Fic: A Girl in Black (26/?)
Title: A Girl in Black (26/?)
Author: mrstater
Fandom: Downton Abbey
Characters & Pairings: Mary Crawley/Richard Carlisle
Chapter Word Count: 4822 words
Chapter Summary: On New Year's Eve, Mary and Richard finally say what they mean, and reach a decision about what that means for their future.
Author's Note: Surprise Tuesday night update! In case my American readers are looking for a distraction from the election results, and in case any of the rest of you are up at ungodly hours. ;) I had thought this would be the penultimate chapter, but good news if you're not quite ready for the fic to end (as I'm not): I've had inspiration for yet another chapter. So. The end is not quite nigh. As always, thanks to ju_dou for going above and beyond the call of beta duty.
Previous Chapters |
26. The Resolution
The story, which Richard tells her over the Hare and Hounds' New Year's Eve special roast leg of lamb--which, Mary says as she chews...and chews...and chews...is more likely boiled mutton; Mmm, just like Mother makes, he agrees as he struggles in vain to saw through gristle with his knife, gaining little leverage with his plate resting on his lap as he stretches out on the settee in the private parlour that in fact belongs to the publican and his wife--is that as soon as he learned that Evelyn Napier was not the perpetuator of any slander about Mary but only heard it traced back to Diana Manners, he set off on the next train to Leicestershire to confront the gossipmonger in person. (You know how she is, Mary, I never could have got a straight answer out of her over the phone. And it turned out the lines to Belvoir were knocked out, anyway.)
Due to the icy conditions across the country, the usual two hour train ride lasted through the night, and by that time it pulled into the station the morning editions were out, and Richard was forced to put off going on to the Duke of Rutland's whilst he struggled to get in touch with Miss Fields and his editor back in London about damage control in the Evening Telegram. His attempt the following day to get to Downton was similarly thwarted, the train delayed indefinitely just outside of Bottesford--not five miles from Belvoir, whereupon Richard, in a fit of frustration, disembarked the train, hiked back into the village, and bought the Model T off the first local he saw and spent the rest of the day contending with the treacherous roads to Yorkshire, stopping only for petrol.
"No wonder you turned up looking so untidy," Mary says, seated across the low coffee table from him in a wing-backed chair by the fireplace. She tests the mashed turnip at the end of her fork for edibility and, deciding it lives up to advertising better than the lamb, helps herself to a normal-sized bite.
"Forgive me for not donning tails and white tie to be punched in the jaw by Lord Grantham."
Richard's cross expression turns to a cringe as he washes down his meat with a drink of wine, the dry acidity of which no doubt stings his split lip, and Mary's amusement wavers as this draws her attention to the bruise darkening on his chin beneath the pale red-gold stubble of his day's growth of beard.
"Your jaw looks painful," she asks. "Do you need to have it looked at?"
"No," Richard snorts. "I bare-knuckle box in the warehouse, remember? Your Papa swings like an Eton boy."
"In other words, he didn't mete out the same punishment you dealt poor Evelyn?"
He glances away and takes another sullen drink.
"It's just as well you didn't do him any serious damage. Not only because Evelyn was innocent, but you'd have his medical expenses and whatever suit he levelled against you, on top of the cost of this impetuous car purchase."
"Three hundred pounds." Richard draws out the syllables as he peers into his glass as he swirls the wine.
"I beg your pardon?"
"I paid that greedy bastard three hundred pounds for his Model T. He probably only paid half that when he bought it new in '08." Creases form at the corners of his eyes as he glances over his shoulder at her, smirking; clearly he knows that until this moment, she had no notion of the price of a car. "I hope I haven't offended your aristocratic sensibilities by discussing money in such blunt terms."
"After you put that substantial roll of bills on the proprietor's desk and asked him for his best available suite?"
Indeed, her composure was put to the greater test by Richard's clear inference that they would spend the night together in Ripon, giving their names as Mr and Mrs Richards. Which could only mean reconciliation was inevitable, couldn't it? Though he looked more amused than annoyed when she remarked, fishing for some concrete idea of his expectations, that they made such an odd couple--she in her evening attire, he not fully dressed in rumpled travelling clothes, that the innkeeper's wife must think they were in fact a gentleman's daughter and a chauffeur on their way to Gretna.
Now she asks, "Do you always carry sufficient funds to purchase automobiles and rent innkeepers' personal apartments?"
"You are unaccustomed to being in the company of people who carry funds at all, sufficient or otherwise." Richard's slightly mocking expression presses itself into the lines of consternated focus as he resorts to tearing the stubborn clinging fat off the lamb with his fingers. "As you can imagine, I left London in rather a frenzied state to find out who started the rumours for which I blamed Mr Napier."
"If only I'd been able to buy my way into a line of communication that could reach you," Mary says, setting her unappetising plate on the table beside her wing-backed chair, a blob of gravy glistening in the glow cast by the old-fashioned hurricane lamp. "I could have saved you a lot of bother. And money. Though--I do appreciate it. I'm glad you're here."
"But that is why I'm here." Richard swings his legs over the edge of the settee, swivelling to face her as he sits upright. "When Diana told me it was Edith who wrote that you'd engaged in illicit extramarital activities..." Their eyes lock as he pronounces the damning phrase; though Mary flushes all over, she can't avert her gaze. "...I had no intention of going to Downton and being made a fool of again. I planned to stay on at Belvoir and lose myself in the New Year's Eve revels. Diana's Coterie were all there--Raymond Asquith and Duff Cooper, you remember him from the Cave..."
He rambles on about the guest list, which Mary cannot hear over the irrational rumble of a certain green-eyed creature who inhabits her mind, despite the reality that Richard is not currently revelling in the New Year at that den of iniquity.
"But when I woke this morning," the rasp of his voice catches her attention, drawing her out of herself and back to him, "I had a telegram from Miss Fields. That you needed me."
