separates the public space of the seamstress' shop from the fitting area.
"We were just here a few weeks ago in October for her measurements," she goes on. "You took them yourself."
"They seem to have changed in that span of time, Lady Grantham," replies Miss Brown, the dressmaker's assistant whose taut syllables make Mary imagine furrows in the skin all around the thin lips, which part in the very smallest of os required for speech. "Your daughter is rather more slender in the waist than she was when I measured her in October."
At once Mary resumes doing up her buttons, conscious of her sisters seated on the small upholstered sofa behind her in their new Christmas frocks, and of her own lately prominent ribs and hipbones, though they are hidden from view by her corset and chemise.
"Oh," Mama says, in a more normal voice, accompanied by a sigh. "In that case isn't it just a simple matter of taking it in?"
"Not without ruining the line of the gown, I'm afraid. And..."
Mary closes her eyes as the anticipated words are delivered as if they are something unsavoury Miss Brown must swallow.
"...she has increased in...the bust."
"Or you measured her incorrectly." Aunt Rosamund's tones, biting as the winter wind that chased them into Maison Lucile an hour ago, do not require Mary to strain to hear as she joins in the conversation, turning it from a duet to a trio. "Have you considered that possibility?"
Miss Brown's reticence is a plainer answer than she could make in words that it is not, and in the mirror, Mary feels sick at the sight of the her blouse stretching tightly across her breasts as the button strains at the edge of its hole. And of Edith's brown eyes watching her hawkishly above her narrow hooked nose. Sybil, however, grins.
"You have to admire Miss Brown's resolve against the combined forces of Mama and Aunt Rosamund."
"Hush, darling," Mary chides her little sister, leaning nearer to the curtain.
"Is Lady Duff Gordon in the shop?" Mama asks, her voice low again, and harsh. "I would very much like to speak with her."
Sighing audibly, the dressmaker's assistant replies, "Yes, your ladyship."
The rings of the curtain scrape against the rod as Mama flings it back to enter the dressing area with Rosamund, who draws it closed again behind them.
"Lady Duff Gordon is going to help us sort out this problem," says Mama, giving Mary a tight smile that is not mirrored in her eyes as they scrutinise her figure.
"So I heard," Mary says with as much nonchalance as she can muster. She obscures her mother's view by slipping the jacket of her winter walking suit over her blouse.
"It must be a mistake." Mama seats herself in a reproduction Louis XIV armchair tucked in the corner of the dressing room, she sweeps her hand over her eyes. "Your measurements can't have changed that drastically in so short a time."
"Haven't you noticed her picking at her food at every meal?" Edith stands and crosses in front of Mary to view her own gown in the mirror, adjusting the fall of the sheer black tulle over the jade satin slip in an obvious attempt to be noticed. No one does, of course.
"I wish I had Mary's resolve to diet," Sybil says, fidgeting in her dusky red gown with a wide sash and embroidered roses and pale gold lacework that suit her girlish sweetness. "Then my corset wouldn't have to be so tight. Though if only women weren't made to wear corsets--"
"That wouldn't explain the increased bust," Rosamund says.
Ignoring her aunt's appraising gaze, Mary says, "And if it did you should try it, Edith. So your corset won't have to work so hard."
"Oh, can't you two at least agree to a truce at Christmas?" Sybil implores, on her feet now and reaching awkwardly behind her back for the ends of her satin sash. "In the spirit of peace on earth?"
"You are an angel," Mary goes to her and loosens the sash for her. "Unfortunately the one who appeared to the shepherds didn't say anything about goodwill toward sisters."
"Or dressmakers," says Mama. "I'm not feeling a great deal of goodwill toward Lady Duff Gordon at the moment."
"I tried to warn you," Rosamund tells her. "This Titanic scandal will ruin the woman."
"She wouldn't be the only one," Mary mutters, and Sybil tilts her head upward to give her a sympathetic look as her fingers squeeze Mary's hand.
"Robert said the same," Mama says. "That Lucy's work will suffer with the public condemning her and Sir Cosmo for their means of escape."
