Summary: 1888. Martha Levinson wants a title for her daughter and Robert Crawley desperately needs a fortune to restore Downton to its former splendor. A brilliant marriage, as the society papers call it... but will Cora Levinson and her viscount ever find love?


London, July 1888

The French windows to the terrace had been thrown open and light poured into the ladies' morning room. Cora Levison leaned against the frame for a moment and held out her hands childishly, cupping the light like powdered gold within her palms.

"Whatever are you doing, Cora?"

It was at precisely that moment that her mother had chosen to make an entrance. Martha Levinson did not so much enter a room as thrust herself in, even in the most secluded apartment she adopted the air of one pushing her way through a crowd. Cora attributed it to the hardy peasant stock that had gone into the making of her. Martha Levinson would have liked to pretend to be of respectable Patroon stock, of Dutch extraction like New York's aristocrats to whose drawing rooms she so seldom extended an invitation. She would have liked to pretend to anything but her common Jewish ancestry - and indeed, provided the proper tools, she had the aplomb and daring to pretend to anything.

Cora was to be her tool.

"Nothing mamma," Cora said resignedly, stepping back from the window.

Martha eyed her suspiciously and then sniffing, took a seat at the escritoire. "You might have gotten started on the letters, dear," she said, her tone mildly aggrieved as always. "There are ever so many thank-you notes to be written, really everyone has been so kind to us. And it always looks better if a lady of the house answers personally."

She must have gotten it from one of her penny-magazines, Cora thought with a twinge of irritation as she took her seat next to her mother. How silly and pretentious - as though anyone will care to match the handwriting on my notes. We might as well have gotten a secretary - no all she wants is a spare hour everyday to lecture me.

It began before she had even picked up the first monogrammed sheet of pale pink notepaper. "You might have gotten your maid to curl your fringe instead of braiding it under that band," she observed critically. "It looks so old-fashioned."

"But it suits me, mother," Cora said in a low voice. She always spoke in a low voice to her mother, for fear that if she raised it even in the slightest she would lose her temper and begin to shout and scream. "I thought you would rather have me look my best than ape a fashion that would make me look a fool?"

Her mother had no answer to that, but she was quick to pick on another aspect of her daughter's that did not suit her exacting standards - few things did, really. "I thought you rather too friendly to Mr Bardsley at Lady Roscoe's soiree last night. Remember that he does not have a title to his name."

"We were only speaking of his travels, mamma. He had the most fascinating stories to tell - do you know that he has been to Morocco and Singapore?"

"A vagabond," her mother sniffed. "And a fortune-hunter I suppose."

"He is independently wealthy, I believe. And he is to inherit the Thwaite fortunes from his mother."

"But not as wealthy as you," her mother reminded her, significantly.

"I haven't a penny to my name really," Cora reminded her lightly. "I only come into my fortunes when I am twenty-five or when I marry, whichever comes first - and that marriage subject to your approval, mamma."

"And that is as it should be," her mother said smugly. "Your poor, dear papa knew what he was doing when he settled his fortunes on you two children."

No he didn't, she thought resentfully. Punctiliously she signed her name at the end of a gushing thank-you note to Lady Roscoe all the while seething at the unfairness of the world. Harold receives his inheritance unconditionally when he turns twenty-one but I must wait five years more. I've only just turned twenty and mamma will be sure to marry me off, one way or another, within the year. Probably to some titled boor who will shut me up in a castle in the woods like Bluebeard while he gets his grubby hands on my money.

The parlor-maid entered, just as her mother was plumping herself up to launch another diatribe. "Lady Fenn to see you, ma'am," she said, dipping a perfunctory curtsey.

"Alix!" Martha said with pleasure, "Do send her in. I wonder what brings her here so early?" she asked of her daughter.

"An empty purse, no doubt," Cora said, but under her breath.