And he came.
As he always would have done, she knows in the depths of her, more certainly than she has ever known anything. The moment she asked him to.
If only she'd not been too proud to ask.
He doesn't wait for her to ask him to stand and step around the coffee table to her. Her pulse beats against the veins and the skin of her wrists in an instinctive reaction against his domineering stance, but she remains seated, conceding the advantage of position. Why she does so, she cannot say; she folds her hands suppliantly in her lap, but the jut of her chin as she peers up at him is not precisely submissive.
"You doubted me," Richard says. "I am unclear as to what action on my part gave you cause to do so, but the fact remains that you did."
His eyes, which seem to be carved beneath the ridge of his brow due to the fairness of the lashes that frame them, widen slightly as his nostrils flare with an indrawn breath. Reining in his emotions. And his words.
"Let me reassure you that I still want to marry you," he says. "If that is what you want. And if you can meet me and build our house on a foundation of truth. Even one lie, Mary, will bring it all crashing down."
"I've already lied." She stands, as if she is a defendant rising to plead her guilty case, though she has no intention of pleading, or even of defending herself. Only of admitting the truth. "I am pregnant."
He has to have known it was coming-- this shameful condition, Papa announced to everyone with ears to hear--yet the blow of her confession seems to strike Richard harder than the punch he took earlier. She hears the puff of the breath he releases, sees the fall of his shoulders, the slight rock of his frame with the shifting of his weight, as though he is wrong-footed. The lines of his face slacken in surprise, and his eyes... She just glimpses the downward tug at the corners before he turns his back to her.
Good. He cannot look at her because he is too angry. When he strides away, through the open doorway adjoining the parlour into the darkened bedroom, Mary watches with a rush of relief through her. Richard's anger may last for a moment, but that wounded look...
However, after she has given him a moment to collect himself and follows him to the bedroom, she stops short in the doorway, grasping for the moulding, at the sight of him.
Seated at the edge of the bed. Hunched with his elbows on his knees. Eyes fixed on the toes of his socks.
He seems to be taking it all in, and Mary waits, unmoving, in the doorway for his response, but Richard keeps silent. The space between them seems to be full, packed with something thick and muting, which makes the room, the adjoining parlour, even the pub below stairs, seem unnaturally quiet. Aren't confessions meant to clear the air? Instead, hers seems to have made everything worse.
A chime from the mantel clock in the sitting room--the quarter-hour, just gone ten--makes her start, though Richard does not so much as flinch on the bed. If the truth is to set them free, then Mary can see she must be the one to cut through the layers of lies and silence that enshroud them.
She pushes off the door frame, the Louis heels of her black evening shoes clunking heavily, resonant, in her ears, on the worn planks as she treads slowly across the room to him. As she lowers herself onto the patchwork quilt beside him, Richard doesn't move even to cast a sidelong glance at her, though his shoulder does brush against hers as her added weight tilts the balance of the mattress, springs squeaking in protest.
"I should have told you long before now," she says. "As soon as I suspected. But I--" She catches herself, watching her fingers pick at a loose gold thread in one of the sunbursts embroidered on the sheer black overlay of her gown. "I will make no excuses for myself. There are none."
"Ah, but there are." Richard's voice scratches out, as low as she's ever heard it, the remarkable calm of it frightening. "So many excuses, which you'd be fully within your rights to make."
The bed frame creaks again as Richard shifts, continuing to lean on one elbow as the other hand rests heavily on her shoulder; his fingers curl but lightly around it, though the span of them gives the illusion of a firm grip.
"You are very young," he says, "and very sheltered. It can't be easy for a young woman like you to recognise she is pregnant, much less to contemplate the ultimate ruination of being found in that condition, without a husband."
His grip does tighten around her shoulder now, and Mary's throat constricts in response, choking out any words she might have tried to utter in the pause. Richard turns, slightly, his knee pressing into the side of her leg as he draws her to face him.
"But that's the funny thing, Mary. You would have had a husband. Even with those rumours circulating in London, and your father's inevitable disapproval..." He lifts his other hand to rub his bruised jaw; holding her breath, Mary hears the scratch of his stubble against the callused pads of his fingers. "...I never would have abandoned you."
"I know that now," Mary says, her heart trembling in her chest as she hears the subtle change in his voice, the slight unsteadiness as his control slips.
As if to cling to it, he clutches both her shoulders. "Why didn't you know it then? Why did you doubt me? What reason did I give you? Is this all because I left you to break that goddamn story about Kemal Pamuk?"
"I was angry with you for that--at first--"
"I'll concede I was insensitive to leave you like that, but that in your eyes it made a liar of me..." His fingers press into the soft parts of her arms beneath her shoulders. "After you asked me to be with you..."
"That's it, Richard. You were my choice. I wanted to be yours."
"You were!" He shakes her. "Of all the women in that ballroom last May--I wanted to kiss the one in black. I chose you--long before there was any question of it being necessary to do so. Except that you were necessary to my happiness."
"Then why didn't you tell me you loved me?"
As her voice echoes in the room, Richard's mouth opens in retort, but no words come out. Hands still on her shoulders, he grasps them harder before his fingers release her and he sits back from her at the edge of the bed. Beneath his open waistcoat his chest rises and falls beneath his shirt with the exertion of their quarrel. He draws a deep breath and then lets it out, slowly, before he speaks again.
"Didn't I?"
"Never absolutely."
He seems to accept this as the truth, but he turns away from her, the lines of his face deepening contemplatively as his fair eyebrows twitch in confusion. "I thought..." He ruffles the hair at the back of his head, squeezing the ends between his fingers, before his hand falls once more to his lap. "Actions speak louder, surely--"
"For most people. But you always mean what you say. So I thought--"
"--that what I didn't say must not be true," Richard completes the thought for her.
"I've been such a fool," says Mary, looking up at the cracked plaster of the ceiling.