"Bribery is generally frowned upon," Edith says, and Rosamund snorts.
"That was just newspaper slander," Mama argues, referring to the early reports that Lady Duff Gordon's husband bribed the lifeboat crew five pounds apiece to row twelve people in a boat meant to hold forty safely away from the sinking ocean liner; Sir Cosmo himself claimed the payment was for the purchase of necessities once the survivors reached landfall.
"I wonder who we know who might have been involved in that," says Edith, raising her brows at Mary, who rolls her eyes--though even she is not naive enough to think Richard's papers are above revelling in such a salacious story in the wake of tragedy.
"That is not charitable," Mama rebukes Edith. Pushing up from her chair, she goes on as she approaches her other two daughters, "Sybil's right, it is a season of peace and goodwill. I've had gowns made at Maison Lucile for almost as long as I've been a mother," she goes on, wistfully, and lifts a hand to stroke Mary's cheek. "I want my daughters to have dresses as beautiful as they are."
Mary wishes she could mock her mother's soppiness, but instead holds her breath as the blue eyes scrutinise her at such close range, the lines them deepening by a fraction as if puzzling something out.
"Lady Grantham? Lady Mary?"
At the voice outside the dressing room, Mama turns from Mary to sweep the curtain aside, revealing Lucy Duff Gordon herself. The dressmaker is the picture of modernity even past Mama's age, with bobbed red hair and dressed in one of her own creations, a blousing black wool hobble skirt whose simplicity is belied by elegant braiding down the side-seam and over the wide black sash which falls to mid-calf, paired with a blouse that is a true confection of cream-colored chiffon. Above the ruffled collar, her cheeks are tinged with pink. Rouge? Or humiliation at overhearing the old allegations trotted out against her yet again?
"I'm dreadfully sorry for this mistake about Lady Mary's gown," she says in the flat vowels indicative of her Canadian upbringing. "I'm afraid altering it simply won't be possible, but for your inconvenience Lady Mary may select any other gown she likes off the peg. I'll tailor it myself today and have it delivered to your address here tonight, or expressed to Yorkshire if you must leave before then. It's the very least I can do," she adds, "for another family who has suffered from the Titanic tragedy."
They haven't much time before they're to meet Richard for tea, and though Mama thanks Lady Duff Gordon for her generous accommodations, as they browse the selection of gowns on hangers and mannequins, she bemoans the loss of the original dress.
"It was just so perfect," she says with a sigh. "Ivory is so becoming with your hair and complexion."
Mary's stomach clenches as the memory of Richard's voice, husky from dozing with her after sex, rasps almost the exact words whilst inspecting the contents of her wardrobe.
"I was beginning to second-guess it, anyway," she says. "It's so bridal. And I already have an ivory evening gown."
"You already have a black one, too," observes Sybil as Mary is drawn to a dress not spied before now on a mannequin.
"Not quite like this one," she argues, her eyes raking over the layers of sheer black embroidered tulle draped asymmetrically over a black silk skirt, forming a shawl over a nude slip and black silk skirt, beaded with crystals.
"It's exquisite," Mama says, touching the beadwork about the neckline. "But...darling, are you certain you want to look as if you're in mourning? You were so impatient to be out of it for Patrick."
I'm not as sad as I should be. That's what makes me sad. Mary bristles at Mama's unintended dig, though not so much as at Edith's muttered remark when Lady Duff Gordon approaches Mama with the possibility of adding a bit of beaded burgundy satin at the cuffs of the elbow sleeves and bodice for a festive accent.
"Isn't Mary in mourning, though? For her reputation?"
She slinks off to speak to an acquaintance waving her from across the shop, and Mary stares after her for a moment before drawing her gaping lips back together and returning her attention to the mannequin.
"This will be quite perfect," she tells her mother and Lady Duff Gordon. "The first time I met Sir Richard, I was a girl in black."
She will see whether he still wants to kiss her.
