"O'Brien?" She calls just before the door can stop the sound. There's a softness in her voice that cuts through Sarah's thoughts of mending and the polishing of buttons.
"Yes, my lady?"
"II hate to trouble you. Is the window closed?"
"It is, my lady. Would you like me to stoke the fire?"
"That would be kind, thank you."
Sarah takes another blanket from the cupboard and lays it over the bed, tucking it in over the coverlet. It's a simply blanket, and she chides herself for not thinking of the cold before having the maids make up the beds.
Leaving the bed for the fire, Sarah kneels beside it, remembering her own days as a housemaid. The fireplaces were less grand and the lady of the house far less kind. She carried many a welt across the back of her legs as a child. There are no beatings in this house. That is Lady Cora's work. She can't imagine the Dowager Countess worrying about the lives of her maids, but Lady Cora takes a genuine interest.
"Is that better my lady?"
"It's much warmer, thank you." She rests her hand over the blanket before tucking it back. Her hands are still too thin. The influenza nearly killed her, and her recovery has been acceptable, but she's still weak. She hasn't spent this much time in bed since she lost the baby.
Since Sarah took her baby from her.
Guilt must be why she hovers, finding the excuses of a misplaced glove and a unstoppered bottle of perfume as a reason to stay.
"Are you going to bed now, O'Brien?"
"No, my lady, I have some darning to do and the buttons on your gloves need a good polish."
"You would do that now?" Lady Cora sits up a bit, bracing herself on the headboard. "Wouldn't you rather do something fun?"
"I have plenty of time for fun, my lady," Sarah says, straightening the perfumes on the vanity. "We keep ourselves busy downstairs, no need to worry."
Cora smiles, tugging the blankets up as she gets comfortable. "Your darning, could you do that here?"
It's almost too dark for anything complicated, but there are several pairs of socks that need mending that won't demand much of her sight.
"I hate to ask you for more of your time, but, if you wouldn't mind, I'd appreciate the company. Lord Robert's been so busy, and the girls have been trying to console Matthew, other than Sybil I've barely seen anyone but you."
Her sincerity is so that Sarah would have cut off her own hand to soften her loneliness. Lord Robert isn't fit to crawl through the mud at her ladyship's feet.
"I'll get my basket, my lady. Won't take a moment." Sarah darts down the hall, collecting her mending basket. It'll strain her eyes a little but she will be by the fire.
Lady's Cora's propped up against the headboard, blankets up to her chin. "Is it snowing out there?"
"A few flakes, my lady."
"It's so beautiful here when it snows." She watches Sarah's hands instead of the window. "It softens everything so beautifully."
"Did it snow much in your homeland, my lady?"
"Oh ever so much more than here. When I was a little girl, winters were frozen things. We'd go ice skating and ride in the sleigh behind the horses."
"A real sleigh, my lady?" Sarah can picture her as a girl with snow in her curls. Lady Cora would have been a lovely child, much like Sybil, who had a very sweet temperament as a girl.
"It even had bells," Lady Cora sighs, watching the needle in her hands. "Is it difficult?"
"Darning my lady?" Sarah tilts her head, surprised by the question. No, she never would have had to learn. Maids have been doing the lady's darning her whole life. "It's not difficult. It's the work of moments after you know how it works."
"And you do it so well I can never tell the difference," Lady Cora says, with a little smile that toys with her heart. "Sometimes I think we have it twisted around. There are so many things you servants do that require so much skill, and we sit around upstairs with nothing to do but look beautiful and decide what to wear to dinner tomorrow."
Sarah doesn't remind her that she often chooses what the lady is going to wear. "Darning isn't worth your time, my lady, besides, what would I do if you mending your own socks?"
"You'd have more time for your hobbies."
"I prefer to be busy, my lady." Sarah works her way through a particularly stubborn hole in a delicate stocking without looking up. "I'd rather have my days full."
The blankets rustle and the one she added slips off the embroidered coverlet. Sarah sets down her darning, grabbing the blanket before it can hit the floor.
"That was quick," Lady Cora says, smiling at her from the edge of the bed. She slid over. That was what sent the blanket over the edge.
"Here's your blanket, my lady."
"O'Brien," she says, reaching for her hand instead of the blanket. "Put down the needle."
"Do you need something else-" she can't find the voice to finish. Not if Lady Cora's going to look at her like that.
"It's cold and it's snowing and I don't want to be alone." She reaches out, catching Sarah's chin. "Don't think I haven't noticed how you look at me. I may not be able to stitch anything, but I know how someone looks at me when she wants to kiss me. That's something I've learned very well."
"My lady-"
Lady Cora covers her lips with her cool finger. "Sarah, if just until morning, you really ought to call me Cora."
With strength Sarah hadn't thought she had, Cora tugs her towards the bed.
"I know I can trust you to be discreet and I know what you're thinking when you look at me. That, I happen to be reasonably good at."
"I couldn't."
"Oh?" Cora's hands stop on the buttons down Sarah's back. "You couldn't?"
"It wouldn't be."
"Sarah, if you make me beg it'll be entirely unladylike."
Lady Cora - Cora - has a far better understanding of the fastenings of lady's garments than Sarah would thought, being that she never does her own. Perhaps Sarah's clothing is simpler. When it's on the floor, heaped unsuitably at the side of the bed, it doesn't matter.
What matters are Cora's hands, sliding their way down her thighs and the gasp she has when Sarah kisses her neck.