For This Love (a Downton Abbey fanfiction)

Husband and Wife Together

April 1919

Bates stood outside the registry, watching as Anna hurried toward him. She had asked him to go on ahead, to let her have a moment to collect herself. He understood; it was a momentous thing they were doing. For all that they had been moving so very slowly toward it for years, to know that it was just a moment away—it was overwhelming for him, too.

But she was smiling as she came toward him and took his arm, and he took that to mean that her butterflies had settled. They walked into the registry together, unable to take their eyes off one another.

When it was their time, Anna took off her jacket, and Bates his overcoat, and they hung them up in the antechamber. He preceded her, wishing they could be having a wedding in a church, with all her family and their friends, with Anna in a beautiful dress and walking down the aisle toward him the way she deserved ... but he couldn't dwell on that. Not when he turned and saw her beautiful face lifted toward him, such absolute love and trust in her eyes. Could he really deserve all that? It was hard to believe he could.

He took her hands, folding his around them, the way he wanted to fold himself around her and never let anything hurt her again. "I, John Bates," he said in response to the prompting, "take thee, Anna May Smith, to be my wedded wife."

"I, Anna May Smith," Anna said, her face shining with her pride and her joy in being able to finally say these words that they had both dreamed of so often. He wondered with a moment's amusement if she would say his full name or if, even in her vows, she would cling to calling him "Mr. Bates." "Take thee, John Bates," she continued, and the impish widening of her smile said she had had the same thought, "to be my wedded husband."

Bates reached into his pocket for the ring. Anna's eyes filled with tears as he slid it part of the way onto her finger and repeated the words that would seal them together as long as they lived. "With this ring, I plight thee my troth." His voice was roughening now as his throat closed with emotion. "As a symbol of all we have promised, and all that we share." He moved the ring on her finger until it was seated at the base, stroking her finger as he did so. They shared so much, she and he—she was his best friend, his staunchest support, his truest love, and now his nearest kin, legally as well as in all other ways.

"And now," came the voice of officialdom, ringing through the room, "it gives me great pleasure to say you are now husband and wife together."

Staring into each other's eyes, they were laughing and crying at the same time, the joy almost too much to bear, as for the first time, he bent to kiss Anna Bates.