Fic: A Lady In Paris (2/?)
Title: A Lady In Paris
Author: mrstater
Fandom: Downton Abbey
Characters & Pairings: Mary Crawley/Richard Carlisle
Word Count: 3690 words
Rating & Warnings: M for sex
Summary: 1913: After a rushed autumn courtship and wedding, a honeymoon to Paris gives Mary and Richard the opportunity to see a bit more of the world, and even more of each other. [sequel to A Girl in Black]
Chapter Summary: The revelation of an unexpected gap in Richard's knowledge tests just how well he and Mary can do together.
Author's Note: Many apologies for the length of time between updates; it's been so long I fear you might have forgotten this fic altogether! I blame a combination of too many projects going at once, and also what I thought would be a simple smutty honeymoon fic has turned into a story with something of a plot. I've got it all figured out, though, so my hope is that I'll be able to alternate between this fic and Something Worth Having in a more timely fashion in the future. (I anticipate this being no longer than 4-5 chapters, but then again I thought AGIB would be around a dozen so...take from that what you will.) Thanks so much to vladnyrki for beta reading and translating a bit of French for me.
Previous Chapters |
2. Parlez-vous
"Come now, Mary," Richard addresses her from the seat opposite her in the train compartment. "You can't mean to hold this against me for the duration of our train ride."
"No, indeed," she replies, not looking up from her copy of Lady Fair--though not for the reason her new husband thinks.
The channel ferry from Dover to Calais nauseated her--so badly, in fact, that she had to bolt to the powder room to be sick. In a true test of her acting skills, she retained her composure so Richard would not suspect her true purpose for visiting the toilets. It's too undignified, being ill on one's honeymoon, especially as she has always been a good sailor and knows the baby must have brought it on; the last thing she wants is for him to make her think more about it by doing everything in his power to relieve the affliction which will pass on its own. Already she is reasonably certain the worst is past--or will be, if she doesn't exacerbate the dizziness produced by the swaying train with any sudden movements of her own and avoids looking out at the windows at the blurring French countryside, glaringly resplendent with the midday sun on the snow.
However, at the rattle of his newspaper, she looks up to see Richard fold and set his newspaper aside, then push to his feet as if to join her on her side of the carriage.
Hastily she averts her gaze to the magazine in her lap and adds, affecting tones of disinterest, "I mean to hold it against you for the duration of our marriage."
For a moment Richard stands arrested in his awkward hunched position at the centre of the of the train compartment before he resumes his seat, the cushion puffing air from some unseen hole in the upholstery.
"Surely you overcame worse shortcomings to become my wife. My Dickensian origins."
"Do you really qualify?" Mary pictures the boy version of Richard in the shadowy, yellowed photograph his mother brought to London for the wedding, all cheekbones beneath a mop of fair hair. "As the son of a printer and laundress, you were hardly standing in line with an empty bowl begging the workhouse master for more gruel."
Richard ignores her and continues to enumerate on his flaws. "My Darwinian business ethics."
"That I definitely won't dispute. Nor, I think, would Miss Swire." Their eyes meet across the car, and Mary sees the smirk that tugs at the corner of her lips mirrored on Richard's face. "Don't forget your dandified fashion faux pas. That gave me great pause."
"Presumably you refer to the tweed incident."
"You presume correctly," she replies, and Richard scowls. Satisfied, Mary returns her attention once more to her magazine.
Before she gets further than re-reading the paragraph where she left off, however, Richard rises from his seat again, sliding his arm around her shoulders and nudging her over on the bench with his hip as he makes room for himself between her and the wall of the carriage. Any protest she thought to make is silenced as he nuzzles at her cheek, his lips finding the sensitive place where her earlobe meets her jaw, warm breath prickling up goosebumps on the back of her neck as he murmurs in husky tones.
"My Don Juanian powers of seduction."
"I seduced you," Mary says, pleased that she manages to sound stiffly aloof--even if it is most ironically because his kisses--and caresses, his other hand coming quite boldly to curl over her breast--made her catch her breath. "If you remember."
With a sigh, Richard sits back, hands leaving her breast and shoulder. "And now you emasculate me. All because I don't speak bloody French."
He reaches into the inner pocket of his jacket and takes out his silver plated cigarette case and lighter.
"I thought I knew who I was marrying," Mary says. "Gauche, I was prepared for. But such gaps in your education?"
He asks, cigarette clenched between his teeth as he lit it, "Would you have said I do if you'd known?"
"I admit it might have been a deal breaker."
"Then how fortunate for me you were already pregnant."
