I think this story may end up being rather different from what everyone was expecting. I'm not a very good linear storyteller - I like to create mood. So here is some more mood in the form of our beloved Donk Crawley.
"Golly, what a night!" She'd said, and Robert felt nothing. Empty. Defeated. His knuckles throbbed instantly, regret and shame seizing his muscles as he clutched the arms of the chair and forced oxygen into his lungs.
He was sure his heart had stopped beating.
He couldn't look at her. Couldn't comfort her. Couldn't be near her.
"I'll sleep in my dressing room." He said, and he fled to the quiet cold of the room next door.
The hollow click of the connecting door was final and he pulled the blanket over his head to drown out the quiet sound of her tears.
He has no idea how many hours he spends alone in his dressing room bed, only that his thoughts drove him out in search of a drink some time before dawn. He spends too much time examining his culpability in the evening's drama and he wants to be able to blame only Cora. Cora, for flirting with that man. Cora, for inviting him in the house. Cora, for seeking companionship with someone who wasn't him. It is long past midnight when he gets up in search of a drink. He thinks he will get well and truly plastered and then take out that blasted painting and set fire to it in the front drive.
He will save them all from Simon Bricker and he doesn't matter what he has to burn down to do it.
His plan is waylaid, however, when the whiskey slides down to easily. When the pleasant warmth makes his muscles languid and his fervor to remove the Della Francesca) and thereby Bricker) from his life completely cools to a simmer.
Then Cora appears, and the fervor returns. He is agitated and his skin feels aflame when she enters the library and makes a bee-line for the whiskey herself. He wonders, uncharitably, if she is seeking liquid courage before returning to the arms of her paramour. But then he takes in the defeated set of her shoulders, the shadows beneath her beautiful eyes, and he knows.
He knows.
How can she be so calm, he thinks. Her pale hands are steady as she pours herself a finger of whiskey, something that would surprise him if he was even remotely sober. But instead he focuses on the smoothness of her movements and the way she doesn't even sway as she throws back her drink. He follows the shallow curves left my her nightdress, from petite toes peeking beneath the hem to the tumble of darkness over her shoulder. Words twisted in his throat and he threw back another drink before speaking, his chest weighted down with conflicting emotions.
It smothers him sometimes, the pride of her. That she is his, that she chose him. The sweet jasmine of her perfume is an ether and at its delicate scent he loses some piece of himself to her. He is lost to her and, he fears, she is lost to him. Forever.
"It's you." She speaks first, resigned.
"What do you hope to accomplish with this?" He means the whiskey, but there is an unintended entendre beneath his slurred words.
"Same as you, I suppose."
"Oh, you've a wish to forget your wife's unfaithfulness as well? What a coincidence." Anger is the easiest emotion to accept at the moment. It is warm and welcoming and it hazes his vision enough that he cannot see the hurt in her eyes.
"I seek to forget that my husband is currently behaving like a horse's ass, which I suppose amounts to the same thing." Her shoulders hunch protectively and he realizes they've never fought like this. Never like this. Regardless of the issues between them, they were always together. Devoted together. This wasn't disagreement, this was dissolution and it frightened him. He wants to lash out, and he wants her to feel fear too. Perhaps if they are both terrified, they won't be so lost.
"You're thinking of him right now!" Her eyes are far away and her expression is penitent. He knows he's right when she jerks slightly, and he wants to shake her. He wants to charge up the stairs with a roar and drag Simon Bricker out of their lives by his giant ears. He wants to pound him into dust and break that damned painting over his head. He wants to...
"Of him. And of you. Rolling together like children in our bedroom. Waking Edith and tempting God knows what scandal." She is speaking and his daydream of revenge is cut short.
"I was tempting scandal? I. Was tempting scandal. Me?" Scandal is the least of his worries. He doesn't care what anyone - not his mother, not the county, not the papers, not his daughters, not the servants - said of it. He would fight them all, beat them back with the last of his breath, if it meant he kept his wife.
It wasn't that he believed she would do anything with that art hack. He knew her to be the most faithful and reliable woman who'd ever lived.
But she is his, dammit. And Bricker had sought to take her away.
HIS.
His wife. His Cora.
A memory, unbidden, rises through the haze. "Mary can be such a child. She thinks that if you put a toy down it will still be sitting there when you want to play with it again."
But these were not toys. This was his wife. HIS WIFE.
It is with a double glance that he realizes Cora is staring at him strangely.
"Yes, I'm YOUR WIFE. After more than thirty years I think I'm aware."
"Then how could you flirt with him? How could you flatter him? How could you invite him here? How could you let him into our room?"
Her glass makes a cracking sound when she slams it onto the side table.
