I feel almost as if I should apologize for writing this, because the Richard/Mary relationship is so messed up. But for better or for worse, it is canon, and will profoundly affect Mary from here on out, so I explore it with interest, though it goes without saying that I don't condone the way Richard manipulates, controls, and abuses Mary. And I do hope I'm not the only person out there who finds their dynamic intriguing! If you do, too, feel free to drop a line.

Bound

She's walked this hall before, in the dark. She can almost see herself: a ghost in her long white nightdress, pale and bowed beneath the weight of Kemal Pamuk's corpse, passing from shadow to shadow between the shafts of moonlight that beam through the many windowed hallway leading to the guest quarters, cursing the grudge Downton's architect apparently harboured against secrets.

He'd been warm then. So warm that Mary thought the strange race to drag Kemal's body from the family wing to the guest wing must still have been part of whatever silly game they'd begun that afternoon when he'd doffed his hat to reveal the head of dark curls so devoid of the Turkish pomade she'd imagined and filled her head with the insipid question of how it would be to run her fingers through them as he kissed her with those full lips that parted in effortlessly seductive smiles. And made her long to dispense with Crawley family tradition and visit a better dentist.

Well, she'd found out, hadn't she? And her hands still break out into a sweat more abhorrent to her than any hair oil could be-though dear God, Richard uses such a lot of it-whenever she dreams of clutching fistfuls of Kemal's soft thick hair as he dies in her arms in a way even Donne and his Metaphysical chums couldn't possibly approve of. It's a cold sweat, cold as his corpse, which should be so light now, six years mouldering in the grave, but instead is heavy, heavier even than when Kemal was alive and pressing her against the wall in the drawing room in that heated moment before she'd rejected his kiss, or when he'd pressed her down onto her bed, or when she'd carried him through this hall back to his room after he was dead. Dead as a doornail, like Jacob Marley. Only she's the one who got shackled with his chain.

And wasn't that very like a man? Ethel isn't the only girl a man loved in this house and then left with a bastard. Standing before Richard's room-the same one that had been Kemal's, she notes with irony-Mary draws up her shoulders. At least she can hate her bastard. Poor Ethel's station doesn't even afford her that luxury.

Even so, Mary is not prepared when Richard answers her light rap at the door wearing only his dressing gown, as Kemal had come to her, not a cuff nor collar of pyjamas showing at the neck or hem of the midnight blue velvet dressing gown, only bare calves and ankles above a pair of carpet slippers, and a glimpse of a strong masculine chest, and she draws in a sharp breath at-of all the ridiculous things-his hair escaping its prison of pomade.

"Why, Mary," Richard says, the register of his voice lower than usual due to the lateness of the hour, his eyebrows arching high on his forehead. "You area woman of the evening."

"I believe it's morning now."

She's grateful for the insult, which looses her from the momentary hold of her attraction to her fiancé, who stands aside as she sweeps past him into the red wallpapered bedroom. Why so many red rooms in this house, hers among them? Do they signify, like a scarlet letter pinned to the breast?

"And don't look so surprised," she continues. "You know the rumours about me are true."

"Rumours, plural?" At the heavy clunk of the latch within the moulding, Mary turns back to see Richard leaning back against the closed door, a smirk playing at the corners of his lips. "I was only aware of the one."

Her heart quickens as he pushes off the door and saunters toward her, as it always has whenever he draws near to her, since he first introduced himself to her at Cliveden-without waiting for one of their mutual acquaintance to do so, because she appeared to be having interesting thoughts. Though now more often than not, since Richard shoved her against the wall and threatened to destroy her and her family with the scandal she just can't break free of, her pulse races with alarm. Which she is more afraid of, him or the meek thing he reduced her to that night, she cannot say.

There's nothing meek in her demeanour as she stands before him now, almost toe-to-toe, so that her skirt brushes the hem of his dressing gown. Shoulders back, head high, meeting his eyes as if she is as unashamed as he is. As she wishes she really could be.

As he knows she is not.