"I've been a bigger one." He hunches forward on his elbows again, scuffing his hand over his unshaven cheek and chin, wincing as he rubs the forgotten tender bruise. "All of this was unnecessary. We could have spared ourselves everything.... If only we were both better at saying what we mean."
"It's not too late, is it?" Mary's eyes flick downward again, to the ends of Richard's hair which curl down into the back if his loosened collar with his bent neck. She cannot resist touching them, so fine and golden, with the occasional strand of silver, in the dim light of the bedside lamp. "We've meant all we said just now, haven't we?"
Her hand curls around his neck, fingers slipping into his shirt, pressed against the flutter of his pulse as he turns to look at her over his shoulder, eyes gleaming bright as they fix on her lips.
"Every word," he says, and he kisses her.
It's a gentle kiss, scarcely more than a brush of his lips across hers, and not at all what Mary expects under the circumstances and given how Richard has kissed her in the past. Cautious, almost, if she must describe it. When he reaches up to cup her cheek in his broad hand she leans against the roughened warmth of his palm, parting her lips slightly. But instead of deepening the kiss as his other hand cradles her chin, her own smaller hands covering them, he draws back, peering into her eyes with a clear steady gaze that speaks to her not so much of caution, but of warning. The pads of his fingers curl into her cheekbones and jaw.
"You must never lie to me, Mary. Never again."
"I swear it." He leans in, presumably to kiss her again, but Mary presses her forehead against his, and her hands slide down to clutch his wrists, holding him back from her. "But Richard, you must say--"
"I love you," he rasps, and Mary yields to him, so that the words seem to be a breath that fills her as he murmurs them against her lips. "My god, I love you."
Then his arms snake around her waist, pulling her firmly into his lap; he angles his head to kiss her more aggressively, pushing his tongue between her lips. There is a desperation to the manner in which he seeks her tongue with his own, though not fuelled exclusively by lust as she sensed when he sneaked into her room on Christmas Eve with the intention of claiming the promised tryst from November, and Mary opens to him without hesitation, hooking her fingers behind his neck. She surrenders to his warmth, to his solid strength: the lean muscled thighs beneath her, arms like ropes binding her to his firm body as the world as she's always known it spins and unravels into a place that is altogether foreign.
Or perhaps it is not the world that's changed but her, the scales falling away from her eyes. She closes them and sees him kissing her cheek on Aunt Rosamund's doorstep, on her lips on the veranda at Claridge's, in Papa's library during a thunderstorm. When Richard confessed a lonely heart and she a betrayed one, and both learned the power each had over the other.
All was open between them, then, and now she even tastes the lingering metallic tang of blood on his cracked lower lip before his mouth leaves hers to kiss her chin and along her jaw, the downward path moving down her throat.
Richard lowers her back onto the lumpy mattress, the indentations of the publicans pressed permanently into it, as he slips out from beneath her to stretch his frame out over hers, supporting his weight with elbows pressed tight against her arms. Mary threads her fingers through the fine greying hair at his temples, and his hand moves absently over the sunburst pendant that rests there before wandering lower to curl over her breast. He rocks slightly to one side of her, one knee slotting between her legs, nudging them apart as the hand not occupied with her breast hitches up her skirt and petticoat; the satin and its sheer overlay are hardly warm winter wear, but gooseflesh prickles up beneath her stockings at the sudden absence of the layers--and Richard's sensuous caresses. A hardness against the v of her thighs alerts her to his state of arousal.
She whispers his name, her hands in his hair flatten over his scalp, coaxing him to raise his head to look at her. "I don't know if we should..."
His chest rises and falls rapidly against hers as he catches his breath, and he blinks and a haze seems to clear from his eyes. They dart down to the hand on her breast, and Mary glimpses the telltale furrow of disappointment between his eyebrows. He starts to withdraw his hand, muttering an apology; she covers it with her own, clasping his palm to her chest.
"That is to say," she clarifies, "I've been on bed rest this week."
"Bed rest?" Richard's grip tightens around her hand, the lines of his face seeming to clench inward, too. "Because of the pregnancy? You've had difficulty?"
His eyes search hers, but Mary glances away, self-conscious, as she pushes herself more upright on her elbows, scooting gingerly back to lean on the thin pillows propped against the rickety headboard.
"A little bleeding." She flushes as her gaze is drawn once more to meet Richard's, though he appears unfazed by this indelicacy. It is, after all, the truth.
But not the whole truth.
"It began after I rode to hounds on Boxing Day," she confesses, hastening to add, "though Dr Clarkson says it's not unusual in the early days, and that I couldn't have caused it."
"Of course not." Richard brings her hand to his lips, and sits up, his expression still anxious. "But you're all right now? The baby? And here I've dragged out improperly dressed through the ice in a Ford with worn-down springs."
"I'm fine," Mary reassures him as he settles beside her against the pillows, enfolding her in his arms and kissing the top of her head. "Better than I've felt in weeks, actually. Dr Clarkson gave me clearance this morning to resume my usual light activities. But making love might perhaps be considered undue exertion."
"You mean you didn't ask?"
"I can't imagine he'd have told an unmarried woman that engaging in sexual relations is safe."
"What harm could it do? You're already pregnant."
Mary tilts her face up to him, but it's difficult to maintain a disapprovingly arched eyebrow with the low rumble of his chuckle against her back.
"Do you think...?" he begins when their laughter has faded, but breaks off abruptly; after a moment's hesitation, he changes tacks. "Of course I'll abide by whatever the doctor deems necessary to keep you both safe, but...Will we have to wait until after the baby is born to--?"
"Heavens, I hope not." She supposes she'll have to ask, and what an awkward conversation that will be. "I should like to enjoy our honeymoon properly."
