A/N: Happy Monday!

I had a lovely week in Paris, and in the interim between Chapters 10/11 of With All The Time In The World, this one-shot just popped into my head and begged to be written. Chapter 11 shall be worked on through this week, though, promise :)

Anyway, this is a... very random, I suppose, scenario - but one I think should happen, whether it's one we end up seeing or not. And it provides what I hope is a somewhat original take on an issue that's been covered significantly in fanfic already, by myself included, so I hope you'll find something new in it at least :)

I must thank both Pemonynen and EOlivet for allowing me to witter on about this idea, and for their reassurances with it! Cookies and hugs to both! :)

With that, I've talked entirely too much so shall shut up now and let you read. Hope you enjoy!

Herald of Delight or Despair

The sky over Downton village was bleak and cheerless, and the very air seemed to prickle with a nervous, unpleasant energy that Matthew felt in his bones. Walking home from the train station, he felt terribly aware of the slightest and most obvious things around him, in a way that he had not noticed for weeks, or maybe months or even years.

For little over a week since his most precious Mary had consented to be his wife, it was as though Matthew had been walking on air. Yet now the ground felt very real and wet and hard under his feet. And he hated that such a cloud should cast in his mind over their joy, but – once it was done, it would be all for the better, and he could focus again on happier things and prospects.

When he reached his home at last, he hurried quickly into the warmth and relative security, gratefully allowing Molesley to take his things before making his way to the sitting room where flames flickered and leapt in the grate.

"Hello dear," Isobel greeted him pleasantly, smiling as he bent to kiss her cheek. "You've not been to the Abbey this evening?" It seemed as though he'd hardly been away from the place or his new fiancée, but knowing the reason for his increased absences only cheered Isobel.

"Not today, not yet." He found slight comfort from the fire and stood by the mantelpiece for a moment or two, warming his hands and finding that the heat seeped more comfortingly through his body, battling the chill of anticipation that had simmered in him all afternoon. He'd faced far worse things, he reminded himself, and smiled tightly. "I may go up in a while, I don't know yet."

"Well, alright. I didn't know whether to expect you for dinner but we'll manage either way. How is Mary?"

She knew her son well, the tension across his shoulders striking a familiar and cautionary chord in her.

Matthew knew his mother equally well, and turned at the questioning tone in her voice.

"She's quite well; I telephoned her from the office before I left. They've finalised everything for the announcement in the paper, at last, so I imagine it'll appear in a day or two."

A day or two more, and then their engagement would be broadcast beyond their closest family and friends, and beyond their control. While Matthew knew the announcement should be a cause for joy (and it was, to himself in so many ways), it also worried him. Too many times their lives and relationship had been thrown into disarray by the interference of others, and a part of him wished desperately that their wedding need not be such a grand and public affair.

Isobel smiled as she settled herself back at her writing table, turning the chair so that she faced more towards Matthew.

"What lovely news; it's about time! It'll be something nicer in the paper to read than a lot of the rubbish it seems to revel in so often."

"I can't argue with that," Matthew replied through barely parted lips, staring thoughtfully into the fire.

Sensing that there was still more behind his carefully guarded words and expression, Isobel folded her hands in her lap and waited. With Matthew's engagement to Mary, she'd hoped dearly that the dark, pensive moods that had plagued him for so many months were a thing of the past, as he finally allowed himself to embrace what she'd known was in his heart.

The clock on the mantel ticked loudly over the crackling flames, time slipping inexorably away into the dim lamplight until Matthew gathered the nerve to begin the conversation he'd been dreading all day, knowing that with his engagement about to become public knowledge he could put it off no longer. After speaking to Mary about it at length that afternoon, they'd both agreed that this was the best course, however uncomfortable.

"Actually," he began, "I wanted to talk to you about something like that." He sat down and rested his elbow on the arm of the chair, his finger brushing thoughtfully against his lips.

Isobel frowned. "About the rot in the papers?"

"Well – in a way, but – I suppose so, yes. The thing is I need to tell you something – about Mary."

That clarified nothing, but Isobel saw those tell-tale signs of reticence and discomfort in Matthew's features and so did her best to piece together what he was telling her.

