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Matthew knew that Mary still loved him. He had finally realized it late one afternoon at Downton when he was in still in his wretched chair. He had been talking to some of the soldiers when he noticed her in the doorway. The easy smile she allowed when she spotted him confirmed the thought that had taken hold not too long after he moved to the big house from the hospital.
He loved Mary too, of course, had loved her since before the war, but he accepted it as a quiet feeling that would always be there in the pit of his stomach. He wasn’t in love with her anymore, or so he told himself, and it didn’t change how he felt (how he felt, he ruefully repeated to himself) about Lavinia. Besides, she was marrying Sir Richard Carlisle. While he suspected at least part of her decision was motivated by Carlisle’s position and possibly his pocketbook, he believed that Mary had more integrity than to marry a man based solely on his financial situation. And when Richard wasn’t making power plays or gaping about like a fish, he did seem to be genuinely interested in his fiancee. So it had worked out all around.
He thought back to before, when the war had just begun and he’d left Downton. It had taken Matthew a long time - months and months - to get over Mary’s rejection. The war had helped to distract him, and there was London and then there was Lavinia.
When they first met, he’d seen a pretty young thing with bright eyes and a caring face and when she sought him out after dinner, he found that she was interesting and intelligent and had a way about her that was cheerful and calming.
They talked about flowers, he remembered now. The conversation meandered from botany to geography (he told her all about Yorkshire), to law, and then to childhood and then back to the present. He invited her to go for a walk the next day to talk some more.
He left for France soon after that, and he and Lavinia wrote to each other. Where Mary had been acerbic, Lavinia was understanding. She became the voice in his head, quietly displacing the previous occupant. He stopped thinking about a future with Mary (or how his future would not include her, anyway) and started picturing a quiet and content life at Downton, where war couldn’t touch him and Lavinia was by his side.
Maybe it was the horror of the trenches. He’d always been much more a realist than a romantic, but in the not-quite-still of of the night, when he let himself imagine what a life he might have after it was all over and if he made it through, the thought of Lavinia brought him comfort.
So he did what any soldier would do: he asked her to marry him.
That night he dreamed of Mary for the first time in ages. In his dream, he told her he was getting married. He couldn’t remember her reply, or maybe there wasn’t one. Mary had always been quite good at hiding her true feelings; he reckoned he knew that better than most. He could usually tell, though, when she was being truthful and when she was just doing what was expected. Her eyes...he could always tell by her eyes.
When he brought Lavinia to meet his mother and they went to the concert at the big house, he watched Mary look at him and look at Lavinia. When she smiled, though, he decided that she really was happy for him. He didn’t miss the hint of wistfulness he saw, but he couldn’t fault her for an emotion he knew all too well.
And so they became friends again. He was glad of it, and he appreciated her friendship. At first, he had thought himself one of the luckiest men alive. He had Lavinia, perfect Lavinia, on a pedestal, and he still had Mary, with whom he could laugh and banter and be perfectly himself.
It was after the explosion, while he was in the chair, and after he sent Lavinia away that he began to feel differently. He believed completely that he had made the right decision breaking things off with Lavinia, but that didn’t mean he wasn’t devastated. He was paralyzed and depressed, and just when he was feeling more alone than he could stand, Mary’s support and care had brought him back from the brink of darkness. She filled the void so easily that he began to second guess himself. Then Lavinia had come back, determined to marry him, willing to love him and care for him even though he was impotent and immobile. He loved her even more for that, but it was too late. His heart had already been divided.
It was a difficult and dangerous dance. Loving Lavinia had never been like loving Mary. They were so different. That had probably been part of the attraction; now, it was part of the problem. In his mind, the two women floated before him. Sometimes one blocked out the other and sometimes they were there simultaneously. There were times he wished things had turned out differently, but he couldn’t tell you which ending he would have picked, if he’d had the choice.
It had all come apart. Lavinia died after finding out his worst secret. He was so angry with himself and disappointed at slipping up. In the darker days after her death, when he imagined what life would have been like if she’d lived, he only saw her unhappy and wondering if she would always be held in second place. Jealousy is an impossible master. He didn’t know if they would have been able to go on or if she would have walked away in a move that would have no doubt been even more selfless than when he had done the same thing.
Matthew couldn’t stop the should-have-beens from forming in his head, but he did his best not to dwell on them. As he watched Mary with Carlisle, he realized that he had never been jealous of the other man. Was that because he knew that if it were possible, Mary would have chosen to be with him instead? He had accepted that he and Mary would never be together, but he knew she had been just as relieved as he that they had started being friendly again. And that was fine. They would be friends and she would marry that ridiculous man. As for himself, Matthew thought he might never marry, or if he did, it would be for duty alone. Really, it was more than he deserved.
He had loved Lavinia, he really had. He wished he’d told her more forcefully, at the end, when they thought she’d recover, and even more so when they knew she wouldn’t. He wanted to tell her how much she’d meant to him, how she’d helped him survive his time in the trenches, how he held her smile in his heart even now.
And yet.
“Isn’t this better?” she had asked. This is the thought he would have to learn to live with. The answer, it turned out, was yes.
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