Alix Harlow, Lady Fenn, was a distant - very distant - cousin of theirs and she had been, in Martha's words, "terribly kind" in agreeing to sponsor them through their first London season. She had been married off by a calculating mamma when still a child of sixteen to a dingy baronet, she had borne him the requisite heir and spare and gone through her inheritance with as much aplomb and childlike confidence that there would always be more as him. That confidence had been misplaced and now a charming but impoverished widow, still young (she was only in her early thirties) she traded off on her social connections and personal advantages to secure her position.

She drifted into the morning room like a vaguely disoriented sprite and kissed Martha's cheek dutifully. She was a very lovely little woman, Cora had to admit, all translucent skin and soulful eyes and masses of golden-bronze hair like an autumnal beauty in a Waterhouse painting. She had the air of some ethereal being who had wandered off from a higher plane, a damsel in need of succor, still girlish and glamorous in spite of her two half-grown sons. Young men worshiped her, to them she was all fire and air and poetry. In reality, her mind was as prosaic as an... accountant's, Cora supposed. She had not any sort of contact with that strange breed of "professional men" but instinctively she associated them with all things dull and dreadful.

Today she was looking very fresh and charming in a day-dress of cream silk, patterned with rosy blossoms. There was a vaguely Oriental air to her whole costume and once again Cora was torn between admiration and jealousy.

"You look exquisite," Martha gushed warmly. "Like a..." here her too-literal mind grasped for a metaphor and the best she could come up with was, "...a flower. So charming. Cora you must have a day-dress made along the same pattern."

"The colors might not suit me, mamma," Cora said, just to be perverse.

"Nonsense!" her mother said sharply.

"Most colors would suit you," Alix said, with the easy grace of the professional socialite. "You are so young and fresh and blooming, Cora. Ah, what I would give to be twenty again!" She smiled warmly, reminiscing. "That was my summer of triumph, you see. I had just recovered from giving birth to Harry - a son and heir for the baronetcy and me hardly out of my teens. My mother and Harlow could not get enough of spoiling me, showing me and the baby off..." She trailed off and laughed apologetically.

"You will think me a dowager in my dotage now. Never mind me - I have really the loveliest news and I could not keep it to myself, I simply had to rush over to tell you."

"Yes, we wondered at your calling so early," Cora said, suppressing the sarcasm under a layer of sugary-sweetness. Alix took as much notice of her as she would a forward child and Martha did not notice the sarcasm.

"The Russells have invited me to stay at Haxby Park and they will be sure to invite you too," she said exultantly. "I was waiting for this opportunity, you have no idea of the invitations I declined for your sake." She smiled delightedly at them while Martha stared back uncomprehendingly.

"Oh my dears," Alix said, explaining patiently, "The Russells are neighbors to the Crawleys of Downton Abbey. Robert Crawley was the man I had in mind for Cora ever since I saw you both."

"Has he a-" Martha began practically.

"He is Viscount Downton now," Alix said, smiling. "And he is to be the Earl of Grantham on his father's death. He is really quite young and handsome, if I do say so myself, and the estate is not in the best of fortunes. He will be looking to marry well and really Cora could not do much better. They have held Grantham since the time of King George the Second and the estate is very charming."

It all sounded rather like a fairy-story to Cora. American wealth and British nobility. Certainly it appealed vastly to her mother's imagination - Martha's smile was as bright as an electric bulb.

"Lady Anne Russell is really a romantic at heart," Alix confided. "She's a good friend of mine and she loves nothing more than matchmaking. You will see how lovely an English summer can be in the countryside, Cora, you will love it."

"I am sure I must come to, in time," Cora said quietly, toying with her gloves. But I don't want a lovely English summer in the lovely English countryside, she thought wretchedly. I want to go home.


Cora toyed with a bouquet of roses, admiring the effect of the satiny dark leaves against the waxy-white petals and the rainbows fracturing on the cut-glass vase. She felt rather like the eye of the storm, sitting quietly on the window-seat while the maids bustled hither and to packing her things. This was what her mother had been waiting for - an invitation to an English country-house - and now, with characteristic energy, she threw herself into the proceedings - scolding, snapping, hustling and bustling like a woman possessed.

