If not for his wife, Robert would have woken in up in a particularly bad mood. The sheets on the small inn bed were scratchy and made his skin itch. The sparse room was not outfitted with drapes and so the early morning sun had woken him most annoyingly from sleep. And further, if he had any lingering love of bicycling, it was rather clear that he never wanted to set foot, or, well, behind, on a bicycle ever again; his muscles ached painfully when he sat up and he felt soreness in places that would be far too ungentlemanly to mention.

But even with all that stacked against him, Robert woke, took one look around the room, and was unable to conceal his grin. Cora was already up and gathering their scattered clothes from the floor; stark naked, his wife looked even more beautiful in the warm sun than she had in the bright moonlight only a few hours before. She, too, grinned when she saw he was awake and crossed the room in a few quick steps to press a kiss to his forehead and then his lips.

"You're awake," she noted, a hint of amusement in her voice.

"Of course," he confirmed, "I'm amazed I managed to sleep for so long with that bloody sunlight." He chuckled mirthfully, his words belied by his light tone.

"You were snoring," Cora noted, finally reaching down for her slip and drawing it up over her head—much to Robert's disappointment. She rolled her eyes playfully after adjusting the fabric and laughing at his befuddled expression. "I thought you would be eager to get home, darling."

"Oh, I am; it's just—" Robert trailed off, gazing appreciatively at his wife. The light silk chemise clung gracefully to Cora's body, making him forget his sore muscles in favor of far more pleasant bodily reactions.

She looked at him, expectantly, until he fidgeted just so, catching her gaze just as her eyes traveled downward to the sheets covering his lower body. "You're just more eager to stay here?" Cora laughed again, crawling onto the bed and tilting her head up to kiss him once more. And when her hands trailed lower, following the path her gaze had just taken, she murmured, "very eager, apparently," rubbing her palm over the bulge in the sheets as he groaned in blissful reply.

They were not newly married, not anymore at least. Their second anniversary was fast approaching but Robert still found himself utterly enchanted when Cora's soft, breathy voice whispered his name against his skin. He felt chills run up and down his back when she kissed him and her touch absolutely never failed to ignite a fire in his blood unlike anything else he'd ever experienced. But this morning was not one of the ordinary mornings the two spent sequestered in bed, relishing in all the delights married life offered. No, they were still in the small inn room and no matter how he tried to lose himself in Cora's touch and kisses, the aches in his back, or the random spasms of his leg muscles continued to nag at him.

It was just as he attempted to flip his wife over, her legs just about to wrap around his torso, that he let out a pronounced yelp of pain, doubling over onto his side as Cora hopped up with a terrified look painted across her face.

"Darling?" Cora's voice shifted from warmth to worry in a remarkably short amount of time. In an instant she knelt beside him on the bed, running her fingers through his hair and asking if she should call for the doctor?

Robert shook his head and managed a smile-like grimace as he sat back up. "No, no, I'm just rather sore from the riding yesterday." When he saw Cora's bewildered expression, he amended, "our bicycle ride."

"Oh, my poor darling," Cora curled her arms around his neck and pressed kiss after kiss to his cheeks and forehead. She murmured quiet adorations into his ear and promised to take care of him until he felt better. And to that end, she soon moved off the bed and finished dressing—asking only for help with her corset—so that she could go downstairs and have a note sent up to Downton requesting the carriage come to pick them up.

And but an hour later, it did.

Robert watched with slight dismay as Eliot, their driver, finagled the two bicycles onto the back of the carriage, muttering something unintelligible as one fell off and had to be retied. The bicycles, it seemed, were perhaps more trouble than they were worth. And that fact was confirmed on the carriage ride back to Downton, when over each and every bump they went over, Robert winced in pain.

It was all he could do to remove himself from the carriage without Eliot's help as Cora looked on sympathetically. She reached for his hand the second his feet made contact with the gravel driveway, but he shrugged off her grasp, feeling terribly weak and more than a little embarrassed. He smiled at her sheepishly and promised to find her later in the day, feigning a headache and a stack of paperwork that needed to be tended to before his parents returned. Cora, feeling particularly indulgent due to his injury, said nothing and only nodded, wandering off to the drawing room to write some letters.