Read Chapter 19
Author: mrstater
Fandom: Downton Abbey
Characters & Pairings: Mary Crawley/Richard Carlisle, Cora Crawley, Edith Crawley, Sybil Crawley, Rosamund Painswick
Chapter Word Count: 4522
Chapter Summary: During a trip to London for Christmas shopping, acquaintances with a flair for the dramatic, and a dressmaker's error, force Mary to consider what role she must now play.
Author's Notes: This chapter not only features the return of Lady Diana Manners, but her mother, Violet, Duchess of Rutland, who, like Diana, is larger than life and stranger than fiction, and also prominent fashion designer of the era, Lady Lucy Duff Gordon, who seemed a most appropriate choice for the Crawleys' dressmaker because they share a Titanic connection. Also, Liberty is still very much in existence today, though the department store as described in this chapter was in a different location. (Much to my chagrin as I had so looked forward to describing the Tudor revival building!) As always, many thanks to ju_dou for research assistance and beta reading.
Previous Chapters |
18. The Costume
Liberty.
The bold black lettering stands stark against the white façade of the neoclassical building upon which it is painted. Like a newspaper headline, Mary thinks, proclaiming some military or political revolution victorious.
As she stands outside the entrance of London's most fashionable department store, peering up at the Liberty & Co. sign and the two storeys of soot-stained stone that rise above, she wishes for freedom. Not, for the first time in months, from the patriarchy that denies her a birthright, against which Richard Carlisle seduced her with promises to fight. Instead, Mary battles against her own body, a heightened sense of the dizziness and nausea that began on the drive over from Aunt Rosamund's holding her captive on the pavement.
"Mary?"
Drawing a steadying breath of the London air which is, if not wholesome as the air back home, at least refreshingly chill, crisp with the possibility of a frost, she drags her gaze downward to Rosamund, who has fallen back to wait as Edith and Sybil follow Mama into the store.
"Why are you gawking, dear? Someone might mistake you for a country bumpkin who's never seen a store larger than the village shop."
"Me, a country bumpkin?" Mary draws back her shoulders and takes careful steps across the pavement toward her aunt. "In this hat and coat?"
She momentarily forgets her nausea as she glimpses her reflection in the glass door: her new scarlet winter walking costume, trimmed with sable fur at the collar and cuffs, so bright against the grey backdrop of the wintry street scene.
"And here I was just thinking how festive she looks," says Edith waspishly. "The red really offsets the green of her complexion. One can't help but think of holly and ivy."
In other circumstances Mary would come back with a retort to make Edith's weak chin wobble. With all eyes on her now--especially Mama's--she is too mindful of the suggestion Anna made about her health, and of the credence her queasy stomach lends it.
"It's Aunt Rosamund's new chauffeur," she says, rolling her eyes. "If you had to get rid of your old one, couldn't you at least have found someone who knows which side of the road to drive on?"
"Why did you fire him?" Sybil asks.
Rosamund arches her brows at Mary and answers, "He was a spy."
"A spy?" Sybil echoes, incredulous.
Edith snorts. "What, for the Germans?"
"Really, Rosamund," Mama says, thankfully shifting her gaze to her sister-in-law, "why did you let Jenkins go? He always seemed an excellent driver."
"If only his ethics were not so dubious."
Rosamund throws a glance over her shoulder that makes Mary swallow a lump as she watches her push into the throng of Christmas shoppers gathered around displays and moving en masse toward the staircases. Her aunt may have sacked a chauffeur, but it's Richard's ethics to which she refers.
And she doesn't even know by what means he procured his Marconi scoop.
"Shall we get started?" Mama asks Mary and her sisters. She checks the ornate brooch-style watch pinned to her coat and frowns. "We haven't as much time as I'd like for all our shopping before your dress fittings with Lady Duff Gordon. And of course it'll be too late after tea with Sir Richard at Fortnum's."