"You ought to beware being seen by newspaper men at such hours, morning or night," he says. "We're liable to start more."

When he tilts his head Mary observes that her gaze dropped to his lips sometime as he spoke, but she's nearly kissing him before she comes fully aware that it is about to happen. As surprised as she is at herself for giving in to the attraction which still persists in spite of his cruelty, which she's vowed she won't do until it becomes her wifely obligation, she is more taken aback that the hand Richard raises when she steps back from him isn't to hold her in place so he can do what he likes with her, but only to reach up and rake through his hair, further mussing it; he gives no more voice to his frustration than a heavy exhale as he turns to pour himself a dram from the decanter on the dresser.

"That's what I've come to talk to you about," Mary says, shaking her head as he offers her a drink, though Lord only knows she could use one after this long, hellish night, as she had after Sybil nearly got herself killed at the riot in Ripon. How long ago that seems, and in what a different world it had happened. One in which Branson had been a different man than the one she faced tonight. She'll have to remember that, when she helps Sybil do battle with Papa.

Suddenly weary, Mary sits on the brocade upholstered bench at the foot of Richard's bed. "I went out tonight."

Her eyes follow the roll of Richard's throat as he gulps down his whiskey. "Out?"

He looms over her, and Mary wishes she hadn't sat, giving him the advantage of position. On her feet, she stands nearly as tall as he, which makes his domineering manner almost bearable. But she folds her hands demurely on her lap and replies as if she is not in the least perturbed by his dominating presence.

"Sybil decided suffrage wasn't for her. Edith and I stopped her before she took a leaf out of Pride and Prejudice. With the chauffeur."

"I hadn't realised Miss Austen wrote sentimental drivel about chauffeurs." Richard pours another glass raises his glass to his lips but doesn't drink, smirking at Mary instead. "But that would explain why you women lap it up."

As he joins her on the bench, Mary can't make up her mind which feeling is stronger, aversion to his closeness or relief that he's at her level again. He leans back against the footboard and stretches out his long legs, at which Mary cannot help but glance and note with no small measure of satisfaction are revealed by the dressing gown to be only moderately hairy, and that fair, almost golden in the lamplight, though that on what she can see of his chest is darker. Not an alabaster statue, like Kemal, but not a rug, either, thank heaven. A small favour.

"If I lapped up sentimental drivel," she says, shifting her gaze back to his face, "I'd have attracted the sort of heroic man who'd go quietly after my renegade sister and buy off the unworthy fool to keep my family from ruin, instead of having to do it myself."

His rich laugh fills the bedroom and rumbles pleasantly, almost warmly, through her as his shoulder presses against hers. She thinks again of Cliveden, and how often they laughed together then and what a welcome distraction it was from everything happening in the world and everything that wasn't happening at home-but she only allows herself to enjoy it for a moment before she shifts slightly, putting space between them once again.

"I confess I'm rather relieved you won't be filling the library of Haxby with schoolgirl literature," Richard says.

"My lot don't go to school, remember? We have governesses."

"I don't think many people would argue about the quality of that sort of education."

They've discussed this before, the irony of her lot, the better lot, being worse educated than his-if they are so unfortunate as to be born female, that is. Before now she never took it as anything but Richard's frank acknowledgment of one of the many absurd conventions that bind them, but now that the balance of power has shifted in his favour, she feels the barb aimed more precisely at her.

"What do you suggest I read to better myself, then?" she asks. "The society gossip pages of your rags?"

His eyes burn into hers as he swirls the amber whiskey in his glass. "As the publisher of those gossip rags, I might question your wisdom in telling me about your sister's misconduct. Do you want me to ruin your family with scandal?"

A horrible idea blooms in Mary's mind, like the slow stain of blood through a bandaged wound. If Sybil were the one to ruin the Crawley family, then Mary could get free of her Scot, as it were.

Though there still would be no Downton, and not even any Haxby, either, nor anything like it. Even a bad husband is better than none at all.

