Title: Winter's Heir
Author: Ellyrianna
Fandom: Downton Abbey
Pairing(s): Matthew/Mary/OMC
Word Count: 4,600
Summary: Revisionist history, based on
this graphic made by
rufustfirefly on tumblr. Matthew chooses not to propose, so Mary goes to America and finds herself a cowboy from the middle west (who looks and acts like Jon Hamm, of course). Matthew doesn't really take it well.
Matthew deliberately avoided her eyes on the ride up. He came out of his room tugging the brim of his hat over his eyes, walked out the door fastening the buttons of his coat. He climbed into the back of the car with a smile thrown casually over his shoulder for her benefit, but his face was half in shadow, and she could not read his expression. She adjusted herself behind him and shut the door, resolved to wait until he said anything before she weighed in an opinion.
Then, being Isobel, she decided after five minutes of stilted silence that she could bear the waiting no longer.
“We could turn round, you know,” she said. “Take you back. Make some excuse.”
“I’m fine,” he replied. “Please, Mother.”
Silence again, save for the humming of the motor, the crunch of stone and soil beneath the tires. The weak sunlight of the early English spring spied through the windows, and Matthew pretended to be very interested in examining the newly sprouting foliage it was illuminating along the road. Isobel tugged at her leather gloves and smoothed her coat over her skirt. In the front seat, Pratt hummed a few bars of a song absently to himself.
“It’s best to get it over with, I agree,” she said suddenly. “You don’t want to come across petulant.”
“No.”
Isobel desperately tried to meet her son’s eyes. He stoically continued to ignore her.
They were a mere ten minutes to the house now, so Isobel said, pointedly, “Especially since you did not seize the opportunity when it was yours.”
Matthew chewed on his lower lip and did not reply. They made the left turn down the long row of oaks that lined the road to the estate. His knee jerked spastically up and down and two gloved fingers worried the hem of his coat.
“Especially since I told you to,” Isobel said.
Pratt pulled up before the door. They were not some grand party, no dignified array requiring bowing, scraping, and performance. They were the cousins, the family, the inheritors. Carson was waiting for them, stately, nose up, as usual. When the car was parked and their door opened for them, Matthew climbed out as brusquely as he had entered. He did not say a word to her.
--
The message that had arrived at Crawley House announcing the news had been short. Mary engaged. Returning to Downton on next available crossing for wedding.
It had been in Robert’s writing, a learned scrawl that Matthew now realized bookmarked an entire era of his life: delivering the news of his impending inheritance, and announcing the finality of any dream he would actually marry and truly integrate into the Crawley family. He would still inherit Downton, of course, but now there was absolutely no chance that he would ever be one of them in the way that marrying Mary would have made him. Now he was to remain, forevermore, Robert’s cousin: a son in spirit, but not in law.
The note that had invited he and his mother to dine at the house - and, in doing so, meet the American fiancée - had been equally succinct. Mary and company arriving this morning. Please join family for dinner tonight. Formal engagement reception to follow.
Matthew appreciated Robert’s phrasing, which, the more he thought about it, he realized was probably not Robert’s at all. Cora had likely dictated the message, or even written out a copy of her own that she requested her husband take down in his own hand. There were occasions when she came across as cold, but Matthew recognized such behavior as merely examples of Cora’s unerring pragmatism.
Mary and company. The fiancé and his parents? Siblings? It was 1920, but transatlantic crossings were still far from cheap. Not for the first time since receiving the initial note, Matthew wondered just how wealthy this man was, and if that was the reason for the marriage.
Graciously he handed over his coat when it was requested of him, and purposefully walked at a faster clip in order to keep his mother at bay. His hands had been sweating inside his leather gloves and, he realized uncomfortably, continued to do so even now. The American fiancé. The words rattled in his mind as he approached the parlor door the way he expected one approached the gallows on the day of one’s execution.
They had been to dine with Cora and Robert a few times during the period in which Mary had remitted to America to wait out the worst of her published scandal, but the engagement had been recent, sudden, and, at least to Matthew, a surprise. If his cousins had known anything about the man during the times Matthew and Isobel had sat down to supper with them before two weeks ago, they had never let on.
Thomas was waiting at the door, that same genial, empty expression all of the servants wore around the family on his face. “Evening, sir,” he murmured, his gloved hand ready on the knob to admit Matthew to the room. He drew a breath, heard his mother at his heels, took a step forward when he knew he was expected to.
Mary engaged.