Paperwork proved a harder task than he anticipated, too. Well, no, the paperwork was not hard—but his bloody desk chair certainly was. He could not find a single sitting position that did not make his back and, er, behind, ache in protestation. He considered lying across the settee for a brief second but quickly shook the thought from his mind when he considered what his mother would think.

Nevertheless there was paperwork that needed to be completed and he had told Cora he would be busy for hours. He felt foolish for brushing off her attention; he rather loved when she babied him a bit—but this sort of "injury" was no common cold or sore throat that she could will away with soft words and warm tea. He felt like an utter fool each time he fidgeted uncomfortably, his sore bottom a painful reminder of his boyish whim to go on a bicycle ride. So he tried desperately to play the part of the serious Viscount, frowning down at his paperwork and adjusting his seat cushion conspicuously each time he felt a twinge of pain. And after several hours the paperwork was in fact completed and his bottom was more sore than ever.

Robert trudged up the stairs and tried to suppress the vague sense of dread he felt. The dressing gong would ring and that would mean changing into a stiff dinner jacket and suffering through a long dinner in the dining room, followed by drinks in the library if Cora wanted. It had been a terribly long day; all Robert wanted to do was strip down to his underthings and crawl into bed with a hot water bottle.

As he made his way down the hall he considered doing just that. But even the thought made him feel guilty; he could not leave Cora to dine alone. And so instead, to bolster his spirits, he knocked on her bedroom door before going to change in the hopes that seeing her—as it always did—would brighten his spirits.

After a solid knock on her door, Robert stepped back and waited for several seconds. He wondered if perhaps she was still downstairs but he could hear faint movement from beyond the door. Curious, he stepped back, intending to knock again, just as Cora opened the door, a warm smile gracing her features.

She wore her nightdress and her hair was hanging over one shoulder tied in a loose knot. She looked just as she did before bed, and he frowned in slight confusion.

"Cora, the dressing gong is just about to ring—were you napping?"

She shook her head and reached out for his hand, pulling him into her room. "No, of course I wasn't napping. I was…" she paused, waiting until he was fully in the room before continuing, "preparing all this." And with a sweep of her hand she gestured around the candlelit room.

"I…don't understand," Robert answered, smiling bemusedly at his wife.

"We are dining up here this evening," Cora answered simply, taking a few steps toward the bed where a covered tray already rested.

"Are you set on unconventional dining whilst my parents are away?" Robert joked, nodding at their apparent dinner. Cora only smiled, rolling her eyes at him. "But, really," he asked, "what is all of this?"

"Well," Cora stood and crossed the room again, standing tantalizingly close to him. "You seemed to be in a fair amount of pain after our adventures yesterday and I thought it only right that I nurse you back to health."

"You want to nurse me?" Robert shook his head and chuckled, more than willing to go along with Cora's plans if they included skipping a formal dinner and spending the evening in bed.

Cora, still speaking softly—as if the honeyed tones of her voice would cure him—leaned up and kissed his chin before pointing to his dressing room door and murmuring, "go change; then we'll eat."

Robert very happily complied.

And soon he reentered the bedroom, dressed in his nightwear and dressing gown, to find Cora reclined on their bed with a glass of wine in her hand. She had already set one onto his bedside table and so he, in keeping with her carefully executed plans, picked up his own libation and crawled onto the bed beside her.

He took a few sips before turning to his wife, gratefully, and said, "this is heaven." Careful not to spill his wine, Robert moved a bit closer so that he could steal a kiss before reaching down to the foot of the bed where their food was resting.

They spent the next hour speaking quietly over the crackling fire and feeding each other bites of chicken between long sips of the rich wine. It was heaven, truly, and with each stolen kiss or bite of food passed between them Robert knew how lucky he was in all of it; he knew how incredibly lucky he was to be able to call Cora his wife.

True to her promise to play nursemaid for the evening, when their dinner was finished Cora set about removing the empty plates and glasses and setting everything back onto the tray. She winked at him animatedly before picking up the whole lot of it and setting it outside the bedroom door, ringing the cord to alert one of the servants to come pick it up when she reentered the room.

"Thank you for this," Robert murmured happily, slipping beneath the already warm sheets. He smiled up at his wife and turned onto his side. But Cora only chuckled, walking to his side of the bed and kneeling until they were at eye level.

