Fic: Another Chapter (1/5)
Title: Another Chapter (1/5)
Author: MrsTater
Fandom: Downton Abbey
Characters & Pairings: Richard Carlisle/Mary Crawley; ensemble in later chapters
Ratings & Warnings: rated R for sexuality; S2 spoilers
Format & Word Count: chaptered fic, 1759 words in chapter 1
Summary: When Mary agrees to write another chapter in the book of Haxby Park, she unexpectedly writes a new start to her story with Sir Richard. But what sort of story will it be? And will she like it? [S2E6 AU]
Author's Notes: This fic continues the Haxby scene in S2E6 and then deviates pretty drastically from the rest of the episode/S2. I hope it's a good read for those of you who would like to have seen Mary and Richard make a little more of an attempt at having an actual relationship. Many thanks to phoenikxs, without whose boundless enthusiasm and brainstorming, I'd have let this story get the better of me…much like Richard himself. ;)
One
"So. Shall we rescue it? Shall we give the house another chapter?"
"Well. I suppose one has to live somewhere."
"One has to live somewhere," Richard repeats Mary's own words back to her, slowly, as he slides his hand along the gilded black balustrade and takes a step nearer to her. "Just the sort of unsentimental reply I'd expect from one of your lot."
The dimples beneath his high cheekbones deepen with his smirk, and for a moment she imagines they must somehow have been transported back in time to Cliveden, where she first took notice of him because of that expression. Which of course had been intensely irritating to her, because it presumed to question, and even mock, the aristocratic ways. Her ways.
Yet it had been intensely intriguing, as well, because it admired, and envied, who she is. And her heart raced with the exhilaration of having that sort of power over a man--then and now--because it makes her feel like herself again, for the first time since the war started, or since long before that, really. Lady Mary Crawley, the belle of the county, who enjoys her admirers whilst never doing anything so foolish as falling in love with them.
She raises her chin, and an eyebrow. "Whereas by talking of rescues and chapters, you're teetering perilously close to the sort of vulgar sentiment I'd expect from one of yours."
His fingertips slide over hers, the warmth of them that actually reaches her through her kid glove so startling that she draws in a sharp breath before she can stop herself. Of course Richard, consummate newspaperman that he is, doesn't miss it, she can see from the deepening crisscross of lines at the corners of his eyes. Not as striking as another pair of blue eyes she has peered into, but they see her with greater clarity. And that's something.
Quite a lot of something, in fact.
"Come now, Mary," Richard says, his fingers stroking her knuckles until she can't help but relax her grip on the banister and curl her hand around his instead. "Surely you don't intend to continue this charade of yours and mine. We're to share a name, a home… a bed."
She's softening under his touch and the husky tones of his voice and even the words themselves, maudlin though they are, until he has to go and be coarse and talk about sex. While looking at her lips, too.
Her only consolation is that Richard probably would talk about sex even if she was a blushing virgin, and isn't taking liberties just because he knows she's not. It's not s a great consolation, but she probably ought to thank him for reminding her what sort of person she has agreed to marry.
Before she can say anything, his eyes swing back up to meet hers. "Surely you won't begrudge my not being fashionably blasé when I have, after all, waited nearly two years for this."
"Waited? For what? For me to reveal a dirty little secret that obliges me to marry you?"
Richard's grip tightens around Mary's fingers and she gasps. Not because he's hurt her with his aggression, but because he's holding her as one might bear down on another person's hand in a moment of pain. But that can't be possible, can it? Sir Richard Carlisle can't be wounded. He hasn't invested enough feeling in this relationship for her to have that power.
No sooner has the thought flitted through her mind than he releases her, only to capture her again, cupping her face in his hands; Mary's back meets the pillar behind her as Richard closes the gap between their bodies with a kiss.
For a flash she thinks of Kemal Pamuk's long, tanned fingers touching her the same way, his tongue making its bold advance into her mouth when it opened in a gasp as he drove her back against the saloon wall, and her hands go up instinctively to push him away, until she realises that this is not the Turk's lust-fuelled kiss. Despite the assertion with which Richard initiated it, the tips of his fingers trace delicate patterns along her cheeks, her jaw, her neck; the press of his lips, at first insistent, yields to hers as she, much to her own astonishment, wraps her fingers around his wrists and kisses him back.
This close up he smells of his pomade and too much cologne covering whisky and cigars and the newspaper he couldn't take his nose out of during the drive over--none of the scents that should cling to any fiancé of hers. He tastes, however, of patience and two years' longing, and Mary savours it, and the dulling of the bitterness that has filled her mouth for so long that she's no longer certain what sweetness is.