"Because!" If she hears the high-pitch of hysteria in her voice she doesn't let it slow her down. "Because you weren't here. You couldn't be bothered to look at me. Because you've made it abundantly clear that my opinion means nothing to you and that I am too daft to hold a conversation with. Because I'm not ready to be the Dowager quite yet and I longed for a friend. You, my best friend, could not be bothered! I needed you to hear me and you couldn't be bothered."
"So that's a reason to let him fuck you."
As soon as the whiskey soaked words leave his mouth, he longs to reach out and grab them back. Her face, already pale in the shadows of the library, whitens further. He is fairly sure that if she hadn't already slammed down her drink, the crystal glass would be crossing the few feet separating them, aimed straight at his temple.
He is prepared for her anger. For her righteous indignation. He is prepared for her to call him a cad, a bastard. He aches for the fire of her temper to match his. Perhaps then they will ignite together and emerge from the ashes renewed and strengthened.
He is not prepared for blank expression, her palms up in supplication, the defeated drop of her thin shoulders..
"I'm sorry." She whispers into the darkness looming between them.
He is not prepared to forgive her.
He is not prepared to forgive himself.
He doesn't recall setting aside his drink or standing. He doesn't recall the few steps required to cross the space between them and take her in his arms. But Cora is real and stiff in his embrace and their noses bump when he clumsily turns her to face him. His hips rut relentlessly of their own accord and he clenches at her with helpless need. She is his lifeline.
She is his. He will remind them both of that fact.
He will not lose her. He cannot survive it. His lips scorch across her chilled skin and his teeth seek the reassuring thrum of her pulse in her neck.
"Mine." He groans. "Mine, mine, mine, mine, mine."
She is beatific beneath him, pale and cool and he wants to devour her. Does she not know that holds his very heart in the palm of her hands? Does she not know that he would cease to exist without her, would wither away and disappear without the force of her love holding him steady?
She does not, his traitorous mind replies. And it is your fault.
Renewed vigor and a need to reset their bond fills him and his mostly thoughtless seduction becomes more precise. He presses his fingers to her core and is not particularly surprised to find her warm and dry. She is stiff in his embrace and he knows exactly how to enact a thaw.
He drops to his knees before her, a supplicant at her altar and he fumbles with her nightdress before drawing it up high enough to reveal his goal. Dark curls and porcelain thighs and his mouth almost waters at the sight. He makes no preliminaries before pressing his face to her, before slipping his tongue between her folds. She is as necessary to him as air, and the first taste of her on his lips soothes the savage thing in his chest. He shifts his head, kissing her sex deeply, relieved to hear his broken name echoing from above.
"Ro-ro-ro-ummmmm.." He is even harder, trapped in his pajama pants and even more determined to possess her. He wants to leave her with only one name on her lips, in her brain, between her thighs. He pushes her legs further and presses his finger into her a little carelessly. He is rewarded with a rush of wetness and her palm cups his neck drawing him closer. He can hardly breathe as she grinds her hips against his working mouth. But if he is to die, this is the way he wants to go suckling at his wife's essence and erasing her mind of all others.
He nibbles down rather hard on the bundle of nerves and her entire body jerks.
"There." He says, satisfie. He cannot look at her right now, as much as he wants to possess her. There is something angry and painful rising once more between them, flickering and singeing and threatening to set them ablaze. If he looks at her, if he watches her sooty lashes flutter against her cheeks, he will be done and he will let her slip away.
And so he turns her away and she clumsily braces herself on the writing desk. He pushes his pants down only far enough to free his member and then bunches her nightdress at her hips. Roughly he toes her legs further apart and the heat of her draws him in.
Cora trembles beneath him. Cora trembles.
At once, his nerve wanes and he is about to let her go, shame already burning in his face. Taking her this way, without asking if she even wants it, seeking to mount her as though she is a possession and not his partner. He cannot.
"Don't," She growls, and he can hear the tears in her throat even as she presses yearningly against him. It is permission and plea in a single word, and all the encouragement he requires. Confidence restored, he shifts his hips and he is inside her.
"Mine," He ruts against her, something foreign and rough taking him over when he bites the back of her neck. It will mark her, and the thought of her porcelain skin bearing his mark sets him aflame once more.
"Yes," she whispers and rocks against him in counterpoint, reaching a hand to cover the one steadying her against her abdomen. She attempts to thread their fingers and he pulls away to hold her hips instead, slapping against her.
"Mine." He cannot control his thrusts and they are forceful, the desk rocking precariously beneath them.
"Yes."
"Mine." His forehead is against her spine when he spills inside her and her back is wet from exertion and, he is not surprised to find, his tears.
Yours, he wants to say. But doesn't.
(2/3)
One more part left to go and there's one party we haven't heard from yet.
Cora's Jasmine scent is a very unsubtle nod to Ohtobealady's "An English Summer" which is my new obsession. If you haven't read it - what are you even doing with your life?