She kissed his lips, ever so gently, and replied, "the night is far from over, darling," in a tone that made him worry.

He knew that tone. He loved that tone—usually.

It was the tone that meant he was going to get to undress his wife and do unspeakable, exciting, perfect things with her. Oh how he loved that tone. But tonight, taking in her smirk and the hint of mirth in her voice, all he wanted to do was shrink back and crawl beneath the blanket. He could barely move without disturbing his sore muscles. There was certainly no way he would be able to…perform to his usual standards. And he was not about to disappoint his wife. That he would most certainly never live down. And so he smiled, as innocently as he could manage, and answered, "I'm rather tired, my darling."

He waited for her face to fall, or for the displeasure to register in her expression. But if anything, his words seemed to please her. She grinned, standing back up, and kissed his forehead. "I know you are, just give me a moment?"

Curiously, he nodded his assent and watched Cora disappear into the washroom.

When she emerged but a moment later, holding an unmarked bottle, Robert cocked his head curiously, lifting himself back into a sitting positing.

"What is that?" He asked, furrowing his brow when Cora let her dressing gown slip from her shoulders just before crawling back onto the bed, the small bottle still in her grasp.

"Lavender oil," she replied, moving so that she was knelt just beside his feet.

Again, Robert frowned. Cora was smirking, which was nearly always a good thing, but he was admittedly a bit dense at times and really had no clue what she was getting at. So he ventured a guess, asking, "for your hands?" but was met with a low chuckle and a shake of her head.

"No, darling, not quite. Take off your trousers, please."

Robert felt his mouth fall open slightly. "My trousers? But darling, I thought I told you…" He felt ridiculous saying he was tired again. Here was his wife, dressed in a very fetching nightdress, holding a bottle of oil and asking him to take his trousers off. Who was he to deny her this request? And so he complied, trepidatiously, and slipped them off, waiting for some other instruction.

"Your shirt too, I think," she added, smiling with satisfaction when he again complied and removed the garment. "Now," she continued, "turn over."

He heard Cora click her tongue with displeasure when he did actually turn over. Thankfully, she explained herself a second later when she leaned down and whispered, "my poor sweet darling, you're bruised," with particular emphasis on the word 'bruised' so that he would know where exactly she was looking. It was only slight recompense that she was displeased with the bruises and not his unenthusiastic demeanor.

But he had little need for her medical assessment. He had already taken stock of his bicycle injuries when he dressed for dinner. Or bed, rather. Looking in the mirror of his dressing room, he had determined that there were no less than five unfortunate looking bruises on his behind—all thanks to his wonderful new toy. He had made silent plans to have the bicycles donated to the village children first thing the next morning. Cora seemed to take her time gazing at his battle scars, taking stock of each injury and cataloguing it as he lay on his stomach like some sort of beached animal. It was a most embarrassing situation to find oneself in and he'd half a mind to ask her to stop whatever it was she planned on doing so that he could simply go to bed a draw a veil over the entire day.

That is until he felt a dribble of oil hit his back.

"Cora…"

His voice trailed off as more oil hit his back, followed by his wife's hands.

"Shhh, just let me take care of you," Cora murmured. And to punctuate her point, she leaned forward and pressed a warm kiss to the back of his neck before moving back down, straddling his thighs, and starting to massage her hands into the muscles of his shoulders and back.

Robert knew he was tense, his muscles had been strained all day, but Cora's fingers worked like magic on his tired body—pressing and pulling in all the right places. The room was quiet, save for the hum of breath and the crackle of fire, and Cora worked the oil all across his back before doing what he later suspected she had planned to do all along. She spent very little time kneading her fingers into his upper body. In fact it was only a handful of moments before he felt her shift downward again and pull the sheets back further away from him. And before he could ask what precisely she was doing, he felt the press of her fingers, along with the slickness of the oil, against his behind.

Robert was startled, very much so, but made no effort to move. He turned his head, ever so slightly, to ask, "Cora, what are you, uh, doing?" but had to turn back into the pillow a second later when he felt more oil hit his skin and her hands knead into his behind more deliberately. His face flushed to a bright red as he felt her knuckles pressing into a rather fleshy spot.

