He goes upstairs to see his wife and he can hear her and Mary laugh before he has even reached the door. He hopes it is a good sign, not just for Cora's well-being but also for Mary's. He has felt quite sorry for his eldest daughter for years and he wants her to be happy. It is what she deserves and he has been worrying about her. He is sure that she had hoped that Mathew would return her feelings and while he knows for a fact that Matthew does, so far the boy does not seem to have come to his senses. But maybe he has done so now. When he opens the door to the bedroom both his wife and their eldest daughter look at him and he marvels at how alike they look. Mary maybe a lot more like him than she is like her mother, but she looks almost exactly like Cora. Mary gets up the moment he enters the room and says "Well, I better make that telephone call now."

"Yes. Good luck." His daughter walks past him and just like Sybil did only minutes earlier, Mary too gives him a kiss on the cheek and says "I love you."

"What has gotten into her?" he asks Cora. Mary hasn't told him that she loved him in years. He of course knows that she does, he would never doubt it and it doesn't bother him that she never says it because it is just not like her to say it.

"I've told her that I told you about Pamuk and that you weren't mad at her."

"I thought we'd agreed that I talk to her about that." He is secretly glad though that Cora has taken this from him, he wouldn't have known how to go about it and he is sure that his wife found the right words, she always does, she is so much better at talking to their daughters about personal matters than he is. He loves those girls with all his heart but there are things he can't talk about and this would have been very uncomfortable for him, considering that what Mary did with Pamuk is exactly what he does not want to think about his girls doing.

"Yes, we did. But she needed to know now. That telephone call she is going to make is to invite Richard Carlisle here for tomorrow. She'll break it off with him then."

"Finally. How did you get her to do that?"

"I didn't. It was Matthew. She said that he had kept his part of the bargain and that it was now time that she kept hers."

"Hm. I hoped there was more to it."

"There is more to it, Robert. He told her he'd propose to her again once she had sacked Carlisle. And she has already told him that she'll say yes." This almost makes him dance with joy. He hoped for it so much, both Mary and Matthew deserve happiness. Those two have been through so much that they should be happy for the rest of their lives, they should be as happy as he is.

"Finally. It has taken them long enough."
"Yes." The smile on his wife's face is one of the most beautiful he has ever seen and he wishes he could kiss her now, really kiss her, not just a peck on the cheek. "Darling, I want to kiss you too, but I am afraid I can't."

"How did you?"

"Thirty years of happy marriage." He kisses the hand he's been holding the whole time and her smile becomes even more lovingly.

"Tom is coming here. I talked to him."

"You invited him to dinner?"

"I invited him to stay. Sybil promised she would stay until you were on your feet again and that will be months. We can't keep them apart for that long. I told Tom he could marry her as soon as you were well enough to attend a wedding."

"He agreed to that?"

"After some discussion, yes."

"Discussion. I hope you didn't scare the poor boy too much." He has to chuckle about Cora calling Tom 'the poor boy'. He often thinks of Matthew as 'the boy', although Matthew is 33 years old and he wonders if he will ever think of Tom as 'the boy' too, although after the discussion he had with Tom in the afternoon he doesn't think it unlikely. Tom really seems to have a good head on his shoulders, he is well read, intelligent and not afraid to ask questions, in short he is quite a lot like Matthew.

"I didn't scare him at all. I just talked to him and we discussed some things. On a very friendly level. 'The boy' as you say has a good head on his shoulders and he really does love our little girl."

"It is what matters the most."

"It is the only thing that matters, Cora. If your illness has taught me one thing, it is that love is all that matters, that it should be put above all."

"I'm glad you see it that way."

"You are tired, aren't you?"

"Yes, darling. I'm sorry."

"Why don't you lie down and I read to you until you are asleep?"

"Would you?"

"Yes."