"I see. Something to do with Richard Carlisle?" It was the only connection between Mary and newspapers that she could think of.

"…Yes," Matthew answered slowly. It was a start, something he could latch onto and go from. He swallowed, and realised with a new clarity Mary's predicament all those years ago, and even now. If he found it so difficult to approach his mother with this, how must Mary have struggled with revealing it to him? A fresh wave of sympathy and love for her crested in his chest.

A simple affirmation of that was not nearly enough, and Matthew blinked down at the pale patterned carpet. "A little do with him, anyway. I know you probably wondered – well, we all did – quite why Mary went along with him for so long."

The very idea of that man and his attitude to Mary made Matthew's blood boil afresh, and he was not even aware of his fingers curling into a gently tensed fist on the armrest.

"It crossed my mind," Isobel nodded noncommittally. Of course she'd wondered, when Mary's affections had so obviously laid with her son, but it had not been her place to question and she hadn't thought it was now.

Matthew steeled himself. "You see, being a man of considerable position in the newspaper sphere, he was at liberty to publish something – pretty unsavoury about Mary. And while Mary would agree to marry him, he held it all at bay, as well as a lot of gossip about Bates' trial as I understand." He met his mother's eyes at last with a depth of seriousness that took her aback. "Obviously now he'll have little cause to withhold it any longer."

"Now that she's thrown him over, you mean, and – I presume – now that he'll see her engaged to you in his place."

"Yes, exactly." Matthew watched the beginnings of understanding (so far as she could understand, at least) dawn on his mother's face. Whilst Matthew had not seen the bitter dislike between himself and Carlisle as rivalry so explicitly at the time, he recognised easily now just how the man must despise him. "Anyway," he carried on briskly before his nerve deserted him again, "Mary and I both reckoned you must hear the story and the truth of it first from one of us, before he might dare to publish it and you learn of it that way."

The air closed in around them, the previously comforting warmth of the fire now stifling, suffocating. Matthew loosened his collar and could not find it within him to reassure his mother even with a smile, whose expression had dropped as she realised the weight of what he was telling her.

"So whatever story he has is true, then?" she asked quietly. "Is it something very awful?"

"Yes, it's true. And I'm afraid it will shock you, I think, but you must let me tell it to you as fully as I can before you cast any judgement on it. Can you do that?" He knew too well how quick his mother could be to leap to conclusions about things (though the same could be said of himself, he supposed), and considering how recently he felt she'd come to accept Mary as it was, he couldn't bear the thought of her now losing faith in the woman he loved more than his own life. He wouldn't bear it.

Isobel, for her part, recognised that determined, hardened glint in his eye and her own character. Pouring a cup of tea for herself (she felt she would need it) to occupy her hands as much as anything, feeling nervousness prickle up her spine, she nodded.

"I will try, Matthew. But do go on."

It wasn't very often that her son opened up to her on serious matters, of his own accord, and that he should do now without prompt or cause almost worried her as to what he could say. While in many ways Isobel felt she had never quite been able to understand Mary, the fact that she had loved Matthew so steadfastly and the depth with which he loved her had laid any lingering doubts Isobel might have had to rest. Now, she found alarm bells sounding loudly in the back of her mind as she listened to Matthew's revelation which caused her to question everything she'd ever thought of the young woman he loved.

He said it quickly, as if the very words were poisonous and he needed to rid his body of them before they could take hold in him. He'd promised her it would be forgotten, it would be forgotten between them for he never wanted to think of it again… and he stared at a fixed point on the leg of his mother's chair, wondering at how Mary had been brave enough to look him in the eye while she told him. In rare instances he'd considered himself capable of bravery, but in this moment he wanted only to hide.

"Alright. Only a few months after you and I came here, you may remember a hunt meeting held at Downton and a dinner afterwards attended by Evelyn Napier and his diplomat friend who died that night. It happened that – the Turk took it upon himself to go to Mary's bedroom, without her invitation I must stress – in fact as I understand it he'd made a proposition to her earlier in the evening which she heartily refused. But once he was in her room, and God knows how he found it, she –"

At that, Matthew's throat closed and choked off the words that he couldn't bring himself to say. He pressed a fist to his mouth and glared bitterly at that same point, fighting within himself to hold back the taunting of his imagination. From the corner of his narrowed eyes he saw his mother's lips part to speak in the wake of his silence, but he held up a hand to stop her. To his relief she sat back with pursed lips and a gentle frown, waiting for him to continue, though the effort of her restraint was palpable.