It is less fortunate for Mary, whose head begins to ache the instant the cigarette smoke assaults her sense of smell. Though she's proven sensitive to many aromas during her pregnancy, Richard's smoking hasn't troubled her since she got over her morning sickness. In fact she enjoyed the smell this very morning, when she woke at the hotel in Dover to him smoking beside her in bed as he read the paper. Still nauseated from the ferry ride, however, and now from the motion of the train, she's afraid she may be making another dash for the water closet. She doesn't ask him to stop; she never has before, and it will only arouse his suspicion if his smoking suddenly bothers her now.
To distract herself from her nausea and headache, she focuses on her annoyance. Though they were only bantering about Richard's ignorance of the French language, part of her meant every word of it. Still reeling from the channel crossing, the last thing she was in the mood for was the discovery that Richard didn't know enough French to instruct the cab driver he hailed in Calais to take them to the railway station. Mary had to speak to him, and the man scarcely stopped talking all the way there--though he at least understood enough English so as not to mistake Richard's meaning when he asked him to please shut up. But at the station it was Mary who had to purchase their train tickets, and deal with the porters with regard to their baggage, and she will have to do it all over again--and more--in Paris.
"Are you quite well?" Richard asks, and she lowers her hand to her lap, only now realising she has been pinching the bridge of her nose.
"Quite--apart from my state of utter disbelief that you never to learnt French," she answers. "You did go to school, didn't you? Or are you a self-educated man as well as a self-made one?"
"In my day, the Scottish school system was far superior to the English one, and that's a fact," Richard replies, his voice low and even. He looks her in the eye. "French is reserved for the elite…But as for knowledge gaps…How's your geometry? Trigonometry?"
Mary glances away, her face growing warm at the blunt way he points out her deficiencies. The scenery out the window blurs past and seems to pull painfully at the edges of her eyes, and she must close them against the sight. Nevertheless, she musters her haughtiest voice.
"What use do women like me have for higher mathematics?"
"No more than I do publishing newspapers. Just because certain fields of study aren't useful doesn't mean they're not beneficial. There's a lot to be said for mastering concepts simply because you can. And shouldn't that be the point of being elite?"
It's a funny sort of privilege, she realises as her eyes snap open, that deprives her of knowledge available to people who are beneath her. If she married Patrick, or the Duke of Crowborough, or Evelyn Napier, or any other man Mama sat her next to at dinner, she likely never would have even known this, or cared that she did not. Humiliating as it is to have her ignorance exposed, she's glad not to remain in the dark any longer. Glad her husband doesn't see her as less because of it, and that their child--her hand moves to rest on her stomach, properly nipped in by her corset--should it be a girl, will be entitled to so much more than an education designed to catch a certain type of husband. With her free hand, she covers Richard's which rests on her thigh.
"So Lord Grantham learned his French at Eton," he says, weaving their fingers together, "did they teach him how to become a millionaire should he find himself without an inheritance?"
"Well yes," Mary says, turning back to him, smirking as puzzlement at her remark etches itself in the lines of his face. "He came out with the necessary qualities to marry Mama and acquire hers."
Richard chuckles softly, smoke puffing from his slightly parted lips. "And I married you."
"To be your translator?" Mary quips, but Richard is no longer in the mood for banter, leaning in to kiss her instead.
She gives him only a peck in return, almost at once pulling back from the bitter taste of tobacco on his lips. He looks a little askance at the brevity of the kiss and, oblivious, takes a long drag from the cigarette.
"How did you plan a Parisian honeymoon, then?" Mary asks. "Or do we even have a hotel reservation?"
"Miss Fields took care of everything."
French isn't a skill Mary typically associated with secretaries, then she remembers the inimitable Miss Fields was a governess prior to working for Richard. "She conducts your international business, then?"
"I don't have much. At present."
"If only I'd known, you might have at least conducted our honeymoon business. I taught Anna quite passable French in six weeks, in case she meets a handsome Frenchman who wants to court her."
"I'm not sure he'll care about her language mastery," Richard replies, and gives her hand a squeeze as he shifts on the seat, turning to brush his lips across her cheekbone. "I thought you'd enjoy having all the control by being the one who can communicate. My ignorance puts me entirely at your mercy, you realise?"
"True…" Mary turns the idea over in her mind as Richard releases her hand to take her chin and turn her head for another attempt at a kiss. She smiles against his mouth, then says, "I could do all sorts of diabolical things, such as go to a restaurant and order you escargot."
He leans back from her, an eyebrow raised. "I do know that's the dish with the snails. And if you think for a second that's enough to turn the cast iron stomach of a Scotsman, you have a lot to learn about my mother's cooking."