Mary isn't sure whether it's the notion of eating that turns her stomach at the mention of tea, or the prospect of seeing Richard for the first time since their awkward goodbye at the train station six weeks ago, when he was already too absorbed in writing up his story about Mr Pamuk's death to even say the words. Although, if she considers the scenario fairly, she hardly gave him a chance to say them, before she whisked off to be Evelyn's moral support as he telephoned the Turkish admbassador.
And now Mama's informed him of their shopping trip to down, less than a fortnight before she is to see him anyway at Downton, and accepted his invitation to afternoon tea at Fortnum and Mason..
I thought your plan was to show me how he doesn't fit in with our kind of people? Mary asked when Mama informed her of the plan
You're confusing me with your father again, Mama replied, but added, sincerely, Whatever it is you like about Sir Richard, you saw it in when you were in the company of his kind of people. I want to give him a chance to show me, too.
By taking tea with him, your three daughters, and your sister-in-law? Mary flung back with her usual sarcasm. Mama's support comes as too little, too late; even if she does decide Richard is all dimples and charm, she'll deny ever having such an opinion if she learns about his ultimate breach of etiquette. Never mind that he did so at Mary's suggestion.
"In that case shouldn't we start with Granny?" Edith's suggestion draws Mary back to the current dilemma of Christmas shopping. "She's always the most difficult to find presents for."
"What a practical idea, Edith," says Mama--though the middle daughter wilts slightly when Sybil elicits a similar reaction from their mother.
"Don't you think we ought to save her for last? So we don't run out of time trying to make up our minds and come away empty-handed?"
Some debate ensues, during which their voices recede, of no more consequence to Mary than the din of their fellow shoppers' conversations blending together all around them. They must reach some consensus, because she soon finds herself following them in a weaving path through the maze of people and display tables and cases, then shuffling down a flight of stairs to the basement level of the store. Too much Nuit de Chine wafts from the fox stole of a jiggling woman in front of her down the stairs, and to escape the nauseating odor, Mary looks up--but this proves a mistake as the view of the oak staircase spiraling overhead forces her to close her eyes and cling to the banister as she completes the descent by feel.
At the bottom, her state only worsens when she is confronted by Liberty & Co.'s most dizzying feature of all. Which is not the Eastern Bazaar with its eclectic display of Indian and Oriental-inspired decorative goods and furniture, but by a blur of frowsy hair and trailing silk that nearly knocks the off-balance Mary to the floor as a pair of arms embrace her and lips peck each of her cheeks.
"Mary darling!"
"Hello, Diana." Mary delivers an unsmiling greeting, though in true Diana Manners fashion, the other girl seems hardly to notice the lack of warmth as she draws back, her hands sliding down Mary's forearms to grasp her hands.
"Fancy running into you here, when I was just thinking of you!"
"Were you?" Mary thinks it unlikely.
"What a fetching coat. You are the daring one, going out in red after..."
The sentence trails off, and Diana's clear blue eyes turn into a suddenly glassy gaze; Mary, heart pounding and palms perspiring inside her kid gloves, cannot decide whether Diana said more than she intended, or if she is simply distracted by something shiny.
"I was going to say the same about your...kimono." Mary recovers a little as Diana takes the bait, tugging up the silken lapel that has slipped off her shoulder. Or perhaps it was really nothing more than Mary's own guilty conscience.
"Isn't it just a dream?" Diana releases Mary's hands and twirls, striking a croise derriere which somehow, for all her eccentricity, shows the garment's busy floral and bird print--and her full figure--to great advantage. "I found it upstairs and thought I'd ask Mama to buy it for me for Christmas...Only I can't find her anywhere..."
The vacant eyes scan the crowd around them as if to emphasize her point, but they do not alight on Lady Rutland.
"Ducky," Diana addresses a flushed and flustered Edith observing them from nearby, her face drawn uncharacteristically into disapproving lines that remind Mary of the Duchess of Rutland. "The Christmas season brings so many unexpected tidings from old acquaintances. I think yours might be the most surprising of all."
