Fic: A Girl in Black (27/?)
Title: A Girl in Black (27/?)
Author: mrstater
Fandom: Downton Abbey
Characters & Pairings: Mary Crawley/Richard Carlisle, Cora Crawley, Robert Crawley, Violet Crawley, Sybil Crawley, Edith Crawley, Rosamund Painswick, Carson
Chapter Word Count: 4316 words
Chapter Summary: The wedding is inevitable, but as plans get underway, will Mary have the full support of her family?
Author's Notes: Crazy week! Wasn't sure if I'd manage an update this week, though I desperately wanted to with the Thanksgiving holiday approaching, as I likely won't be posting next week. It's looking now like 30 chapters and an epilogue--at least. So if your Christmas wish happens to be for AGIB to not wrap up before then, it looks like you're on Santa's nice list. ;) I can't thank you enough for all the lovely comments about the previous chapter and your enthusiasm for what's to come. And as always, many thanks to ju-dou for cheering me on when I wasn't quite feeling up to snuff this week, and for working beta time into a busy schedule.
Previous Chapters |
27. The Arrangements
January 1913
"I'm in the bath!" Mary calls out at the rattle of the bathroom door handle. It turns anyway, despite her making her presence known; she rolls her eyes and lolls her head on the high curved back of the tub, toward of the door so that whoever has decided to interrupt her ablutions will be greeted by her expression of intense irritation.
"Carson just told me you came back." Mama appears unperturbed by Mary's glare--or even to notice it-- as she blusters to the tub, lifts Mary's left hand from where it dangles over the porcelain, and inspects it her fingers. "You're not married."
"Why should you expect me to be?" Mary asks, pulling out of her mother's grasp, though she knows perfectly well why, having climbed into Richard's recently acquired Model T with the same expectation. Not that she isn't pleased with how the events actually transpired.
"Because you drove off with Richard...You stayed out with him all night…We assumed you'd run off to Gretna…Your grandmother and I almost convinced Papa it was all for the best, and that Richard would at least be able to keep the scandal out of the papers..."
"On the contrary," Mary says, smirking, even though she knows it's cruel to mock Mama's distress, "I think Richard means our wedding to be the story of the decade."
"Well what did you do last night, if not get married?"
"We spent the night in Ripon. At the Hare and Hounds."
"Oh Mary." Mama sits down heavily on a towel folded on the bench at the foot of the bathtub, facing Mary. "After all the drama, you stayed at an inn with man you're not married to? So close to home? Where you might have been recognised?"
"Richard gave them false names. And rather more money than room and board should cost."
Mary lathers her sponge with the lilac scented soap she can bear the smell of again and rubs it over her arm, though her air of unconcern is difficult to affect in light of Mama's expression changing from the exaggerated mask of bug-eyed horror to a frown of disappointment.
"As you said," she goes on, with a touch of contrition, "on the small chance that there's a scandal he'll be able to keep it out of the papers. We had a lot to sort out. Including setting a wedding date."
Mama closes her eyes as she tilts her face upward. "Thank the Lord."
"The thirteenth of February," Mary says. "Assuming Richard can get the church, but there's very little he can't do with a few bills pressed into the right hands."
"Not the fourteenth?" The blue eyes pop wide open. "Only Valentine's Day would be so very romantic."
Mary can't restrain her smirk--nor does she try; she predicted this reaction, and laughed over it with Richard over breakfast in bed at the pub. "Richard and I aren't very romantic, I'm afraid. And really, would you want us to put the wedding off one day longer?"
Getting up from the bench, Mama catches Mary's eye and says in all seriousness, "I should go warn Richard to put off running into your father until after the guns are locked up again from the shoot, or he's liable to find himself shot for New Year's Day."
Though Mary scoffs at her mother's clichéd hyperbole, her eyes widen in a near approximation of one of Mama's faces when Papa stalks into the drawing room at teatime, the acrid odour of gunpowder still clinging to the shooting tweeds he hasn't bothered to change out of, and the expression with which he regards Richard, seated beside her on the pale pink jacquard sofa, seemingly unchanged from the previous night's encounter.
"For heaven's sake, Robert, you can stop glowering," says Granny, presiding over the tea table from her favoured armchair, as if she is the Countess of Grantham still and not merely the Dowager. "It seems you and Sir Richard share an opinion at last."
"Not of himself, I shouldn't imagine."
"Papa!"
Mama hastily pours a cup of tea and offers it to him. "He didn't think an elopement was in Mary's best interests."
She retreats to her chair as Papa accepts the tea. He brings the cup to his lips, eyes hard and small in his round face and trained on Richard.
"Oh?" he says, tightly. "That does make two of us."
"Everything is settled," Richard says. His tones are measured, but the smile he gives Mary reassures her that he intends no trouble with Papa. He wipes sandwich crumbs from his fingertips on the lace-edged serviette spread across his lap and takes her hand, giving it a squeeze. "I'm pleased to say that Mary and I are engaged to be married. As soon as the arrangements can be made for a proper wedding."
"As proper as can be with a most improper little third party present."
"Granny--"
"Everything may be settled between you and Lady Mary," Papa says, setting his teacup in its saucer with a clink that makes Mama jolt and regard her wedding china with alarm, "but you have yet to settle things with me."
"If you mean I require your permission, I'm quite happy to ask for it now."
A little more tension creeps into Richard's voice, matching the tightening of his grip around Mary's hand. Abruptly, his fingers uncurl from around it. He places his serviette on the tea table and pushes up from the sofa, giving Mary another smile before he turns to Papa--though not without her noting the deliberate twitch at the corners, the hard line of his jaw, the slight flare of his nostrils as he draws a breath.