Unable to stop a grimace, Mary turns from him again, cradling her forehead in her hand.
"You're not well," Richard says and, knowing he won't believe a mere reference to black puddings and haggis could have induced such a reaction, she admits his cigarette has exacerbated the nausea that began on the ferry. At once he tamps it out into the brass plated ashtray set into the arm of the bench. "For god's sake, Mary. Why didn't you say?"
Leaning against the back of the seat, she gives a week smile. "It seems neither of us is very good at admitting our shortcomings."
Richard does not grin back, the creases at the corners of his eyes deepening with his frown as he studies her in concern and brushes his fingers over her aching forehead. "I'd prefer it if added to the list of mine isn't that I unwittingly let my wife suffer."
"I don't think there's much you can do, unless you've aspirin in your briefcase.
Abruptly Richard's hand leaves her, and he is on his feet, reaching for the shelf overhead. "But I always do."
Of course he does. "In case of hangovers?"
Richard opens the case on the vacant seat. "In case of the inevitable gnashing of teeth the newspaper business brings."
"Not that I don't appreciate your preparedness, but this is a pleasure trip, not a business one."
"Take that," Richard says, the peremptory tone as he presses a pill into Mary's hand making her wonder for a moment if he's keeping something from her. But the throbbing in her temples pushes the thought out of her mind as suddenly as it came into it, and her focus shifts to Richard muttering that she needs something to drink and opening the door of the train compartment to flag down a passing attendant.
"My wife needs--" He looks back over his shoulder at her, frowning. "How do I ask for a cup of tea?"
"Heavens, I'm much too warm for tea."
"Water, then," Richard snaps.
Sighing, Mary opens her mouth to translate, this very basic French not coming to her readily in her state, but not before the bemused attendant repeats in heavily accented English. "Water? Oui, monsieur."
When the man has scurried off and Richard has closed the compartment door, Mary says, "I'll thank you not to take your communication frustrations out on me." She rolls the aspirin capsule between her thumb and forefinger This is all your doing, after all."
"The French honeymoon, or the pregnancy?" he asks--his tone, if not his words, apologetic--and resumes his seat beside her.
"Both."
"And just a moment ago you were taking all the credit for seducing me." His large hands sweep the underside of her breasts as he releases the top button of her ivory pinstriped traveling suit.
"If you're plotting a seduction now," Mary says, swatting him away and shrinking back from him into the corner of the compartment, "you have an appalling sense of timing."
"My timing had only to do with your remark that you were overly warm. You might feel better if you take off your jacket."
"Oh. Yes."
Mary undoes the rest of her buttons and allows him to help her draw her arms from the sleeves. Also at his encouragement she removes her hat, its absence at once relieving her head of the pressure of her hairpins under its weight. A moment later a knock at the door signals the return of the attendant with the water, goggling at Mary over Richard's shoulder when she thanks him in French.
"He looked a little scandalised by my state of undress," she remarks when they are alone again, sips of water doing much to revive her even before the aspirin has a chance to do its work.
"He's French. I rather doubt much scandalises him." Richard puts his arms about her and she willingly leans against him, tension ebbing from her as his left hand cradles her head, working soothing circles over her scalp with his fingertips, and his voice rumbles pleasantly through her. "And if it does, what do we care? We'll never see him again, once we arrive in Paris."
"What do you think he imagines we've got up to?"
"Headache cures."
Mary tilts her head on his shoulder to look up at him. "It cures headaches?
"Just to clarify we're talking about the same thing…The it you refer to is sex, yes?"
"Yes," she admits, not breaking eye contact; her cheeks grow warm again, but Richard grins.
"I don't suppose you'd like to try it?"
"Right here in the carriage? We're not even in a sleeper car."
"As you discovered yesterday at the Ritz, beds are not a requirement."
The heat in Mary's cheeks--and elsewhere--deepens with the memory of the passionate interlude they had on the desk, which resulted in a broken lamp.
"And if privacy is your concern, a train's no more public than being under your father's roof during a house party."
This argument, Mary must concede, is most persuasive; their risk of being caught that weekend at Downton was much greater, with more disastrous potential, than this. Before she can say so, Richard abruptly sits back from her.
"I don't mean to pressure you. If you're not comfortable, or not up to it…"
"Why not?" She gets up, her skirt brushing his trousers as she stands in front of him. "I can't read with a headache, and we've finished arguing, so we need some way to pass the time."
Richard grasps her by the hips and pulls her to stand between his knees as they part on either side of her. "It's fortunate I'm aroused by that blasé demeanour. Less confident men than me might find their spirits dampened by your apparent lack of enthusiasm. But I know you. The less you say, the more you feel."
