Author's note - I hope that this comes up as the last chapter of Letters of Intent/Tales from the Abbey. But I am never sure of the interface. What I am sure of is that I am very grateful for all the positive reviews. These last chapters take us full circle...and then some to focus on where this all started; Robert's relations hsip with is formidable mother. Again, I do not own these characters and no copyright infringement is intended.

War and Peace, Russia, Winter 1875

Screaming. The wind was screaming. The Princess was screaming. Footmen and coachmen screamed at the horses and each other as the two carriages jockeyed for position. The horses screamed and plunged in their harnesses. The snow screamed by.

Violet Crawley shivered in the cold, clinging to her maid, as the Princess yanked open carriage doors and threw Violet's cases into the snow. Screaming, (more screaming) at the footman, as the Princess ordered them put into a different coach. Frantically, Violet searched out the face of her Prince. They were to meet in Paris, but surely he would come and put an end to this. All this screaming. And then she and he would be together. Would start their life anew. As they had pledged and promised each other. But his face was not there. So many faces, but not his.

Suddenly...yes...that must be him...stumbling through the snow...stumbling toward her. At last! But when the figure drew closer, it wasn't Igor at all. It was, she registered with a start, the Kuragin Estate agent. A man, Violet happened to know, on the cusp of being fired... and quite possibly shot... for stealing staggering amounts of funds from the Kuragin family over decades.

Just as the agent raised his terrorized face to Violet, she felt herself yanked unceremoniously. By her hair. The princess, with a grip of iron, dragged her to a coach and pushed her in. A torrent of French and Russian followed. And then her maid. The carriage door slammed shut. Frantically, Violet bolted to the other side of the coach and thrust her head out into the snow. Desperately she searched for Igor. But he was not there. The driver's whip cracked and the horses leapt forward. And the only face that Violet saw...the last face from her Russian odyssey was that of the blasted Estate Agent as he stumbled after the coach, holding out a package. Stunned and sobbing, she withdrew into the coach and into her maid's arms. What she didn't see, in the darkness, as the coach raced off, was the Estate Agent, with one last desperate lunge, thrust his package among the cases on the back of Violet's carriage.

'It will work' he thought...'I will get to England and get my diamonds back. It will work."

He thought this as the snow enveloped him and the wheels of the Princess' carriage pounded him into the snow.

Downton Dec., 1926

Robert drifted restlessly through the house. A house on the point of bubbling over with decorations, over stimulated children and an air of festivity he just didn't share. Despite Cora's best efforts. Oh, yes, he was aware that she was aware he had been a bit down for the last several weeks and she had tried, in ways both subtle and not so subtle, to buoy his spirits.

His wanderings finally took him into he and Cora's bedroom. Ostensibly to fetch a book, but really, to slip into her sitting room and look at 'the' painting. Study it when no one would study him.

Part of Cora's campaign of cheer had involved the painting...the one of he and Mama and Rosamund discovered at the Dowager's house. A painting that for reasons he could not pin down left him somehow sad and disappointed each time he saw it. Yet, here he was again...looking at it.

Cora, who loved the painting and raved about it regularly until Robert's discomfort became obvious, had enthusiastically thrown her self into its history and care. She had sent it to York to be cleaned and it had accompanied them to London, over his strong protest, to be examined by a worthy art expert. (NOT the awful Bricker, which had gone without saying by both) Rosamund was delighted by the painting. She had no more recollection of sitting for it than he did, but she regarded it with great interest and enthusiasm, rather than the vague feeling of unease he felt. "I think I do remember that dress I am wearing." she said. "Such an especially lovely shade of blue."

Cora had come back from meeting with a Mr. Pollard, over the moon with excitement. The painting, it had turned out, was by Whistler. THE Whistler. James McNeil. The fact that this particular painting had been done by an American gave Cora a special filip of enjoyment. "Mr Pollard thinks it quite wonderful." she had reported. "A bit of a shame that it isn't finished... it is definitely NOT a study...and that does effect its value, but we would never sell it anyway. He was quite puzzled about WHY it was unfinished and did a great deal of research into Whistler's time in England, but really hasn't come up with any explanation. I told him Mama probably threw him out on his ear when she couldn't stand having an American around for another single second. Anyway, it doesn't matter. I am going to have it properly framed and then we will find the perfect place for it at Downton. Since it was obviously painted in the Ladies' Sitting Room, it should go there, but honestly, because of the size...and well, frankly the light can be so poor in there… I am not sure it will go. What do you think?"