He stays in her room long after she has fallen asleep. He contemplates his talk with Tom and realizes that some of Tom's answers and questions had bordered on cheeky and he is about to be indignant but then realizes that the boy probably reacted the way he did because he himself had been very open with him and he finds that he doesn't regret it. If Tom really is to be his son-in-law then he will have to get to know him. He doesn't want a son-in-law he only sees on Christmas and New Year's Eve because that would mean seeing the girl who married him only on Christmas and New Year's Eve and that certainly would be very hard on him. He sometimes wonders how Cora's mother can stand living on the other side of the ocean, how she can deal with hardly knowing her daughter anymore, but then he thinks that Cora never had a very close relationship to either one of her parents. She often jokingly says that her mother is too American for her but he thinks that maybe it is true and Cora's mother really has become too American for her or rather that Cora has become to English. He is of course glad that Cora harbors no wish to return to America but he sometimes wonders if she doesn't miss her family. He asks her about from time to time and she always says that her mother, brother and favorite aunt all still write to her regularly and that she can live with that very well because her children and husband are at Downton. He strokes her hair now and she murmurs something in reply. He halts his movement for a second and she says "don't stop" more or less audibly and so he doesn't stop.

When the dressing gong rings he leaves Cora although he doesn't really want to, but he can't stay away from the dinner table the first night that Tom is there. When he gets downstairs all three of his girls and Tom and Matthew are already there and true to his promise, Tom wears a dinner jacket. He doesn't look as uncomfortable as Robert had thought although that could be due to that fact that Matthew has involved Tom in a conversation about the estate. He has to smile at that and wonders if he will be the laughing stock of society, allowing his eldest daughter to marry a lawyer and his youngest to daughter to marry a chauffeur. But he'd much rather be the laughing stock of society than the father of unhappily married daughters. Neither Mary nor Edith seem to be too fazed by Tom being there, on the contrary they both act welcomingly towards him too and he is thankful for it because as Tom will be a member of the family soon, he should be treated as such. When the girls go through to the drawing room after dinner and he stays behind with Tom and Matthew, he decides that now is as good a time as ever to give them the 'father-of-the-bride' talk and he can give it to both of them this way, so he'll only have to do it once.

"Listen, you two. I am not going to give you a long speech now but there are a few things I'd like to say. We, that is Cora and I, love our girls very much and all we really want for them is to be happy. But once they are married, they can only ever be really happy if they are happily married. I know that neither one of you would purposely hurt them, don't think that I don't know that, but there are a few crucial points to a happy marriage. Don't drag out fights. If you disagree, say so but don't make a point of it. Fight for what you think is right, but never for just being right. Be open with your feelings, don't hide anything. And if you come across a rough patch, don't give up. Fix what has been broken. That's all I have to say." He gets up and leaves the room without looking back at them.

"So you are going to marry Mary?" He has to smile at Matthew who looks utterly taken aback.

"We've talked about it, we will eventually but she hasn't even sacked Carlisle yet. But I suppose that Mary told Cora and that Cora told Robert. By the way, if there is something you don't want too many people to know about, always take into consideration that Robert and Cora tell each other everything. Once you've told one of them, you've told the other."

"And it is the same with you and Mary."

"It will eventually be like that, yes."

"Matthew, I am really happy for you. I've been rooting for you and Mary right from the start."

"Thank you. So have you moved here for good?" For good? Is Matthew crazy? He could never live at Downton for good. Admittedly, dinner had been a lot easier to get through than he had thought or rather feared, but it had only been Matthew, Mary, Edith, Robert, Sybil and him. He supposes that Cora wouldn't have made things more complicated but the Dowager certainly would have done so, maybe even Matthew's mother would have complicated things and he doesn't even care to think about what it will be like when there are guests. Or what his mother and brother would say if he stayed at the Abbey permanently.

"No. Just for the time being."

"All right. Should we join the others?" He isn't sure whether Matthew believes him, but he doesn't want to fight him on it because he thinks that maybe, Matthew could become his friend and he needs a friend in this family.

When they go into the drawing room Sybil is talking to both of her sister about women's rights to vote and miraculously they all seem to agree on it. Their father is watching them with a smile on his face and looks as if he actually enjoyed listening to his daughters.

"What do you think, Robert? Should women have a right to vote?" It is Matthew who asked the question, he wouldn't have dared to ask something like that.