"It may ease your mind, Lord Grantham, to know that before...everything...I did imagine the scenario of how I would petition for Lady Mary's hand."
"I assume you never imagined I would not grant my permission."
The difference in the two men's height is so slight as not to exist; as Richard slips his hands into his trouser pockets, he draws back his shoulders and lifts his chin so that he seems to look down on Papa.
"You assume wrongly. I've wanted to marry your daughter for months, but I knew you wouldn't consent to an engagement. I planned to wait until I gained your approval."
"As you waited to engage in acts reserved for marriage? No, sir, it seems more likely this was all part of a nefarious plan to give me no more choice to accept you than you gave her."
"It was my choice!"
Mary rattles the tea things as she scrambles to her feet, off-balance, and knocks her shin against the low table before the sofa. Richard's hand catches her arm, steadying her. She shoots him a grateful look, wrapping her other hand around his bicep, flexed beneath his dark suit, and he glances down at her with much the same expression before he returns his attention to Papa.
"Nefarious." Richard's mouth curls around the word as he repeats it, drawing out the pronunciation.
"Oh dear," Granny says, shaking her head. "I'm afraid he took that as a compliment."
"You are not being helpful," hisses Mama, but Richard's smirk deepens.
"My nefarious schemes are generally more foolproof than this scenario might have played out. As it is..." His voice softens, as do the lines of his face as he looks at her again. "I imagined saying to you, with the utmost of sincerity, that I admire and respect Lady Mary more highly than any other lady I've ever known. I would be honoured to have her for my wife, if you will give us your blessing."
Papa huffs and rubs his fingers across his forehead, considering the teacup in his other hand for a moment with as much disdain as he previously regarded Richard, clearly wishing it was something else. He takes a drink, anyway, then says, "Very well, then. Permission granted. But do not consider it an honour bestowed on a worthy suitor."
"Believe me, Lord Grantham, I don't." Richard pauses, giving Papa just time to look smug about the deference, before adding, "My view of marriage is rather a modern one."
"Indeed," Papa's reply comes through tight lips, as if to stop himself from deflating, though his broad shoulders sag. "Alas," he says, squaring them again as he takes a step nearer to Richard and imitates the jut of the pointed chin, "my views of engagements are decidedly old-fashioned. Therefore I am afraid my conscience will not allow me to play host to you prior to the wedding."
"Papa!" Mary says at the same time as Mama cries out, "Robert!"
"If business brings you to Downton during that time," he barrels on, as if no one interrupted, indeed, as if there is no one in the drawing room but him and Richard, whose face has gone very red around thin pale lips, "you will have to seek accommodations at the Grantham Arms."
At Granny's snort, however, Papa's gaze drifts over Richard's shoulder, his own face flushing and flickering with an almost boyish shame under his mother's reproof. "That's locking the stable door after the horse has bolted, don't you think?"
"But Mama," he argues, reinforcing Mary's notion that his behaviour is childish, indeed, and destroying the remotest inclination she might have had to sympathise with his paternal plight, "surely you agree that under the circumstances, a church wedding will be nothing short of farcical? Let's not make a complete mockery of holy wedlock, and ensure things are at least kept chaste, shall we?"
"I assure you, Lord Grantham, that I will not lay a hand--"
"You needn't bother attempting to convince me of your trustworthiness," Papa cuts him off, reaching across to set his teacup on the table. "There is absolutely no chance of your succeeding."
"You needn’t pay for a bed, either, Sir Richard," Granny says, her voice heavy with exasperation. "You may stay at the Dower House."
"Who's staying at the Dower House?"
They all turn to see Aunt Rosamund, changed from her shooting attire into a flowing forest green velvet tea gown that sets off her russet curls, slip through the drawing room doors.
Granny purses her lips. "On second thoughts, I'm not entirely certain I trust Rosamund in the house with you."
Regarding her a little askance, Richard tugs at the cuffs of his shirtsleeves beneath the hem of his jacket. "Thank you, Lady Grantham, for your warm welcome into the family, but I'm catching the evening train to London anyway. If we're to pull off a society wedding in six weeks, I'll need to secure St Paul's and the Ritz."
"St Paul's and the Ritz!" splutters Papa as Richard places his hand on Mary's where it still rests in the crook of his arm, and moves to quit the room. They pause to acknowledge the outburst.
"Be glad she's not marrying your heir, Lord Grantham. None of the bills will go to you."
Despite his having got the last word, and looking rather more pleased about it than perhaps he ought to as they leave the drawing room together, Mary can't stop picturing his white-lipped anger or flush of mortification, or feeling the twinge of his muscle beneath her fingers.
"I'm sorry you're not getting a more amiable father-in-law," she says a bit later, as they wait in the vestibule for Taylor to bring the Model T from the garage so Richard can drive himself to the station. "Give him some time. He'll come around. Perhaps after the baby comes."
Richard raises his brows beneath the brim of his trilby. "When he has a tangible reminder of my sexual misconduct with his daughter?"
Mary looks down at her shoes, frowning. She hadn't thought of that.
"It's all right. I can take it. If I curled up and wept over not having the approval of men like the Earl of Grantham, I wouldn't have acquired the top floor office in the Daily Telegram building."
The scuff of shoes on the floor draws Mary's gaze to Richard's polished black boots stepping almost toe to toe with her. She sees his briefcase thump softly onto the rug as his arm encircles her waist, pulling her hips closer against his than is strictly proper, even for an engaged couple, his shaven cheek smooth against hers.