Robert, who had required a short course on Mr. James McNeil Whistler, had hoped that was the end of it, and this particular painting would find its way into deep storage in one of Downton's many rooms, only muttered a response and when Cora pressed him he had rather snapped at her, saying, "I don't really care where it goes so could we just stop talking about it!" Cora had looked startled as he had stomped out of the room on some pretend errand, but from then on, she hadn't mentioned the painting at all.

But that didn't mean Cora had given up. Once it was framed, she had Carson and crew hanging and moving and re-hanging and re-moving various Downton paintings trying to find just the right place for the Whistler. Robert had gruffly vetoed all of the downstairs locations...much to Cora's consternation and bewilderment. Even Mary and Edith had pressed to have the painting...which they of course loved...hung somewhere in one of the sitting rooms...or the library! "Yes, the library!" They both, in rare agreement, enthused. But Robert snapped and grumbled even more at that. Until finally Cora, in some desperation, settled on her sitting room. And when Roger protested even that, she put her foot down. "Robert, I don't pretend to know what you have against this painting. But it is MY sitting room and I will have what I want on the walls. And that is an end to it." And Robert knew he was done. Defeated. With the very thing that made him so unsettled so close by his and Cora's sanctuary. It was too ironic and too cruel.

Dully, he had become inured to its presence. But it continued to both haunt and draw him. So here he was again. Studying her. His mother. Never mind he or Rosamund or the puppy whose name he could not for the life of him recall. No, for him, the only subject of the painting was his mother.

Ever since the seemingly indomitable Dowager has done the unthinkable, and actually died, Robert had been unable to understand his own lack of emotion at the loss. Nearly everyone had shed tears upon hearing of her death...or if not then, then at her funeral. Cora and the girls had truly wept. He had seen Tom touch away a tear. And poor Isabel had been nearly undone. The servants had been almost equally moved. Why, even Mrs. Hughes...who he once heard refer to his mother as "that old bat!" had shed tears...and he had no doubt they were genuine.

While he had remained dry eyed throughout. He...he who had cried when his children were born, when he and Cora's baby had slipped away from them too early; when he had lost all of Cora's money, when Sybil had died, when Matthew was lost. He had cried freely...in a most 'unEnglish' way… so many other times when the lives of those he loved were torn. And yet, at the loss of the most important woman in his life before Cora, he felt...nothing.

Ruefully he considered his childhood. He had always cried easily; much too easily for a boy sent off to boarding schools. His mother sniffed at his 'sensitivity' while his father smiled indulgently and said, 'he'll out grow it.' And in a way they had both been right. His earliest years away from home were a misery of bullies who delighted in tormenting him to tears. Which came all to easily and too often. But, as his father had predicted, he had indeed 'grown out of it.' Literally. He still cried upon occasion, but he had a tremendous growth spurt a year or two ahead of his classmates and, overnight it seemed, his tormentors found themselves facing a tall, powerful, and, thanks to a few lessons from one of Downton's stable hands, skilled fighter. Robert turned from tormented to protector of the weak almost overnight. But, he had never stopped crying at those moments in life that truly touched his heart.

So why could he not summon up tears at the loss of a woman he so admired, was so amused and bemused by, so frustrated and exasperated by...that he so loved? Because he knew he DID love her. But why didn't it feel that way? And it seemed to him that the longer he felt so little the more a sense of emptiness overcame him.

His unpleasant musings were interrupted by Bate's discrete cough. Robert turned to see his valet standing in the doorway of Cora's sitting room. A place he had never ventured into. "I'm sorry M'Lord. I meant to give this to you weeks ago, but forgot. And one of the hall boys thought he saw you come into the bedroom."

"Yes, of course," Robert replied somewhat impatiently. He crossed over to where Bates was to save the man the embarrassment of venturing in. "What is it?"

Bates handed Robert an envelope. "When we brought the guns and the saddle back from the Dowager's house, Harker found this in the case when he took guns out to be cleaned. He gave it to me right away. I put it aside and only just found it. I'm terribly sorry M'Lord. I can't imagine how I forgot it."