When Richard presses one last, firm kiss to her lips before standing proudly erect again, she is sorrier than she ought to be. And more pleased than she ought to be, too, when his fingers linger about her neck, caressing her skin just below the collar of her jacket as he smiles down at her, his eyes crinkled at the corners in an expression which, worn by any other man, she would call tender.
"My," she says, her voice too short of breath to sound appropriately blasé. "What sort of story is this we've agreed to add chapters to?"
"I know what genre I'd like it to be," Richard says, catching her hands when she starts to lower them, his gaze commanding hers even as his lips graze her knuckles, not allowing her to break it to roll her eyes at this second intimation of sex.
Not that Mary is certain she would do even if she had that freedom.
"But that editorial decision," he adds, drawing her hand into the crook of his arm as he guides her down Haxby's great white marble staircase, "I leave to you."
~*~
"There may be some family things I can persuade Papa to send with me to Haxby," Mary says during the drive home. "Mama's been at him to get a few of the rooms more up-to-date. And she collects horrid American paintings he won't let her hang anywhere. She might give us a few of those so our walls won't be completely bare. We won't have to buy everything. Only mostly everything."
She sighs, as much at the indignity of being reduced to buying an estate from an old family friend fallen on hard times and having to furnish it from scratch, as at the fact that the man who will be buying all of this for her is apparently too buried in his own newspaper to even listen.
Sharp words form on the tip of her tongue, words she's chastised Richard with before--that people might forget he must work for his living if he'd ever stop working in front of them. But at the last moment she stays them, remembering his words--of new chapters, and of waiting.
And, most of all, remembering his kiss. When she looks at his mouth, lips pressed together in a thin pale line as he reads, she can almost feel the warmth of them on hers.
She hasn't given Richard much of a chance, she realises, not since they met and certainly not since he made his awkward proposal to her at the station two years ago. She owes him that much.
And she'd like to give herself a chance, too, now that she knows they might actually have something of the moon and the June between them, after all. If only she'll let them.
"That reminds me," Richard's voice breaks into her musing, underscored by the rustle of his newspaper as he folds it up and slides a little nearer to her on the bench seat. "I've already arranged for something to come with you from Downton to Haxby."
"Oh? And what's that?"
"Well--not what so much as who."
His blue eyes twinkle, and one corner of his mouth quirks upward, and he looks so extremely pleased with himself that Mary can't let him get away with it just yet, even though her curiosity's piqued and her pulse quickens with the thought that he's orchestrated a surprise for her.
She arches a wary eyebrow at him. "Oh dear. You haven't invited old Edith, the maiden aunt, to live with us, have you? Because honestly I'd rather go to a department store and buy brand new modern furniture."
"Close." Richard takes her hand, which rests on her lap, in his. "Only it's someone you like."
Mary laughs. "I can't imagine...You haven't asked Anna on as head housemaid, have you?"
To her surprise, he wilts slightly. "I will if you'd like me to."
She would, very much, but-- "It's very ill-bred to steal other people's servants."
Richard glances away, plainly embarrassed. "I thought it rather more imperative to secure a butler before a maid."
If Mary were the one driving, she'd have stepped on the brake in her surprise. Thankfully Branson's managed not to get himself drafted, so her reputation for cold composure--perhaps the only reputation she's got left, at least in Richard's eyes--remains untarnished.
"Are you trying to give Papa more reasons to dislike you?" she asks.
He meets her eyes again. "Seeing as it's you I'm marrying and not Lord Grantham, it's not him I ought to worry about pleasing, is it?"
Mary doesn't blink, so as not to miss the smirk she fully expects to follow such boldly defiant words.
But Richard doesn't smirk. In fact, she's never seen him look more earnest. Not even when he proposed to her.
He's noticed, she thinks, her heart accelerating in her chest, faster than the car speeds down the road. Noticed how very fond of Carson she is. And has done one of those things well-bred people simply don't do--just to please her.
And how many people of even the most unblemished pedigree have really tried to do that?
Out the corner of her eye, she glimpses Branson watching them in the mirror, and she tears her gaze from Richard.
But she gives his hand a discrete squeeze and says, "It is hard to find good help these days."
She discretely watches as Branson swings his eyes back to the road, shaking his head with an undisguised expression of disgust--really, they'd all be better off if Papa would sack Branson and let Edith play chauffeur--then gives Richard a small smile.
"Why settle for good," he says, returning it, and threading their fingers together, "when we can have the best?"