Mary draws in a sharp breath through her teeth. Edith wrote to Diana? Apparently so, given the way Edith steadfastly ignores Mary's attempts to catch her gaze. But why? In all the times they've been in each other's company, the younger girls have never been what anyone would call friends, and Diana was quite mean to Edith when they were débutantes together.
"Sybil!" Diana cries as the younger girl turns to show Mary a brooch she's found. "Haven't you grown into a beauty? It's lucky for Mary she's already caught a husband, because all the eligible bachelors will be breaking their hearts over you! Do you come out next season?"
"Not for another year." Sybil shakes her head with a slightly dejected manner, as her eyes glitter with amusement at Diana who, seeming not to have heard her, chortles as she adjusts her kimono.
"Though perhaps Mary needs to look out--I've never heard Richard speak so highly of anyone as you, Sybil. Mama had him for dinner not long after he stayed at Downton, and he quite raved about your mission to liberate girls from the drudgery of service.
"Did he say anything about Gwen?" Sybil asks, all eager earnestness.
Diana blinks. "Gwen?"
"Dawson. The housemaid he's hired on to train as a secretary."
"Lord, I don't remember!" Diana's giggle stops abruptly as she threads her arm through Mary's and leads her apart from her sisters. "And I was only joking, Mary, about Richard. What are you getting him for Christmas?"
"I hadn't thought--"
"Well you'd better think. He's your fiancé!"
"We're not engaged. It's hardly appropriate--"
"Isn't it just a formality at this point?"
Would it be possible, Mary wonders, to scandalise Diana by stating that in fact the wedding would be just a formality.
"And I know just what you should get him!" Diana giggles again. "Don't worry, Mary darling! It will be completely within the bounds of propriety."
Mary doubts that, but does not express such verbally, just as she says nothing on the subject of what Diana means by at this point. Whatever she knows--or thinks she knows--it can't be so sinister as her remark about wearing red if it operates on the assumption of forthcoming nuptials. Can it? And anyway, how could Diana know anything?
"Look, Mary, there's your Mama!" Diana bolts forward, dragging Mary toward a fabric counter. "Lady Grantham, you've exactly the same idea as me--nothing but a Liberty print for the fashionable Englishman."
"How lovely to see you, Diana." Mama's expression doesn't indicate she thinks it lovely at all as she watches Diana flit about in the kimono she hasn't actually purchased. After a moment she turns to Mary to solicit her opinion the length of printed silk she was admiring before Diana interrupted.
"I was considering this for the lining of a smoking jacket..." Eyeing the silk draped over Diana's frame, Mama notices it's the same as the one in her hands, and moves further down the silk display. "Perhaps a paisley would suit your papa better...If there's even time to have one made..."
"A smoking jacket, yes! Oh, Mary, that'd be simply ripping! You know how Richard is about his cigars!"
She does. In fact Mary has a more intimate knowledge of Richard and his cigars than Diana can likely imagine, for all her penchant for being featured in newspaper gossip columns. She tasted Richard's cigar when he kissed her that night in the library, the musty smoke on his lips, the bittersweet oaky tobacco as her tongue glided along his in his warm mouth.
"Don't you think that might be a little personal for a man to whom I am not formally engaged?" Mary asks, avoiding eye contact with Mama.
Diana throws back her head, a few strands of rebellious hair falling loose from the pins, and laughs--loudly, turning a few heads, which is just what she intended. "I suppose a dressing gown is out of the question, too! All right then, what about a nice respectable boring...scarf?"
Mary balks--but only because of the particular printed silk scarf Diana points to in a glass display case. Her eye is caught by a different pattern.
"Excuse me, Miss?" Diana waves to attract the attention of a salesgirl--and a number of passersby. "My friend would like to purchase a gentleman's scarf. That one, the peacock feather print." Chortling, she grasps Mary's hand and bounces on the tips of her toes as if she's wearing a pair of pointe ballet slippers--which, a downward glance reveals to actually be the case. "Oh, Mary, it's the most perfect present for Richard. He's such a vain darling!"
"You don't think Sir Richard will find it insulting?" Mama asks as the clerk holds out the scarf for Mary's closer inspection.