"Though I wish I did have it, for your sake," he murmurs, and brushes his lips over her temple. "I promise to try very hard for amicable relations."
Mary bites her lip to stifle a hmm in response to the light warm trail of kisses he makes down the side of her face, his breath tickling her neck when he lingers to nuzzle at her earlobe. Grasping the heavy lapels of his greatcoat, she turns her head to capture his mouth with hers. The sigh that escapes her lips when Richard tilts his head, however, changes to huff of annoyance as he stops just shy of deepening the kiss to continue the conversation instead.
"Especially since there's very little chance of you having an amicable relationship with your mother-in-law."
He leans in to resume the interrupted kiss, but now it is Mary who resists. She pushes back against his chest, her hands having slipped inside his coat, and lifts an eyebrow. "It seems you've withheld crucial information about Mrs Carlisle in order to secure our engagement."
His chuckle rumbles against her hands and through her chest as his long fingers span her back, pressing her tighter to him. "Your Papa wasn't wrong when he accused me of having a nefarious plan," he says.
And if Mary has any notion of interrogating him further on the subject of his mother, Richard distracts her most effectively with his kiss.
~*~
At least one relation is amenable to her forthcoming marriage not merely because of its necessity, but because of who it is to, Mary thinks the next morning when her entrance to the dining room for breakfast is greeted with Sybil rushing over in a blur of smiles and streaming hair ribbons from where she has been leaning over Papa's chair against his protestations.
"Mary! Your engagement's been announced in this morning's Times!"
That certainly explains Papa's unusual irritation at her reading over his shoulder.
"Right across the page from Lady Strallan's obituary," says Edith, retreating into her teacup, though not before Mary glimpses her wrinkled nose.
Mary rolls her eyes, but otherwise ignores her middle sister as she allows the younger to grasp her hand and tug her toward Papa's chair. "I shall have to walk into the village later and pick up a copy of the Telegram to save. Richard would never let me hear the end of it if I kept the Times version for my scrapbook."
"For heaven's sake," says Papa, leaning to one side in his chair as Mary bends to read over his shoulder. "Where do all of you come by this vexing habit?"
She's vaguely aware of Sybil's wispy tones tweaking him about how it wouldn't be a problem if he kept his subscription to the Telegram, and of the clang of the telephone in the hall--and, in her periphery, Carson leaving his station at the sideboard to step out and answer it--as her eyes rake over the item. The bold black typeset seems almost to glare off the newsprint in the first brilliant morning light they've had in days, which breaks and scatters through the coating of frost that has only just begun to melt from the windowpanes.
The engagement is announced between Lady Mary Josephine Crawley, eldest daughter of the Earl and Countess of Grantham, and Sir Richard Carlisle, son of Mr and Mrs Mark Carlisle of Morningside, Edinburgh. The wedding is to occur on the thirteenth of February, 1913, at St Paul's Cathedral in London.
She reads it over at least a half a dozen times before she actually takes in all the words in their entirety, and once she has, probably would another half a dozen times as excitement starts to take hold, when Papa's voice echoes her thoughts--though not her mood.
"This is really happening," he says, posture wilting.
"My wedding, or Maud Strallan's funeral?"
Papa starts to turn in his chair, but his attention, along with Mary's, is drawn by Carson's sonorous tones as he chooses that moment to re-enter the dining room.
"Pardon the interruption, my lord, but Sir Richard Carlisle is on the telephone for Lady Mary."
"At this hour of the morning?" Papa seizes upon the new complaint. "Honestly, it would have been less irritating if the man had stayed."
Mary hurries to the hall to avoid his rant, and Caron's eye, as well; what does he think about the news of her pregnancy? Does he protect her from the servants' gossip as Anna said he did when the rumours from London reached the servants' hall? Or is he too disappointed in her tarnished reputation to care for it as fastidiously as he does the silver?
Richard's voice crackling over the miles of telephone wire before she has scarcely spoken her greeting into the mouthpiece, provides a most welcome distraction.
"I've secured St Paul's," he says, without preamble, and Mary leans back against the telephone table and lets out her breath. "And the Ritz for the breakfast and the ball."
His eagerness is unmistakable, even amid the static of the still uncertain connection, and Mary grins--though she presses her lips together, as if to conceal her own giddiness.
"So I assumed when I read it in the paper," she replies, her tone restrained, as well. "Tell me--are newspapers always to precede my hearing anything from you? Evelyn Napier, now this?"
"Of course not. Do you think I'd allow the Times to be read in my house? Good morning, by the way."
It ought to annoy her that his greeting comes as an obvious afterthought once the business is concluded, but it's so quintessentially Richard. She can just see him: previously hunched over the imposing oak desk in his vast brownstone office overlooking the city, demanding the necessary parties accommodate his wedding plans just he deals with business associates, now leaning back in his swivel chair, cradling the receiver of his more modern telephone between his neck and shoulder, perhaps the fingers of the other hand wrapped around a steaming mug of coffee just brought in by Miss Fields. The smile stretches across her face till her cheeks ache, and she no longer tries to hide it, hugging the microphone against her as she speaks into it, as if doing so will bring him into closer contact.
In just six short weeks, she will be there with him, away from all this.
"Good morning," she returns, her voice low as she remembers saying the words to him the previous morning, when they woke together at the Hare and Hounds.
"And how did Lord Grantham take the engagement announcement?"
