A/N: My response to the recent spoilers for Season Three. I don't expect for a moment this is how it will play out, but I can dream. I just want Cora to be strong again!
The money is gone.
Robert has gambled it all away in some stupid, stupid scheme and now they have precious little left of the fortune her father had sweat blood and tears for just to give his only child everything she'd ever dreamed of. And now there's nothing left, nothing left for herchildren and their dowries because their father has effectively flushed it down the drain.
Good god, what are they going to do?
"I'll speak to Murray," Robert tries, running a hand through his hair. Cora has never seen him so scared, and the feeling is quite mutual. "Perhaps he—"
"He's a lawyer Robert, not a loan shark," Cora cuts in sharply. "We need money, not legal advice."
A miracle is what they need, because she is not going to ask her Mama. The last thing she needs is Martha Levinson here, in striking distance of Violet Crawley and lording it over her family singing 'I Told You So'. She has survived without her for thirty years and she does not need her now. Besides, she saved Downton Abbey once before.
Why not now?
"What are you going to do, m'lady?" O'Brien asks, later that day.
Her maid has been wonderful, but she expects nothing else from the woman who held her hand as she delivered a child that would never draw breath. This time O'Brien holds her as she cries, and when she's finished it is as if it never happened, and that is precisely what she needs right now. She does not need to be smothered – she needs to feel useful.
She does have one thought, but the idea soon falls apart when she realises, "I don't have a story to sell."
Cora thinks to herself as O'Brien's fingers move seamlessly over her back. There must be something – there always is in a family like theirs.
"There's always Mr. Pamuk," she ponders, and doesn't bother to clarify the statement – O'Brien is her eyes and ears and there's nothing she doesn't know about her now. Not since that August afternoon. "But that's old news now. It's certainly not worth an estate."
O'Brien's fingers freeze on her back.
"O'Brien?"
"There is something. Something you might be able to sell."
She has never heard O'Brien quite so nervous, and it piques her curiosity as much as it unsettles her. She turns and takes the other woman's hand in hers.
"Right now, I'll take anything." Her gaze softens. "I need your help."
"I don't want to hurt you, m'lady."
O'Brien's voice wavers – if there is anything she believes in it is her maid's devotion. She squeezes her fingers reassuringly.
"I doubt there is anything that could hurt me more than this."
She is wrong.
"You're asking for a substantial sum of money, Lady Grantham."
Richard Carlisle is just as charming as she remembers, and just as dangerous, but on this occasion she needs him. She smiles as invitingly as she can manage. She has even worn her most revealing dress.
"In return for a substantial story. And you're a newspaper man, are you not?" she eyes him coyly. "Don't tell me money matters to you."
"On the contrary. I'm just…" Richard grasps carefully for the word. "Surprised. I was under the impression you were a lady." He smirks – he is impressed with her. Apparently he likes his women devious. "It appears I was wrong."
"Do we have a deal, Sir Richard?"
Richard regards her silently for a moment, scrutinising her, attempting to read her and extract the secrets from her mind, but there is only one she's selling.
"I'm curious. If I changed the terms, if I wanted," his eyes run pointedly over her, "something else – would we have a deal then?"
Cora cannot help but smile. It's been some time since she's been flattered by anyone, let alone her husband, but Richard Carlisle is certainly not the man for her.
"We both know that's not what you want. You want the story more than you want me."
"I could have both."
Cora does not hesitate. "Yes."
"Why?"
"Because I love my family."
Richard nods.
"And him?"
For the first time since his secretary showed her in his office, Cora is lost for words.
A week later, lunch is an uncomfortable affair. Robert does not ask about London and Cora does has no intention of discussing it, at least not until she has to and she imagines that will be any day now.
"I apologise for the interruption, my lord."
She is so deep in thought she barely notices Carson's entrance, but the letter in his hand is addressed in a familiar scrawl that holds her attention.
"A letter, my lord, from Sir Richard Carlisle."
Today, actually.
"Sir Richard?" Mary exchanges a wary glance with her fiancé. After all this time, Mary still thinks the world revolves around her. "For me?"
"For Lady Grantham, my lady."
Edith smothers a smile as Cora reaches for the letter, but all other eyes are on her. She takes the letter with a grateful smile, reaching for the letter opener and slices swiftly. It will be better for all of them if she simply gets this over with.
She removes the scrap of paper, turning it over in her hands, but there's little point scrutinising it carefully. She had been expecting it after all and it's time she told the others.
"It's a cheque," she says simply, laying the cheque in question in the middle of the table for general inspection. "Not quite as much as my fortune of course, but enough to ensure your survival."
"My survival?"
Cora meets her husband's disbelieving gaze.
"Ours," she amends, but she imagines it won't be theirs for much longer.
"Why would Richard Carlisle help us?" Mary demands.
"What did you give him?" Robert interrupts. He has read between the lines, of course, and she can see the worry in his eyes. Her silence only aggravates him further. "Cora?"
The anger in his voice galls her – after everything he's put her through, put them all through, he doesn't have the right to be angry and if he hadn't gone behind her back in the first place, first with the maid and secondly with her fortune, then perhaps she wouldn't have gone behind his?
"Anything I could give him to save this estate."
"What did you give him, Cora?"
Cora smiles sadly. "Isn't it enough that we're safe again?"
But, of course, it's not.
A week later the story breaks, and Cora is on a ship bound for America.
The irony is not lost upon her: she came to England thirty years ago to save the Crawley family with her hand in marriage, and she has saved them once again but this time she is making the return journey. The divorce papers have been signed, but then she had expected nothing else.
She did sell Robert's affair with the housemaid to the papers, after all.
"Do you regret it, m'lady?" O'Brien asks, peering up from the waves crashing against the ship.
The sound is so soothing she nearly forgets she's a divorcee on her way back to America in disgrace. She is – what did she once call it? Damaged goods.
But does she regret it? Throwing away her husband of thirty years, alienating her children – even Rosamund won't speak to her, and Violet has been quick to dismiss her as the barbarian she has always believed her to be. And perhaps she is. A proper Countess would never have sold her husband's reputation, not even for the sum she did and it had been a considerable sum. But then she's never been a real lady. She has been pretending for so long she thinks she must have forgotten who she really is, who her mother raised her to be, and that woman will not abide adultery.
And she had saved Downton Abbey in the end.
Cora's lips curl up in a vague smile. "No."
After all, it was a fair price.