To emphasise the point, Mary leans her head back to kiss the curve at the base of his jaw, where the strong stubbled line meets smooth skin scented faintly with the lingering musk of shaving lotion and cologne. His mouth tilts with a slow grin.
"I want to take you to Paris," Richard says, and kisses her.
"You've got it all planned out, have you?"
"I have." His dimples show as he draws back, combining with his dishevelled hair and clothing, the cuffs of his trousers riding up to reveal his stocking feet, to make him look rather boyish. "Although I confess my daydreams never imagined Paris in the dead of winter. But the hotel has central heating, so it won't matter."
Richard and his central heating. "I'm sure you never planned on a baby, either," she says. "Do you mind much?"
"Believe it or not," Richard says, giving her an encouraging squeeze, and a smile, "I'm very fond of children. I have three nephews and an infant niece."
"Your brother's children? George?"
Richard nods, seemingly pleased at her memory of the brother he mentioned once. Soon, she supposes, she will meet the family he's spoken so little of. Will they take the news of her pregnancy as badly as her own family?
"And I can believe it," she says. "You're so indulgent of Sybil."
"I'm not sure I like what you're implying about my age. Or my carefully established reputation as a ruthless man of business."
"I dreamt you put her to work in your office. The baby, not Sybil. Miss Fields and Miss Dawson were teaching her to be a secretary."
"It's not such a terrible idea, you know, for children to learn practical skills, cultivate a work ethic. They'll be heirs to a business empire, after all."
He chuckles, and Mary again enjoys the vibration of it as she rests her head on his shoulder, and the relief at how accepting--even welcoming--he is of impending parenthood--one of them should be--and that banter is once more a part of their relationship. Though part of her worries he's not joking about putting their child to work. Before she can ask whether he means it, his chin brushes her temple as he leans around to catch her eye.
"You dreamed we had a girl? A daughter?"
"It was more of a nightmare, actually. I shouldn't like to set any store by it." Yet the nervous fluttering inside her changes to a quick strong beating heart when she looks up and sees a smile on his face that can only be described as an expression of hopeful delight. "You'd let a female child inherit the newspaper empire?"
Richard shifts them so that they lie facing each other on the bed, legs tangling together. His fingers stroke a loose lock of hair back from her face.
"Whether we have one child or ten," he tells her, without a trace of irony in his voice or expression, as if he's making a business agreement, “they'll have an equal share of everything, regardless of sex. I can give you that."
Mary doesn't miss his slight emphasis on the word I, or the inferred dig at Papa. Nevertheless she snuggles against him, burrowing her face into the soft poplin of his shirt to hide her face as it screws up against emotion--although her whispered thank you surely betrays her.
When she has swallowed the lump in her throat, she adds, "I think I'd prefer it if you don't give it to me ten times."
"I should have taken precautions." Richard massages circles her shoulder blades, bared by her low-backed evening gown. "The thought did cross my mind, but I never imagined one time would yield...results."
"It's in-character for you, though, isn't it? To get a thing done the first time?"
Richard smirks, but scuffs his thumb tenderly over her cheekbone. "We can be more careful in the future, you know."
She doesn't know, but daren't ask. Another thing to ask Dr Clarkson, she supposes. Does Mama know?. Or Aunt Rosamund? For the first time, she wonders if her aunt chose not to have children. She and Uncle Marmaduke avoided having a baby on the way prior to the wedding, after all, and now she thinks of it, Rosamund isn't exactly the most maternal woman she's ever known.
Neither, of course, is Mary. Not wanting Richard to outdo her too much in the department of parental instinct, she says, "We'll see if I share your fondness for children. I've never been around any to know. Not since I was a child myself. Though in the interest of full disclosure, I don't much enjoy childbearing so far. I've been frightfully ill..."
"That day at Fortnum's. God, I'm so sorry."
"It's an effective diet, though Dr Clarkson assures me I'll gain all the weight back, and then some. Eating for two. In future you may not have any interest in the sort of activities that require precautions."
"I highly doubt that," says Richard, loosening his embrace just enough to peep appreciatively down at the swell of her breasts, clearly noting they have grown. The hand at her waist sweeps down over her bottom. "I could teach you to box, so you can stave off the affects of childbearing whilst I wage war on middle age."
"Can't you find a form of exercise that doesn't present such a danger to your face?" Mary touches his chin, gingerly. "Like riding?"
"Where I'm only in danger of breaking my neck?"
"I hear it's the sort of headline that sells a lot of newspapers."
Richard glowers, but the creases at the corners of his eyes and mouth tug into a smile instead as he twines his fingers through hers. "We're in this together."
"Maintaining our svelte figures?" Mary again staves off rising emotion, wondering if Richard does the same when he replies, "What else?"
He kisses each of her knuckles, lingering on her fourth finger, remarking that he'll have to get her an engagement ring. Mary starts to remark that it's not really the thing for her lot, but bites her tongue, saying, with a glance down at her pendant, that she looks forward to more of his good taste in jewellery.
As they lie in each other's arms in bed, the implication of his statement gradually dawns on her.
"It won't be much of an engagement, will it, as it's only a few hours' drive to Gretna?"
"Who says we're eloping?"
Mary props herself on one elbow, moonlight on the bed in lacy patterns through the yellowed curtains, beyond which chimes the clock from a nearby church. "Wasn't that your intention when we jumped into your new old car and drove north? You asked me to elope at Christmas."
"Our new old car," Richard corrects her. "And that offer is now off the table. As for intentions...I intend for everyone to know I married you because I wanted to, not because I had to. I intend to do things properly." At her arched eyebrows, he grins. "For once."
Beyond the window, the village clock chimes the hour, half a beat out of synch and a step out of tune with the one on the mantel in the parlour. Counting twelve, Mary says, "Is that your New Year's Resolution? To do everything properly in 1913?"
Richard's eyes reflect the moonlight as Mary lies down again beside him, tilting her face in for a kiss. "Well--maybe not everything."