"Perhaps you ought to say a bit less."
"I won't argue with that," he mumbles, tilting his face up to hers as his arms tighten about her waist to draw her down for a kiss.
As their lips meet, Mary slides her hands over his chest, then inside his jacket to rest on his shoulders; with the sweep of his tongue into her mouth she clings to his neck as he embraces her even tighter, hoisting her onto the balls of her feet. She is not certain at first what he intends, but when one hand leaves her waist to clutch the front of her skirt, hoisting it up above her knees, and his fingers hook around her the back of her thigh to lift her leg, she realises he must mean for her to straddle his lap--fully clothed. Not quite what she imagined when he proposed a romantic interlude--but then again, she had no clearer idea about how lovemaking in a train would occur.
Two days of marriage, it seems, are not enough to give her a much more complete grasp of sex than she has of higher mathematics.
Though master it, she can. And will.
With no little dubiousness and a great deal of awkwardness, she hoists up her skirt and petticoat and climbs onto his lap, grateful that Richard seems unaware of either. Her breasts come quite close to his face and he kisses them through her blouse, the heat of his breath touching her skin even through the silk and layers of fine linen undergarments. Grasping his shoulders, she rocks her hips against his in response, surprised at the heady feeling evoked even without the intimacy of being naked with him. Emboldened by the thought, she slides one hand down from his shoulder, over his chest until her fingers brush his arousal. She smiles at his sharp indrawn breath; when she slips her fingers beneath the fly to undo the first button, he mutters an exclamation that is muffled by her blouse.
"What did you say?" she asks as she makes swift work of the other closures.
"Something in a language you've ever heard."
Mary's eyebrows go up at that--or perhaps, more accurately, they go up as warm fingers slip inside the opening of her drawers, finding with his usual precision her most sensitive place. She is not truly offended by the expletive; she probably ought to be, but then again, she is in the process of engaging in sexual intercourse with only thin partitions separating them from the other passengers and railway employees, and that doesn't offend her, either. On the contrary, the flush that races from deep inside to every extremity, the tips of her fingers and her cheeks, can only be attributed to a thrill of excitement at what they are doing.
No language she's ever heard? Well, two can play at that game. After all, language is what got them started down this track in the first place.
"Tout cela est bien mal élevé," she says.
"I beg your pardon?"
This is so ill-bred, she said--but she has no intention of playing the role of translator for Richard now. He gives her an excuse not to, anyway, entering her, and she must bite her lip against a cry. He grasps her hips and begins to pump into her, settling into a rhythm so rapid and frantic that she knows this encounter will be even briefer than he one on the desk. It differs from other times they've made love, too: the position gives her more control so that she feels the peaks of pleasure more acutely, yet the pace, that of a snatched moment, does not allow her to become so lost in the ebb and flow of physical sensation; she keeps her head, and desires to express what she feels in words--and in doing so, to prove Richard's earlier assessment of her wrong.
"Tout cela est bien mal élevé," she repeats the French--because proving her husband wrong should not preclude teasing him, "et pourtant si merveilleux. Je suis si heureuse de t’avoir épousé, toi et tes origines modestes, et ta moralité douteuse, et ton affreux tweed, juste par amour."
"Something about tweed and love?" Richard mutters between thrusts.
Dreadfully ill-bred, yet completely wonderful. I'm so happy I married you and your humble origins, and your dubious morals, and your tweed, for love.
Then it's all a wordless cry whose meaning is perfectly plain to both of them as they arrive together at their destination, at what feels to Mary like the full speed of the locomotive. She clings to Richard with one hand, the other scrabbling overhead to clutch luggage rack at the sensation that she might be flung free of the carriage altogether.
His hand, first stroking a fallen tendril back into her coiffure, then sweeping lightly across her brow, draws her back to him.
"How's the headache?"
Mary pauses to assess herself and, in her relief to feel as well as she did before the ferry ride, starts to tell him so--but at the last moment she stops, deciding that will likely go straight to his head.
"Envolé," she answers--Cured. "Si seulement nous pouvions déposer un brevet, les fabricants d’aspirine feraient faillite, et nous deviendrions encore plus riches que nous ne le sommes déjà."--If only we could patent it, we'd put the aspirin companies out of business and be even richer than we already are.
"You're going to enjoy wielding this power you have over me even more than I anticipated, aren't you?"
"If you'd known about my Bonapartean despotism, would you still have married me?"
Richard laughs. "Oui. And much sooner than I did."
"In that case," Mary says, rocking down in his lap and eliciting a little moan from him, "let's try another round of treatment. I simply must be in tip-top shape for Paris."