Mary glances back toward the dining room, but the door is shut, and no muffled voices sound behind it. "I only just came downstairs, and he hasn't said much. Edith, on the other hand, was very quick to remark on its having appeared opposite Lady Strallan's obituary. You remember Sir Anthony's wife, don't you? Maud. You sat beside her at dinner."
"Ah, yes. The funny woman. My condolences," he adds. "Ought I to come down for the funeral?"
"Do you mean will it ingratiate you to Papa?"
"I mean..." A creaking sound indicates the movement of his chair--perhaps as he hunches over his desk again, grinning at her suggestion that his mind operates in a diabolical fashion. "...that I'm looking for any excuse to come see you between now and the wedding."
"I imagine we'll be in town soon enough. To see about my wedding gown. And my trousseau."
"In that case, I'd best give the funeral a miss and go shopping for a ring."
"Will you take Frida along?" Mary can't resist teasing.
A brief pause, then: "Maybe."
She smirks, and he must picture it, because he chuckles low. But they do not laugh together for long--he must go for his nine o'clock appointment--so he tells her he'll phone again later, and she places the earpiece back on its hook, resisting another sentimental urge to let her touch linger on it, and returns to the dining room.
"What did he want?" asks Papa, not looking up from the paper as she goes to the sidebar.
"To wish his fiancé a good morning." Mary's frustration is underscored by the clanking of the serving dish lid as she checks the contents within and replaces it. With an apologetic glance up at Carson, she opens the next one more carefully, and spoons a generous helping of eggs onto her plate under the butler's approving gaze. "To let me know he finalised the venues."
Papa grunts, but Sybil says breathlessly, "You're really going to be married in St Paul's?"
"What a joke," mutters Edith.
Sybil shoots her a dark look, but beams at Mary as she lifts her glass of orange juice, as if in toast. "It's going to be marvellous. You might as well be marrying royalty, it's going to be so lavish."
"Lavish does not equal tasteful, Sybil dear," says Papa, and as Mary slips past Carson to go to her seat, she notes the tuck of his chins in what seems to be a nod of agreement.
"Oh, Papa," Sybil chides, "you sound just like Granny."
"She did raise him," Mary says, slipping into the empty place beside her little sister, who squeezes her hand beneath the table.
"As if you would ever allow anything in poor taste."
Edith eyes Mary over her teacup. "One might argue that falling pregnant outs of wedlock is in very poor taste indeed."
"I'll hear no more of this bickering, girls," Papa says, rattling his Times as he folds the broadsheet and lays it aside. "Mary."
His eyes beckon hers down the table, and for the first time since he overheard her discussing the pregnancy with Mama, he looks at her without anger or accusation. Only confusion and...regret.
"Is this truly what you want? I don't mean Sir Richard, I mean this..." He casts about for a word, settling on, "...circus. It's a far cry from being queen of the county, with the villagers all turned out to wish the future countess all joy."
She looks down at her plate, her appetite vanishing as her stomach constricts. Though having been at odds as she's been with Papa for the better part of the past year, he has known her for the twenty that preceded it. He is quite correct; these are primarily Richard's ideas. She got swept away with him in that lumpy bed at the Hare and Hounds, teasing about letting him have the wedding of his dreams, whilst surprising him with the confession that she hardly gave any more thought to how she would marry than to whom she would be married. It was one more thing she took for granted. As Papa did.
"I hope I am not stepping out of line, Lord Grantham," says Carson, coming over to pour more tea, "but the villagers will wish Lady Mary all joy regardless of whether they see her paraded through the high street in a carriage, or read about a city affair in the newspapers. We shall always be proud of her."
His face blurs as Mary's eyes mist, her voice too choked with emotion to offer a word of thanks. Even when she has swallowed the lump in her throat along with her tea, she doesn't think she can speak to him without undue emotion.
Instead, she says, "In either case, we can be assured that my wedding will feature prominently in the society pages. As will everything I do from now on, so you'll have to get used to it. Let's leave the bunting and villagers strewing confetti to Miss Swire. They're much more suited to her, and St Paul's and the Ritz will make for a glamorous newspaper spread.”
"Yes, but will it hey make you happy?" Papa persists.
"Funny," she says, scraping marmalade over her toast, "I don't recall you being so concerned about my happiness when you thought I might marry the Duke of Crowborough?" She takes a bite and, dabbing at a blob of sticky orange from the corner of her mouth, turns to her little sister. "Sybil, darling--will you be my bridesmaid?"
"Oh yes!" cries Sybil, clutching Mary's hand again.
"Shouldn't it be Edith?" asks Papa. "She is the eldest. Or can't you include both your sisters in your wedding party?"
"After she set the London gossips' tongues wagging about me?" Mary narrows her eyes at Edith, wondering what on earth her parents intend to do about her wrongdoing.
"As if I could stand up in support of Mary's flagrant immorality," Edith sniffs, drawing herself up as if she is more offended by Papa's notion of including her than by being overlooked. "We'll see if I even attend the spectacle at all."
"If you don't," Sybil flings at her, "it's only because you daren't show your face now that everyone knows what a jealous, spiteful little cow you are."
"None of you sounds mature enough to have anything at all to do with weddings," Papa interjects. "Or even to sit in this dining room as adults. You may all leave the table this instant."
He unfurls his Times as and hunches behind it as his three daughters rise to obey, and Mary imagines him as a younger man in his Army uniform, hunkering down beneath a barricade against enemy fire.
Amid the crunching of his toast, he mutters, "No wonder your mother always takes her breakfast in bed."