Read Chapter 27
Author: mrstater
Fandom: Downton Abbey
Characters & Pairings: Mary Crawley/Richard Carlisle
Chapter Word Count: 4822 words
Chapter Summary: On New Year's Eve, Mary and Richard finally say what they mean, and reach a decision about what that means for their future.
Author's Note: Surprise Tuesday night update! In case my American readers are looking for a distraction from the election results, and in case any of the rest of you are up at ungodly hours. ;) I had thought this would be the penultimate chapter, but good news if you're not quite ready for the fic to end (as I'm not): I've had inspiration for yet another chapter. So. The end is not quite nigh. As always, thanks to ju_dou for going above and beyond the call of beta duty.
Previous Chapters |
26. The Resolution
The story, which Richard tells her over the Hare and Hounds' New Year's Eve special roast leg of lamb--which, Mary says as she chews...and chews...and chews...is more likely boiled mutton; Mmm, just like Mother makes, he agrees as he struggles in vain to saw through gristle with his knife, gaining little leverage with his plate resting on his lap as he stretches out on the settee in the private parlour that in fact belongs to the publican and his wife--is that as soon as he learned that Evelyn Napier was not the perpetuator of any slander about Mary but only heard it traced back to Diana Manners, he set off on the next train to Leicestershire to confront the gossipmonger in person. (You know how she is, Mary, I never could have got a straight answer out of her over the phone. And it turned out the lines to Belvoir were knocked out, anyway.)
Due to the icy conditions across the country, the usual two hour train ride lasted through the night, and by that time it pulled into the station the morning editions were out, and Richard was forced to put off going on to the Duke of Rutland's whilst he struggled to get in touch with Miss Fields and his editor back in London about damage control in the Evening Telegram. His attempt the following day to get to Downton was similarly thwarted, the train delayed indefinitely just outside of Bottesford--not five miles from Belvoir, whereupon Richard, in a fit of frustration, disembarked the train, hiked back into the village, and bought the Model T off the first local he saw and spent the rest of the day contending with the treacherous roads to Yorkshire, stopping only for petrol.
"No wonder you turned up looking so untidy," Mary says, seated across the low coffee table from him in a wing-backed chair by the fireplace. She tests the mashed turnip at the end of her fork for edibility and, deciding it lives up to advertising better than the lamb, helps herself to a normal-sized bite.
"Forgive me for not donning tails and white tie to be punched in the jaw by Lord Grantham."
Richard's cross expression turns to a cringe as he washes down his meat with a drink of wine, the dry acidity of which no doubt stings his split lip, and Mary's amusement wavers as this draws her attention to the bruise darkening on his chin beneath the pale red-gold stubble of his day's growth of beard.
"Your jaw looks painful," she asks. "Do you need to have it looked at?"
"No," Richard snorts. "I bare-knuckle box in the warehouse, remember? Your Papa swings like an Eton boy."
"In other words, he didn't mete out the same punishment you dealt poor Evelyn?"
He glances away and takes another sullen drink.
"It's just as well you didn't do him any serious damage. Not only because Evelyn was innocent, but you'd have his medical expenses and whatever suit he levelled against you, on top of the cost of this impetuous car purchase."
"Three hundred pounds." Richard draws out the syllables as he peers into his glass as he swirls the wine.
"I beg your pardon?"
"I paid that greedy bastard three hundred pounds for his Model T. He probably only paid half that when he bought it new in '08." Creases form at the corners of his eyes as he glances over his shoulder at her, smirking; clearly he knows that until this moment, she had no notion of the price of a car. "I hope I haven't offended your aristocratic sensibilities by discussing money in such blunt terms."
"After you put that substantial roll of bills on the proprietor's desk and asked him for his best available suite?"
Indeed, her composure was put to the greater test by Richard's clear inference that they would spend the night together in Ripon, giving their names as Mr and Mrs Richards. Which could only mean reconciliation was inevitable, couldn't it? Though he looked more amused than annoyed when she remarked, fishing for some concrete idea of his expectations, that they made such an odd couple--she in her evening attire, he not fully dressed in rumpled travelling clothes, that the innkeeper's wife must think they were in fact a gentleman's daughter and a chauffeur on their way to Gretna.
Now she asks, "Do you always carry sufficient funds to purchase automobiles and rent innkeepers' personal apartments?"
"You are unaccustomed to being in the company of people who carry funds at all, sufficient or otherwise." Richard's slightly mocking expression presses itself into the lines of consternated focus as he resorts to tearing the stubborn clinging fat off the lamb with his fingers. "As you can imagine, I left London in rather a frenzied state to find out who started the rumours for which I blamed Mr Napier."
"If only I'd been able to buy my way into a line of communication that could reach you," Mary says, setting her unappetising plate on the table beside her wing-backed chair, a blob of gravy glistening in the glow cast by the old-fashioned hurricane lamp. "I could have saved you a lot of bother. And money. Though--I do appreciate it. I'm glad you're here."
"But that is why I'm here." Richard swings his legs over the edge of the settee, swivelling to face her as he sits upright. "When Diana told me it was Edith who wrote that you'd engaged in illicit extramarital activities..." Their eyes lock as he pronounces the damning phrase; though Mary flushes all over, she can't avert her gaze. "...I had no intention of going to Downton and being made a fool of again. I planned to stay on at Belvoir and lose myself in the New Year's Eve revels. Diana's Coterie were all there--Raymond Asquith and Duff Cooper, you remember him from the Cave..."
He rambles on about the guest list, which Mary cannot hear over the irrational rumble of a certain green-eyed creature who inhabits her mind, despite the reality that Richard is not currently revelling in the New Year at that den of iniquity.
"But when I woke this morning," the rasp of his voice catches her attention, drawing her out of herself and back to him, "I had a telegram from Miss Fields. That you needed me."
And he came.
