A/N: Thank you everybody for following, favoriting and reviewing this story, it really means an awful lot to me. You are all amazing for sticking with it until the bitter end (which has now arrived in the form of the seventh chapter)!

Anna and Mr Bates leave. She had known if for a while. Since Anna caught them in the hall, since the quiet, awkward cups of tea when the girl confided that she understood, that love makes you do things you never thought you would, that it makes you strong and reckless. The girl had confided in her that she and Mr Bates had almost saved up enough money to afford the first two months of rent and the fees and license to start the inn they had been dreaming about just before they were married.

"And maybe start a family." The girl had said, shyly.

"Start a family..." She had echoed and understood. She had no problem imagining a life away from service, of starting a life that was all your own. He, on the other hand, had been quite put out.

He had sat in her sitting room, one hand crumpling the letter he had found on his desk - written by Mr Bates, handing in his notice after carefully talking it through with his lordship - the other clenched around the cup of tea she had poured him. He had spoken of how he had welcomed back Mr Bates with open arms after his imprisonment like a friend, had trusted him with worries of his own and now he was leaving? After all Lord Grantham had done for him? And he was taking Anna with him? Leaving the house - he means his precious Lady Mary - without a Lady's Maid?

She had let him be. Let him talk of ingratitude, let him come out with his confusion, his hurt. He had grabbed a biscuit from the tin without being offered, had put his cup down with a thud and he had looked at her with such pleading eyes, she had wrapped him in her arms, held him to her chest and told him how people are not all the same, that people have different dreams and that Mr Bates and Anna dream of a life together, of working for their own purpose, of having children and she had kissed the top of his head, kissed his cheeks, his mouth, had comforted him with her body, kept him warm during the night.

The pair leaves, Thomas is back to being valet. The boy - will he ever be a man to her? more than an ambitious youngster who has demons of his own to fight? she doesn't know - doesn't show him the respect he deserves. She is proud of how he doesn't act upon it, doesn't call the boy into his office, dismisses him without a reference. They sit in his pantry one evening and she asks about it. He tells her they have been giving Thomas too much leeway, have held their hands over his head and they cannot suddenly stop. He tells her things will be alright, that these things take time.

She doesn't like to think of how long things take. She feels how she is getting older day by day, feels it, deep in her bones, her skin. Her knees click in the evening, her back is stiff when she wakes up.

She feels she deserves a room of her own now she old enough to be someone's grandmother three times over. She wants a living room and a settee, a little sideboard with framed pictures and she wants bright wallpaper. She wants a double bed with a heavy mattress that hasn't a single lump in it and soft, supple sheets that are new and that are hers.

He is not ready though. She feels it as he jerks away from her, still buried deep inside, mumbles about how he has forgotten to discuss the guns with his lordship and she pulls at him, digs her fingers in his flesh, rocks her hips, tries to get him back. She never thinks of work when they do this, when they strike up the rhythm that comes easily to them, she doesn't think of rotas and ledgers and suppliers when his fingers touch her skin, her nipples, when his tongue is on the shell of her ear, between her legs. She doesn't think at all, she just feels, gives herself over to it.

She watches him in the weeks after Mr Bates and Anna left, sees how he is kinder, milder almost, she sees that while he may not be ready, it is not as far off as she initially thought. He walks past a vase that is not entirely straight, he doesn't wake up early on days the wine delivery comes. He is not lowering his standards, of course not, he could never do that, his standards are part of his make up. He gets a little more relaxed. He stands straight, but he looks approachable now. He allows the Branson todd to clamber towards him and picks her up. He coos at the little Crawley baby. He is allowing himself to be human as well as butler.

"What do you think?" He asks.

"Very nice." She answers, takes her glass, sips, waits for him to make his case.

He scrapes his throat. "I mean... what do you think?" He emphasises, looks at her intently.

"I think you can be very happy there, it's close to the house, you can easily pop by if you feel the need." Her knitting needles click against each other as she sets up stitches. Feels the corners of her mouth twitch. Teasing him is easy, but she won't come with him unless he asks, she wants him to want her there, to need her there.

He is silent though and she looks at her work, the four needles sticking out, her fingers nimble, her movements sure and steady.

"What is it?"

"Don't you want to come with me? Only, I thought you might and..." He stumbles, cannot find the words and she isn't cruel, she looks up, smiles at him.

"Do you want me to come with you?"

"Of course I do. I wouldn't leave if I didn't know you might come with me, I still have some work left in me, you know." He puffs up his chest and she lets out a scoff.

"You want to carry eleven pounds of silver tea tray up two flights of stairs only to find the family decided to go to the library? Do you want to scold the delivery boy for bringing you copper polish instead of silver polish? Do you really want to deal with the drama still going on between Jimmy and Alfred and Thomas? Do you really?"