Read Chapter 28
Author: mrstater
Fandom: Downton Abbey
Characters & Pairings: Mary Crawley/Richard Carlisle, Cora Crawley, Robert Crawley, Violet Crawley, Sybil Crawley, Edith Crawley, Rosamund Painswick, Carson
Chapter Word Count: 4316 words
Chapter Summary: The wedding is inevitable, but as plans get underway, will Mary have the full support of her family?
Author's Notes: Crazy week! Wasn't sure if I'd manage an update this week, though I desperately wanted to with the Thanksgiving holiday approaching, as I likely won't be posting next week. It's looking now like 30 chapters and an epilogue--at least. So if your Christmas wish happens to be for AGIB to not wrap up before then, it looks like you're on Santa's nice list. ;) I can't thank you enough for all the lovely comments about the previous chapter and your enthusiasm for what's to come. And as always, many thanks to ju-dou for cheering me on when I wasn't quite feeling up to snuff this week, and for working beta time into a busy schedule.
Previous Chapters |
27. The Arrangements
January 1913
"I'm in the bath!" Mary calls out at the rattle of the bathroom door handle. It turns anyway, despite her making her presence known; she rolls her eyes and lolls her head on the high curved back of the tub, toward of the door so that whoever has decided to interrupt her ablutions will be greeted by her expression of intense irritation.
"Carson just told me you came back." Mama appears unperturbed by Mary's glare--or even to notice it-- as she blusters to the tub, lifts Mary's left hand from where it dangles over the porcelain, and inspects it her fingers. "You're not married."
"Why should you expect me to be?" Mary asks, pulling out of her mother's grasp, though she knows perfectly well why, having climbed into Richard's recently acquired Model T with the same expectation. Not that she isn't pleased with how the events actually transpired.
"Because you drove off with Richard...You stayed out with him all night…We assumed you'd run off to Gretna…Your grandmother and I almost convinced Papa it was all for the best, and that Richard would at least be able to keep the scandal out of the papers..."
"On the contrary," Mary says, smirking, even though she knows it's cruel to mock Mama's distress, "I think Richard means our wedding to be the story of the decade."
"Well what did you do last night, if not get married?"
"We spent the night in Ripon. At the Hare and Hounds."
"Oh Mary." Mama sits down heavily on a towel folded on the bench at the foot of the bathtub, facing Mary. "After all the drama, you stayed at an inn with man you're not married to? So close to home? Where you might have been recognised?"
"Richard gave them false names. And rather more money than room and board should cost."
Mary lathers her sponge with the lilac scented soap she can bear the smell of again and rubs it over her arm, though her air of unconcern is difficult to affect in light of Mama's expression changing from the exaggerated mask of bug-eyed horror to a frown of disappointment.
"As you said," she goes on, with a touch of contrition, "on the small chance that there's a scandal he'll be able to keep it out of the papers. We had a lot to sort out. Including setting a wedding date."
Mama closes her eyes as she tilts her face upward. "Thank the Lord."
"The thirteenth of February," Mary says. "Assuming Richard can get the church, but there's very little he can't do with a few bills pressed into the right hands."
"Not the fourteenth?" The blue eyes pop wide open. "Only Valentine's Day would be so very romantic."
Mary can't restrain her smirk--nor does she try; she predicted this reaction, and laughed over it with Richard over breakfast in bed at the pub. "Richard and I aren't very romantic, I'm afraid. And really, would you want us to put the wedding off one day longer?"
Getting up from the bench, Mama catches Mary's eye and says in all seriousness, "I should go warn Richard to put off running into your father until after the guns are locked up again from the shoot, or he's liable to find himself shot for New Year's Day."
Though Mary scoffs at her mother's clichéd hyperbole, her eyes widen in a near approximation of one of Mama's faces when Papa stalks into the drawing room at teatime, the acrid odour of gunpowder still clinging to the shooting tweeds he hasn't bothered to change out of, and the expression with which he regards Richard, seated beside her on the pale pink jacquard sofa, seemingly unchanged from the previous night's encounter.
"For heaven's sake, Robert, you can stop glowering," says Granny, presiding over the tea table from her favoured armchair, as if she is the Countess of Grantham still and not merely the Dowager. "It seems you and Sir Richard share an opinion at last."
"Not of himself, I shouldn't imagine."
"Papa!"
Mama hastily pours a cup of tea and offers it to him. "He didn't think an elopement was in Mary's best interests."
She retreats to her chair as Papa accepts the tea. He brings the cup to his lips, eyes hard and small in his round face and trained on Richard.
"Oh?" he says, tightly. "That does make two of us."
"Everything is settled," Richard says. His tones are measured, but the smile he gives Mary reassures her that he intends no trouble with Papa. He wipes sandwich crumbs from his fingertips on the lace-edged serviette spread across his lap and takes her hand, giving it a squeeze. "I'm pleased to say that Mary and I are engaged to be married. As soon as the arrangements can be made for a proper wedding."
"As proper as can be with a most improper little third party present."
"Granny--"
"Everything may be settled between you and Lady Mary," Papa says, setting his teacup in its saucer with a clink that makes Mama jolt and regard her wedding china with alarm, "but you have yet to settle things with me."
"If you mean I require your permission, I'm quite happy to ask for it now."
A little more tension creeps into Richard's voice, matching the tightening of his grip around Mary's hand. Abruptly, his fingers uncurl from around it. He places his serviette on the tea table and pushes up from the sofa, giving Mary another smile before he turns to Papa--though not without her noting the deliberate twitch at the corners, the hard line of his jaw, the slight flare of his nostrils as he draws a breath.