He couldn’t focus on anyone in the room at first; each face blurred into the next as he sought out the one that was unfamiliar to him. There were several, in fact, and a mild panic dawned in him when he realized that there were at least two of the age that he felt would have been appropriate. There was an older man, too, about Robert’s age, and a woman near Cora’s. Sybil was here, too, and Branson, and the Dowager, and another similarly aged woman. His eyes could not find Mary. He felt himself smile against his will, an impromptu, knee-jerk reaction to how overwhelmed he suddenly understood that he was.
Mary and company. Too much company. Which was the one? Which was him?
“Matthew,” Mary said warmly, appearing from, it seemed to him, nowhere. She stepped out of the throng of people in a red chiffon dress and some lovely silver ornament in her hair, gloves up to her elbows, her face perfectly arranged. “I’m so pleased you could join us tonight. May I introduce my fiancé, Daniel Harlis -“
He, too, melted out of the fray. He was neither of the men Matthew had thought candidates for the position; like Mary, he seemed to have been hidden somewhere, tucked carefully away until precisely the right moment. Perhaps he had been.
She continued to present the rest of his family, but Matthew learned nothing about them. He was shaking hands with her fiancé, with the American fiancé, the man who would marry Mary, the one she had found to replace him.
--
Daniel Harlis was the oldest son of a Kentucky stud ranch owner. The vast, sprawling estate was located in Lexington, not far from Churchill Downs, and also housed a distillery, although that had been shut down in recent weeks due to the American Prohibition. He had two younger brothers and a younger sister. All three boys were college educated. Daniel and his father had been staying in New York City after a long trip upstate to Belmont, and had attended the Metropolitan Opera on the same night that Mary had been there with her grandmother. They were seated in adjacent boxes, introductions were made, and suddenly the elder Harlis was returning to Kentucky solo while his son lingered in New York, ostensibly scouting stables in the suburbs but really courting the charming Englishwoman he’d met by chance.
Introductions in the parlor were truncated by the announcement that dinner was served, so conversation moved to the dining room, where Matthew felt he had a better grasp on the situation. At least he could pretend to be eating if he did not want to speak, and there was a vast table in between the American fiancé and himself. It also gave him plenty of time to evaluate the man without the pressure of conversation; indeed, he kept cutting and chewing and taking more from the servants as they circulated just so that he could remain mostly undisturbed.
Harlis was, Matthew could not avoid conceding, impressively handsome. He was tall, broad-shouldered, with his skin just suntanned enough to suggest time spent outdoors, but in a responsible, respectable way. The tuxedo he wore was clearly new, purchased probably just before their crossing, with Mary undoubtedly selecting the fabric, cut, and colors all to her specifications. Its hasty production could not have been deduced from its appearance, however; it was impeccably tailored, precisely in a way as to present how bold a figure this man was. His black hair was smoothed back from his forehead, but was cut in such a way that Matthew expected it was not accustomed to such an arrangement. His smile was bright and easy, his jaw strong.
In fact, Matthew thought with increasing darkness as he continued to cut, chew, and swallow, strong was the word he would hang on the man as an accurate summation of his character. He looked like the son of a ranch owner. He looked like he could pitch hay and rope cattle, although he of course did none of those things. He looked like he rode often, and could shoot well. To Matthew, he looked just how an American ought to.
--
The table was tightly packed, with guests crammed in at every available space, and although the conversation was lively and divided, it was clear where everyone’s attention was truly drawn. Mary, imperative as always, often interjected when a question was posed of him, of the American fiancé. Matthew watched Harlis smile indulgently at her and then pose his own answer after she had elicited the laughter she had sought. It was an easy pattern, he saw, one that they seemed to have adapted to quite smoothly.
Edith was seated next to him and was similarly silent throughout the majority of the meal. She smiled and nodded and agreed when it was necessary, but for the most part she, too, was keeping to herself. Quietly, as they waited for pudding, Matthew asked her, “What do we think of him?”
She took a sip of her wine and shrugged. “He’s quite lovely,” she said. “I don’t understand how Mary will live in America, let alone Kentucky, but I suppose she has a plan.”
Matthew couldn’t see it, either, and felt a small thrill inside of him at Edith’s agreement. “Yes, I can’t imagine it. And on a farm?”
“Well, it seems to be a good deal more intricate an operation than that. The family lives in one of those plantation-style homes, you know, with the columns? They’re one of the wealthiest families in the South, our Grandmother Martha has told us. She researched them quite thoroughly, apparently. In fact I wouldn’t be surprised if she’d set it all up from the start,” she added bitterly.
He frowned and glanced askance at her. “Why do you say it like that?”
