December 1920

There's a soft knock on the door of her room – and she can't help but still consider the governess room hers, even though it's a misnomer to call any room at Downton "hers". The door opens and she's in the middle of scribbling down a sentence so doesn't look up from her notebook as she says, "Oh, Anna, I'm so sorry, I don't need anything but thank you for looking in on me."

She hears the door click shut. "Shame, because you have something I need." She looks up from her papers to find Tom standing at the end of the bed in his flannel robe. He grins, adding, "Desperately."

She keeps writing, telling him tartly, "You shouldn't be in here."

"Don't worry, I've been sneaking into the governess's room since I was fourteen."

She snorts. Fiction! He said the same thing about sneaking up to the maids' corridor, but Gwen Dawson told her long ago he'd never risk it for mortal fear of Mrs. Hughes. She suspects the rule holds true for the governess's chamber, too. "It's inappropriate, sir-"

"Oh good lord you're funny."

"-Until we're married. Downton isn't London, Tom, and we're not in my flat or yours. What would your family say?"

"Who gives a toss?" he asks, untying his robe, shrugging out of it. Naturally he's naked underneath. Not even the sense enough to wear pajamas in the middle of December!

"I do," she answers. She forgets what she was just about to write in her book, watching him lean over the fireplace to stoke the fire.

"Since when?"

She snaps her notebook closed. "Since always. Don't be glib. I'm a guest in their home."

He straightens up, dusting his hands on his bare thighs. "Ah. Now I get it."

"What?"

He prowls over to his side of her bed, pulling back the bedclothes. "Why you've been acting so strangely since we arrived."

She sets her pen and notebook aside on the nightstand. "I have not."

He sighs heavily, saying as he slides into bed next to her, "Bloody hell, woman, you're not a guest, you're my fiancée." He mimics her pose, leaning back on the headboard. "You haven't been yourself with them, darling girl. You've been pussyfooting around mother and father and granny and Aunt Rosamund and Lavinia, even Matthew, like you're still the second housemaid or the head nurse. You hardly said a word at dinner when father was going on about the Black and Tans and Bloody Sunday as though he knew what the hell he was talking about."

"Every politician in the history of forever has known the people you must be the most diplomatic towards are in-laws. Especially prospective ones. I was trying not to make waves."

"You like making waves. You get paid to make waves."

He's so infuriatingly contrary sometimes. "Alright, so I was biting holes through my tongue at dinner. Yes, I could easily talk of nothing but Ireland all week, but I don't want to wear everyone out. I was trying to make things easier for you, Tom!"

"My god, but you don't have to! You could walk around this house wearing nothing but a sandwich board, handing out rubbers to everyone and recruiting the staff into Sinn Fein, and I would be traipsing right behind you quoting Michael Collins and demonstrating proper prophylactic application. Don't disappoint me, Sybil, not now that we're back here."

She frowns. "That's rather harsh, isn't it? I mean, Jesus, do you have any idea how...discombobulating it is—"

"Discombobulating?" he repeats, grinning.

"-Disconcerting it is being back without having some job to do here? I'm out of place at every turn. I went downstairs after dinner to say hello and they all stood up like I was the Queen of bloody Sheba. It was bizarre. They didn't say anything rude, but I swear they were looking at me like I was some kind of traitor. I crossed the Rubicon for them."

He picks up her hand and kisses her fingers. "I know it's hard—"

"Do you?"

"You should've seen the looks the lads used to give me whenever I turned up in the garage in my coveralls. They couldn't say anything to me, either, me being the boss. But I knew what they all thought of me – a toss playing at being a workingman, dressing up like them to fit in. But I just went about being myself and rebuilding engines like I've been doing it all my life, because I have, and they soon got over their snobberies. You've just got to be you the best way you know how. That's all that matters, my own true love."

It's so easy to love him. And he seems to find it easy to love her, so why is she getting herself all twisted up about everyone else? Why couldn't it have always been this easy, all those years, instead of chasing each other around on a rollercoaster? It was all so hard before.

She sighs, rolling into him, and he kisses her firmly. "Is this your elaborate way of coercing me into having illicit relations with you?" She rubs her hands over his chest, up, rubs his shoulders and neck as she kisses his skin.

"If you want to make a political statement by exhibiting your liberated views on sexuality, I won't stop you," he promises.

"How progressive."