"A few years ago I'd have said 'no', but I think I've changed my mind. Why shouldn't women be allowed to vote? I used to think that one vote per family was enough, but there are families in which opinions differ greatly. So yes, I think that every adult, regardless of gender, should have the right to vote. Although I am afraid that Cora won't get it, she is still an American."

"Our Papa, an advocate for women's rights. Who would have thought?"

"Thank you Edith, for your high opinion of me." He wonders for a moment if Edith is in trouble but then he sees both Edith and her father laugh and he wonders what the family dynamics are really like, what 'the Crawleys' are like when they are just amongst themselves.

"On that note, my dear girls, I'll go to bed. Make fun of me all you like as longs as I don't have to hear it." Robert and all the girls then get up and he gives each one of them a kiss on the cheek in turn. He would have never thought the mighty Earl of Grantham to do something like that, but it seems to be regular occurrence as neither of the girls seems to be surprised.

"Goodnight Tom. Matthew, if you want to sleep here, your room is ready. Just let someone know, they'll tell your mother if you want to let her know. Although she will probably know where you are."

"Thank you, I'll stay. I have a meeting with Jarvis at eight tomorrow morning and I've already told Mother that I might not come back tonight."

"Alright, I'll see you at breakfast then." The Earl, Robert, leaves and they are left to their own devices. Robert didn't say a word about chaperoning or behaving well and he wonders if he just forgot or if he trusts all of his daughters and Matthew and him so implicitly that he didn't think that warnings were necessary.

"Are you really allowed to make fun of your father?" He can't believe that the might Earl would sanction that.

"As long as no one besides us and Mama hear it, yes. Why should he not allow it? He makes fun of other people as well and I think it is for the best that no one knows what he and Mama talk about in their bedroom." It is Edith who answered and he is slightly surprised by that, almost as surprised as he is by the term 'their bedroom'.

"So, how was dinner with Tom?"

"I thought you would be asleep." He is either teasing her or stalling and she dearly hopes that it is teasing. If he stalled, it would mean that dinner did not go that well and she wants Tom to be part of the family and if he is teasing her it means that it did go well and that he isn't as careful with her any more, which she would appreciate very much. She might be sick physically but she certainly should be allowed some fun.

"Robert."

"What?" He has now sat down on his side of the bed and looks at her as if he had no idea what she wanted to know and she thinks there is a twinkle in his eye.

"You know."

"I don't." He is certainly teasing her.

"Tell me."

"Tell you what?" He can look so innocent when he wants to. She moves a little closer to him and begins to tickle his side.

"Stop it."

"Not until you tell me."

"Cora, I am warning you."

"About what?"

"If you don't stop"
"If I don't stop?"

"Then I'll do this." He grabs her, pushes her on her back and hovers over her. She knows that he did it without thinking, that he momentarily forgot how sick she is, but it makes her very happy nonetheless. She hopes that he will kiss her but he doesn't and moves away from her instead. It probably is for the better, she doesn't want him to get sick too but she is still disappointed, if only for second.

"I am sorry darling, I shouldn't have done that. I forgot that you are still sick."

"Don't worry. So will you tell me now? About dinner with Tom?"

"There is nothing much to tell. It went rather well. Sybil was of course over the moon and so was Matthew. I think Matthew needs a friend, a man his own age. Edith was surprisingly friendly to him but I am not complaining about that. And Tom didn't seem to feel too out of place, which is a good sign. He wore the dinner jacket I asked him to wear, so maybe he has accepted that he sometimes has to play by our rules if he wants to marry into this family."

"I doubt that Tom wants to do that, Robert. He loves Sybil, but he doesn't love us."

"No. But Matthew wasn't too keen on us at first either and he came around too." She has to laugh about that. Calling Matthew 'not too keen' on them is quite an understatement, Matthew was prepared to dislike them all, except for Mary perhaps. Matthew didn't believe in class divides, he still doesn't, not really, which is probably why he is excited about Tom joining the family. But Robert is right, in many aspects Matthew has come around. He cares about the estate and its legacy and he has accepted his role as the next Earl of Grantham even if he will probably be far more liberal than Robert is, although Robert actually is quite liberal himself. He may not always seem like it, in fact she thinks that Robert can sometimes appear to be rather stuck-up, but he isn't, he has never been stuck-up, he was just raised in a conservative world. But if he was as much of a traditionalist as some people belief him to be, he wouldn't live the life he lives. He wouldn't spend every night beside his wife, he wouldn't have allowed her, in fact helped her, to raise their daughters to be independent and outspoken, he wouldn't have accepted Matthew so openly and he certainly wouldn't view her as an equal to him.

