Cora sat in silence as her mother's maid tugged a comb through her damp locks. Her mother had insisted she take a bath, chattering on and on about the restorative quality of lavender, and Cora had numbly allowed herself to be led upstairs, still clutching the packet of letters, and then to be undressed and submerged in the steaming water. Someone, at some point, must have taken them, though. For, as Cora looked down at her hands now, they were empty. There were no letters. The evidence had been so ably carried off and hidden from view, and the familiar glint of her wedding rings was absent as well. She could not bear to look at them—not now.
After completing her task in silence, Ellis removed herself with the promise to bring breakfast early—so as they might leave on time for the train. Cora only blinked dumbly, fog invading all rational thought.
Sleep seemed the obvious choice. It was sleep, of course, that seemed best in a time like this. What else beyond strong liquor, perhaps, could possibly dim the pain, could possibly stifle the onslaught of emotions that threatened to spill? When she was a young girl and in pain or heartache, Cora would cry into her pillow, smothering the sound and feeling in expensive silks and the perfume of her bed linen. The bed here felt impossibly foreign, sheets scratching against her bare ankles as she slipped beneath, and she wondered for the hundredth time that evening where her husband would be sleeping on this night.
Robert plagued her thoughts. An inky poison that seemed intent to make its way throughout every pore of her body, Cora could not seem to shake the image of his face, smiling with impossibly blue eyes on the street, from this afternoon. Silvers of memory, an etching of them walking along the lake, a moment beside the fireplace with their fingers entwined, the night on the return train when she'd been sick and he held her close—now they haunted her, now she grasped at them desperately and analyzed, looking for any sign of his falseness, of the grand deception he'd enacted.
But no. As desperate as she was, even now in the dark quiet of the room, as her mother's painful truths carried off the lovely memories of her honeymoon, wedding, and courtship in quick, mournful succession, she could find no moment that felt false—even now. Perhaps that was the crux of it all, the reason it made her feel as though her heart had been shot clean through. He'd done it all without reservation, without a momentary hesitation that she might have seen through. The veneer had never cracked, and so now she lay shattered by the truths forced out by someone else.
It seemed to Robert that absolutely everything and everyone in the world had conspired against him. If he could verbalize the tumult of emotion that had lodged itself deep in his stomach, it would likely be anger. Yes—it was anger more than anything else that had sat with him at the pub all evening. Anger through glass after glass of scotch, and anger as he wandered the streets of London, wondering how on Earth he might explain to everyone that his wife had left him after less than a month of marriage. This was a record, even for him.
More than all that, though, it seemed incredibly unfair. It was unfair the burden that had been foisted upon him. He still heard the intonations of his parents, Downton this and Downton that, and the stern talks of legacy and family. And the letter—the dammed letter—was still wadded up in his pocket. He'd met Cora less than a fortnight after its inscription, and had long forgotten the stupid words as soon as he came face to face with her impossibly blue eyes and intoxicating accent.
As he rounded the corner now, intent upon his destination, he remembered the conversation with his parents after that night. His mother had been in a rage; his father, though, was pragmatic, if not pleased. Everything seemed thrown together, now, and the words played over and over in his brain, relentlessly stringing together like some distorted melody.
"I will not let my son throw away his life for some, some—"
"Violet, careful now."
"Mama, Papa…I don't even know if I want to marry Miss Le—"
"Robert, we've talked about this. Ignore your mother's foolishness. This young woman will make a fine bride, and her dowry will secure Downton for your sons."
"Patrick, what about our son? I cannot let you—"
"—Enough, Violet!—"
"I've spoken to Miss Levinson's father. He's eager to have his wealth and status secured with the gift of our family name."
"But, what of me and Cora, Papa? What if she doesn't want this?"
"It's taken care of, Robert. She'll be pleased to be Countess of Grantham. I promise you."
Promises, yes, they were all so easily made and broken. The weight of it all was impossibly heavy and it seemed inevitable now that eventually it would all come crashing down—how could it not, when the foundation was set upon shaded half-truths and misunderstandings? He'd been foolish, had let himself be manipulated because she was beautiful and he was weak. But what made him angriest was the fact that it had not only brought him down, it had all crushed Cora as well.
Cora tossed and turned for what seemed like hours, but when she reached for the clock on her bedside table found that it had been but a quarter of an hour. The house was steeped in an eerie quiet, the servants having been largely dismissed as they were to leave in the morning, and her mother and Harold had gone to bed long before, feigning exhaustion and a headache respectively. She knew, though, the real reasons. It was intolerable to be around her, it seemed. No one wanted to witness the unraveling, the reddened eyes and sobs that wracked through her body.
She clutched the pillow again, finding it frustratingly uncomfortable, and sunk her nails into the fabric in an attempt to feel something, anything other than the thump thump thump of her aching head.
It was only a few moments later when she heard the noise, quiet at first but soon increasing in volume. It sounded like rocks, she realized after listening for a beat, rocks that were being pelted against the stone of the outside walk. And then a scratching. Or, creaking, maybe. But whatever the sound, it drew Cora out of bed and to the window where she saw the unmistakable figure of her husband standing at the bottom of the trellis, two stories below her, attempting to climb up.