"Oh, well," said Robert. "No harm done I am sure." He looked the envelope a bit more closely. It was in is mother's hand addressed to his father in London. "Looks like it was in that case for dogs' years. I am sure a few more weeks doesn't make any difference."

"Thank you M'lord. Do you need anything before I go?"

"No, that will be all."

Bates departed and Robert sat down at Cora's dressing table with a sigh to examine the envelope more carefully. He opened it and found several pages inside. Apparently his mother had written his father from Downton in April of 1876.

Dear Martin,

I don't blame you for still being angry and disappointed with me. Although we have both tried to put Russia behind us, it seems that it will continue to come between us whenever you need or want something to throw in my face. But I cannot in truth blame you for that.

(Here Robert's curiosity was seriously peaked.)

I hope that someday you can truly forgive me and we can get back to who we were. How we were.

I know that I was a fool. And, in some ways, I suppose, that is the hardest thing to forgive. I know it is the hardest thing to forgive in myself. I let myself be swept away by Kuragin...

Robert gasped out loud at this. "Kuragin?" Who was that? A dim bell rang. Yes...of course...one of 'Rose's Russians'. A bearded gaggle of whom came to the house for tea and a 'viewing' of his father's Russian collection. And then something about Kuragin's wife. Shrimpy involved somehow. The details escaped him. He read on.

...and what I did was betrayal. I betrayed you in the worst way a wife can."

At this point, Robert stood and his jaw dropped. Was he reading this correctly? Had his mother had an...here he actually struggled to form the word... an affair? HIS mother? An affair with Prince Kuragin!? No. It wasn't possible. And yet...what else could she be referring to? He began to pace the sitting room. And there was something else. After 'Rose's Russians' had left...had been dispersed to homes and shelters throughout England and beyond…he remembered something Isabel had said. One evening before dinner, he had wondered why his mother had taken such trouble over the Prince's wife. "Oh, well," Isabel had replied with a smile and a modest twinkle in her eye, "everyone's past occasionally requires a bit of account settling." Robert remembered his own surprise at this remark, but then Isabel had turned away to greet a guest and the whole incident had slipped from his mind.

Robert spun and looked again at the painting. And suddenly he was able to see his mother, not as his mother... not even as the imperious form who dominated the painting, but as the strikingly beautiful woman she was. This realization caused him to sit down abruptly. It took several deep breaths before he could re-focus his attention on the letter.

"I know that can never fully be forgotten. But, I hope some day that it may be forgiven...or at least, forborne. By you my dearest. For after all, it was you...your sense, and more importantly, your love.. that brought me back to myself. That picture of our cherished children shook me to my core and and turned my path to home. Toward Downton...and you, my dearest, ARE my home and my heart. I wish nothing more for both of us that we may become that one heart again.

But, when you left today, there was one thing you said, that I simply cannot let stand. Over your shoulder you shouted at me that I was an "unnatural mother." Martin, although you may think I have sacrificed all rights to indignation, I tell you I have not, and that charge cuts me to my very soul. I know you think I am a 'distant' personage in our children's lives; that I relegate them to an hours' visit at tea each day. And so I do and so I say does every other mother worth the name, "natural" or not, in Yorkshire and dare I say in England. While YOU indulge and spoil them...their every tear warrants a flood of sympathy from you and..."

(the last words here were crossed out..)

"No. That is not it. If I am to make you understand, I must be honest. About this as about everything. I DO think you indulge the children too much and sometimes I fear for their future wellbeing and independence. And I genuinely do believe that that often a parent nurtures best by letting children, under proper supervision of course, find more of their own way. But that is not all of why I keep the children, especially Robert at arms length.

When we returned from Russia, you left almost immediately for London. I do not blame you for that. We both needed time for our lives to stop spinning. But then you sent that foolish little man...that so called painter of no discernible talent and even fewer good manners... to come and paint us. What ever for!? An American no less!

Well, as you know, it did not go well, nor did it end well. Before the beastly fellow was finished Rosamund and I came down with an awful illness, (I am SURE it was because of him that we became ill), and so I sent him packing and glad I was to see the back of him. I never felt so ill in all my life, but at least Rosamund and I got better. But just as we began to recover, Robert fell so ill...so dreadfully ill.

