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The breeze off the muted turquoise of the Irish Sea slaps their cheeks with cold, and Mary, whose delicate, gloved hand is threaded through Tony’s arm, draws in a little closer. Most at home by the ocean, Tony has brought her to where it might reassure them with its lulling rhythms and ancient whispers. To share the sea with her means he has let her into parts of himself even he does not fully grasp.
Such as this moment: He is embarrassingly moved to have Mary at his side, insisting to himself that the salty air has rendered his eyes misty. It has not. I am not alone--for now, this week. What does one remember of departed loved ones when their faces recede into imprecise memory? The grassy scent of his brothers’ half-chaps as he piled them in the stables after riding. He was the baby of the family, and now he is its only member. Alone.
This sentimentalizing is the sea’s fault too; she comforts and unsettles in equal measure--her waves crash in and blithely funnel out. Tony dabs his nose with his handkerchief before Mary can notice he’s nearly fallen apart beside her.
Emerging from his reverie, he senses a change in her too--once chatty at dinner, inquiring after his business, reporting on Downton exploits both practical and Rose-inspired frivolity. They even talked of politics, on which they tend to agree: more taxes--alarming!--but workers’ rights--let people reap the fair fruits of their labor. Since they’ve been walking back to the hotel, however, she’s withdrawn into her mysterious, internal world.
“Mary, darling.”
Hat obscuring her chocolaty eyes from view, he suddenly needs to reassure himself that she does not regret this before its really begun. When he tilts her heart-shaped face toward his, the sun, extravagantly blood red in its begrudging retreat, infuses her eyes with fire. She is as gorgeous as nature’s best attempt.
“Yes?”
“Are you all right?”
“Quite.” But her bottom lip juts out, tempting Tony to kiss it. He respectfully refrains, as she’s speaking again. “I’m troubled by something Charles Blake said to me.”
“You saw Charles?” Tony’s face twists before he can stop it. For a British gentleman he’s awfully poor at masking emotions.
“He came with Simon Bricker, an art hist- oh, don’t look at me like that, Tony. He wasn’t there to see me.”
Tony cocks his eyebrow. Really, Mary.
“Well, all right. Perhaps he was. I hadn’t written to him in quite some time and… Oh, never mind. I really shouldn’t have brought it up.”
When it comes to Charles Blake, Tony knows he is far from reasonable. He’s about to push her on the matter, but to what purpose? To feed his own lingering jealousy? With great effort he works to calm his twitching jaw muscles. “I’m sorry if Charles upset you.” After all, she is here with him and not with Charles.
Tony lightly rests his hand on her blue-velvet waist and guides her to the railing over the water. The sun is working harder than ever to capture their admiration, casting golden glitter on the darkening sea. He wants to tell her what it means to him to see this with her, for there was a time he believed he did not wish to see another sunset. There was a time he begged the waves to take him. But the moment to explain passes; he never could have done it justice anyway.
“He did, but I shouldn’t have let him,” Mary continues, her eyes bobbing along the choppy water. “Tony, what do you think of Charles- his character, that is?”
A puff of air escapes his nostrils. For the better part of two years, Blake has been nothing but a thorn in his side, a rival for Mary’s affections. But Tony’s principles are more important to him than even his passions. “I served alongside Charles in chokingly close quarters for long, tedious months. I watched him lead his men by working ten times harder than they. He is brave, intelligent, practical. I admired him very much. He was the better officer.”
“I don’t believe that.”
“What, that I admired him?” Tony’s eyes crinkle around the edges in the stirrings of a smile.
She laughs, the sea breeze making her almost hoarse. He should get her indoors before the damp settles into her bones. His bones are made of driftwood, brittle to air, perhaps, but impervious to the sea.
Mary clarifies, “I don’t believe that he was the better officer. You are humble and gentle. Men like you temper the cruelty of wars.”
Somewhere deep and private her words rattle against his perceived deficiencies and anguish. His gloveless knuckles turn white on the railing, and she must decide he’s cold, for she removes one of her own gloves to rest her bare hand on his. He watches spellbound for the better part of a minute.
“What a lovely thing to say, Mary, but…” he shakes his head. “I was too sensitive for military service. In truth, I don’t even like to harm a partridge to put supper on the table let alone another man. It’s why I chose the navy.” He squints at the fading light and changes the subject: “This is truly a sunset for lovers.”
She squeezes his hand and agrees, “Indeed it is. Tony, you’ve lost a tremendous amount in the war. I fear in my own pain I’ve scarcely made room for yours.”
Tony turns to her and smiles sweetly, pressing her chilly fingers to his lips before helping her to replace her glove. “You do nothing but ease my pain. Each moment I spend in your presence ignites a shriveled atom of my being back to life.”