She shifts herself on top of him, straddling his lap. He pulls her nightgown up, pulls it over her head, tosses it away. They touch each other, sweet and slow and easy, building something together, building a fire in their bed. This is the easy part.

"I know I'm no substitute for your mother, dear, God rest her," Lady Cora begins as she deals out the next bridge hand. "But I do hope you'll look upon me as the next best thing."

"I do," Lavinia answers earnestly. "And I'm very honored to do so."

"So you'd ask, wouldn't you? If there was anything you wanted me to tell you," Lady Cora says leadingly, with meaning. Well, well. Sybil smiles to herself, suddenly far more interested in studying the embarrassed flush on Lady Cora's face, the Dowager's raised eyebrow, and the blank look of non-comprehension on Lavinia's face than she is in studying her hand of cards. "About what to expect on your wedding night," Cora clarifies for Lavinia's benefit.

"Oh I see!"

"I mean, I'm sure you must know...something. Yes?"

"Cora, dear, you'll shock Sybil," the Dowager intercedes, likely hoping to end this line of conversation before it goes any further.

It makes Sybil laugh out loud. "I think she's shocked Lavinia more than I, Lady Grantham." It's them who'd be shocked if they knew how very well-versed she already is in the marital arts. If they only knew what she and Tom had been up to just a few hours ago, in fact, before they came down to dinner...

"I just mean that I feel like I wasn't sufficiently briefed before my wedding night, and I hope you can avoid a similar...awkwardness, dear," Cora tells Lavinia.

"Thank you," Lavinia answers vaguely, intently rearranging her hand of cards, her own face red now. It seems unlikely she'll be asking Cora for the gory details around the card table. Shame. That would've made this card game far, far more interesting. "It's so strange to realize that by this time tomorrow, I'll be a married woman! And then it will be your turn, Sybil, soon enough! And then, God willing, soon enough after that we'll have a pair of little baby cousins crawling about the house together. A little Matthew and a little Tom, perhaps. Wouldn't that be wonderful!"

Now Sybil's the one raising her eyebrow. "You wouldn't like to wait a little while before trying for a baby?" she asks Lavinia.

"Wait? Why would she wait?" Lady Grantham demands.

"To enjoy being married for a while, to have time to just enjoy each other. When two people love each other, everything...is the most terrific fun, y'see."

The Dowager gasps, quite hilariously. Now she's shocked them, but frankly, she's just being honest, isn't she.

"And there are plenty of ways to maintain that enjoyment but not yet start a family, delay it until one is really ready. Family planning, they call it. Birth control."

The look on the Dowager's face, even Cora and Lavinia's faces – you'd think she'd just told them she's currently wearing a cervical cap.

"That's what Tom and I are doing – will do, that is, will do," she hastily corrects, with transparency. "Because we're both still so young, and just starting out in the world, really. Still building our careers."

"Careers," the Dowager echoes, like the word is a dead squirrel.

"I do want to have children, certainly. I want to give Tom the most beautiful children someday. He would be the most wonderful and tender and fiercely protective father. I dearly want that, but I'm not ready. Do you think the men I work for will allow me to keep my job once I get pregnant? Even if they did, say, they certainly won't give me leave to attend to my maternity duties and let me come back to work, they'll just sack me. It's not right, it's completely unfair! But that's the way it is right now. And one might say it could change once all women of age have the vote, but even I can admit that's probably just wishful thinking. But it's something to strive for, isn't it? I've only just gotten to a place where I can affect real change in the larger world and I won't quit that yet."

"Nor should you, darling girl," she hears Tom say behind her. She turns in her seat, startled, and looks. He stands by the fireplace with his father and brother; they must've just come in to join the ladies, just in time to hear her speechifying.

Said ladies are now staring at her, silent and their cards forgotten.

"Well," the Dowager begins, crisply breaking the silence. "I feel like I've just been standing at Speakers' Corner!"

But Sybil pays no attention to her soon-to-be granny-in-law, her focus only on her soon-to-be husband and his huge shining blue eyes, shining just for her, shining with pride and hard-earned love. Maybe it was necessary for everything to be so difficult between them for all those long years, the daily sacrifices on the altars of pride and confusion and anger and denial and youth and foolishness necessary in order to get to this very point, in order to become true equals and partners, in order to build separately a future worth having together.

A/N: Thank you very much for reading, I hope you enjoyed it. And thank you for commenting!