"More insulting than the Papa and Edith about the shooting tweeds?"
Mama opens her mouth in retort, but before she can emit any sound, a fourth female voice joins the conversation.
"Diana! Diana my love. I told you not to run off." The Duchess of Rutland scolds her daughter as if she is two years old and not twenty--though she leaves off suddenly, with much the same distracted expression as Diana wore earlier. "Oh! What a lovely kimono." She herself is swathed in a chartreuse wool mantle over a trailing black dress, indicating that mother and daughter share an appreciation for Oriental fashions.
"Cora," she adds, by way of greeting, chin jutting at an awkward angle from her long neck to peer up at Mama from beneath the rolled mink band of the black and gold silk hat squashed low on her head. It strikes Mary as a cross between a turban and a Russian ushanka--apart from the large jaunty bow in the back, which recalls neither style of headdress.
"Lady Rutland."
Mama's smile doesn't reach her wide eyes as they dart downward to the hand encased in a long black evening glove peeping out from the wide yellow sleeve, which the Duchess pointedly does not extend to her. The tension between the two women perplexes Mary; even more so when she notices Diana bobbing on her toes again whilst her gaze darts back and forth between them as if she is a spectator at a tennis match. How alarming it is that Diana Manners is better appraised of the situation than she.
"Mama, just look what I helped Mary find for Richard Carlisle! A peacock print Liberty scarf! Isn't it cunning? Just like the old fox!"
"Yes..." Lady Rutland turns slightly toward Mary and expresses the same genuine admiration that she did for Diana's kimono, but she is only momentarily distracted from the company. "Richard told the Duke and me he'd accepted an invitation to your estate. I must say, Cora, I voiced my fear to him that he might find a country Christmas rather dull in comparison to what he's accustomed to in town..."
Or at Belvoir, Mary suspects Diana's mother wants to say. The antics at the Saturday to Monday parties the Duchess throws at her husband's ancestral castle are notorious for being even more theatrical than the productions at His Majesties Theatre, and grace the pages of less reputable publications than The Sketch.
"Then again," Lady Rutland goes on, her shaded gaze locking on Mary. "I suppose Downton played host to scandal during Richard's previous visit with appeal enough for even a newspaper magnate's lurid tastes. Though I take it you'll avoid the traditional Boxing Day hunt?"
Mama splutters a response about Mr Pamuk's ghastly accident and Sir Richard's tasteful coverage of the tragedy, of which Mary can register no more than every other word for the roar in her ears of a hot sick wave rolling over her. Pressing her fingers in the cool kid leather glove to her lips, she again tries to convince herself it's only her own guilt. Not the possibility that Diana or Lady Rutland really knows anything. Certainly not that she is...afflicted with the condition Anna suspects.
But then the Duchess tells her daughter to come along and, as they pass by, leans in to Mama and squeezes her hand.
"I'm so sorry for you, Cora," she says as if she is offering condolences at a funeral. "But at least she'll be married off to a husband who can minimise the scandal for your family. Small comforts."
"Merry Christmas, darling!" Diana calls out, pirouetting to blow kisses.
Mary removes her hand from her mouth in a rather weak wave, though the pressing urge to be sick recedes along with their acquaintances into the mass of shoppers.
"My," she says, her voice slightly too tremulous to qualify as the blasé tone she has polished with as much care and precision as Professor Higgins buffed the London grime from Eliza Doolittle's until the syllables shimmered from her lips like cut glass. "The Mannerses never miss an opportunity to be dramatic, do they? All the world's a stage, indeed."
And the role that Mary must play, for the moment, is that she is not about to be sick on the stage because of a choice even Diana has not been foolish enough to make.
~*~
"What do you mean, Mary's gown doesn't fit?"
The Duchess of Rutland and her daughter are not, it seems, the only ones prone to theatrics. Fingers pausing on the buttons of her blouse, Mary tilts her head toward the exterior of the dressing room, straining to make out Mama's dismayed stage whisper through the heavy velvet drapery that separates the public space of the seamstress' shop from the fitting area.