And she's ruined one sister's chance of happiness already, which she regrets all the more with each year that passes without Edith's receiving an offer from even old men or the maimed soldiers she so tirelessly and thoughtfully cared for. Not to mention Edith's got, if not up to Sybil's level of lovability, almost likeable-though Mary imagines that will all change now that the war's ended and they none of them has anything to do. It's another mark in Richard's favour, not having to live as a spinster with Edith, who will probably collect small, irritating dogs or, worse, cats.

"Perhaps I will have a drink, after all."

Mary rises from the bench, Richard's fingertips brushing her elbow as he gets up, too, and then against her own fingers as he hands her a shot of whiskey. He watches her intently as she swallows it in a gulp. What does that look mean? Does he find it unfeminine that she can handle a man's drink? Is he impressed? Does he hope the liquor will allow him to take the sort of liberties he no doubt desires to take with her?

Of course, if he wanted that, he could have had his way with her already. Kemal had not found it necessary to ply her with strong drink.

Which leaves her only to one conclusion, that Richard is generally curious about her presence in his room. As should she be.

She hadn't consciously set out for this part of the house, but rather had been drawn by that chain that bound her irrevocably to it. Or rather, to him. Not Richard. Not even Kemal's ghost. But to the other man who slept in a room further down, with whom she'd shared a drink after Sybil's previous act of rebellion, who had thumbed his nose at convention by refusing to ring for a proper glass from which to drink it-which had been rebellious enough for her satisfaction in those days-and from whose kiss Mary had not shrunk. Nor never would.

But of course she can say none of that to Richard. And it is his room she's ended up in, not Matthew's.

She sets the empty glass on the dresser, watches the tip of her finger trace a circle around the lip, and then meets Richard's eye. Her fiancé. Husband, come July.

"I promised I'd tell you where I go, who I see, and what I say to them, didn't I?"

How she expects him to take this remark, she's not sure. A lot of ways, she supposes. Triumphant. Condescending.

Certainly not wounded.

His eyes dart away beneath knitted brows. "You make me sound quite the gaoler."

"Aren't you, though?" Mary plucks the stopper from the decanter and refills both their glasses. "There must be a reason why they refer to it as the bonds of matrimony. And what's that expression? It's vulgar, though I've always thought it rather amusing myself. Oh yes-the old ball and chain."

The lamplight glints off Richard's glass and in his eyes as he drinks. "That one's generally said with respect to wives."

"So respect does come into it? How intriguing."

Mary finds herself moving nearer to him. It's not the effects of the whiskey, she tells herself, or that she's in desperate need of sleep, but the talk that draws her to Richard. This is how it was at Cliveden, when they made society a sport and themselves spectators, when she thought she liked him very much, as much as she'd liked any of the men she'd liked during her seasons before-

No. She throws back her whiskey, femininity be damned. She mustn't think of Matthew. Matthew who hadn't wanted her when he couldn't walk or have a proper marriage. Matthew who certainly won't want her now that he can. Not if he knows what Richard knows. The whiskey burns her throat, but also her doubt that her situation would be any different if she'd told him the truth about Kemal years ago, as she meant to do. He'd found reason in abundance to withdraw his proposal even without the matter of her promiscuity.

"Believe it or not, Mary," says Richard, "I quite look forward to being bound to you."

He prises the empty tumbler from her grasp with a surprising gentleness and takes her hands in his, his thumbs lightly scuffing over her knuckles, lingering on her fourth finger, where he'd tried to place an engagement ring before she told him it was gauche, vulgar, simply not done by her lot. After they were married, she'd happily wear his family jewels, she'd told him. But of course Mr and Mrs Mark Carlisle of Morningside, Edinburgh, he'd reminded her, going flush in the face, had none.

"If you are faithful to me," he says, "you can bet on me doing you the same courtesy."

"Why, Richard-you sound almost sentimental."

His fingers clamp hard around her hands, restricting her movement as surely as a pair of manacles. "In thought and deed."

Somehow she resists the instinct to wrench away from his grasp, but if Mary has learnt anything in the past six years, it's when to surrender a losing battle. She does win the struggle to keep her voice low and steady amid her heart pounding against her ribs like a prisoner rattling the bars of her cage. "I'd no idea you were a mind reader."