"It may ease your mind, Lord Grantham, to know that before...everything...I did imagine the scenario of how I would petition for Lady Mary's hand."
"I assume you never imagined I would not grant my permission."
The difference in the two men's height is so slight as not to exist; as Richard slips his hands into his trouser pockets, he draws back his shoulders and lifts his chin so that he seems to look down on Papa.
"You assume wrongly. I've wanted to marry your daughter for months, but I knew you wouldn't consent to an engagement. I planned to wait until I gained your approval."
"As you waited to engage in acts reserved for marriage? No, sir, it seems more likely this was all part of a nefarious plan to give me no more choice to accept you than you gave her."
"It was my choice!"
Mary rattles the tea things as she scrambles to her feet, off-balance, and knocks her shin against the low table before the sofa. Richard's hand catches her arm, steadying her. She shoots him a grateful look, wrapping her other hand around his bicep, flexed beneath his dark suit, and he glances down at her with much the same expression before he returns his attention to Papa.
"Nefarious." Richard's mouth curls around the word as he repeats it, drawing out the pronunciation.
"Oh dear," Granny says, shaking her head. "I'm afraid he took that as a compliment."
"You are not being helpful," hisses Mama, but Richard's smirk deepens.
"My nefarious schemes are generally more foolproof than this scenario might have played out. As it is..." His voice softens, as do the lines of his face as he looks at her again. "I imagined saying to you, with the utmost of sincerity, that I admire and respect Lady Mary more highly than any other lady I've ever known. I would be honoured to have her for my wife, if you will give us your blessing."
Papa huffs and rubs his fingers across his forehead, considering the teacup in his other hand for a moment with as much disdain as he previously regarded Richard, clearly wishing it was something else. He takes a drink, anyway, then says, "Very well, then. Permission granted. But do not consider it an honour bestowed on a worthy suitor."
"Believe me, Lord Grantham, I don't." Richard pauses, giving Papa just time to look smug about the deference, before adding, "My view of marriage is rather a modern one."
"Indeed," Papa's reply comes through tight lips, as if to stop himself from deflating, though his broad shoulders sag. "Alas," he says, squaring them again as he takes a step nearer to Richard and imitates the jut of the pointed chin, "my views of engagements are decidedly old-fashioned. Therefore I am afraid my conscience will not allow me to play host to you prior to the wedding."
"Papa!" Mary says at the same time as Mama cries out, "Robert!"
"If business brings you to Downton during that time," he barrels on, as if no one interrupted, indeed, as if there is no one in the drawing room but him and Richard, whose face has gone very red around thin pale lips, "you will have to seek accommodations at the Grantham Arms."
At Granny's snort, however, Papa's gaze drifts over Richard's shoulder, his own face flushing and flickering with an almost boyish shame under his mother's reproof. "That's locking the stable door after the horse has bolted, don't you think?"
"But Mama," he argues, reinforcing Mary's notion that his behaviour is childish, indeed, and destroying the remotest inclination she might have had to sympathise with his paternal plight, "surely you agree that under the circumstances, a church wedding will be nothing short of farcical? Let's not make a complete mockery of holy wedlock, and ensure things are at least kept chaste, shall we?"
"I assure you, Lord Grantham, that I will not lay a hand--"
"You needn't bother attempting to convince me of your trustworthiness," Papa cuts him off, reaching across to set his teacup on the table. "There is absolutely no chance of your succeeding."
"You needn’t pay for a bed, either, Sir Richard," Granny says, her voice heavy with exasperation. "You may stay at the Dower House."
"Who's staying at the Dower House?"
They all turn to see Aunt Rosamund, changed from her shooting attire into a flowing forest green velvet tea gown that sets off her russet curls, slip through the drawing room doors.
Granny purses her lips. "On second thoughts, I'm not entirely certain I trust Rosamund in the house with you."
Regarding her a little askance, Richard tugs at the cuffs of his shirtsleeves beneath the hem of his jacket. "Thank you, Lady Grantham, for your warm welcome into the family, but I'm catching the evening train to London anyway. If we're to pull off a society wedding in six weeks, I'll need to secure St Paul's and the Ritz."
"St Paul's and the Ritz!" splutters Papa as Richard places his hand on Mary's where it still rests in the crook of his arm, and moves to quit the room. They pause to acknowledge the outburst.
"Be glad she's not marrying your heir, Lord Grantham. None of the bills will go to you."
Despite his having got the last word, and looking rather more pleased about it than perhaps he ought to as they leave the drawing room together, Mary can't stop picturing his white-lipped anger or flush of mortification, or feeling the twinge of his muscle beneath her fingers.
"I'm sorry you're not getting a more amiable father-in-law," she says a bit later, as they wait in the vestibule for Taylor to bring the Model T from the garage so Richard can drive himself to the station. "Give him some time. He'll come around. Perhaps after the baby comes."
Richard raises his brows beneath the brim of his trilby. "When he has a tangible reminder of my sexual misconduct with his daughter?"
Mary looks down at her shoes, frowning. She hadn't thought of that.
"It's all right. I can take it. If I curled up and wept over not having the approval of men like the Earl of Grantham, I wouldn't have acquired the top floor office in the Daily Telegram building."
The scuff of shoes on the floor draws Mary's gaze to Richard's polished black boots stepping almost toe to toe with her. She sees his briefcase thump softly onto the rug as his arm encircles her waist, pulling her hips closer against his than is strictly proper, even for an engaged couple, his shaven cheek smooth against hers.