Edith let out a laugh, a small, dead trill. “Nothing. I shouldn’t be like this. Only I suspect if I had gone in her place, no one would have made half the effort on my behalf.”
Matthew waved vaguely at the mass of people crowding the table. “There are a few brothers to choose from here, or maybe they know someone -“
“And be accused of always lusting after what Mary just has handed to her? After Patrick? And Strallan? Even you,” she said, and a sudden blush suffused her cheeks. A plate of dessert came before her and she dug into it with uncharacteristic gusto.
“Edith,” Matthew began, but was unsure of how to continue.
She shook her head. “Don’t apologize. At this point I’ve accepted it. I’ve had to, haven’t I?” She laid her fork on her half-empty plate and pushed it slightly away from her. “I do wonder, though, Matthew. We all thought, after Lavinia, after Mary threw over Sir Richard…we were holding our breaths for a proposal. Mary never said anything, but Mama and I, we really did think…” Matthew picked at his own dessert, studying the fine texture of the spongy cake, the beautifully whipped buttercream. “Why did you not ask her? She said she confessed…that…all of it to you. She told me. Was that it?”
He shot a glance across the table. Mary was rolling her eyes and acidly responding to some disparaging comment the Dowager Countess had made about cannibals in Kentucky. Harlis was laughing good-naturedly, and even responded, “Well, it wouldn’t surprise me if you took a trip out to the back roads and found such a thing.” Cora smiled indulgently and mediated, while Martha offered a quip that suggested American cannibalism was superior to English haute cuisine.
“I’m not sure I even remember what excuse I told myself,” he said honestly, without thinking.
Edith blinked at his candor, and when Matthew realized what he said, he felt the back of his neck grow hot. She graciously allowed him to avoid her eyes for the remainder of the meal.
--
He felt himself grow tense when the ladies rose and excused themselves to the parlor, leaving the men behind to the cigars and brandy being proffered on silver trays. These recessions had consisted of only Matthew and Robert, and perhaps a neighbor or visiting guest, for what felt like a very long time, even with the intercession of the war and Matthew’s long time away from Downton. Now he and Robert were joined by Branson, uneasy, still stubbornly wearing his day clothes, and the four Harlis men.
“Better or worse than your own vintage?” Robert asked when the Harlis patriarch accepted his glass from Thomas and tasted the liquor inside.
“We brew - brewed -- whiskey,” he said cheerily, “but this is quite something on its own.”
Robert apologized for his gaff and seemed to fold the eldest Harlis aside, leaving his sons to contend with, and outnumber, Branson and Matthew.
“Maybe we should do proper introductions? Everything in this place feels so formal,” Daniel said. “My brothers, Benjamin and Walker.”
“Walker?” Branson asked as he shook each hand in turn.
“Family name. We’re from Scotland originally -“
Somehow, without Matthew even realizing, Daniel had slipped through his brothers and managed to sequester himself and Matthew somewhat to the side, away from Branson, the only support, weak and awkward as it was, that he had left to rely on.
“I thought we should speak privately,” Harlis said, motioning for Matthew to take a seat. He had moved them far enough from the rest of the conversations in the room that the talking of the other men had died down to a dull buzz. One of the new footman came by to light their cigars, and then they were effectively alone.
“And why is that?”
Harlis shrugged pleasantly. “I’ve been made aware that there is a history between you and Mary.” His good-natured expression never wavered. Matthew checked the tenseness of his jaw and the tight grip he had on the arm of his chair, focused on smoking his cigar. “I wanted to make sure the air was clear.”
“I’m afraid I don’t understand,” he said. He felt his cheeks heating and clenched his hand again, willing it away, his embarrassment, his disdain. I was in a war, he told himself. I fought and saved lives and nearly died. “There are no problems between Mary and I. We’re quite friends now.”
Harlis hand-waved this affably. “Yes, she’s said. But you obviously care deeply about her” - it does not matter I cannot shoot a pigeon on New Year’s Day nor ride a racing stallion - “and she about you. It’s a precarious sort of situation.”
“I’m afraid you’ve lost me, Mr. Harlis.”
“Daniel.”
“Yes,” Matthew corrected, pulse tight in the palm of his clenched hand, “I apologize. But Mary and I, while we’ve been through some” - he sought the right word: her eyes in the foggy train station, her hand in his - “turmoil, have made it through to the other side and are now as perfect friends. I wish the two of you every happiness in your engagement and future life. If you are indeed worthy of her,” he impulsively added, and hoped the words did not sound too poisonous.
