"Robert! Where are all my books?"
Cora looked on her dressing table. Then she opened the drawers. No books. None.
Robert turned from where he sat up in bed reading his own book, his forehead puckering. "What do you mean? You told me to take the books you'd read – the ones on your table – downstairs to put back in the library. I didn't put them away; I just left them on my desk and told Carson to put them away later."
Her jaw dropped as she looked over at her bedside table, where a stack of books sat. "Robert, I said the ones on my bedside table." She pointed at them. "Not my dressing table!" She glanced around for her dressing gown.
"What on earth…? So we'll go down and get them again tomorrow. Come here, and I'll read to you if you want something to read." His brows knitted together in confusion.
She stopped bustling around to stare at him. "You don't understand. My books were in that stack."
Robert's confused look remained in place for a moment while her eyes bore into his face. Then his brow cleared in understanding, an expression quickly replaced by mortification. Throwing his own book aside, he scrambled out of bed. "Dear lord, I hope Carson didn't try and put those books away." Finding her dressing gown first, he tossed it to her while he slid his feet into his bedroom shoes and looked around for his own robe.
"On that chair!" She pointed to the garment before sweeping out the door, heading for the library.
Tugging the dressing gown around him, Robert followed her in all due haste, cursing under his breath.
"Robert, where are they?" Her voice had reached a pitch where she nearly screeched the inquiry, her hands fumbling among the things on his desk.
Only half the lights had been turned on in the room, so Robert stepped over to turn the rest of them on, flooding the room with a glare that his mother would have flinched at. Stepping around one of the settees to start a more extensive search of the room, he suddenly halted with a sharp gasp, having nearly tripped over –
"Carson!"
"Robert?" Cora turned from her futile search at the desk, his tone drawing her attention elsewhere. But instead of seeing Carson's tall figure in the doorway, her vision caught Robert in the act of kneeling down, his eyes lowered and his expression unreadable. She crossed the room to join him. "Is he alright?"
Her husband looked up at her and nodded. "I think he fainted. He doesn't seem injured otherwise." He cast his eyes about the fallen butler to the books scattered upon the floor and one still in his hand, open to an illustration of a particularly difficult – and extremely pleasurable when executed correctly – sexual position.
"So – so he's alright?"
"Yes. I think so. Perhaps we should ring Clarkson, just in case, but he doesn't seem to have hit his head." His eyes began to crinkle with mirth.
"Robert Crawley, don't you dare start to laugh, because if you do…." But it was too late. She'd already begun to giggle.
Twitching the book out of Carson's hand, Robert stared at the page, laughing. "I might have fainted too, had I not already done –"
"Bite your tongue, you incorrigible man!" She snatched the book out of his hand and snapped it shut, squatting down to gather up the other books. She giggled still, her face becoming crimson. "I'll take these upstairs and get my smelling salts." She rose, the books clasped tightly to her chest. "I wonder what he might think of us now." Yet there was no trace of true concern, just lingering mirth.
Robert stood up straight and wrapped his fingers around her upper arm, pulling her closer into a sweet kiss. Then he smiled and said, "If he understands those books at all, he'll think that we're in good shape and very satisfied."
Cora took the top book off the stack in her arms and smacked him squarely in the chest with it.
"Ouch," he said, laughing lightly. His grin grew wider and his fingers squeezed her arm gently. "In good shape and very satisfied…. And still very much in love."
"Well. That's different." She smiled and tilted her head up for another sweet kiss before sashaying out of the room to make the exchange, tossing a radiant look at him over her shoulder at the door.
Robert started at a grunt from the man at his feet. "Carson? What happened?" He successfully stifled the last remnants of laughter in his concern for the butler.
"I – I'm not sure, my lord." Carson glanced around him, as if expecting to see the books he'd been putting away. "I had been putting away those volumes on your desk, as you requested, but –" He sat up as he was talking, watching Robert walk over to pour him a glass of water. "Did I imagine it, Lord Grantham?"
"Imagine what, Carson? Fainting?" He handed the other man the water, his brow raised. "I would think your being sprawled on the floor would be evidence enough of that."
Carson drank deeply, mentally going through the events leading up to the faint, then blinking hard to remember the illustration on the page of the volume he'd held. "No, your lordship. The books. I had books with me, my lord."
Convinced that Carson would be just fine, Robert allowed himself to chuckle. "Yes, well, her ladyship took those away with her. We decided they're far too dangerous to be left lying about in the library."
Handing the glass back to Robert, Carson began to help himself up off the floor. "You might say that again, Lord Grantham." His brows rose.
Still chuckling, Robert shook his head. "You've no idea, Carson."
At Carson's somewhat shocked expression, Robert simply laughed harder.
"Never mind, Carson. Never you mind."
A/N: There are two drabbles/ficlets that probably properly belong in this collection, but have been published elsewhere. To read them, go to "Not Fade Away," and they are chapters 4 and 8.