"I'm a newspaper man."

"Then why employ spies? Or ask for reports?"

Mary's fingernails carve half-moons into her own palms as she steels herself for a more violent reprisal for her insolence, when Richard's fingers uncurl from around her wrists as abruptly as he grasped them. She refrains from rubbing the burning red marks he's left as she she pushes past him to exit the room she ought to have quit long before their conversation reached this point, which she never ought to have visited at all, nor would she have needed to if Kemal had never left it in his dressing robe and his hair...

"Mary," Richard calls to her as her fingers close around the cold brass doorknob. Completely as she expected, though she shuts her eyes and silently curses him anyway.

She turns to him, dutifully, trying not to weep from weariness and the thought that this is her life now, the choice that she has made and got stuck with. Shackled herself to. And thrown away the key.

"Yes, Richard?"

"Did you talk Lady Sybil out of marrying Branson, or just out of eloping with him?"

"You're not the only one who made promises to be true tonight."

Unromantic as Mary considers herself to be, even she cannot deny how wrong it is to compare Richard's pledge to the one Sybil made to Branson, with a chaste kiss to his cheek.

"I asked him once when I was up after the Easter Rising if he planned to go home to Ireland. Presumably it was their next stop after Gretna?" At Mary's nod, Richard goes on,"He's driving me to the station in the morning. I'll tell him that if he hasn't yet secured himself a job, I have connections with some of the Irish papers."

In spite of the sentimentality she indulged just a moment ago, or perhaps because of it, Mary feels a little perverse in light of how high and mighty Sybil-Sybil, who had tried to elope!-has been about Richard from the moment Mary told her mother and sisters about their courtship. Such as it was. Mary won't ruin Sybil's life, but she has no qualms about returning favour for favour.

"Do," she urges him. "Sybil will be ever so grateful for your ringing endorsement of her marriage. Just do her the favour of not printing it up in one of your papers before she tells Papa. Though come to think of it, I'm not sure Branson will take you up on your offer. He's a socialist, you know, as well as a madman." She laughs, sadly, thinking again of the night Sybil was injured in Ripon. "Once he told me they weren't the same. Perhaps it's you and your capitalist cronies who ought to beware."

Chuckling, Richard pushes off from the dresser against which he's been leaning and steps toward her. At the movement of his arms, Mary tenses with the anticipation of the touch she wants no more than she'd wanted Kemal's-except when she had wanted it-but relaxes again as he shoves his hands deep into the pockets of his dressing gown.

"That's precisely why I'd like Branson someplace where I can keep an eye on him. I can't have him doing anything too detrimental to British politics. Or the Crawley family's reputation."

"Careful," Mary says, arching an eyebrow, "or you might be in danger of turning into Mr Darcy after all."

"Oh? I was under the impression Darcy wanted to protect his beloved's reputation. Only I rather like the thought of your father having a son-in-law he likes even less than me."

"None of you had a chance after-"

Mary catches herself, but not in time. Richard puts his index finger to her lips, pressing so hard against her teeth that she fears he will leave them bruised.

"Thought and deed, my darling," he says, "thought and deed.

Then he bends over her and it's not his finger bruising her lips, but his mouth, the rough rake of his teeth, the forceful thrust of his tongue into her mouth. The kiss is mercifully brief, but nonetheless leaves her breathless-though not, by any means, with passion.

"No need to get up early to see me off," he says, generously, reaching around her to open the door. "I'll ring to let you know I've arrived safely in London."

She'd rather he didn't. Phone her. Or arrive safely in London, for that matter. Though he'd never have the good grace to go quietly, in a train wreck.

"I'll wait by the phone," she says, shuffling wearily into the hall.

"Oh, there's no need to limit your social sphere when Carson can take a message easily enough."

Why not? Richard certainly has her on a short enough leash.

"How else am I to report to you that I woke up, had Anna dress me, then went down to join Papa for luncheon?"

~Fin~