As he always would have done, she knows in the depths of her, more certainly than she has ever known anything. The moment she asked him to.
If only she'd not been too proud to ask.
He doesn't wait for her to ask him to stand and step around the coffee table to her. Her pulse beats against the veins and the skin of her wrists in an instinctive reaction against his domineering stance, but she remains seated, conceding the advantage of position. Why she does so, she cannot say; she folds her hands suppliantly in her lap, but the jut of her chin as she peers up at him is not precisely submissive.
"You doubted me," Richard says. "I am unclear as to what action on my part gave you cause to do so, but the fact remains that you did."
His eyes, which seem to be carved beneath the ridge of his brow due to the fairness of the lashes that frame them, widen slightly as his nostrils flare with an indrawn breath. Reining in his emotions. And his words.
"Let me reassure you that I still want to marry you," he says. "If that is what you want. And if you can meet me and build our house on a foundation of truth. Even one lie, Mary, will bring it all crashing down."
"I've already lied." She stands, as if she is a defendant rising to plead her guilty case, though she has no intention of pleading, or even of defending herself. Only of admitting the truth. "I am pregnant."
He has to have known it was coming-- this shameful condition, Papa announced to everyone with ears to hear--yet the blow of her confession seems to strike Richard harder than the punch he took earlier. She hears the puff of the breath he releases, sees the fall of his shoulders, the slight rock of his frame with the shifting of his weight, as though he is wrong-footed. The lines of his face slacken in surprise, and his eyes... She just glimpses the downward tug at the corners before he turns his back to her.
Good. He cannot look at her because he is too angry. When he strides away, through the open doorway adjoining the parlour into the darkened bedroom, Mary watches with a rush of relief through her. Richard's anger may last for a moment, but that wounded look...
However, after she has given him a moment to collect himself and follows him to the bedroom, she stops short in the doorway, grasping for the moulding, at the sight of him.
Seated at the edge of the bed. Hunched with his elbows on his knees. Eyes fixed on the toes of his socks.
He seems to be taking it all in, and Mary waits, unmoving, in the doorway for his response, but Richard keeps silent. The space between them seems to be full, packed with something thick and muting, which makes the room, the adjoining parlour, even the pub below stairs, seem unnaturally quiet. Aren't confessions meant to clear the air? Instead, hers seems to have made everything worse.
A chime from the mantel clock in the sitting room--the quarter-hour, just gone ten--makes her start, though Richard does not so much as flinch on the bed. If the truth is to set them free, then Mary can see she must be the one to cut through the layers of lies and silence that enshroud them.
She pushes off the door frame, the Louis heels of her black evening shoes clunking heavily, resonant, in her ears, on the worn planks as she treads slowly across the room to him. As she lowers herself onto the patchwork quilt beside him, Richard doesn't move even to cast a sidelong glance at her, though his shoulder does brush against hers as her added weight tilts the balance of the mattress, springs squeaking in protest.
"I should have told you long before now," she says. "As soon as I suspected. But I--" She catches herself, watching her fingers pick at a loose gold thread in one of the sunbursts embroidered on the sheer black overlay of her gown. "I will make no excuses for myself. There are none."
"Ah, but there are." Richard's voice scratches out, as low as she's ever heard it, the remarkable calm of it frightening. "So many excuses, which you'd be fully within your rights to make."
The bed frame creaks again as Richard shifts, continuing to lean on one elbow as the other hand rests heavily on her shoulder; his fingers curl but lightly around it, though the span of them gives the illusion of a firm grip.
"You are very young," he says, "and very sheltered. It can't be easy for a young woman like you to recognise she is pregnant, much less to contemplate the ultimate ruination of being found in that condition, without a husband."
His grip does tighten around her shoulder now, and Mary's throat constricts in response, choking out any words she might have tried to utter in the pause. Richard turns, slightly, his knee pressing into the side of her leg as he draws her to face him.
"But that's the funny thing, Mary. You would have had a husband. Even with those rumours circulating in London, and your father's inevitable disapproval..." He lifts his other hand to rub his bruised jaw; holding her breath, Mary hears the scratch of his stubble against the callused pads of his fingers. "...I never would have abandoned you."
"I know that now," Mary says, her heart trembling in her chest as she hears the subtle change in his voice, the slight unsteadiness as his control slips.
As if to cling to it, he clutches both her shoulders. "Why didn't you know it then? Why did you doubt me? What reason did I give you? Is this all because I left you to break that goddamn story about Kemal Pamuk?"
"I was angry with you for that--at first--"
"I'll concede I was insensitive to leave you like that, but that in your eyes it made a liar of me..." His fingers press into the soft parts of her arms beneath her shoulders. "After you asked me to be with you..."
"That's it, Richard. You were my choice. I wanted to be yours."
"You were!" He shakes her. "Of all the women in that ballroom last May--I wanted to kiss the one in black. I chose you--long before there was any question of it being necessary to do so. Except that you were necessary to my happiness."
"Then why didn't you tell me you loved me?"
As her voice echoes in the room, Richard's mouth opens in retort, but no words come out. Hands still on her shoulders, he grasps them harder before his fingers release her and he sits back from her at the edge of the bed. Beneath his open waistcoat his chest rises and falls beneath his shirt with the exertion of their quarrel. He draws a deep breath and then lets it out, slowly, before he speaks again.
"Didn't I?"
"Never absolutely."
He seems to accept this as the truth, but he turns away from her, the lines of his face deepening contemplatively as his fair eyebrows twitch in confusion. "I thought..." He ruffles the hair at the back of his head, squeezing the ends between his fingers, before his hand falls once more to his lap. "Actions speak louder, surely--"
"For most people. But you always mean what you say. So I thought--"
"--that what I didn't say must not be true," Richard completes the thought for her.
"I've been such a fool," says Mary, looking up at the cracked plaster of the ceiling.