Read Chapter Two
Author: MrsTater
Fandom: Downton Abbey
Characters & Pairings: Richard Carlisle/Mary Crawley; ensemble in later chapters
Ratings & Warnings: rated R for sexuality; S2 spoilers
Format & Word Count: chaptered fic, 1759 words in chapter 1
Summary: When Mary agrees to write another chapter in the book of Haxby Park, she unexpectedly writes a new start to her story with Sir Richard. But what sort of story will it be? And will she like it? [S2E6 AU]
Author's Notes: This fic continues the Haxby scene in S2E6 and then deviates pretty drastically from the rest of the episode/S2. I hope it's a good read for those of you who would like to have seen Mary and Richard make a little more of an attempt at having an actual relationship. Many thanks to phoenikxs, without whose boundless enthusiasm and brainstorming, I'd have let this story get the better of me…much like Richard himself. ;)
One
"So. Shall we rescue it? Shall we give the house another chapter?"
"Well. I suppose one has to live somewhere."
"One has to live somewhere," Richard repeats Mary's own words back to her, slowly, as he slides his hand along the gilded black balustrade and takes a step nearer to her. "Just the sort of unsentimental reply I'd expect from one of your lot."
The dimples beneath his high cheekbones deepen with his smirk, and for a moment she imagines they must somehow have been transported back in time to Cliveden, where she first took notice of him because of that expression. Which of course had been intensely irritating to her, because it presumed to question, and even mock, the aristocratic ways. Her ways.
Yet it had been intensely intriguing, as well, because it admired, and envied, who she is. And her heart raced with the exhilaration of having that sort of power over a man--then and now--because it makes her feel like herself again, for the first time since the war started, or since long before that, really. Lady Mary Crawley, the belle of the county, who enjoys her admirers whilst never doing anything so foolish as falling in love with them.
She raises her chin, and an eyebrow. "Whereas by talking of rescues and chapters, you're teetering perilously close to the sort of vulgar sentiment I'd expect from one of yours."
His fingertips slide over hers, the warmth of them that actually reaches her through her kid glove so startling that she draws in a sharp breath before she can stop herself. Of course Richard, consummate newspaperman that he is, doesn't miss it, she can see from the deepening crisscross of lines at the corners of his eyes. Not as striking as another pair of blue eyes she has peered into, but they see her with greater clarity. And that's something.
Quite a lot of something, in fact.
"Come now, Mary," Richard says, his fingers stroking her knuckles until she can't help but relax her grip on the banister and curl her hand around his instead. "Surely you don't intend to continue this charade of yours and mine. We're to share a name, a home… a bed."
She's softening under his touch and the husky tones of his voice and even the words themselves, maudlin though they are, until he has to go and be coarse and talk about sex. While looking at her lips, too.
Her only consolation is that Richard probably would talk about sex even if she was a blushing virgin, and isn't taking liberties just because he knows she's not. It's not s a great consolation, but she probably ought to thank him for reminding her what sort of person she has agreed to marry.
Before she can say anything, his eyes swing back up to meet hers. "Surely you won't begrudge my not being fashionably blasé when I have, after all, waited nearly two years for this."
"Waited? For what? For me to reveal a dirty little secret that obliges me to marry you?"
Richard's grip tightens around Mary's fingers and she gasps. Not because he's hurt her with his aggression, but because he's holding her as one might bear down on another person's hand in a moment of pain. But that can't be possible, can it? Sir Richard Carlisle can't be wounded. He hasn't invested enough feeling in this relationship for her to have that power.
No sooner has the thought flitted through her mind than he releases her, only to capture her again, cupping her face in his hands; Mary's back meets the pillar behind her as Richard closes the gap between their bodies with a kiss.
For a flash she thinks of Kemal Pamuk's long, tanned fingers touching her the same way, his tongue making its bold advance into her mouth when it opened in a gasp as he drove her back against the saloon wall, and her hands go up instinctively to push him away, until she realises that this is not the Turk's lust-fuelled kiss. Despite the assertion with which Richard initiated it, the tips of his fingers trace delicate patterns along her cheeks, her jaw, her neck; the press of his lips, at first insistent, yields to hers as she, much to her own astonishment, wraps her fingers around his wrists and kisses him back.
This close up he smells of his pomade and too much cologne covering whisky and cigars and the newspaper he couldn't take his nose out of during the drive over--none of the scents that should cling to any fiancé of hers. He tastes, however, of patience and two years' longing, and Mary savours it, and the dulling of the bitterness that has filled her mouth for so long that she's no longer certain what sweetness is.
