#I'm forever grateful you lend me even a moment of your day to read my writing

[ohtobealady]

We did it, gang! We finished it! The last chapter is posted :)

Preview under the cut

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He chuckled and it was a weak, dry bounce in his throat. “Not Mary.”

“Not Mary, indeed,” she smiled at him, and the image of Aunt Mary pushing Donk’s chair through the gravel came to her mind. “She really does have the family’s best interest at heart, doesn’t she?”

He chuckled, again, in a way. A dry choke of what should have been a laugh. “She’s the champion of us all.”  The air in his thin chest vibrated with his long exhale. “The heroine of the story.” 

“Yes.” Sybbie grinned; again she stroked his fingers. “The heroine of Downton.” 

But Donk shook his head against his pillows. “No, not that.”

“Oh yes,” Sybbie passed her thumb against his hand. “That was Granny.”

“I was wrong.” She watched him close his eyes and move his lips, quietly, before looking back at her again. His mouth sounded dry as he spoke, dry but very solemn. “The times I’ve thought Downton needed saving. My life’s work: saving Downton. Protecting Downton. Only now that I’m at the end of it all can I see what it’s really been.” 

She didn’t like this. But she’d listen. She swallowed down the feeling that had risen up high in her throat at Barrow’s cottage. She swallowed down the feeling that had lodged itself tightly at reading through Granny’s letters. She swallowed it all down, and she breathed around it. “And what’s that?”

“Downton saved me.” He nodded, slowly, and his lips trembled into a smile. “Only I was far too self-important to understand that. Hubris.” 

“But—” Sybbie adjusted herself in her chair. “You did save it, too. By marrying. And Uncle Matthew. And now with Georgie—

“—yes, the house.”

“What?”

“We worked to keep the house. The Abbey. Oh, but Cora always knew, I think. And… in her gentle way, she tried to tell me so many times.”

Sybbie blinked. “Knew what?”

Donk exhaled a long, but shallow breath. And then Sybbie watched him smile. “Downton is more than just this house.” He turned his hand beneath Sybbie’s, and his soft fingers squeezed her own. “It’s given me far more than I have ever done for it.”