Indeed they must have sounded perfectly, blandly English, because Harlis laughed good-naturedly and sucked happily on his cigar. “Yes, exactly,” he said.
It grated on him that Harlis was neither condescending nor annoying, that he genuinely seemed pleased to have resolved whatever issue he had concocted out of the mire of misinformation he had received. If he had been self-righteous and snide in the vein of Carlisle, it would have been much easier to dislike him; as it stood, Matthew forced himself to believe that Harlis’s excessive charm and good nature were covering up some darker personality.
Harlis said then, “I’m glad we’re all squared away. What’s the phrase for it over here? Sorted?”
“Quite,” Matthew stiffly replied.
--
Once the men rose to join the women in the parlor, Matthew followed them, pretended to realize he had forgotten his brandy in the dining room and returned, and then slipped away once they were all safely ensconced in the same room together. With a gathering so large, he would not soon be missed; he wagered even his own mother would not realize he was absent until a half-hour after his disappearance. The weather was brisk, bracing, and he did not bother to call for the car. A walk would work to dispel the edginess and nervousness he’d been suffering under all evening.
The entire way back to Crawley House, Matthew replayed moments of the dinner in his mind - mostly just Mary’s face, her reactions to things that her American fiancé said, her smile, her laughter. He saw her melting out of the throng of people to greet him upon his arrival, and how she had looked standing next to Harlis, next to the American fiancé himself. He was tall and dark-haired and fit, broad shoulders tensing his tuxedo jacket, large hand swallowing Matthew’s.
How much more appropriate Harlis looked standing beside her, Matthew thought bitterly to himself. Much more than that sop Carlisle, or the tiresome Evelyn Napier, or ghastly Strallan. Perhaps Harlis had his equal for looks in the ghost, that Turkish man Matthew still imagined decking the way he had Carlisle. He certainly did not have one in Matthew.
Their children will all be pale with dark hair and eyes, and they will speak with American accents, he thought. They will inherit a fortune in horses and alcohol, a beautiful Southern plantation-style home, but not an English estate. And Mary will laugh at them, and tussle their hair.
--
He did his best to avoid dinners when he could. With the entire nuclear Harlis family staying at Downton until the wedding, along with Sybil, Branson, and the Crawley sisters’ maternal grandmother, the table was never empty, so he did not feel especially obvious in making his excuses. Nonetheless, Isobel reprimanded him for appearing petulant and childish, and told him on more than one occasion that he had had his opportunity and could not punish the rest of the family for not taking it.
Still, he mingled little, lingered less. He spoke most often with Edith or Branson when he joined, trying his hardest to dodge conversations with Daniel Harlis, who seemed all too eager to strike up a friendship with him. Isobel chided him for that behavior as well, but on that matter Matthew would not yield or concede to her point. He could be sociable and cordial with the man; friends, however, was out of the question.
He also did his best to sidestep conversations with Mary, who made an effort to speak with him every time he was near but who also dismissed him without compunction once he made it clear that he was uninterested in spending an extended amount of time with her. On only one occasion did she effectively corner him, and it was only then that they really, truly spoke in the entire time between her return to Downton and her wedding day.
She came to Crawley House one day, around twilight, when he was sitting out in the garden with a cup of tea and the newspaper. Isobel had to have told her where he was, because she walked through the back door, suddenly materializing before him like a dusk nymph, her skin luminously pale in the setting sun.
“Mary,” he said. What else could he say?
She smiled in that tight, prim way of hers and took a few steps toward him. He stood hastily, pulled out the other chair at the table for her. She inclined her head in mute thanks for a gesture she both appreciated and understood that she deserved.
“Shall I ring for more tea?” he asked as he settled back into his own seat. “This one’s gone cold by now.”
“No, thank you.” She waved a dismissive hand. “I can’t stay long. I need to go back and change soon.”
“Of course.”
Matthew folded the newspaper and set it aside, pushed his cup on its saucer slightly further from him, arranged his hands on his bent knee, all while waiting for her to say something. There was a furrow of consternation between her brows, a clear indication that she was working toward articulation of whatever it was she had come down specifically to discuss with him. For she hadn’t made an excuse about passing through town, had she? At least not to him. Maybe to Isobel she had, but with Matthew, she knew that nothing but honesty could pass at this point.
Finally, she said, as smoothly as if it had always been the tack she had planned on taking, “I came to gauge your reaction to Daniel.”
He sat up a little straighter. She always had known how to arrest his attention. “Really?”