Summer was not the London Season. Martha Levinson had intended all along to choose a suitable establishment to see her daughter married into - and where better to choose than in the country-side where she might see her future son-in-law in his natural habitat? A quick engagement and then a lengthy Season as a popular and settled fiancee in the winter. A spring wedding perhaps, then a summer tour in the States to show off her daughter, Lady Cora now, don't you know...

Cora did not realize that she was methodically tearing the roses until one of the maids gave her a startled look and glancing down, she saw her skirt littered with sad white petals. She rose quickly and brushed them off, not wanting her mother to see.

She drifted, without a purpose, through the elegant townhouse in one of London's most fashionable streets. Here she picked up a yellow-backed book and turning the gilt-tipped pages listlessly read a line of French poetry. How pretentious, she thought. Mamma can hardly read the language and it exhausts me to contemplate the thought of doing the same. She trailed her fingers over the ivory keys of the piano, propitiating a jarring disharmony of sound.

"What a nice tableau you make, darling," her mother trilled, pausing as she steamrolled through the house on another interminable errand. "Englishmen are so fond of tableaux - if they could, they would cut off their women's tongues and have some clever new talking-machine installed in place. It wouldn't need to say much - just how d'you fancy the weather and how would you like your tea? Yes, I can see the men quite adoring that..."

Cora felt like cutting off her tongue at that moment. The blood rushed to her head and she felt quite savage - like a Mongol horde of one, she thought. She would have liked to cut or chop or mangle anything that came into her hands which itched, yes they really itched to kill something...

She held them up, half-expecting blood spatters like Lady Macbeth's for her rage had been such that she had forgotten herself for the moment in a red haze... they were still smoothly buttoned into her day-gloves, two sizes too small for her to make her hands seem tinier. Suddenly the madness was gone and wearily, she sagged into a sofa.


Downton

Robert stood in the green sitting room, acutely aware that this was to be his last time inside. The furniture and paintings inside had all been auctioned off and would be carted off tomorrow - privately and discreetly (thank God for small mercies). Downton desperately needed the money. Tomorrow the room would be boarded up.

What made the room ideal was its situation. It was not one of the fashionable rooms downstairs, whose eradication would have been noticed (and remarked upon) by visitors. It was located upstairs, just next to one of the unused boudoirs.

It had originally been given to Countess Angelica - an Italian beauty of the last century - as a private parlor to entertain her women-friends. Being an heiress of considerable means, she had furnished the room to suit her fanciful (and extravagant) tastes. It had been done up at a time when the Oriental was all the rage - the wallpaper abounded in parrots and jungle foliage. It was upholstered all in forest-green velvet with heavy gilt baroque furniture that had been the fashion a few generations ago.

There were some really exquisite paintings on the walls that had fetched a tidy sum. Vivid oils of turbaned dark men and colorful bazaar and palace scenes from India, sketches in silver-and-walnut frames of panthers and rhinoceroses and other picturesque beasts, a portrait of the Countess herself with her sultry black eyes and olive skin dressed in emeralds and green brocade.

"She was a good-looking woman," a quiet voice said. "That is, for a foreigner. I never approved of that 'vivid coloring' as they like to call it, myself. Seems like an excuse for not using enough powder." His mother sniffed and arranged herself onto one of the dark-green suede sofas so she could look all around the room. "What we need is an heiress like her again."

"Aren't you sad, mother?"

"Not as sad as you, apparently, if you have to ask me that," she said, "I've never been sentimental." She tapped the Aubusson carpet on the floor and said practically, "Better that its one of the upstairs rooms that's seldom used and hardly seen. It could have been worse. We could have ended up like the Causeys - fancy being Countess of Grantham in a cottage."

"It will never come to that," Robert said shortly.

His mother gave him a very sharp look. "I should hope not," she said.

"How is Father taking it?"

"Oh, cheerfully. He's drunk enough to keep a warship afloat at the club. And they call us the tender sex."