Matthew took a deep breath and attempted to swallow, his throat dry. His eyes lifted to Isobel's, lit with darkness. "Well. The fact of it is that he was there, and with her, and that is where he died."

He couldn't say any more, and his remaining breath shuddered from his lungs in a long sigh. She understood, he could see, and he braced himself against the tightness of her expression.

"I see," she said finally, her voice cold with shock. "And I suppose he wasn't in her bedroom for a cup of tea and a game of dominoes, was he."

"No." He could sense she was gathering herself for more, and so briskly continued, letting his voice rise over her. "I don't know every – intimate detail of what went on and nor do I want to. It happened as it happened, and Mary is who she is and it doesn't make any difference to me, you must know that. It hasn't changed her to me."

Isobel leaned restlessly towards him. "But Matthew, surely you see that –"

"I know!" He stood up agitatedly, causing his chair to shunt backwards on the carpet. "I know. Believe me, I'm well aware of the – implications of it but I don't care! And I wish you wouldn't."

She frowned at Matthew's distress, watching him pace quickly to the fireplace and lean against the mantel. Her own hands she folded in her lap, pressing them tightly together as her mind raced in conflict, trying to process this story that would dare to alter everything.

It did change things, how could it not? And yet – Mary's indiscretion was a simple fact. As Isobel thought, she found it was not something that she could judge or condemn (she had listened, had understood, had realised that Mary could not be blamed), but despite that she could not help the perception she'd had of Mary changing irrevocably. She was changed by it; and blame and judgements aside, that could not be ignored… not for her son who must be the one to bear the consequences of it.

"I only care for what it means for you," she eventually said quietly.

"Well don't!" He turned to her, his lips pressed fiercely together. Outside, the sky had darkened in the late afternoon, and Matthew moved to tug the curtains shut against it. "It isn't how I might've – wanted things, God knows that, but it's done and I can't love her any less for it."

Isobel twisted in her chair to face him again as everything in his posture suddenly softened, and he leaned back against the window frame, his voice dropping and breaking. "I love her, Mother, and I would marry her now despite anything. Nothing else matters, and certainly not a mistake she made so long ago and has suffered terribly for since."

Thoughtful silence followed his heartfelt words, and Isobel stretched her hand across the table to him until he took it, and met her eyes to see her gentle smile.

"You're very good, you know," she said. "Very good, my dear boy."

"Am I?" He chuckled wryly and moved to sink down onto the settee beside her chair. "I don't think so. I'm lucky, and more than I've deserved to be, I'm sure."

His mother looked indignant. "What do you mean?"

"Only that – oh, it doesn't matter." She'd argue with him, he knew. But he still could not believe the happiness granted to him by Mary, could barely accept her love after everything his stubbornness had put her through. He could not believe that he'd earned it by any goodness from himself, and it had taken him too many months simply to allow himself to acknowledge it. But now they were happy, and together, by what stroke of fate or chance he didn't know but could only wonder at and cherish, as he would her, for the rest of his life. He didn't expect his mother to understand that.

And before she could press him on it further, he quietly asked, "But you do see why I've told you all this now?"

"Yes, I believe so," she nodded. "And I do appreciate it, my dear. It can't have been easy to say." For all it had truthfully shocked her to hear, Isobel knew (as the younger couple had suspected) that to hear it revealed more gently by Matthew was preferable by far than to have learned of it as a shameful secret splashed over a front page.

"Easier than it was for Mary to tell it to me, you can be sure," he replied quietly.

"When did you know of it?" Isobel wondered, glad in her heart that Matthew had heard it from Mary herself. That kernel of admiration for the young woman and her love, that had lost itself for a minute or two, began to reappear.