"Though I wish I did have it, for your sake," he murmurs, and brushes his lips over her temple. "I promise to try very hard for amicable relations."
Mary bites her lip to stifle a hmm in response to the light warm trail of kisses he makes down the side of her face, his breath tickling her neck when he lingers to nuzzle at her earlobe. Grasping the heavy lapels of his greatcoat, she turns her head to capture his mouth with hers. The sigh that escapes her lips when Richard tilts his head, however, changes to huff of annoyance as he stops just shy of deepening the kiss to continue the conversation instead.
"Especially since there's very little chance of you having an amicable relationship with your mother-in-law."
He leans in to resume the interrupted kiss, but now it is Mary who resists. She pushes back against his chest, her hands having slipped inside his coat, and lifts an eyebrow. "It seems you've withheld crucial information about Mrs Carlisle in order to secure our engagement."
His chuckle rumbles against her hands and through her chest as his long fingers span her back, pressing her tighter to him. "Your Papa wasn't wrong when he accused me of having a nefarious plan," he says.
And if Mary has any notion of interrogating him further on the subject of his mother, Richard distracts her most effectively with his kiss.
~*~
At least one relation is amenable to her forthcoming marriage not merely because of its necessity, but because of who it is to, Mary thinks the next morning when her entrance to the dining room for breakfast is greeted with Sybil rushing over in a blur of smiles and streaming hair ribbons from where she has been leaning over Papa's chair against his protestations.
"Mary! Your engagement's been announced in this morning's Times!"
That certainly explains Papa's unusual irritation at her reading over his shoulder.
"Right across the page from Lady Strallan's obituary," says Edith, retreating into her teacup, though not before Mary glimpses her wrinkled nose.
Mary rolls her eyes, but otherwise ignores her middle sister as she allows the younger to grasp her hand and tug her toward Papa's chair. "I shall have to walk into the village later and pick up a copy of the Telegram to save. Richard would never let me hear the end of it if I kept the Times version for my scrapbook."
"For heaven's sake," says Papa, leaning to one side in his chair as Mary bends to read over his shoulder. "Where do all of you come by this vexing habit?"
She's vaguely aware of Sybil's wispy tones tweaking him about how it wouldn't be a problem if he kept his subscription to the Telegram, and of the clang of the telephone in the hall--and, in her periphery, Carson leaving his station at the sideboard to step out and answer it--as her eyes rake over the item. The bold black typeset seems almost to glare off the newsprint in the first brilliant morning light they've had in days, which breaks and scatters through the coating of frost that has only just begun to melt from the windowpanes.
The engagement is announced between Lady Mary Josephine Crawley, eldest daughter of the Earl and Countess of Grantham, and Sir Richard Carlisle, son of Mr and Mrs Mark Carlisle of Morningside, Edinburgh. The wedding is to occur on the thirteenth of February, 1913, at St Paul's Cathedral in London.
She reads it over at least a half a dozen times before she actually takes in all the words in their entirety, and once she has, probably would another half a dozen times as excitement starts to take hold, when Papa's voice echoes her thoughts--though not her mood.
"This is really happening," he says, posture wilting.
"My wedding, or Maud Strallan's funeral?"
Papa starts to turn in his chair, but his attention, along with Mary's, is drawn by Carson's sonorous tones as he chooses that moment to re-enter the dining room.
"Pardon the interruption, my lord, but Sir Richard Carlisle is on the telephone for Lady Mary."
"At this hour of the morning?" Papa seizes upon the new complaint. "Honestly, it would have been less irritating if the man had stayed."
Mary hurries to the hall to avoid his rant, and Caron's eye, as well; what does he think about the news of her pregnancy? Does he protect her from the servants' gossip as Anna said he did when the rumours from London reached the servants' hall? Or is he too disappointed in her tarnished reputation to care for it as fastidiously as he does the silver?
Richard's voice crackling over the miles of telephone wire before she has scarcely spoken her greeting into the mouthpiece, provides a most welcome distraction.
"I've secured St Paul's," he says, without preamble, and Mary leans back against the telephone table and lets out her breath. "And the Ritz for the breakfast and the ball."
His eagerness is unmistakable, even amid the static of the still uncertain connection, and Mary grins--though she presses her lips together, as if to conceal her own giddiness.
"So I assumed when I read it in the paper," she replies, her tone restrained, as well. "Tell me--are newspapers always to precede my hearing anything from you? Evelyn Napier, now this?"
"Of course not. Do you think I'd allow the Times to be read in my house? Good morning, by the way."
It ought to annoy her that his greeting comes as an obvious afterthought once the business is concluded, but it's so quintessentially Richard. She can just see him: previously hunched over the imposing oak desk in his vast brownstone office overlooking the city, demanding the necessary parties accommodate his wedding plans just he deals with business associates, now leaning back in his swivel chair, cradling the receiver of his more modern telephone between his neck and shoulder, perhaps the fingers of the other hand wrapped around a steaming mug of coffee just brought in by Miss Fields. The smile stretches across her face till her cheeks ache, and she no longer tries to hide it, hugging the microphone against her as she speaks into it, as if doing so will bring him into closer contact.
In just six short weeks, she will be there with him, away from all this.
"Good morning," she returns, her voice low as she remembers saying the words to him the previous morning, when they woke together at the Hare and Hounds.
"And how did Lord Grantham take the engagement announcement?"