"We were just here a few weeks ago in October for her measurements," she goes on. "You took them yourself."
"They seem to have changed in that span of time, Lady Grantham," replies Miss Brown, the dressmaker's assistant whose taut syllables make Mary imagine furrows in the skin all around the thin lips, which part in the very smallest of os required for speech. "Your daughter is rather more slender in the waist than she was when I measured her in October."
At once Mary resumes doing up her buttons, conscious of her sisters seated on the small upholstered sofa behind her in their new Christmas frocks, and of her own lately prominent ribs and hipbones, though they are hidden from view by her corset and chemise.
"Oh," Mama says, in a more normal voice, accompanied by a sigh. "In that case isn't it just a simple matter of taking it in?"
"Not without ruining the line of the gown, I'm afraid. And..."
Mary closes her eyes as the anticipated words are delivered as if they are something unsavoury Miss Brown must swallow.
"...she has increased in...the bust."
"Or you measured her incorrectly." Aunt Rosamund's tones, biting as the winter wind that chased them into Maison Lucile an hour ago, do not require Mary to strain to hear as she joins in the conversation, turning it from a duet to a trio. "Have you considered that possibility?"
Miss Brown's reticence is a plainer answer than she could make in words that it is not, and in the mirror, Mary feels sick at the sight of the her blouse stretching tightly across her breasts as the button strains at the edge of its hole. And of Edith's brown eyes watching her hawkishly above her narrow hooked nose. Sybil, however, grins.
"You have to admire Miss Brown's resolve against the combined forces of Mama and Aunt Rosamund."
"Hush, darling," Mary chides her little sister, leaning nearer to the curtain.
"Is Lady Duff Gordon in the shop?" Mama asks, her voice low again, and harsh. "I would very much like to speak with her."
Sighing audibly, the dressmaker's assistant replies, "Yes, your ladyship."
The rings of the curtain scrape against the rod as Mama flings it back to enter the dressing area with Rosamund, who draws it closed again behind them.
"Lady Duff Gordon is going to help us sort out this problem," says Mama, giving Mary a tight smile that is not mirrored in her eyes as they scrutinise her figure.
"So I heard," Mary says with as much nonchalance as she can muster. She obscures her mother's view by slipping the jacket of her winter walking suit over her blouse.
"It must be a mistake." Mama seats herself in a reproduction Louis XIV armchair tucked in the corner of the dressing room, she sweeps her hand over her eyes. "Your measurements can't have changed that drastically in so short a time."
"Haven't you noticed her picking at her food at every meal?" Edith stands and crosses in front of Mary to view her own gown in the mirror, adjusting the fall of the sheer black tulle over the jade satin slip in an obvious attempt to be noticed. No one does, of course.
"I wish I had Mary's resolve to diet," Sybil says, fidgeting in her dusky red gown with a wide sash and embroidered roses and pale gold lacework that suit her girlish sweetness. "Then my corset wouldn't have to be so tight. Though if only women weren't made to wear corsets--"
"That wouldn't explain the increased bust," Rosamund says.
Ignoring her aunt's appraising gaze, Mary says, "And if it did you should try it, Edith. So your corset won't have to work so hard."
"Oh, can't you two at least agree to a truce at Christmas?" Sybil implores, on her feet now and reaching awkwardly behind her back for the ends of her satin sash. "In the spirit of peace on earth?"
"You are an angel," Mary goes to her and loosens the sash for her. "Unfortunately the one who appeared to the shepherds didn't say anything about goodwill toward sisters."
"Or dressmakers," says Mama. "I'm not feeling a great deal of goodwill toward Lady Duff Gordon at the moment."
"I tried to warn you," Rosamund tells her. "This Titanic scandal will ruin the woman."
"She wouldn't be the only one," Mary mutters, and Sybil tilts her head upward to give her a sympathetic look as her fingers squeeze Mary's hand.
