Title: steal me with a kiss
Fandom: Downton Abbey
Rating: General Audiences
Length: 535
Summary: There's only one way to deal with secret admirers in the Crowley household: vicious pantomime.


The family break their fast at table together, as is their habit. It is a tradition Robert finds himself clinging to these recent years, as suitors begin to circle his daughters like starving, slavering hounds. Never has he counted his fortune so great that they spend but a fraction of the year at the heart of society in London.

Edith is, perhaps, the safest of the three, but it is not Edith he finds his worries concerned with. Mary is as likely to start scandal as she is to be taken by a rake, and Sybil ... Sybil is far too trusting. Far too kindhearted. If he had his way, none of them would grow beyond the age of twelve. Still, neither time nor tide may he stay.

He has the paper to hand - more of the same, it appears; the government to be brought about by the last election is still hanging precariously in the wake of the vote's parity, and not much else to be said about the state of the world besides - when the letter arrives.

It is an odd thing to end up at his table, written on cheap paper and falling open as it passes over his shoulder. His hand catches it before it falls into his coffee. The prices of the beans are rising enough without wasting a cup besides.

He looks at it for no more reason than identifying the recipient - if it contains any news of interest to him he will quickly find out the fact, and no bookies odds to more than - until his eye catches on a particularly florid line. The letters themselves have enough curves to fill a textbook of geometry, but the words written – he sighs. It is to be one of those letters, then.

The girls look up, half suspecting what is about to occur. He has, after all, made his scorn for their ravening hordes of would be Romeos apparent. If any of the lovelorn idiots were at lest Dukes in their own right - but no. Fate is not so kind.

"What's this then? An admirer from afar?," his opening is a tad pro-formula perhaps, but the gall of the young man - and he had better be a young man, or the constables would the the least of his worries - sending his missive to the very family table is nigh unmatched, "'If I steal words from a poets lips, it is only that you make me think of poetry.' Not a bad start. It appears this young man is something of a scholar." His recitation is met with long-suffering groans from the girls and Cora's barely hidden amusement tucked behind her cup of tea.

"Hmm, 'I cannot see the moon and not think of you, nor sight the sun and find you fairer. Had I the wit of the greeks, or half the fight, I would swear you my Aphrodite. Alas, our meet is not to be, that I am kept far from thee,' well there's some sense left in the world, if not shame."

"Come now, Robert," Cora chides, "we must leave some romance in the world for the young ones to find."