He sighed, "I'm not blind, Cora. I know this has been going on for a while." He rubbed his hands down his face before he continued, "Please be honest with me. It's killing me and I know it's killing you. Just tell me."

She took a deep breath, licked her lips and averted her gaze from him, "We've been having an affair."

There it was, the word she hated, but she couldn't tell him without saying it. For that's what it was; an affair. There was nothing else to call it.

"How long has this been going on?" His face was turning red. He was trying so very hard not to be mad, but she wouldn't look at him and that made him angrier.

He took a step closer, "How long, Cora?"

She flinched, keeping her eyes trained on the floor, "Seven months."

"When did it start exactly?"

"When he separated from his wife."

He nodded, "I thought so."

Cora's head snapped up, "If you've known for so long, then why are you asking me about it?"

"Because I wanted you to admit it. I wanted to hear it from you. I didn't want to be one of those paranoid husbands." He sat on the bed next to her.

"What did you do together?"

Her eyebrows knit together, "I don't think you want to know that."

"Just answer the question," he growled.

"It started as an emotional affair at first." She swallowed, "I would go to his place. He'd make me dinner, we'd have some wine and watch a movie or two, and then I would go home."

He turned to her, "What else?"

"We didn't go anywhere in public. We were smart about that."

"Nothing about what you did was smart, Cora. You are married. You're married to me and you did things with another man behind my back. How do you think anything about that is smart?" His fists were clenched now and she knew he was on the verge of breaking something.

She placed a hand on top of his, "Please calm down - "

He yanked his hand away and stood, his eyes wild with fire, "Calm down? Calm down?! You were having an affair and you're telling me to be calm about it? You have some nerve, Cora."

"Okay," she whispered.

His breathing was heavy, "What else? I mean, when did you - when did you give yourself to him?"

She sighed, "While you were away on business. Labor Day weekend."

He stared at her then, hoping she would offer more.

"I'm not going into any more details about it if that's what you want. That's far too personal and only for he and I to know. I don't care that we are married, there are some things I am allowed to keep to myself. I don't have to tell you everything."

"That's what part of being married is," he grumbled. "You tell each other things."

She squeezed her eyes shut, "I'm sorry."

"No, you don't get to be sorry."

They were silent for a moment as she remained seated on their bed. He was across the room now, turned away from her.

"I guess I can finally go through with the annulment."

She nodded even though he couldn't see her, "I think that's best."

"No sense in trying to save it now. I was stupid to think you loved me and felt the same way about this marriage as I did." He scoffed, " And I can't believe I was stupid enough to think you'd choose me over Robert Crawley."

A/N: Hi all, it's been a while since I've written anything. After I published my Christmas story, I thought I'd never write again and for while that seemed true. I had lost motivation and just felt like my writing wasn't good. Then the end of 2017/early 2018 was a bit of a difficult time for me personally, but with the announcement about the movie happening, I fell back into the Downton hole and suddenly got inspired. This story was actually for a different fandom I had written years ago and never published, but I've decided it fits well with Cobert. So I thought I'd share this little tease with you! I do have other bits written that I need to go back and tweak, but at the moment I don't really have a plan. So that's what I'll be working on over the next few weeks. I think that was my problem in the past, I'd get an idea for something and it would just run away with itself, but then I struggled to continue anything because I never had a plan for anything. This time though, before I post any more, I'm going to plan out exactly what I want to do with this. So please bear with me and let's see how this goes!