His romanticism is a bit of a joke between them, and they both laugh.
“You mustn’t ever speak so around Granny, or she will have you permanently expelled from Downton for being a poet. Now on the subject of you coming to life...” she smirks and urgently seizes his arm.
“In whose room shall we sleep?” Rings her musical voice from her quarters.
Tony is busying himself in his room, removing his shoes and jacket and stacking firewood.
“Would one or the other make you more comfortable?” Tony peeks around the doorjamb as she divests herself of earrings and beads and lays them on her dressing table with fastidious grace. When she unpins her cascading curls, his heart nearly skips, and he has to steady himself with a hand.
“Not particularly,” comes her clipped response. “I suppose we can try out both beds before the week’s through.” Everything sounds so practical from her lips.
His eyes crinkle. “Can and will--many times. How about my room tonight? I’m setting up for a fire.”
Tony returns to crouching in front of the fireplace, coaxing his infant flame, when he senses the heat of her breath on his neck. Warm fingertips explore his raven waves, but by the time he glances up at her, she retreats to the edge of his bed, kicking out one of her feet to peer at it.
“It seems strange, but I find myself most embarrassed to take off my shoes!” A fetching blush spreads across her cheeks.
Tony shifts weight on his haunches to kneel in front of her. “Allow me, then.” He gently lifts each of her feet and slides off the heels, worshipfully kissing the sole of one and then the other. “Might I help you with your stockings next?”
She grins and gathers up her skirt to her thighs. Dizzyingly creamy flesh awaits him beneath her silk stockings. He traces the right-leg seam upwards with a finger until he can unhook her garter belt and slide down the sheer fabric, leaving in its wake a trail of gooseflesh.
“You seem quite experienced with women’s apparel. Perhaps Anna needn’t have worried about my lack of a lady’s maid,” Mary observes with an arch of her eyebrow.
Tony massages the arch of her bare foot and the tiny bones of her ankle. “You can ask me anything, and I’ll answer truthfully. I’ve nothing to hide from you.” As he awaits her question, he works on freeing her other thigh. Her skin is otherworldly pure. “My God, you’re beautiful, Mary,” he whispers to her left thigh and kisses it. One, two stockings are laid carefully on the footlocker before he settles back on the rug, arms cradling his knees, waiting.
“Have you had many women?” Mary inquires as she stands and steps rather suddenly out of sheer drawers and garter belt. Though her secrets are still safely hidden away beneath her dress and slip, Tony swallows audibly, his trousers tight behind his knees.
He unbuttons his waistcoat and folds it beside her discarded clothing to have something to do with his hands. “I’ve slept with…” he pauses to count, “seven women.”
She moves to kneel before him on the rug, and it feels rather naughty that they should begin their union here on the floor. Searching his eyes, her slim fingers work open the buttons of his shirt, dipping in to stroke his chest. His nipples harden under her touch, and he feels his sex begin to leak.
“Seven?”
Tony frets from her tone that this is rather a lot. He doesn’t really care to talk of the fact that three were paid companions when he was in the navy, but if she asks, he’ll disclose. He’s a very sensual being, has always craved contact, has had to exert substantial restraint over his nature as an eternal bachelor.
“Yes. One for a considerable length of time.”
“I see.” Mary presses her lips to the base of his neck, the honey-lavender of her hair clouding his senses. “Did you love her?”
“Love?” Tony smiles. “I suppose in my silly, youthful way. I was a boy really. It was my mother’s maid.”
“Oh, Tony! How scandalous!”
“Well, if you enjoy yourself this evening, you’ll have her to thank. She really did acquaint me with how to please a woman.”
“Hm. I rather like the sound of that.” She practically interrupts herself kissing him.
He winds his fingers into the cornsilk of her hair, while his other hand works her zipper. With a shrug her dress slumps below the lacy white of her slip.
Her neck and earlobes taste indescribably sweet, and when he manages to wedge his hand beneath her brassiere, he uncovers the tender round of her breast to taste it too, so soft and pretty. She nuzzles into his neck, and when he finally pulls back, she looks disappointed that he’s stopped.
“Sorry, love. Fire needs a bit more wood to keep it going.”
He pads across to the fireplace, crouching to blow on the embers and add more logs, when he feels her pulling at his open shirt from behind. After discarding it, she works at the clasp of his trousers, where he’s so erect that his tip presses against his waistband right under her fingers. She clearly feels it too, taking her time, grazing him with maddening precision. “You can touch me, Mary,” he encourages, voice impossibly rough with need.
Touch him she does, dipping at once beneath the impediments, memorizing the dripping velvet she finds. When he cranes his face over his shoulder to kiss her, he sees she’s dispensed with the rest of her clothing.
“Mary, let me see you. How I’ve longed for it. Please.”