"I've been a bigger one." He hunches forward on his elbows again, scuffing his hand over his unshaven cheek and chin, wincing as he rubs the forgotten tender bruise. "All of this was unnecessary. We could have spared ourselves everything.... If only we were both better at saying what we mean."
"It's not too late, is it?" Mary's eyes flick downward again, to the ends of Richard's hair which curl down into the back if his loosened collar with his bent neck. She cannot resist touching them, so fine and golden, with the occasional strand of silver, in the dim light of the bedside lamp. "We've meant all we said just now, haven't we?"
Her hand curls around his neck, fingers slipping into his shirt, pressed against the flutter of his pulse as he turns to look at her over his shoulder, eyes gleaming bright as they fix on her lips.
"Every word," he says, and he kisses her.
It's a gentle kiss, scarcely more than a brush of his lips across hers, and not at all what Mary expects under the circumstances and given how Richard has kissed her in the past. Cautious, almost, if she must describe it. When he reaches up to cup her cheek in his broad hand she leans against the roughened warmth of his palm, parting her lips slightly. But instead of deepening the kiss as his other hand cradles her chin, her own smaller hands covering them, he draws back, peering into her eyes with a clear steady gaze that speaks to her not so much of caution, but of warning. The pads of his fingers curl into her cheekbones and jaw.
"You must never lie to me, Mary. Never again."
"I swear it." He leans in, presumably to kiss her again, but Mary presses her forehead against his, and her hands slide down to clutch his wrists, holding him back from her. "But Richard, you must say--"
"I love you," he rasps, and Mary yields to him, so that the words seem to be a breath that fills her as he murmurs them against her lips. "My god, I love you."
Then his arms snake around her waist, pulling her firmly into his lap; he angles his head to kiss her more aggressively, pushing his tongue between her lips. There is a desperation to the manner in which he seeks her tongue with his own, though not fuelled exclusively by lust as she sensed when he sneaked into her room on Christmas Eve with the intention of claiming the promised tryst from November, and Mary opens to him without hesitation, hooking her fingers behind his neck. She surrenders to his warmth, to his solid strength: the lean muscled thighs beneath her, arms like ropes binding her to his firm body as the world as she's always known it spins and unravels into a place that is altogether foreign.
Or perhaps it is not the world that's changed but her, the scales falling away from her eyes. She closes them and sees him kissing her cheek on Aunt Rosamund's doorstep, on her lips on the veranda at Claridge's, in Papa's library during a thunderstorm. When Richard confessed a lonely heart and she a betrayed one, and both learned the power each had over the other.
All was open between them, then, and now she even tastes the lingering metallic tang of blood on his cracked lower lip before his mouth leaves hers to kiss her chin and along her jaw, the downward path moving down her throat.
Richard lowers her back onto the lumpy mattress, the indentations of the publicans pressed permanently into it, as he slips out from beneath her to stretch his frame out over hers, supporting his weight with elbows pressed tight against her arms. Mary threads her fingers through the fine greying hair at his temples, and his hand moves absently over the sunburst pendant that rests there before wandering lower to curl over her breast. He rocks slightly to one side of her, one knee slotting between her legs, nudging them apart as the hand not occupied with her breast hitches up her skirt and petticoat; the satin and its sheer overlay are hardly warm winter wear, but gooseflesh prickles up beneath her stockings at the sudden absence of the layers--and Richard's sensuous caresses. A hardness against the v of her thighs alerts her to his state of arousal.
She whispers his name, her hands in his hair flatten over his scalp, coaxing him to raise his head to look at her. "I don't know if we should..."
His chest rises and falls rapidly against hers as he catches his breath, and he blinks and a haze seems to clear from his eyes. They dart down to the hand on her breast, and Mary glimpses the telltale furrow of disappointment between his eyebrows. He starts to withdraw his hand, muttering an apology; she covers it with her own, clasping his palm to her chest.
"That is to say," she clarifies, "I've been on bed rest this week."
"Bed rest?" Richard's grip tightens around her hand, the lines of his face seeming to clench inward, too. "Because of the pregnancy? You've had difficulty?"
His eyes search hers, but Mary glances away, self-conscious, as she pushes herself more upright on her elbows, scooting gingerly back to lean on the thin pillows propped against the rickety headboard.
"A little bleeding." She flushes as her gaze is drawn once more to meet Richard's, though he appears unfazed by this indelicacy. It is, after all, the truth.
But not the whole truth.
"It began after I rode to hounds on Boxing Day," she confesses, hastening to add, "though Dr Clarkson says it's not unusual in the early days, and that I couldn't have caused it."
"Of course not." Richard brings her hand to his lips, and sits up, his expression still anxious. "But you're all right now? The baby? And here I've dragged out improperly dressed through the ice in a Ford with worn-down springs."
"I'm fine," Mary reassures him as he settles beside her against the pillows, enfolding her in his arms and kissing the top of her head. "Better than I've felt in weeks, actually. Dr Clarkson gave me clearance this morning to resume my usual light activities. But making love might perhaps be considered undue exertion."
"You mean you didn't ask?"
"I can't imagine he'd have told an unmarried woman that engaging in sexual relations is safe."
"What harm could it do? You're already pregnant."
Mary tilts her face up to him, but it's difficult to maintain a disapprovingly arched eyebrow with the low rumble of his chuckle against her back.
"Do you think...?" he begins when their laughter has faded, but breaks off abruptly; after a moment's hesitation, he changes tacks. "Of course I'll abide by whatever the doctor deems necessary to keep you both safe, but...Will we have to wait until after the baby is born to--?"
"Heavens, I hope not." She supposes she'll have to ask, and what an awkward conversation that will be. "I should like to enjoy our honeymoon properly."
To emphasise the point, Mary leans her head back to kiss the curve at the base of his jaw, where the strong stubbled line meets smooth skin scented faintly with the lingering musk of shaving lotion and cologne. His mouth tilts with a slow grin.