"Shortly before she broke with Carlisle. I think she'd wanted to tell me a long time ago, but – well, I can't blame her for not being able to do so then, or anything that's happened between us since."

"No, I understand." She wondered quite what he meant, if… that had contributed, somehow, to their split in 1914. She'd often wondered about it, when Mary's affection seemed so clear to her from the very beginning of the war, and as she thought more about it now a lot of questions began to answer themselves in her mind. The grudging respect she'd held for Mary, for the sake of her son, she now found blossoming into something bordering on affection as she considered how this must have burdened Mary for so long, and so severely.

Matthew nodded gently to himself. "Thank you, Mother. I was… so worried you'd think of her differently, and look at her differently for it. And she doesn't deserve that, though I'm afraid it's what she'll get if Carlisle goes ahead and publishes."

"Well!" Isobel said briskly, rubbing her palms on her knees. "It won't be what she shall get from me, at least. I can only suppose how deeply you care for her, my darling boy, and that on its own would be enough for me to welcome her to this house as a daughter."

"Oh, Mother…"

"No, I mean it, and besides that you're quite right, I'm sure she has paid the price for it many times over, foolish as it was."

"Certainly she has," Matthew muttered bitterly, cursing Carlisle in his mind.

"In any case, we can hope the impact will be lessened considerably by your attachment to her. It isn't a very exciting story if she's to be settled and married anyway, and very happily so, and I do think the war has changed people's attitudes to these things." She smiled encouragingly, willing herself to believe her own words.

Matthew mustered a small, grateful smile in response and sighed wearily, relieved for his mother's understanding as he allowed himself to relax for the first time that afternoon.

"I do hope so."

He did go up to the Abbey, after dinner, and as he walked this time he barely noticed the cold in the air. Delight rather than dread filled his heart, at the prospect of seeing Mary and being able to put her most immediate fears to rest, for the time being at least.

Carson welcomed him warmly, as he laid his damp and chilled hat and coat on the table.

"Good evening, Mr. Crawley. May I suppose you'd like to see Lady Mary?"

"I'd very much like to see her, thank you Carson," he smiled broadly, and went as directed into the library to wait for her.

He licked his lips, which cracked into a helpless grin as the door opened and she appeared, resplendent in the satin red gown he loved so much on her.

"Hello darling," he greeted her softly, kissing the nervous smile from her lips as he took her hands and brought her more closely to him. The liberty to do so was still an utter treasure to Matthew, and he believed it always would be.

For a moment she indulged his sweet kisses and the taste of him, sighing gently as her nose brushed his which was cold from the chill night air.

"Was it alright?" she whispered finally, easing back in his arms. "I'm sorry it can't have been easy, and to have it all brought up again –"

"It was fine," he hushed her with a fingertip to her lips and a kiss to her forehead. "We knew it was for the best, and – it's quite alright. In fact she took it better than I expected, and – if you'd care to, Mother would very much like you to visit her for tea tomorrow afternoon."

"Oh," her relief exhaled in a gentle sigh, and she blinked up at him with wide, searching eyes. "You're sure? I know she thinks little of me as it is, and this can hardly have helped."

Matthew kissed her again, simply because he could, and to reassure her.

"She loves you, darling, and this – is forgotten. It's nothing to her, as it is nothing to me, and now it's done with we needn't ever think of it again." His voice trembled a little with the fervour of his words, as he desperately hoped he could believe his own assurance.

"Yes. Alright. Thank you," she smiled tenderly and rested her forehead against his, her hands stroking up and down his arms that curled around her back in a delicate embrace. "I wrote to Sybil, too, though I don't suppose it'll shock her in the slightest."

He chuckled gently. "No, I don't suppose it will."

"Hmm." Her gentle sigh was lost against his lips as they found hers once more, their light, insistent pressure coaxing hers apart and she smiled happily.

For the time being, at least, all of that was alright and forgotten. In his arms, no words could slight her or eyes shame her, and she would seek refuge there and in his warm and loving kisses until she might forget the whole world beyond him.

Fin

A/N: Thank you ever so much for reading :) As ever I'd love to know what you thought, and thank you! I adore Matthew/Isobel. *sigh*