Author's Note: I hope all who reviewed the last chapter enjoyed my totally useless facts! Here is the last chapter. Sorry it's so short but I hope it is not unsatisfying.

A few more ciders in and luncheon being just a fleeting memory, Lady Sybil Crawley was a bit intoxicated. It wasn't exactly a severe problem as far as Branson could see as she was relatively stable on her feet and nothing about her demeanor was altered. She was talking louder and faster than usual and perhaps with less focus but otherwise her condition was relatively minor. Considering how much she had drank it was rather impressive. It hadn't even occurred to him that it might cause a problem until she suddenly gasped and asked him what time it was and they realized they had stayed far longer than they had intended to with no real time to reach full sobriety before heading back. In a bit of a rush to get started walking home, Lady Sybil retreated to freshen up while Branson covered their tab and in minutes they were out the door.

They walked briskly and quietly through the village itself with their heads tilted downwards as a safety precaution until they had gotten away from all the buildings and the possibility of encountering anyone.

"Thank you so much for today," she said in a dreamy, sing-song manner when they were finally surely alone. She looked up at him fondly and he smiled at her alcohol-induced tone and her cheeks flushed from drink.

"Thank you for proposing the idea in the first place," he said, returning the appreciation.

She grinned wider, waving her hand away as if to say it was nothing. They walked along for a few seconds of silence while he watched her face under the shade of her hat and saw that her smile did not dwindle until she spoke again.

"I have never had that much to drink in . . ." she was cut off abruptly as her shoe caught under a protruding tree root and she started to fall forward. Branson rushed to her side and caught her around the waist, preventing her inevitable collision with the ground. He held her for a minute as she seemed to slowly come to the realization of what had happened and looked from the grass she had almost landed in to his arms around her to his concerned expression.

The only time he had ever been as physically close to her as now had been when he carried her, unconscious and limp, away from the riot that had broken out at the count. All he could think about then was how terrified he was that she had been injured. While he held her he prayed over and over that she would be okay and mentally apologized to her for not protecting her better. He begged and bargained for her sake and could barely spare a thought to the fact that the girl who had become the subject of most of his thoughts as of late was in his arms.

Today he had no such qualms. The moment they had earlier by the tree had only been a mere suggestion of what he now felt with her pressed against him. He was sweltering from her body heat, the feel of her elevated pulse that mirrored his, and the way he was engulfed in her floral scent and the faintly fruity alcohol on her warm breath that she released through parted lips.

"I guess this is the closest we'll come to dancing tonight," she said softly after a time, finally managing to close her mouth and punctuate her joke with an upward turn of her lips.

He chuckled, the tension he felt at her proximity lessened, and he loosened his hold on her, allowing one arm to fall away as the other slid around her back to continue to provide support.

"Think you can walk without falling?" he asked good-naturedly.

"I'm not sure I can say yes yet," she admitted with a touch of shame. "I wouldn't mind a little extra assistance."

He nodded and kept his arm around her as they continued walking.

"They might not even cancel the Servant's Ball next year," she said, continuing off her previous comment. "The war could be over quickly. Or the Ball could go on because of Papa's insistence on upholding tradition."

"It's certainly possible," he agreed. "If there is a Ball, will you save a space for me on your dance card?"

She gave a little laugh. "You don't even have to ask."

Touched by her remark, he was about to ask her what kind of dance she would prefer when she let out an exasperated, "Oh, no!"

"What is it?"

"We forgot to pay for our drinks!" she practically shouted, stopping them in their tracks. Aware of her volume, she raised a hand to her mouth as if she could suppress what she had already said and he tried not to laugh and humiliate her further.

"I'm sorry I didn't tell you sooner but I actually did when you had stepped away," he assured her, putting a bit of pressure on her back to remind her to keep walking as they were still going to be arriving at the Abbey after when they had intended to.

She started to walk again but looked at him with a miffed expression.

"Well, you shouldn't have," she declared as if it was obvious. "I should have at least paid for what I drank. For all the trouble I put you through I should have bought your drinks as well," she reasoned.

"It isn't any trouble," he insisted but he knew deep down he was lying for her sake. While having his living quarters and meals provided for did make for a sizeable salary, he sent a fair portion of his income to his family, only keeping what he absolutely needed to pay for extraneous items and a small percentage for personal savings. With the amount of alcohol they had both consumed, he figured he would have to make some sacrifices in terms of what he buys for a little while but, oh, it was worth it.

However, she did not believe him for a minute.

"Of course it is! You need to save your money so you can go see your father," she reminded him, getting more and more furious at his offhand attitude. "I'll pay you back," she said firmly.

