1914

Cora sat up in bed, beads of perspiration coursing down her back. The draft of cool early-spring air did little to alleviate her labored breath or the high color in her cheeks, for she had been roused from sleep for a reason entirely separate from temperature.

It happened again, as it had the previous three nights.

Sleep, it seemed, was elusive and becoming increasingly fraught with disturbance. Nothing had been quite right, really, since the week earlier when Mary changed their lives with carelessness that still stunned her.

It had been a perfectly lovely dinner party. Evelyn Napier was rather handsome and had manners to match his pleasing features. She and Robert knew his father, and Lord Branksome could be dull at times but was generally a good man. His son was no less. And his friend, Mr. Kemal Pamuk, had seemed charming as well. He, compared to the Viscount, was exceptionally good looking and she had been only too willing to offer her hand in greeting to the tall, foreign gentleman.

Robert had chastised her later that evening, his voice alight with jest when he asked whether she planned to run off with him. Everything had been so wonderfully carefree. She'd kissed her husband, promised that he was the only man she would ever consider running off with, and took his arm as he led her downstairs for dinner.

Everything after that, particularly in the subsequent days, became a blur.

Dinner had been quail, of that she was sure. The drinks after dinner were not particularly strong, and she could remember snapshots of it all; the guests flitting around the drawing room, Carson's voice directing the young footmen to refill glasses of sherry, and Robert's hand caressing her cheek were all images she could still grasp. But the general picture of the night was blurry, veiled with the horror of everything that came after.

All that was clear now was the memory of Mary's voice, hushed but terror filled, and the feel of her daughter's hand across her mouth, and the look of her deep brown eyes as she gestured her out of the bedroom. Robert had been fast asleep, clutching his pillow as he snored lightly. She could remember the slight furrow of his brow and the painful way Mary clutched at her arm, dragging her away from the safety of Robert's embrace.

Nothing, no helpful tip from a family member, or tidbit from a book on the subject of parenting could have helped. And when she thought at first her daughter was playing some awful trick on her, she soon realized the only joke was ever overestimating how naïve and sensible her daughters were.

He was lying in bed, his limbs hanging loosely from the mattress and his eyes unfocused and pointed toward the ceiling. "What happened?" seemed an ineffectual question, for it neither mattered nor seemed pertinent anymore. What happened was clearly far beyond what she wanted to know, and Mary's brief explanation only served to nauseate her, as loath as she was to admit it.

And then they carried him. Through the quiet, dark, halls they carried him back to his room and she watched her daughter look on his boneless form. She could remember taking the sheets, shuddering when her fingers brushed against his cool skin, and handing them to Anna. Anna, too, had been dragged into the awful mess.

Then they went their separate ways.

Looking at Mary had been impossible and Anna seeing her cry would have been inappropriate so without so much as a nod of her head, she had exited the room and turned back to her own room, closing and locking the door before someone else could come to find her.

Robert was still sleeping. He had looked so peaceful.

Her hands had shook, and an overwhelming feeling of nausea gripped her. She only just made it to the washroom in time, and was later amazed that the violent retching sounds did not wake her husband. She'd stayed in there a long while, feeling the cool tiles against her skin and gleaning some sort of comfort from that.

Just before dawn she had crawled back to bed, determined not to let Robert find her anywhere but where she always was: beside him.

And it had worked, or so she thought.

For the first few days it was easy to draw a veil over that night's events. It was easier to pretend that it was a bad dream or that she had made the whole thing up. It seemed the only way to get through each day; waking, lacing up a corset and sipping tea with Violet and the girls would be utterly intolerable if she so much as thought for one second that it had truly happened.

But then, not a week after the fact, the nightmares began.

At first they were abstract, leaving her only with a vague feeling of upset when she woke. But then they became increasingly clear—vivid images of that night, of Pamuk's face, of her daughter's tears, flashed through her mind and forced her from sleep. She woke sweating, frightened, and nauseous, never knowing quite how she would be able to settle herself back down.

She promised Mary that she would not say anything to Robert. But, beyond Mary, she had promised herself the very same thing. As awful as it had been for her, it would be worse for Robert. He was good and kind, her husband, but his emotional abilities were different than her own. He kept things in, stewed over problems for far longer than she thought healthy. And his temper was laughably short when it came to the wellbeing of their children. She could still remember how he'd shouted, gotten red-faced and tremulous, when he dismissed Sybil's governess after overhearing her call their daughter unrefined. To tell him this, that a man had been in their daughter's—his darling, sweet eldest child's—bedroom, would spark a fury unlike anything she could manage. The man, she thought darkly, was lucky that he was already dead.

It would be better for them all if she could simply put it behind her and move forward with her life. And if it were not for the inconvenient dreams, she could do just that.

As she lay back down, her body still overheated and her heart thumping rhythmically, Cora pressed her head back onto her pillow and turned herself away from Robert, saying the same silent prayer she always did that he would not wake up.

Tonight, though, her words apparently did not get through.

She felt him before she heard him, his body shifting closer to her own as his arm, strong and heavy, snaked around her waist. He murmured something unintelligible against her hair and applied his lips to her shoulder, curling in closer as he always did when he was cold. She always loved the way he held her at night, simultaneously protecting and comforting her with such simple gestures. But not tonight, tonight she was hot and on edge. His arms were too heavy and his breath too warm.

Cora shifted away, using her foot to press back against his leg. "I'm hot, Robert," she murmured quietly, willing her voice to remain steady.

She felt him roll backward slightly, releasing her, but his hand remained on her waist. "Sorry," he yawned, shifting again. She thought he'd fallen back asleep but then, his fingers playing with the fabric at her waist, he added, "you could take this off?"

Tensing, Cora reached down to remove his hand from her waist. "No," she said simply, sitting up and swinging her feet out from under the blankets. "I'm going to sleep in your dressing room; it's too hot in here and I can't sleep with you snoring like that."

She didn't need the lights turned on to know that she'd hurt him, for he said nothing beyond a mumbled "alright," and she heard him flop backward against the pillows just as she crossed the room and let herself into the adjoining bedroom.

Miraculously, she managed to stave off her tears until the door was closed. She sank down, backward against the door, until she sat on the floor in a crumpled mess, crying silent tears that racked her body.