When Richard presses one last, firm kiss to her lips before standing proudly erect again, she is sorrier than she ought to be. And more pleased than she ought to be, too, when his fingers linger about her neck, caressing her skin just below the collar of her jacket as he smiles down at her, his eyes crinkled at the corners in an expression which, worn by any other man, she would call tender.
"My," she says, her voice too short of breath to sound appropriately blasé. "What sort of story is this we've agreed to add chapters to?"
"I know what genre I'd like it to be," Richard says, catching her hands when she starts to lower them, his gaze commanding hers even as his lips graze her knuckles, not allowing her to break it to roll her eyes at this second intimation of sex.
Not that Mary is certain she would do even if she had that freedom.
"But that editorial decision," he adds, drawing her hand into the crook of his arm as he guides her down Haxby's great white marble staircase, "I leave to you."
~*~
"There may be some family things I can persuade Papa to send with me to Haxby," Mary says during the drive home. "Mama's been at him to get a few of the rooms more up-to-date. And she collects horrid American paintings he won't let her hang anywhere. She might give us a few of those so our walls won't be completely bare. We won't have to buy everything. Only mostly everything."
She sighs, as much at the indignity of being reduced to buying an estate from an old family friend fallen on hard times and having to furnish it from scratch, as at the fact that the man who will be buying all of this for her is apparently too buried in his own newspaper to even listen.
Sharp words form on the tip of her tongue, words she's chastised Richard with before--that people might forget he must work for his living if he'd ever stop working in front of them. But at the last moment she stays them, remembering his words--of new chapters, and of waiting.
And, most of all, remembering his kiss. When she looks at his mouth, lips pressed together in a thin pale line as he reads, she can almost feel the warmth of them on hers.
She hasn't given Richard much of a chance, she realises, not since they met and certainly not since he made his awkward proposal to her at the station two years ago. She owes him that much.
And she'd like to give herself a chance, too, now that she knows they might actually have something of the moon and the June between them, after all. If only she'll let them.
"That reminds me," Richard's voice breaks into her musing, underscored by the rustle of his newspaper as he folds it up and slides a little nearer to her on the bench seat. "I've already arranged for something to come with you from Downton to Haxby."
"Oh? And what's that?"
"Well--not what so much as who."
His blue eyes twinkle, and one corner of his mouth quirks upward, and he looks so extremely pleased with himself that Mary can't let him get away with it just yet, even though her curiosity's piqued and her pulse quickens with the thought that he's orchestrated a surprise for her.
She arches a wary eyebrow at him. "Oh dear. You haven't invited old Edith, the maiden aunt, to live with us, have you? Because honestly I'd rather go to a department store and buy brand new modern furniture."
"Close." Richard takes her hand, which rests on her lap, in his. "Only it's someone you like."
Mary laughs. "I can't imagine...You haven't asked Anna on as head housemaid, have you?"
To her surprise, he wilts slightly. "I will if you'd like me to."
She would, very much, but-- "It's very ill-bred to steal other people's servants."
Richard glances away, plainly embarrassed. "I thought it rather more imperative to secure a butler before a maid."
If Mary were the one driving, she'd have stepped on the brake in her surprise. Thankfully Branson's managed not to get himself drafted, so her reputation for cold composure--perhaps the only reputation she's got left, at least in Richard's eyes--remains untarnished.
"Are you trying to give Papa more reasons to dislike you?" she asks.
He meets her eyes again. "Seeing as it's you I'm marrying and not Lord Grantham, it's not him I ought to worry about pleasing, is it?"
Mary doesn't blink, so as not to miss the smirk she fully expects to follow such boldly defiant words.
But Richard doesn't smirk. In fact, she's never seen him look more earnest. Not even when he proposed to her.
He's noticed, she thinks, her heart accelerating in her chest, faster than the car speeds down the road. Noticed how very fond of Carson she is. And has done one of those things well-bred people simply don't do--just to please her.
And how many people of even the most unblemished pedigree have really tried to do that?
Out the corner of her eye, she glimpses Branson watching them in the mirror, and she tears her gaze from Richard.
But she gives his hand a discrete squeeze and says, "It is hard to find good help these days."
She discretely watches as Branson swings his eyes back to the road, shaking his head with an undisguised expression of disgust--really, they'd all be better off if Papa would sack Branson and let Edith play chauffeur--then gives Richard a small smile.
"Why settle for good," he says, returning it, and threading their fingers together, "when we can have the best?"
Read Chapter Two