"I'm taking care of you," she replied simply, as if what she was doing was a perfectly normal course of treatment.

"But you don't have to—Ah!—Ah!—" Robert interrupted himself when she touched upon a particularly sensitive area, flinching involuntarily when her fingers danced over the area between his legs for the briefest of seconds.

He was absolute putty in her hands and was rather glad to be, actually. He quickly forgot about the propriety of it all and instead leaned into his pillow and enjoyed the sensation of his wife's hands running over his slick skin.

Her nails scraped lightly up and down his sides, across the expanse of his back, and then to his behind again where they focused most of their energy on drawing circles into his flesh or kneading a bit harder depending on the sounds he made in response. After almost an hour of this Robert was in a state of utter bliss. And finally, when he could feel the much of the oil had been soaked up into his skin and he was nearly lulled into sleep, Cora leaned forward again and pressed a kiss to his lower back, murmuring, "feel better?"in question.

Robert nodded into his pillow, grinning widely as Cora discarded the near-empty bottle onto the bedside table and flounced back against the pillows beside him.

"Good," she replied, chuckling lowly as she curled her body into his. Her skin was warm and smelled of lavender oil and soap; it made him feel happier than he could explain, and so he gathered her into his arms and pressed his body as close to hers as he could; he loved being close to her like this.

He opened his eyes, having turned onto his side to hold her, and gazed into her relaxed, sleepy eyes. She drew her hand up to his face, tracing her fingers over the rough of his cheek, and smiled warmly, happy that her course of treatment seemed to have the desired effect.

And it had, more than he anticipated it would. Earlier in the night he feared Cora would be upset at his inability to participate in the romantic activities he thought her to have in mind. But she had surprised him, as she often did, and now he felt the urge to return the favor, so to speak. And just because he was still less mobile than usual did not mean they had to forgo every activity. Cora had made that point very clear.

Curling his fingers into the fabric pooled at her waist, Robert brushed his thumb methodically against her thigh, waiting for a response that he could gauge. When Cora's eyes opened again—clearly surprised—and she smirked mischievously at him, he knew precisely what her response entailed.

He was undoubtedly slower in his movements than he might otherwise be. But he had no trouble lifting the skirt of his wife's nightdress just a little higher so that he might snake his fingers beneath. And he had no trouble reaching the juncture between her thighs, either, a move that produced an immediate effect.

Cora tilted her head back, biting her lip as she released a low hiss of pleasure. "Oh, Robert—that—don't—stop," was all she managed as she pressed her body into his touch, arching her back when he moved two fingers over her and began to move them in deliberate circles, the heat it created in her body spurning on his actions. He knew exactly how to touch her, how to please her most, and so he continued with the small circles, pressing the pads of his fingers into her as she cried out his name and squirmed beside him. He found it incredibly arousing, even to listen to her, but knowing it would likely end in more strained muscles and bruises on his behind, Robert endeavored to focus his attentions on Cora rather than relieve his own—albeit tired—excitement.

The focus of his attentions, coupled with their already heightened arousals, made for a rather quick interlude. And soon he felt Cora writhe around his fingers, her body tightening as she reached the climax of her pleasure. Leaning her head against his shoulder, she took a few breaths before wiping away the perspiration that had collected at her brow and kissed him soundly, grinning madly when she pulled back to look at him.

"Oh, Robert, that was…" she trailed off, cupping his face to kiss him once more, before finishing, "…perfect."

Drawing her body close to his again, Robert ran his fingers through her limp curls and smiled, nuzzling his face into her neck. "Darling, I don't know where you learned how to do that," he murmured, already smirking at the memory of her lavender oil, "but it just might make me reconsider keeping our bicycles."

"Oh, please do," she answered softly, sitting up so she could blow the remaining lit candles out, "I rather enjoyed our little adventure. And—" she smiled, so widely he could see it in the newly dark room, and settled into his embrace before finishing, "—and your behind, though now paying the consequences, looked terribly appealing when seated on that bicycle."

"Alright then," he replied, stifling a laugh.

And as he lay back against the pillows, his wife secure in his grasp, Robert thought that perhaps keeping the bicycles would not be such a bad idea, anyway. He would, after all, need a discreet way of getting into the village to procure more of that lavender oil.