Mary glances back toward the dining room, but the door is shut, and no muffled voices sound behind it. "I only just came downstairs, and he hasn't said much. Edith, on the other hand, was very quick to remark on its having appeared opposite Lady Strallan's obituary. You remember Sir Anthony's wife, don't you? Maud. You sat beside her at dinner."
"Ah, yes. The funny woman. My condolences," he adds. "Ought I to come down for the funeral?"
"Do you mean will it ingratiate you to Papa?"
"I mean..." A creaking sound indicates the movement of his chair--perhaps as he hunches over his desk again, grinning at her suggestion that his mind operates in a diabolical fashion. "...that I'm looking for any excuse to come see you between now and the wedding."
"I imagine we'll be in town soon enough. To see about my wedding gown. And my trousseau."
"In that case, I'd best give the funeral a miss and go shopping for a ring."
"Will you take Frida along?" Mary can't resist teasing.
A brief pause, then: "Maybe."
She smirks, and he must picture it, because he chuckles low. But they do not laugh together for long--he must go for his nine o'clock appointment--so he tells her he'll phone again later, and she places the earpiece back on its hook, resisting another sentimental urge to let her touch linger on it, and returns to the dining room.
"What did he want?" asks Papa, not looking up from the paper as she goes to the sidebar.
"To wish his fiancé a good morning." Mary's frustration is underscored by the clanking of the serving dish lid as she checks the contents within and replaces it. With an apologetic glance up at Carson, she opens the next one more carefully, and spoons a generous helping of eggs onto her plate under the butler's approving gaze. "To let me know he finalised the venues."
Papa grunts, but Sybil says breathlessly, "You're really going to be married in St Paul's?"
"What a joke," mutters Edith.
Sybil shoots her a dark look, but beams at Mary as she lifts her glass of orange juice, as if in toast. "It's going to be marvellous. You might as well be marrying royalty, it's going to be so lavish."
"Lavish does not equal tasteful, Sybil dear," says Papa, and as Mary slips past Carson to go to her seat, she notes the tuck of his chins in what seems to be a nod of agreement.
"Oh, Papa," Sybil chides, "you sound just like Granny."
"She did raise him," Mary says, slipping into the empty place beside her little sister, who squeezes her hand beneath the table.
"As if you would ever allow anything in poor taste."
Edith eyes Mary over her teacup. "One might argue that falling pregnant outs of wedlock is in very poor taste indeed."
"I'll hear no more of this bickering, girls," Papa says, rattling his Times as he folds the broadsheet and lays it aside. "Mary."
His eyes beckon hers down the table, and for the first time since he overheard her discussing the pregnancy with Mama, he looks at her without anger or accusation. Only confusion and...regret.
"Is this truly what you want? I don't mean Sir Richard, I mean this..." He casts about for a word, settling on, "...circus. It's a far cry from being queen of the county, with the villagers all turned out to wish the future countess all joy."
She looks down at her plate, her appetite vanishing as her stomach constricts. Though having been at odds as she's been with Papa for the better part of the past year, he has known her for the twenty that preceded it. He is quite correct; these are primarily Richard's ideas. She got swept away with him in that lumpy bed at the Hare and Hounds, teasing about letting him have the wedding of his dreams, whilst surprising him with the confession that she hardly gave any more thought to how she would marry than to whom she would be married. It was one more thing she took for granted. As Papa did.
"I hope I am not stepping out of line, Lord Grantham," says Carson, coming over to pour more tea, "but the villagers will wish Lady Mary all joy regardless of whether they see her paraded through the high street in a carriage, or read about a city affair in the newspapers. We shall always be proud of her."
His face blurs as Mary's eyes mist, her voice too choked with emotion to offer a word of thanks. Even when she has swallowed the lump in her throat along with her tea, she doesn't think she can speak to him without undue emotion.
Instead, she says, "In either case, we can be assured that my wedding will feature prominently in the society pages. As will everything I do from now on, so you'll have to get used to it. Let's leave the bunting and villagers strewing confetti to Miss Swire. They're much more suited to her, and St Paul's and the Ritz will make for a glamorous newspaper spread.”
"Yes, but will it hey make you happy?" Papa persists.
"Funny," she says, scraping marmalade over her toast, "I don't recall you being so concerned about my happiness when you thought I might marry the Duke of Crowborough?" She takes a bite and, dabbing at a blob of sticky orange from the corner of her mouth, turns to her little sister. "Sybil, darling--will you be my bridesmaid?"
"Oh yes!" cries Sybil, clutching Mary's hand again.
"Shouldn't it be Edith?" asks Papa. "She is the eldest. Or can't you include both your sisters in your wedding party?"
"After she set the London gossips' tongues wagging about me?" Mary narrows her eyes at Edith, wondering what on earth her parents intend to do about her wrongdoing.
"As if I could stand up in support of Mary's flagrant immorality," Edith sniffs, drawing herself up as if she is more offended by Papa's notion of including her than by being overlooked. "We'll see if I even attend the spectacle at all."
"If you don't," Sybil flings at her, "it's only because you daren't show your face now that everyone knows what a jealous, spiteful little cow you are."
"None of you sounds mature enough to have anything at all to do with weddings," Papa interjects. "Or even to sit in this dining room as adults. You may all leave the table this instant."
He unfurls his Times as and hunches behind it as his three daughters rise to obey, and Mary imagines him as a younger man in his Army uniform, hunkering down beneath a barricade against enemy fire.
Amid the crunching of his toast, he mutters, "No wonder your mother always takes her breakfast in bed."
Read Chapter 28