Author: mrstater
Fandom: Downton Abbey
Characters & Pairings: Mary Crawley/Richard Carlisle
Word Count: 3690 words
Rating & Warnings: M for sex
Summary: 1913: After a rushed autumn courtship and wedding, a honeymoon to Paris gives Mary and Richard the opportunity to see a bit more of the world, and even more of each other. [sequel to A Girl in Black]
Chapter Summary: The revelation of an unexpected gap in Richard's knowledge tests just how well he and Mary can do together.
Author's Note: Many apologies for the length of time between updates; it's been so long I fear you might have forgotten this fic altogether! I blame a combination of too many projects going at once, and also what I thought would be a simple smutty honeymoon fic has turned into a story with something of a plot. I've got it all figured out, though, so my hope is that I'll be able to alternate between this fic and Something Worth Having in a more timely fashion in the future. (I anticipate this being no longer than 4-5 chapters, but then again I thought AGIB would be around a dozen so...take from that what you will.) Thanks so much to vladnyrki for beta reading and translating a bit of French for me.
Previous Chapters |
2. Parlez-vous
"Come now, Mary," Richard addresses her from the seat opposite her in the train compartment. "You can't mean to hold this against me for the duration of our train ride."
"No, indeed," she replies, not looking up from her copy of Lady Fair--though not for the reason her new husband thinks.
The channel ferry from Dover to Calais nauseated her--so badly, in fact, that she had to bolt to the powder room to be sick. In a true test of her acting skills, she retained her composure so Richard would not suspect her true purpose for visiting the toilets. It's too undignified, being ill on one's honeymoon, especially as she has always been a good sailor and knows the baby must have brought it on; the last thing she wants is for him to make her think more about it by doing everything in his power to relieve the affliction which will pass on its own. Already she is reasonably certain the worst is past--or will be, if she doesn't exacerbate the dizziness produced by the swaying train with any sudden movements of her own and avoids looking out at the windows at the blurring French countryside, glaringly resplendent with the midday sun on the snow.
However, at the rattle of his newspaper, she looks up to see Richard fold and set his newspaper aside, then push to his feet as if to join her on her side of the carriage.
Hastily she averts her gaze to the magazine in her lap and adds, affecting tones of disinterest, "I mean to hold it against you for the duration of our marriage."
For a moment Richard stands arrested in his awkward hunched position at the centre of the of the train compartment before he resumes his seat, the cushion puffing air from some unseen hole in the upholstery.
"Surely you overcame worse shortcomings to become my wife. My Dickensian origins."
"Do you really qualify?" Mary pictures the boy version of Richard in the shadowy, yellowed photograph his mother brought to London for the wedding, all cheekbones beneath a mop of fair hair. "As the son of a printer and laundress, you were hardly standing in line with an empty bowl begging the workhouse master for more gruel."
Richard ignores her and continues to enumerate on his flaws. "My Darwinian business ethics."
"That I definitely won't dispute. Nor, I think, would Miss Swire." Their eyes meet across the car, and Mary sees the smirk that tugs at the corner of her lips mirrored on Richard's face. "Don't forget your dandified fashion faux pas. That gave me great pause."
"Presumably you refer to the tweed incident."
"You presume correctly," she replies, and Richard scowls. Satisfied, Mary returns her attention once more to her magazine.
Before she gets further than re-reading the paragraph where she left off, however, Richard rises from his seat again, sliding his arm around her shoulders and nudging her over on the bench with his hip as he makes room for himself between her and the wall of the carriage. Any protest she thought to make is silenced as he nuzzles at her cheek, his lips finding the sensitive place where her earlobe meets her jaw, warm breath prickling up goosebumps on the back of her neck as he murmurs in husky tones.
"My Don Juanian powers of seduction."
"I seduced you," Mary says, pleased that she manages to sound stiffly aloof--even if it is most ironically because his kisses--and caresses, his other hand coming quite boldly to curl over her breast--made her catch her breath. "If you remember."
With a sigh, Richard sits back, hands leaving her breast and shoulder. "And now you emasculate me. All because I don't speak bloody French."
He reaches into the inner pocket of his jacket and takes out his silver plated cigarette case and lighter.
"I thought I knew who I was marrying," Mary says. "Gauche, I was prepared for. But such gaps in your education?"
He asks, cigarette clenched between his teeth as he lit it, "Would you have said I do if you'd known?"
"I admit it might have been a deal breaker."
"Then how fortunate for me you were already pregnant."