She smiles and rises, gazing down at him, more breathtaking than anything he’s imagined, and he’s spent a good deal of time imagining. That pearly glow of skin, her gentle curves worn slightly by motherhood. She's been rendered more finely than any woman he’s beheld in art or life.
When his eyes find the dark curls at the meeting of her thighs, he bites his lip. “Oh dear. I’m afraid I’m so terribly in love with you, I may prove insatiable.”
“Is that a challenge to see who can outdo whom?”
“I daresay you hold the advantage over me in some respects,” Tony chuckles. He stands in front of her and pushes his remaining clothes to the ground.
Mary’s graceful Adam’s apple moves as she takes in the sight of his nakedness. Her hand skates over his chest and down his ribs; it seeks the indentation of his hip. “You are quite… fit,” she remarks seriously. Then her face explodes into an enormous grin that elicits a near-giggle from Tony. Oh God, he’s gone ridiculous, but of course, he’s nervous he’ll disappoint.
Their lips find each other again, but this time he lifts her around his waist, skin meeting skin for the first time at a million points of contact. He carries her to the bed and parting her legs, settles between them. His cock drips arousal onto her pristine flesh as he kisses a path to her bellybutton and beneath, hovering above the tempting triangle of dark curls. When he studies her face, she is lost in rapture, eyelids clenched, tongue poked between rosy lips. He squeezes her hand to gain her attention.
“May I kiss you here?”
Her black eyelashes flutter apart. “Oh. I…”
“Please, if there is anything I do that makes you uncomfortable or feels less than wonderful, tell me immediately.”
She nods him onward, but he can tell her stomach muscles are coiled and tense. At first he just breathes on her, inhaling her intoxicatingly heady scent. Then he ghosts his lips over where she is drenched and swollen. He doesn’t want to alarm her with too much intimacy all at once. This is a woman who has been closed since she lost her husband. But how he longs to open her and know her secrets. Instead he kisses her sex very carefully, nimbly flicking his tongue, relishing her for the first time. When she seems to get used to it, he explores her more boldly with his tongue, using one of his fingers to add pressure to her little bundle of flesh.
She moans and kicks both legs over his shoulders, pulling at his curls hard enough to make his eyes water, but he isn’t about to dampen her enjoyment. He fingers her more urgently, dipping a thumb inside of her, lapping at her, until she babbles, Yes, oh God, yes!
Resting his cheek against her stomach, Mary winds and unwinds a single curl from his head. After a long pause, she mutters throatily, “My compliments to your mother’s maid.” They both snort. “Tony, when we make love I want to make certain there aren’t consequences.”
“Of course. I have prevention.” Tony sits up, ready to retrieve a condom.
“As do I. Mine is already in place, in fact.”
Tony grins: his dear, practical Mary. He slides up the bed beside her and cups her cheeks, dotting her nose and lips with kisses. Mary drapes a warm, silky thigh over his, opening her legs in invitation.
Tony scoots in closer and guides himself against her wetness, pushing in to the welcoming heat of her body, his most sensitive flesh completely ensconced.
“Are you all right?” his voice sounds so strained.
“Yes.” Her small hand slides over his shoulder urging him in deeper still.
He waits for her to breathe and accommodate his girth. When her muscles ease at last he begins thrusting, carefully for as long as he’s able, and then bucking, unrestrained. She grasps his buttocks and pulls him on top of her.
“Mary,” he gasps, his senses all condensed to the tip of his penis, slamming against her diaphragm. He comes shivering and shaking, his face buried in the pillow beside her. He’s bitten his lip so hard he tastes metal. The second it’s over he’s disappointed and wants it all again.
Rolling his cheek on the pillow, he kisses the first skin he contacts: her nose. She regards him with bright, brown eyes.
“M’ I crushing you?” he mumbles at her.
“Don’t you dare move, Lord Gillingham.”
If he’s honest, titles don’t impress him in the least, and his has never been welcome until this moment when she’s managed to render it sexy. About to smile, he sees something soften in the lines of her face: upset. “Did I hurt you?”
“No, it was…” Mary covers her face with her hand. “It was so different than…”
“Oh, darling.” When he pulls aside her hand, he sees that her eyes are leaking. He rolls off her now, gathering her tightly to him. Her shoulders shake minutely.
When she finally collects herself, she pulls back, air cooling the streams of tears down his chest. “I’m sorry, Tony. It’s not you or this. I’m just… parts of me are still put together all wrong.”
“No, Mary. Every part of you is perfect. You can grieve this change. It’s quite all right.” Tony believes his own words, but his throat is tight. The way he loves Mary is the way she loved Matthew. He has made intellectual peace with the fact that his passion for her will likely always exceed hers for him. But he still feels its emotional sting.