"You don't have to. It can be an exchange for your planning this outing," he offered. A more rational part of his brain was telling him to stop fighting her on the issue. His romanticizing the outing by picking up the cost as if it were no matter who paid was only detrimental to him and was not fooling her when she knew how desperately he needed to hold onto his money.

She looked away from him dejectedly and sighed.

"As soon as I get some more money, I will pay you back," she said assertively and he tried to hide his smile at the irony of both her insistence on the fact that she should have paid and her status in society. She couldn't have paid even though she wanted to. It didn't surprise him that she didn't have enough on her as she was so used to being with a chaperone that would cover the cost. Now that he thought about it, he had never seen her exchange money for anything she acquired, probably because the shops she went to had accounts set up with Lord Grantham. She was wealthy but without anything tangible in her purse.

"Okay, Miss Crawley," he said merrily, not concerned if she ever made good on her promise but knowing she would out of shear stubbornness if she managed to remember in her tipsy mind.

As they got closer and closer to Downton Abbey, he wondered for the first time what her arrangement for getting back inside was.

"Let's go to the back of the garage," she said, as if she was reading his thoughts and he turned with her, hand still against her back even though she appeared to be walking perfectly fine.

"You have a plan for making it back in, I hope?" he asked, to be sure.

"I just thought of one," she assured him although he was glad he hadn't asked earlier if she had only just come up with the idea.

When they got to the back of the garage, where they had started their journey, he removed his hand from her back as she started fiddling with the buttons on one of her gloves. For a second he thought it might just be the strange behavior of someone who had been drinking but he soon realized she was trying to remove it; however, with her other hand still gloved she wasn't having any success.

"Could you help me with this?" she asked, presenting her wrist to him.

Carefully he unbuttoned the glove for her, wondering if Gwen had been the one to put them on her in the first place. She clearly couldn't have done it alone and he thought about joking that he was her new ladies maid but was a bit distracted by trying to do such delicate work with his large hands.

When he had finished, she pulled the glove off and went to work on the other one, passing them both to one hand and removing her matching hat.

"If you could keep these safe for me, I'll come back to get them later," she said, holding out the hat and gloves to him. He took them from her and smiled. She had a reason to come visit him again. Maybe she had created a reason to come visit him again.

"And when you do I can give you those pamphlets I have about women's clubs in the area," he added.

"That would be wonderful!" she exclaimed, taking off her jacket and folding it so that it draped over her arm.

"So what's your plan?" he asked, unable to resist. She had clearly taken off the hat and gloves to conceal the fact that she had gone out but the jacket seemed to be another matter.

"I'm going to go through the service entrance," she explained. "No one should be standing around there at this time and if they are I'll just wait until they leave. Then I'm going to walk as quickly as I can to the service stairs which I can take all the way to the floor my bedroom is on and if I encounter anyone, I'll just tell them I was retrieving this," she held up her jacket, "which Anna had been repairing for me."

"And if Anna is the one to stop you?"

"There's a little tear right here," she said, pointing to a hole near the hem, "I'll ask her to fix it and Gwen will get her things back in better condition than she lent them out."

"You are something," he said with a sigh, unable to mitigate his great affection for her.

She glanced downward, her cheeks turning even redder than they already were from the ciders, and then looked back to him with a little smile.

"Enjoy the rest of your evening, Branson," she said, with what seemed like exaggerated propriety but was really just stark in contrast to how familiar they had been acting all day.

The change in title was not lost on him. They had returned to reality and the reality of the situation was that this would not be able to happen again. They had been lucky, unfathomably lucky, but now he knew that they would need to return to the way things were before. Even though he knew he wouldn't be one forever, for now he was still a chauffeur and she was a Lady.

And even so, things would not be exactly as they were. With her little gesture with her hat and gloves he knew that he wasn't the only one thinking about how much closer he felt to her now. He wasn't the only one who valued their little talks. Even before today, he couldn't have been the only one benefitting from the pleasure of her company. She had been the one to come to him when she needed someone, thereby breaking a social barrier they hadn't yet breeched.

They wouldn't make it to the pub again but she would return to the garage.

"And you as well, milady," he responded with a jovial nod.

In a moment her smile fell away and she fixed her blue eyes on him with such honestly that he was almost startled.

"Thank you," she said confidently, and her statement was imbrued with all the weight of her gratitude for him joining her on her adventure when she had steered him so wrong before, his reluctance to let anything bring down their day no matter what adversity they faced, and the companionship he always freely offered her from the moment he had started working for her father.

And then, as he watched her walk away from him to return to her life of luxury and privilege, a thought that had been simmering in the back of his head made itself painfully, obviously known: that he would never be happy with anyone else as long as Lady Sybil walks the earth and when the time was right he would ask her to marry him.

But for now, he would treasure their short-lived diversions.