It is less fortunate for Mary, whose head begins to ache the instant the cigarette smoke assaults her sense of smell. Though she's proven sensitive to many aromas during her pregnancy, Richard's smoking hasn't troubled her since she got over her morning sickness. In fact she enjoyed the smell this very morning, when she woke at the hotel in Dover to him smoking beside her in bed as he read the paper. Still nauseated from the ferry ride, however, and now from the motion of the train, she's afraid she may be making another dash for the water closet. She doesn't ask him to stop; she never has before, and it will only arouse his suspicion if his smoking suddenly bothers her now.
To distract herself from her nausea and headache, she focuses on her annoyance. Though they were only bantering about Richard's ignorance of the French language, part of her meant every word of it. Still reeling from the channel crossing, the last thing she was in the mood for was the discovery that Richard didn't know enough French to instruct the cab driver he hailed in Calais to take them to the railway station. Mary had to speak to him, and the man scarcely stopped talking all the way there--though he at least understood enough English so as not to mistake Richard's meaning when he asked him to please shut up. But at the station it was Mary who had to purchase their train tickets, and deal with the porters with regard to their baggage, and she will have to do it all over again--and more--in Paris.
"Are you quite well?" Richard asks, and she lowers her hand to her lap, only now realising she has been pinching the bridge of her nose.
"Quite--apart from my state of utter disbelief that you never to learnt French," she answers. "You did go to school, didn't you? Or are you a self-educated man as well as a self-made one?"
"In my day, the Scottish school system was far superior to the English one, and that's a fact," Richard replies, his voice low and even. He looks her in the eye. "French is reserved for the elite…But as for knowledge gaps…How's your geometry? Trigonometry?"
Mary glances away, her face growing warm at the blunt way he points out her deficiencies. The scenery out the window blurs past and seems to pull painfully at the edges of her eyes, and she must close them against the sight. Nevertheless, she musters her haughtiest voice.
"What use do women like me have for higher mathematics?"
"No more than I do publishing newspapers. Just because certain fields of study aren't useful doesn't mean they're not beneficial. There's a lot to be said for mastering concepts simply because you can. And shouldn't that be the point of being elite?"
It's a funny sort of privilege, she realises as her eyes snap open, that deprives her of knowledge available to people who are beneath her. If she married Patrick, or the Duke of Crowborough, or Evelyn Napier, or any other man Mama sat her next to at dinner, she likely never would have even known this, or cared that she did not. Humiliating as it is to have her ignorance exposed, she's glad not to remain in the dark any longer. Glad her husband doesn't see her as less because of it, and that their child--her hand moves to rest on her stomach, properly nipped in by her corset--should it be a girl, will be entitled to so much more than an education designed to catch a certain type of husband. With her free hand, she covers Richard's which rests on her thigh.
"So Lord Grantham learned his French at Eton," he says, weaving their fingers together, "did they teach him how to become a millionaire should he find himself without an inheritance?"
"Well yes," Mary says, turning back to him, smirking as puzzlement at her remark etches itself in the lines of his face. "He came out with the necessary qualities to marry Mama and acquire hers."
Richard chuckles softly, smoke puffing from his slightly parted lips. "And I married you."
"To be your translator?" Mary quips, but Richard is no longer in the mood for banter, leaning in to kiss her instead.
She gives him only a peck in return, almost at once pulling back from the bitter taste of tobacco on his lips. He looks a little askance at the brevity of the kiss and, oblivious, takes a long drag from the cigarette.
"How did you plan a Parisian honeymoon, then?" Mary asks. "Or do we even have a hotel reservation?"
"Miss Fields took care of everything."
French isn't a skill Mary typically associated with secretaries, then she remembers the inimitable Miss Fields was a governess prior to working for Richard. "She conducts your international business, then?"
"I don't have much. At present."
"If only I'd known, you might have at least conducted our honeymoon business. I taught Anna quite passable French in six weeks, in case she meets a handsome Frenchman who wants to court her."
"I'm not sure he'll care about her language mastery," Richard replies, and gives her hand a squeeze as he shifts on the seat, turning to brush his lips across her cheekbone. "I thought you'd enjoy having all the control by being the one who can communicate. My ignorance puts me entirely at your mercy, you realise?"
"True…" Mary turns the idea over in her mind as Richard releases her hand to take her chin and turn her head for another attempt at a kiss. She smiles against his mouth, then says, "I could do all sorts of diabolical things, such as go to a restaurant and order you escargot."
He leans back from her, an eyebrow raised. "I do know that's the dish with the snails. And if you think for a second that's enough to turn the cast iron stomach of a Scotsman, you have a lot to learn about my mother's cooking."
Unable to stop a grimace, Mary turns from him again, cradling her forehead in her hand.
