Hat in Hand

Chapter 6

"If you were looking for his letters I don't keep them."

While it could hardly be denied that his wife had taken a lover during their time in St. Petersburg, it had never been spoken of openly before.

"I return them. Unopened."

He knew of each and every letter his wife had received. Though in separate piles, their mail shared the same tray. Each morning the butler would first bring him his mail in the dining room before taking the tray to her ladyship's rose garden where his ever contrary wife breakfasted instead of her rooms.

The return addressee was listed as a woman, but they both knew who really wrote the letters inside. He should question why then her foreigner still wrote, but Lord Grantham knew that if it were him a few returned letters would not be enough to put him off.

"I wasn't looking for his letters to you. I was looking for your letter to me. My goodbye letter. When Nanny told me you had gone out with the children and left her behind ..."

Lord Grantham admitted. "... I went looking for you. I found your empty coach. The coachman said you took the children on the train. I thought you had taken the children and ... gone."

His curiosity and insecurities having gotten the better of him, he had taken and read one of the letters from her foreigner. Written in the hand of a woman, it had contained mostly idle chit chat intended to disguise the letter's main intent. The supposed lady had been regretful that Lady Grantham had not been able to travel to Austria the month before while she was there. She had made arrangements to travel to nearby Belgium. Could a meeting be arranged? It was suggested she bring her children as the letter's composer would find it no imposition to have them come along.

Lord Grantham admitted the truth. "I prefer you not take both children when you go out because if you leave one behind I can be assured of your return."

His wife looked at him curiously. "And when I take both the children with me?"

Defeated, he admitted. "I am left to wonder if you will ever return."

At a loss for words – a rare occurrence if ever there were one - his wife said nothing. Eventually, she resorted to the tactic she always used when she had no idea what to do with him. She lifted her shift up and off – revealing all of her to him.

Slipping one arm under her knees and the other behind her back, he carried her to her bed.

Setting her on the bare mattress, he sat beside her. With her copper color hair and her alabaster skin, she looked like a work of art – like a figure from a Botticelli. He was trying to take a moment to simply admire her loveliness when she intruded upon his thoughts.

"If you need to make an example out of him make an example out of him, but don't turn him out. Give Charlie another chance."

Of all the inopportune times! Leave it to his wife. "You and that damn boy! You don't even know where he has been the past two years or what he has been doing!"

"What does it matter where he was or what he did? What matters is that he is here now. He wants to come home."

For the second time that day he raised his voice to her. "No! No! A thousand times no!"

Still she persisted. "He went off and had a taste of the world, but now he wants to come home. Sometimes you have to stray a ways to fully appreciate what you left behind."

"Charlie Carson will never -"

"- I'm not talking about Charlie, my Lord. Take me back or cast me out but no more of this in between!"

He looked down at his beautiful wife laying on the bare mattress of her stripped bed.

He closed his eyes in an attempt to block out the sight of her, but it could not be done. The vision of her remained. She haunted him already.

As he rose off the bed uncertainty tinged her voice. "My Lord?"

As he turned his back to her, her hand reached out to try to clutch at him - to keep him from leaving. "Marion?"

tbc

A/N In the words of Dana Scully – "There are hits and there are misses. And then there are misses." Go ahead and tell me which one this was.