I know I told you about this upon your return from London but I did not tell you all of it. How very sick he was. How, over the course of 3 days it looked very much that he was going to die. How he burned with fever and was gripped with dreadful pain. And, oh, Martin how sweet and strong he was. "Don't worry Mama," he would say with deep seriousness. "You musn't worry about me."

"And oh, that DREADFUL so -called physician. Travis. Who knew next to nothing and DID nothing to ease Robert's pain or illness. He muttered into his beard and drank most of the good sherry. If it has not been for Cotille, I am convinced Robert would have died. It was she who thought to wrap him in cold sheets to break his fever. And it worked...while the dreadful Travis was deep into his cups, it was my MAID who saved our son's life. "

"Martin, I love both our children very much, despite what you may believe. But I cannot say I love them in the same way. From the moment Rosamund entered this world, when I looked at her, it was like looking at myself. From the very beginning, she had a shrewd and prepossessed gaze of almost unnerving directness. Like me, she will, at times be headstrong and even willful, but, I am convinced she will sail forth into the world on a ship of self possession and confidence; requiring a firm but subtle hand on the tiller to hold her to the course her station in life requires."

"But Robert is a much a different child. He is truly open to the world in a way which makes him utterly vulnerable. When I held him in my arms after his birth and he looked up at me so solemnly, so trustingly, I knew even then that I would be in danger of loving him too much, holding him too tightly. And so I guarded against that. But Martin, after nearly losing him, after hearing what I thought may well have been his last breaths on this earth, I wanted to cling to him tighter than any vine. Every time he merely stumbled my heart lurched and I wanted to surround him with cotton wool. And what breaks my heart still further is that I KNOW that this would be the worst possible thing for him. I feel like I could smother him with my fear. Completely prevent him from going out into the world the way a boy, and then a man must, to become strong and grow into his responsibilities. And so, I do the only thing I can do. I pull away. I put a clamp upon my heart as far as Robert is concerned. It is a terrible thing to have to do, I assure you, to close part of one's affection, one's heart, to the very person who calls to it most sweetly. But, to truly love Robert, I have no choice."

"And though you may see this as 'unnatural' and perhaps it is...and though Robert may someday see it the same way, I can only pray that this way...this mother... will allow my beautiful boy to fully become the man I know we both want him to be."

"Dearest Martin we have been through so much in the last year ...so much that I put us through...yet I cannot believe we will continue to drift apart like some of those in our set that we have always looked on with such ...dare I say 'superiority.' Two people living two separate lives in one union. I desperately do not want that and I know that you do not either. I love you Martin. I love our children...though I may show it differently than you. And I love the life we once had. Please my dearest...please come back to me...fully back to me so that we may be two in one marriage. Two, who simply are one."

"With all my love,

Violet."

Robert let the letter slip from his grasp. He sat at Cora's dressing table while a waterfall of un-namable emotions crashed over him. He felt he had been punched very hard in the stomach...as if he might be sick… and nearly faint with how short his breath came. In some corner of his mind he wondered if he might be having a heart attack. And then immediately knew that he was - just not the kind a doctor would diagnose. The heart being wrenched was the heart of his very being; the heart that bound him to his mother, to all that he had known of her and she of him.

And now, at last the tears did come. And not just because of the extraordinary things his mother had written. He had known it all along. Oh, not the details of course... not the affair, not how sick he had been or how his mother had nearly broken with fear at the idea of losing him. No, the facts were new, but the tears that coursed down his face came from the deeper knowledge that he had always had; that his mother's love for him was as steadfast as any battlement and as ferocious as any tiger. The letter...amazing as it was...only served as tug on his sleeve...a door pushed abruptly open to remind him of who she was and what and who he had lost. He put his face in his hands and wept.

A moment later Cora stepped though the door in search of some hospital board papers. Robert's bent form and the stifled sobs she heard filled her with dread. She knelt beside him.

"Robert! Darling, what is it?"

Robert fumbled a handkerchief from his pocket and wiped his streaming eyes.

"Atep." he said, looking up at her with reddened eyes but also with a small smile.

Cora was baffled and becoming increasingly concerned. Was he husband suffering a shock of some sort?

"Atep was the name of the puppy in the painting." he explained. "My first lab. Mama picked him out as well." He smiled again at Cora. He straightened up and took a deep breath.

"It's all right, honestly," he said noting her concern. Standing, he took her hands in his. "I'm fine. Or at least I know I am going to be fine."