"You're not well," Richard says and, knowing he won't believe a mere reference to black puddings and haggis could have induced such a reaction, she admits his cigarette has exacerbated the nausea that began on the ferry. At once he tamps it out into the brass plated ashtray set into the arm of the bench. "For god's sake, Mary. Why didn't you say?"
Leaning against the back of the seat, she gives a week smile. "It seems neither of us is very good at admitting our shortcomings."
Richard does not grin back, the creases at the corners of his eyes deepening with his frown as he studies her in concern and brushes his fingers over her aching forehead. "I'd prefer it if added to the list of mine isn't that I unwittingly let my wife suffer."
"I don't think there's much you can do, unless you've aspirin in your briefcase.
Abruptly Richard's hand leaves her, and he is on his feet, reaching for the shelf overhead. "But I always do."
Of course he does. "In case of hangovers?"
Richard opens the case on the vacant seat. "In case of the inevitable gnashing of teeth the newspaper business brings."
"Not that I don't appreciate your preparedness, but this is a pleasure trip, not a business one."
"Take that," Richard says, the peremptory tone as he presses a pill into Mary's hand making her wonder for a moment if he's keeping something from her. But the throbbing in her temples pushes the thought out of her mind as suddenly as it came into it, and her focus shifts to Richard muttering that she needs something to drink and opening the door of the train compartment to flag down a passing attendant.
"My wife needs--" He looks back over his shoulder at her, frowning. "How do I ask for a cup of tea?"
"Heavens, I'm much too warm for tea."
"Water, then," Richard snaps.
Sighing, Mary opens her mouth to translate, this very basic French not coming to her readily in her state, but not before the bemused attendant repeats in heavily accented English. "Water? Oui, monsieur."
When the man has scurried off and Richard has closed the compartment door, Mary says, "I'll thank you not to take your communication frustrations out on me." She rolls the aspirin capsule between her thumb and forefinger This is all your doing, after all."
"The French honeymoon, or the pregnancy?" he asks--his tone, if not his words, apologetic--and resumes his seat beside her.
"Both."
"And just a moment ago you were taking all the credit for seducing me." His large hands sweep the underside of her breasts as he releases the top button of her ivory pinstriped traveling suit.
"If you're plotting a seduction now," Mary says, swatting him away and shrinking back from him into the corner of the compartment, "you have an appalling sense of timing."
"My timing had only to do with your remark that you were overly warm. You might feel better if you take off your jacket."
"Oh. Yes."
Mary undoes the rest of her buttons and allows him to help her draw her arms from the sleeves. Also at his encouragement she removes her hat, its absence at once relieving her head of the pressure of her hairpins under its weight. A moment later a knock at the door signals the return of the attendant with the water, goggling at Mary over Richard's shoulder when she thanks him in French.
"He looked a little scandalised by my state of undress," she remarks when they are alone again, sips of water doing much to revive her even before the aspirin has a chance to do its work.
"He's French. I rather doubt much scandalises him." Richard puts his arms about her and she willingly leans against him, tension ebbing from her as his left hand cradles her head, working soothing circles over her scalp with his fingertips, and his voice rumbles pleasantly through her. "And if it does, what do we care? We'll never see him again, once we arrive in Paris."
"What do you think he imagines we've got up to?"
"Headache cures."
Mary tilts her head on his shoulder to look up at him. "It cures headaches?
"Just to clarify we're talking about the same thing…The it you refer to is sex, yes?"
"Yes," she admits, not breaking eye contact; her cheeks grow warm again, but Richard grins.
"I don't suppose you'd like to try it?"
"Right here in the carriage? We're not even in a sleeper car."
"As you discovered yesterday at the Ritz, beds are not a requirement."
The heat in Mary's cheeks--and elsewhere--deepens with the memory of the passionate interlude they had on the desk, which resulted in a broken lamp.
"And if privacy is your concern, a train's no more public than being under your father's roof during a house party."
This argument, Mary must concede, is most persuasive; their risk of being caught that weekend at Downton was much greater, with more disastrous potential, than this. Before she can say so, Richard abruptly sits back from her.
"I don't mean to pressure you. If you're not comfortable, or not up to it…"
"Why not?" She gets up, her skirt brushing his trousers as she stands in front of him. "I can't read with a headache, and we've finished arguing, so we need some way to pass the time."
Richard grasps her by the hips and pulls her to stand between his knees as they part on either side of her. "It's fortunate I'm aroused by that blasé demeanour. Less confident men than me might find their spirits dampened by your apparent lack of enthusiasm. But I know you. The less you say, the more you feel."