“I’m sorry.”
“Mary, you needn’t be sorry.” He cradles her close again and strokes her hair, humming gently. The fire smolders, dying out as all flames do in time, so he pulls the covers up to their chins, and they snuggle into their nest.
“Can we just hold each other for a while?”
“Of course, of course. I will hold you for as long as you’ll let me.”
She fell asleep quickly in his arms, but he lay awake a fair portion of the night watching her. Thus he's not surprised to awake to her warm eyes, as if she's been regarding him for quite some time, their cheeks side by side on a shared pillow.
"Morning. Is it terribly late?" He mumbles thickly, hoping his breath is not offensive.
"I don't know, really. I've just been lying here enjoying the view." She chuckles and runs the backs of her fingers over his stubbled cheek and chin. "I rather like you with a beard."
"Well I'm glad, as my face seems wholly intent on growing one every few hours. Quite inconvenient."
"Mmm. You should keep it at least for the morning."
"Pile scandal upon scandal?" He laughs. "Shall I ring in for some tea?"
"Not quite yet," she stays his arm, finding the muscle of his bicep and squeezing it. "You said we'd come here in part to learn everything there is to know about each other."
"I did." A strand of chestnut has fallen across her face, which he caringly sweeps behind her ear. She looks softer and pinker in the morning somehow.
“You never asked me whom I’d slept with.”
“Do you want me to ask?”
“I would answer if you were curious.”
“I am curious about everything having to do with you, dear. Have you slept with others besides Matthew?”
Mary groans and rubs her eyes fetchingly, more curls tumbling down her shoulders and into her face. As she reveals the story of Kemal Pamuk, Tony can't help but laugh.
"Sorry, I shouldn't-" but he simply laughs all the harder.
"Now Tony, don't be cruel! It was quite distressing! Mama and Anna had to help drag the body back to his room!"
"Oh dearest, I'm terribly sorry that was your introduction to sex!"
She quirks her eyebrow. "Well. Fortunately two men have very much improved it for me."
Tony chuckles and pulls her hand to his lips, kissing the thin skin over her fragile bones.
"I feel quite guilty I fell asleep and didn't give you your night of endless love making, Tony."
"Oh, I quite enjoyed myself. Of course, you could make it up to me this morning..."
"Could I?" Her smart lips curve upward.
Tony removes her hand from his lips and presses it down beneath the covers where he is hard from sleep.
"Ah. I'd forgotten men wake up in such a state." She wraps her slender fingers about him and squeezes so firmly he lurches. "You know what you did to me last night?"
"Hm?" He mumbles as she strokes his shaft more placidly.
"I might like to try it myself."
Tony mmms, as she grazes her soft thumb over his tip. "I would like that, yes."
He's quite shocked, impressed even by her boldness as she pulls down the covers to unveil his proud erection. The respectable ladies he's been with wouldn't even have conceived of this, and yet Mary leans down to kiss his tip, pink tongue swirling out to lick its circumference. When she takes him in, her cheeks hollowing, it requires nearly all his self-control not to thrust against her throat and choke her.
Flinging an arm over his face in a moan, he scarcely hears her when she pops off to declare, "I want to taste you."
Slowly he lowers his arm again. He must look a sight--curls wild, cheeks unshaven, legs open wantonly, cock still close enough to her lips that when she speaks, her breath tickles his slicked skin.
"I- are you sure, Mary? It's quite... startling?" he attempts to find the words.
"Startle me, Tony," she insists decisively and smiles rather impishly.
He gives himself over completely to her mouth and talented fingers. Never did he dare to imagine he'd come in Lady Mary's mouth, but that is precisely the position in which he finds himself, reaching down to tug her hair in warning as the familiar coil of pressure grips him.
His muscles contract and release against the rough heat of her tongue, and he spills with sudden violence he can't restrain. She coughs but manages to hold her own. When he can finally open his eyes to check on her, the sight of his seed dribbling down her lips incites in him a strange panic that he has sullied what was perfect. He pulls her up the length of his body to encircle her in his arms, his wet, waning erection compressed between them.
“That was... Well, I fear I've led you down the path of no good!"
"Was it good?" she questions with a sweet insecurity.
"Dear heavens, yes!" he blathers so enthusiastically that she chuckles.
"Then we haven't gone anywhere we didn't want to."
He squeezes her soft, silky body in answer. "For mercy's sake, I must have tea," he informs her hair in which he’s buried his entire face. He simply cannot persuade himself he hasn't awoken to a wonderful dream. Only tea will convince him otherwise.
"Oh, good. Then you're still an English gentleman even if you did just finish in my mouth."
Tony groans and cuddles her fiercely. "Oh Mary. I do love you so impossibly much."