He bent to pick up the pages of the letter. For a moment he hesitated. After all, this was a private letter between two very private people. And yet, he and Cora were, as his mother had written, "Two, who are simply one." and there was nothing he did not want to share with her.

"This is quite a read. I think you will find it almost as astonishing as I did."

Cora relaxed a little as her husband handed her the letter. He seemed more himself. She began to scan the letter.

Robert had turned to look at the Whistler. Suddenly, he spun round to face her, this time with a huge smile on his face. "You know, I think you have been right all along. This painting should be somewhere much more prominent in the house. In the sitting room...or better yet the library! I'm going to find Carson now and have them move it.

Astonished, Cora just stared at him.

As he started to leave the room, he turned back and took her in his arms. And kissed her deeply and thoroughly. "I love you. I love us. And I love our life together...two people who are simply one."

Epilogue. Downton - 2005

Nicholas Robert Crawley, The Eighth Earl of Grantham pushed the last of the farm accounts to the edge of his desk. "Is that the lot?" he inquired of his estate manger.

"Yes, M'Lord."

"Well, I must say things seem to be doing very well. Congratulations Moore. I mean, who would have ever thought organic farming could become so profitable? Bees and chickens and vegetable with lumps and spots. Bless them all." He gave a short, happy laugh. "I must thank the Prince of Wales the next time I see him...and to think, they laughed at him for talking to plants."

Moore raised an eyebrow but said nothing as he gathered up his papers and departed the library at Downton.

Nicholas stood up and stretched. Patting his pockets he searched for his phone before remembering he had left it in his coat pocket when he came back from his walk. He started to go to fetch it but paused, as he often found himself doing, to simply take in his surroundings...he wandered slowly from the library to the sitting room through to the library... simply enjoying his home. His lovely home.

Nicholas was not in any way a religious man. But, in the last few years he had, when in residence at Downton, found himself attending church on a more a less regular basis, sometimes even succeeding in getting his bemused wife and children to come with him. Little of the Anglican ritual touched him in any way, but he did find church the one place he felt most comfortable to offer his most heartfelt prayer; that he always be humble enough, smart enough, and aware enough to appreciate every day how stupendously lucky he was.

He was married to a beautiful and intelligent woman who seemed to manage the perfumery that she had inherited with aplomb and long distance ease. Their children, unlike the children of many of their friends, were neither drug addicts wastrels, nor even spoiled. And his son, though he rolled his eyes at the idea of a title, actually loved the estate and was already learning much about it.

And his own work...well that was, to him, in some ways the most amazing thing of all. He had somehow fashioned a career as the writer of comic mysteries. Some said he had even invented the genre. And his books...which he genuinely enjoyed writing...flew off the shelves. It made him laugh some times.

And as for Downton. He still did not fully understand exactly how his father had done it...something about a lucky investment followed by an outright windfall...or was it the other way around? A distant Russian cousin? But slowly, ever so slowly, Downton had emerged from the underbrush of neglect and near ruin that had overwhelmed it in the 60s and early 70s. The entire house...from roof gutters to basements re-done. Re-pointing, re wiring, re-plumbing, re-staffed, re-everything. His father had even been able to buy back some of the antiques that had gone earlier. An exquisite Chinese umbrella stand suddenly re-appeared along with various other valuables that everyone had thought long since vanished into other, wealthier homes. And the land! A car park reclaimed. Acres of land turned back to gardens and parkland. Parts of the house were opened to the public on a regular basis, but mostly it remained a home...their home. The Crawley family home. And upon his father's death, he found that...barring the worst of times and/or truly epic mismanagement... Downton's financial foundation was firmer that he could ever have imagined.

The big mantle clock chimed and reminded Nicholas that he had to be back in London for a meeting with his publisher.

He cast one last glance at his father's favorite painting...the Whistler of his ancestors...whose features he found daily in his own face and the face of his children. With a cheerful whistle he started to head to the foyer to fetch his phone from his coat.

He was stopped in mid-stream by the entrance of the butler, Cramer.

"M'Lord. there are two gentlemen here to see you."

"Really? I wasn't expecting anyone. Who are they?

"One is from Scotland Yard. And the other is a representative of the Russian Embassy."

"The Russian Embassy?!"exclaimed Nicholas. "What on earth can that be about?"

THE END (For Now)