She puts her knitting on the table beside her chair and gets up, goes over to him, leans in, her face so close to his, her hands on the armrests to support herself.

"Do you really want to keep sneaking around? Do you really want to keep taking me to unused, cold, damp rooms and have me on unmade beds, or against peeling wallpaper? Do you want to keep worrying about a maid coming in when you are kissing me, when you have your hand up my skirt, when I am taking you in my mouth..."

Her voice is hoarse, thinking about this has her breathing hard. She bites her lip, closes her eyes for a brief moment and his lips are on her cheeks, his hand on her bottom, the other works loose the buttons on the front of her dress.

"While I admit that it would be nice to have you in my own bed, to take you whenever the mood strikes, to do all this to my wife - she hisses as he tugs on her earlobe with his teeth between his easily formed words - there is an element about being caught I really enjoy. I will miss it."

"What will you miss?" His hand kneads her bum and then starts to pull up her skirt, finds the skin between knickers and stockings, gently touches her.

His lips are nearly on her ear as he whispers.

"I'll miss having my hand on your leg at breakfast, the way you spread your legs as I move it towards your sex... I will miss pushing you up against the wall in an upstairs corridor while I know her ladyship is entertaining and feeling your wetness against my fingers as I hike up your skirts and push away your knickers... I will miss bending you over the Servants' Hall table in the middle of the night... I will miss re-enacting that first night when I found you nude in the scullery sink, pouring water over yourself with an old wooden bucket... I am thinking of taking that bucket with us..."

His words are paired with kisses, with touches and strokes and he has untied the ribbon of her knickers, they are pooling around her feet and he is stroking her, dipping his fingers inside her, making her moan and pant. If she lets go of the armrests, she will fall on top of him, she has no control over her legs it seems. She wants more, though. His fingers aren't enough, she wants him, to celebrate, to mark the occasion. Carefully she lets go of one hand and she touches him, gropes him. She is so well trained in undressing him, she only needs the fingers of her one hand to undo his fly, to free him and he scoots forward, only a little, but she understands and turns.

She sits down on him, rides him, his hands on her hips, her corset digging in her as she bends and moves. She undoes more buttons of her dress while he is deep inside her, while she cannot hold back the noises of pure pleasure. She shrugs off the top of her dress, the busk of her corset is under such strain, it almost springs apart as she pushes the two sides against each other to undo it.

His hands find her breasts with the certainty of experience, he sneaks them under her chemise, skin against skin, his fingers tugging at her nipples and she is close, so close... For a moment it flashes through her mind: this might be the last time we do this here, this is the appropriate place, this is good, oh, this is good, this is so good...

"You are not lifting anything, are you?" She calls inside to Anna who is in charge of provisions.

"No, I'm not. I have a brew ready though, if you like a cuppa." The girl calls back.

She is tired and all she really wants is a cup of tea and a biscuit and a quiet chat at her new kitchen table. She turns to look at him and Mr Bates who are unloading their few possessions from the cart.

"You go in, we'll take care of this." He says, nods, smiles. They have so few things and they have done most of it themselves. Mr Bates is strong these days, it must be the lack of stairs, she thinks. She looks at him and he nods.

She wipes her hands on a towel by the door and drops into a chair in her kitchen. Anna is bustling about, the oven is on, there is something in there, a casserole or a shepherds pie and she has put a dinky plate of biscuits on the table and the teapot under a cosy, cups are waiting to be filled.

"Things going alright?"

"I always thought we had so few things, that moving would be a matter of an hour at the most..." She sighs, raises her shoulders and they click.

"It's always more work than we think, isn't it?" Anna moves heavily through the kitchen and she looks at the girl, how she fills out one of Lady Mary's cast offs. She looks very beautiful. Happy. Content.

They sit at the table and drink their tea, eat biscuits. There is no awkwardness, it's companionable almost. There are few people you can be quiet with, she thinks.

"Are you sure you want that old wooden bucket, though? It's looking a bit tattered. They do these lighter ones now, very easy to keep clean." Anna stirs her tea, rubs her tummy.

The idea that Anna is no longer the little fifteen year old girl who was so hardworking and willing to learn, who held her own in conversations with Miss O'Brien and with him is strangely confronting. Maybe Anna is what she could have been had she taken Joe up on his offer, had she seduced him earlier. But it doesn't do to dwell on what might have been, she can easily focus on what will be soon. She has a basket full of little socks and woolly hats and tiny shirts for Anna. She imagines the child might come to visit them. She'd like that. She finds it comforting, feels strangely rewarded, the way he does with the little Crawley todd.

"Oh, we are keeping it for sentimental reasons." She answers.

"I didn't know you were very sentimental."

She takes a biscuit from the plate.

"Oh... more than you think." She smiles and drinks her tea.