Robert sighed. This was how they had come to such a pass in the first place - Father could not curb his extravagances and since now, Mother, deciding that if he could not she would not, had made no effort to do so. Father kept a separate 'establishment' in London, he was incurably fond of drinking and race-horses and gambling. Mother had her house-parties, her fashionable charities and a thousand little imported luxuries that all added up - she claimed that it would be unseemly not to keep up appearances and Robert supposed that it would. But none of it came cheap all the same. And then there had been little money from the beginning as it were - Mother had not brought anything to the marriage and Father's inheritance was not as much as would be expected of an Earl of Grantham.

"We shall have to get Rosamund married quickly," his mother said. "Before the bloom is quite off the rose."

"She's only twenty-two, Mother," he reminded her.

"A pretty girl without a dowry, there are hundreds like her on the market. She has her name to recommend her and I know just the kind of buyer who might be up on the market for that sort of thing."

"She seems fond of Lord Hepworth."

"I can imagine only a few calamities worse than that," his mother said, with a theatrical shudder. "I shall have a house-party - I think I'll invite that Painswick man, a nice sort, he seems..."

"He's as rich as Croesus," Robert said bluntly, "That's all he has to recommend himself."

"Yes, I did say that he was nice, didn't I?" His mother smiled pleasantly up at him. "Do speak to Rosamund for me, will you? Remind her of her duties, as it were."

"She won't like that," Robert said bluntly.

"She won't but she's not a sentimental sort like you, darling," his mother said. "When push comes to shove, she slams."

He found his younger sister walking in the park. She looked most fetching with her golden ringlets twisted up into a chignon, in her gown of sea-green lace with the matching parasol poised daintily over her face. With her pure ivory outlines and grave blue eyes she had an air of sweetness and spirituality, like a Filippo Lippi Madonna - quite at odds with her true character which as hard and unyielding as bedrock.

He walked with her and slowly told her what their mother had said.

Her eyes became glassy as he spoke, she slowed down and presently sat down in one of the benches, not speaking.

"She won't force you," Robert told her, taking her hand and sitting down next to her.

"But I will force myself," Rosamund said.

"If you love someone else-"

"I don't really," Rosamund said frankly. "I love luxury and I hate to see things dingy, that's all."

"We are hardly dingy at Downton," he said, offended. "Things haven't come to such a pass-"

"But they might," she reminded him coolly, looking down at her polished nails. "Where is the money to come from, Robert? Don't tell me about your dear, demented schemes - they are all doomed to failure. I'm not as stupid as I have to show the men." She pursed her lips. "Marmaduke Painswick," she said slowly, "I know hardly anything of him. How is he?"

"Dull. A boor really," Robert said promptly. "Not your type at all."

"I could live with that," she said consideringly. "As long as he let me please myself. I think it would be rather fun to marry, come to think of it, I wouldn't be under Mamma's thumb, I could hold my own parties and order my own house as it suited me." She laughed at the horrified look on Robert's face. "Oh dear Robert," she said, stroking his cheek, "you can be such a foolish darling sometimes and we all love you for it. But a girl has to be sensible. I've had a lovely three Seasons at London, no girl could ask for better, and its high time I bound myself to the yoke. Silken or steel, its my choice."

"It seems so unfair for a woman," Robert said, moved by his sister's cheerful indifference. It did not seem quite right that a woman, of whom one would expect more tender and delicate sensibilities, should be so hard-headed. Marry for money? Rosamund took that into her stride more easily than he ever could.

"If you knew what was best for Downton you would do as I did," Rosamund said cheekily, "Marry some bright American heiress - there are boatloads of them running around the Continent hunting for titles, I believe."

"Rosamund!" he said, quite shocked.

"There I've offended you again - just as I wanted to. You mustn't keep on falling for my tricks, Robert," she said, giggling. "I'd best brush up on my knowledge of Painswick if I am to pursue him with any success," she added and rising, drifted languidly in the direction of the house. But her words gave Robert pause for thought. Marry an American heiress, some wild, headstrong chit with flyaway hair and hands more suited to milking cows as he supposed all American girls who had not been suitably trained were? Impossible! The very idea was repugnant to him.

But... if that was the only way that he could save Downton?