“Yes. Your opinion means a great deal to me, and you seem to have been avoiding occasions on which you might have to interact with him. I was worried you might have an objection to his character.”
His mind blanked; he tried to think of a reason beyond a motive to split them apart, split them apart and secure the future he had denied some months ago.
“Not at all,” he said, which was the truth. He could fabricate nothing, no matter his own personal regrets, failings. “From the time I’ve spent with him, he seems perfectly adequate.”
Mary’s smile tightened, her eyes sparkling. “Adequate.”
“I’m sorry -“ He reached out a hand, recognizing his mistake, but she laughed it off easily.
“Don’t apologize. I came for your candor.”
“I much prefer him to Sir Richard?”
“Is that a question?” she asked, expertly arching a brow.
He sighed. “Don’t play games with me.”
“My motives are pure. I honestly did believe you were abstaining from our company out of an objection to my fiancé.”
He wondered how he could sidestep admitting that that truly was his objective, and instead said, “I do worry about you in America, in Kentucky, of all the places in the world. It does not seem suited to you.”
“On the contrary,” she demurred, “Daniel stands to inherit all following the death of his father, and is already integral to the operation of the system. He means to involve my assistance in any way I choose, should I choose.”
“Another heir.” Matthew smiled at her across the table, but it felt false to him, too melancholy. She seemed to sense it, too.
“You couldn’t argue that I find myself drawn to certain types.” He appreciated her attempt at humor, in some distant, detached way, but could do little more than flick the edge of his newspaper in response, his fingers worrying the print onto his skin.
“Matthew,” she said, almost sharply, and he raised his eyes to meet hers, feeling guilty, like a child caught doing what he had been explicitly told not to. He would have to explain, now. He would have to give her the reason why he had not asked, when he had been expected to, wanted to. He would have to tell her he was daft and sentimental and had no good excuses, and that now he was destined to be miserable the rest of his life, and in doing so properly honor Lavinia’s memory.
Then, as if she had thought better of it, Mary’s snap of anger passed and her face regained its previous serenity. “You must promise to visit me when I’m trapped in my palatial Southern estate,” she said lightly, scraping back her chair and rising. She brushed invisible dust from her crimson coat and perfunctorily adjusted her sleeves. “It’s called Winterhall.”
“Yes.” He rose as well. “Let me show you out.”
“I’ll find my own way,” she assured him. “I’m merely relieved to hear Daniel dubbed adequate in your opinion. I was concerned that if you found fault in him, there might be another wrestling match in the library.”
“Oh, I don’t think I would engage him,” Matthew found himself saying. “I would wind up bruised and bloody.”
Mary gave him a quick once-over, and a wry smile quirked the corner of her mouth. “Yes, probably.” She paused, then added, “Daniel fought in the war as well, you know. He was at the Somme.”
“Perhaps we crossed paths and didn’t even know it.”
“Perhaps.” She stepped toward him, and he met her halfway, accepting the kiss she offered to his cheek with smooth familial grace. This is what it will be from now on, then, he realized. It was a dull surprise. “Good night, Cousin Matthew.”
She walked out through the garden gate, the red of her coat bleeding into the red of the sinking sun on the horizon line.
--
Mary looked very beautiful on her wedding day.
He sat in the church with his mother in the pew behind Robert and Cora and the Dowager, with Branson and Sybil and Edith filling out their row. Sybil rested her hand on her pregnant stomach and smiled benevolently, while Edith’s own hands remained primly clasped in her lap, her back straight, her face unreadable.
When Mary was at last admitted through the heavy wooden doors and the entire congregation rose to greet her, Matthew sought her out just as if he were anyone else. He admired her gossamer veil, pinned invisibly into her carefully arranged hair; the diamond heirloom headpiece that accompanied it; her white silk wedding gown with its intricate beading detail and lace sleeves.
Most intently, though, he watched her face, her eyes. He waited for them to scan the pews for him, for the moment when they would connect and he would read in her the true secret of how she still desired him, still wished he had proposed at the Servant’s Ball the way he had considered, the way his mother had urged him to. He leaned forward, waiting, waiting.
She did not look for him. Her gaze remained straight ahead of her for the entire procession, fixed at the altar, at the American fiancé, who was waiting for her. She wore a secretive smile, but it was not meant for him. The look of pure joy on her face when she finally joined Daniel Harlis before the entire collection of family and townspeople and servants, English and American all alike, stunned Matthew.
Everyone sat. Matthew felt the pew, hard and cold, beneath him with a clarity he had not had before.
“Dearly beloved,” the chaplain began.