"Perhaps you ought to say a bit less."
"I won't argue with that," he mumbles, tilting his face up to hers as his arms tighten about her waist to draw her down for a kiss.
As their lips meet, Mary slides her hands over his chest, then inside his jacket to rest on his shoulders; with the sweep of his tongue into her mouth she clings to his neck as he embraces her even tighter, hoisting her onto the balls of her feet. She is not certain at first what he intends, but when one hand leaves her waist to clutch the front of her skirt, hoisting it up above her knees, and his fingers hook around her the back of her thigh to lift her leg, she realises he must mean for her to straddle his lap--fully clothed. Not quite what she imagined when he proposed a romantic interlude--but then again, she had no clearer idea about how lovemaking in a train would occur.
Two days of marriage, it seems, are not enough to give her a much more complete grasp of sex than she has of higher mathematics.
Though master it, she can. And will.
With no little dubiousness and a great deal of awkwardness, she hoists up her skirt and petticoat and climbs onto his lap, grateful that Richard seems unaware of either. Her breasts come quite close to his face and he kisses them through her blouse, the heat of his breath touching her skin even through the silk and layers of fine linen undergarments. Grasping his shoulders, she rocks her hips against his in response, surprised at the heady feeling evoked even without the intimacy of being naked with him. Emboldened by the thought, she slides one hand down from his shoulder, over his chest until her fingers brush his arousal. She smiles at his sharp indrawn breath; when she slips her fingers beneath the fly to undo the first button, he mutters an exclamation that is muffled by her blouse.
"What did you say?" she asks as she makes swift work of the other closures.
"Something in a language you've ever heard."
Mary's eyebrows go up at that--or perhaps, more accurately, they go up as warm fingers slip inside the opening of her drawers, finding with his usual precision her most sensitive place. She is not truly offended by the expletive; she probably ought to be, but then again, she is in the process of engaging in sexual intercourse with only thin partitions separating them from the other passengers and railway employees, and that doesn't offend her, either. On the contrary, the flush that races from deep inside to every extremity, the tips of her fingers and her cheeks, can only be attributed to a thrill of excitement at what they are doing.
No language she's ever heard? Well, two can play at that game. After all, language is what got them started down this track in the first place.
"Tout cela est bien mal élevé," she says.
"I beg your pardon?"
This is so ill-bred, she said--but she has no intention of playing the role of translator for Richard now. He gives her an excuse not to, anyway, entering her, and she must bite her lip against a cry. He grasps her hips and begins to pump into her, settling into a rhythm so rapid and frantic that she knows this encounter will be even briefer than he one on the desk. It differs from other times they've made love, too: the position gives her more control so that she feels the peaks of pleasure more acutely, yet the pace, that of a snatched moment, does not allow her to become so lost in the ebb and flow of physical sensation; she keeps her head, and desires to express what she feels in words--and in doing so, to prove Richard's earlier assessment of her wrong.
"Tout cela est bien mal élevé," she repeats the French--because proving her husband wrong should not preclude teasing him, "et pourtant si merveilleux. Je suis si heureuse de t’avoir épousé, toi et tes origines modestes, et ta moralité douteuse, et ton affreux tweed, juste par amour."
"Something about tweed and love?" Richard mutters between thrusts.
Dreadfully ill-bred, yet completely wonderful. I'm so happy I married you and your humble origins, and your dubious morals, and your tweed, for love.
Then it's all a wordless cry whose meaning is perfectly plain to both of them as they arrive together at their destination, at what feels to Mary like the full speed of the locomotive. She clings to Richard with one hand, the other scrabbling overhead to clutch luggage rack at the sensation that she might be flung free of the carriage altogether.
His hand, first stroking a fallen tendril back into her coiffure, then sweeping lightly across her brow, draws her back to him.
"How's the headache?"
Mary pauses to assess herself and, in her relief to feel as well as she did before the ferry ride, starts to tell him so--but at the last moment she stops, deciding that will likely go straight to his head.
"Envolé," she answers--Cured. "Si seulement nous pouvions déposer un brevet, les fabricants d’aspirine feraient faillite, et nous deviendrions encore plus riches que nous ne le sommes déjà."--If only we could patent it, we'd put the aspirin companies out of business and be even richer than we already are.
"You're going to enjoy wielding this power you have over me even more than I anticipated, aren't you?"
"If you'd known about my Bonapartean despotism, would you still have married me?"
Richard laughs. "Oui. And much sooner than I did."
"In that case," Mary says, rocking down in his lap and eliciting a little moan from him, "let's try another round of treatment. I simply must be in tip-top shape for Paris."