"Robert said the same," Mama says. "That Lucy's work will suffer with the public condemning her and Sir Cosmo for their means of escape."
"Bribery is generally frowned upon," Edith says, and Rosamund snorts.
"That was just newspaper slander," Mama argues, referring to the early reports that Lady Duff Gordon's husband bribed the lifeboat crew five pounds apiece to row twelve people in a boat meant to hold forty safely away from the sinking ocean liner; Sir Cosmo himself claimed the payment was for the purchase of necessities once the survivors reached landfall.
"I wonder who we know who might have been involved in that," says Edith, raising her brows at Mary, who rolls her eyes--though even she is not naive enough to think Richard's papers are above revelling in such a salacious story in the wake of tragedy.
"That is not charitable," Mama rebukes Edith. Pushing up from her chair, she goes on as she approaches her other two daughters, "Sybil's right, it is a season of peace and goodwill. I've had gowns made at Maison Lucile for almost as long as I've been a mother," she goes on, wistfully, and lifts a hand to stroke Mary's cheek. "I want my daughters to have dresses as beautiful as they are."
Mary wishes she could mock her mother's soppiness, but instead holds her breath as the blue eyes scrutinise her at such close range, the lines them deepening by a fraction as if puzzling something out.
"Lady Grantham? Lady Mary?"
At the voice outside the dressing room, Mama turns from Mary to sweep the curtain aside, revealing Lucy Duff Gordon herself. The dressmaker is the picture of modernity even past Mama's age, with bobbed red hair and dressed in one of her own creations, a blousing black wool hobble skirt whose simplicity is belied by elegant braiding down the side-seam and over the wide black sash which falls to mid-calf, paired with a blouse that is a true confection of cream-colored chiffon. Above the ruffled collar, her cheeks are tinged with pink. Rouge? Or humiliation at overhearing the old allegations trotted out against her yet again?
"I'm dreadfully sorry for this mistake about Lady Mary's gown," she says in the flat vowels indicative of her Canadian upbringing. "I'm afraid altering it simply won't be possible, but for your inconvenience Lady Mary may select any other gown she likes off the peg. I'll tailor it myself today and have it delivered to your address here tonight, or expressed to Yorkshire if you must leave before then. It's the very least I can do," she adds, "for another family who has suffered from the Titanic tragedy."
They haven't much time before they're to meet Richard for tea, and though Mama thanks Lady Duff Gordon for her generous accommodations, as they browse the selection of gowns on hangers and mannequins, she bemoans the loss of the original dress.
"It was just so perfect," she says with a sigh. "Ivory is so becoming with your hair and complexion."
Mary's stomach clenches as the memory of Richard's voice, husky from dozing with her after sex, rasps almost the exact words whilst inspecting the contents of her wardrobe.
"I was beginning to second-guess it, anyway," she says. "It's so bridal. And I already have an ivory evening gown."
"You already have a black one, too," observes Sybil as Mary is drawn to a dress not spied before now on a mannequin.
"Not quite like this one," she argues, her eyes raking over the layers of sheer black embroidered tulle draped asymmetrically over a black silk skirt, forming a shawl over a nude slip and black silk skirt, beaded with crystals.
"It's exquisite," Mama says, touching the beadwork about the neckline. "But...darling, are you certain you want to look as if you're in mourning? You were so impatient to be out of it for Patrick."
I'm not as sad as I should be. That's what makes me sad. Mary bristles at Mama's unintended dig, though not so much as at Edith's muttered remark when Lady Duff Gordon approaches Mama with the possibility of adding a bit of beaded burgundy satin at the cuffs of the elbow sleeves and bodice for a festive accent.
"Isn't Mary in mourning, though? For her reputation?"
She slinks off to speak to an acquaintance waving her from across the shop, and Mary stares after her for a moment before drawing her gaping lips back together and returning her attention to the mannequin.
"This will be quite perfect," she tells her mother and Lady Duff Gordon. "The first time I met Sir Richard, I was a girl in black."
She will see whether he still wants to kiss her.
Read Chapter 19