"I want to take you to Paris," Richard says, and kisses her.
"You've got it all planned out, have you?"
"I have." His dimples show as he draws back, combining with his dishevelled hair and clothing, the cuffs of his trousers riding up to reveal his stocking feet, to make him look rather boyish. "Although I confess my daydreams never imagined Paris in the dead of winter. But the hotel has central heating, so it won't matter."
Richard and his central heating. "I'm sure you never planned on a baby, either," she says. "Do you mind much?"
"Believe it or not," Richard says, giving her an encouraging squeeze, and a smile, "I'm very fond of children. I have three nephews and an infant niece."
"Your brother's children? George?"
Richard nods, seemingly pleased at her memory of the brother he mentioned once. Soon, she supposes, she will meet the family he's spoken so little of. Will they take the news of her pregnancy as badly as her own family?
"And I can believe it," she says. "You're so indulgent of Sybil."
"I'm not sure I like what you're implying about my age. Or my carefully established reputation as a ruthless man of business."
"I dreamt you put her to work in your office. The baby, not Sybil. Miss Fields and Miss Dawson were teaching her to be a secretary."
"It's not such a terrible idea, you know, for children to learn practical skills, cultivate a work ethic. They'll be heirs to a business empire, after all."
He chuckles, and Mary again enjoys the vibration of it as she rests her head on his shoulder, and the relief at how accepting--even welcoming--he is of impending parenthood--one of them should be--and that banter is once more a part of their relationship. Though part of her worries he's not joking about putting their child to work. Before she can ask whether he means it, his chin brushes her temple as he leans around to catch her eye.
"You dreamed we had a girl? A daughter?"
"It was more of a nightmare, actually. I shouldn't like to set any store by it." Yet the nervous fluttering inside her changes to a quick strong beating heart when she looks up and sees a smile on his face that can only be described as an expression of hopeful delight. "You'd let a female child inherit the newspaper empire?"
Richard shifts them so that they lie facing each other on the bed, legs tangling together. His fingers stroke a loose lock of hair back from her face.
"Whether we have one child or ten," he tells her, without a trace of irony in his voice or expression, as if he's making a business agreement, “they'll have an equal share of everything, regardless of sex. I can give you that."
Mary doesn't miss his slight emphasis on the word I, or the inferred dig at Papa. Nevertheless she snuggles against him, burrowing her face into the soft poplin of his shirt to hide her face as it screws up against emotion--although her whispered thank you surely betrays her.
When she has swallowed the lump in her throat, she adds, "I think I'd prefer it if you don't give it to me ten times."
"I should have taken precautions." Richard massages circles her shoulder blades, bared by her low-backed evening gown. "The thought did cross my mind, but I never imagined one time would yield...results."
"It's in-character for you, though, isn't it? To get a thing done the first time?"
Richard smirks, but scuffs his thumb tenderly over her cheekbone. "We can be more careful in the future, you know."
She doesn't know, but daren't ask. Another thing to ask Dr Clarkson, she supposes. Does Mama know?. Or Aunt Rosamund? For the first time, she wonders if her aunt chose not to have children. She and Uncle Marmaduke avoided having a baby on the way prior to the wedding, after all, and now she thinks of it, Rosamund isn't exactly the most maternal woman she's ever known.
Neither, of course, is Mary. Not wanting Richard to outdo her too much in the department of parental instinct, she says, "We'll see if I share your fondness for children. I've never been around any to know. Not since I was a child myself. Though in the interest of full disclosure, I don't much enjoy childbearing so far. I've been frightfully ill..."
"That day at Fortnum's. God, I'm so sorry."
"It's an effective diet, though Dr Clarkson assures me I'll gain all the weight back, and then some. Eating for two. In future you may not have any interest in the sort of activities that require precautions."
"I highly doubt that," says Richard, loosening his embrace just enough to peep appreciatively down at the swell of her breasts, clearly noting they have grown. The hand at her waist sweeps down over her bottom. "I could teach you to box, so you can stave off the affects of childbearing whilst I wage war on middle age."
"Can't you find a form of exercise that doesn't present such a danger to your face?" Mary touches his chin, gingerly. "Like riding?"
"Where I'm only in danger of breaking my neck?"
"I hear it's the sort of headline that sells a lot of newspapers."
Richard glowers, but the creases at the corners of his eyes and mouth tug into a smile instead as he twines his fingers through hers. "We're in this together."
"Maintaining our svelte figures?" Mary again staves off rising emotion, wondering if Richard does the same when he replies, "What else?"
He kisses each of her knuckles, lingering on her fourth finger, remarking that he'll have to get her an engagement ring. Mary starts to remark that it's not really the thing for her lot, but bites her tongue, saying, with a glance down at her pendant, that she looks forward to more of his good taste in jewellery.
As they lie in each other's arms in bed, the implication of his statement gradually dawns on her.
"It won't be much of an engagement, will it, as it's only a few hours' drive to Gretna?"
"Who says we're eloping?"
Mary props herself on one elbow, moonlight on the bed in lacy patterns through the yellowed curtains, beyond which chimes the clock from a nearby church. "Wasn't that your intention when we jumped into your new old car and drove north? You asked me to elope at Christmas."
"Our new old car," Richard corrects her. "And that offer is now off the table. As for intentions...I intend for everyone to know I married you because I wanted to, not because I had to. I intend to do things properly." At her arched eyebrows, he grins. "For once."
Beyond the window, the village clock chimes the hour, half a beat out of synch and a step out of tune with the one on the mantel in the parlour. Counting twelve, Mary says, "Is that your New Year's Resolution? To do everything properly in 1913?"
Richard's eyes reflect the moonlight as Mary lies down again beside him, tilting her face in for a kiss. "Well--maybe not everything."
Read Chapter 27