"Yes, he did. I am glad he did. It means quite a lot to you, doesn't it?"

"Yes. I love him like a son." She squeezes his hand when he says that. She has known this for years of course, but he has never said it to her, not so plainly. His worries about Matthew when he was in the trenches, when he was missing and later injured spoke for themselves and she felt rather sorry for him. She can't feel exactly the same about Matthew because she is not like a mother to the boy with him actually living with his mother but she loves Matthew regardless of that. He has done quite a lot for the family and is doing more every day, after all he even gave up being a lawyer to help Robert and thereby her, even if it is only a temporary arrangement.

"I know you do and I am glad about it."

"You don't think it is wrong?"

"No. It doesn't make you love our girls any less, so there is nothing wrong about it. And I know that you have always wanted a son."

"I am sorry."

"Don't be, there is nothing wrong with wanting to have a son, I wanted one too, you know that. I love our girls very much but I also wanted a son, just as much as you did."

"You know that I don't blame you, don't you?" She isn't really sure what he means, whether he means that she is not to blame for them having only girls or whether he means that he doesn't blame her for the death of the one son they could have had. But she knows that he doesn't blame her for either one of those things, so she just says "I know Robert. And I love you for it." He kisses her hand now and looks at her and she can see that there are tears in his eyes.

"I wish he had lived." He has never talked about their son, not since the day after the miscarriage. She never asked him to talk about it although she would have liked to have talked to him about it but she also knows that it wouldn't have done Robert or her or their relationship any good if she had forced him to talk about their dead baby boy.

"So do I."

"He would have turned six this year."

"Yes. And he'd be driving us mad and we'd love him for it." Robert laughs at that but it is a sad laugh, one that makes her want to hug him, makes her want to kiss him and take his troubles away. But she can't. She will never be able to take this burden of him, a part of him will always mourn the loss of his son and she can't take his troubles away for a short while because she is too weak to even get up, let alone do anything else.

"He'd probably be like boy version of you."

"There would be an American Earl then, sometime in the future."

"My mother would try to turn him into a proper English man but she wouldn't be successful."

"No, she wouldn't. But she'd love him all the same. Just as we would."

"Yes. Cora, I am so sorry for leaving you alone with it. I am sorry for never mentioning him, but I just couldn't. It hurts too much, it still does." He looks so defeated now and she has to make him feel better, so she leans forward, disregarding the pain that it puts her in, takes his face between her hands and kisses him on the lips. It isn't more than a swift kiss, they shouldn't and she couldn't do anything else but she pours all the love she feels for him into that one kiss.

"Robert, it will always hurt a little, but there is nothing we can do about it, is there? When can talk about him from time to time, but that is all we have of that little boy. But let's not start to wallow in self-pity now."

"I won't wallow in self-pity. I am too happy for that. I know this sounds contradictory and maybe it is, but that is how I feel. Besides wishing that our boy had lived, my life is quite perfect the way it is. You will get well again and two of our three daughters are about to be very happy and I am sure that Edith will be happy eventually as well."

"We should help her with that, although I don't really know how to do that." She really doesn't know how to accomplish that, although she dearly wishes she could. The fact that she spends all of her time in bed and can't even read has made her think about many things and Edith is someone she has thought about rather a lot. Mary and Sybil are about to marry the men they want to marry and while Cora doesn't believe that a woman's happiness necessarily depends on a man, she knows that Edith longs for love.

"We'll think of something."

"Yes."

"My mother has asked to see you. I told her I didn't know whether you were well enough for it, but I think you shouldn't deny her a visit for too long because she is very worried about you. She won't believe either me or Sybil that you are getting better every day, she wants to see it for herself." This rather touches her. She has long since stopped to believe that her mother-in-law hated her, she doesn't even think that she dislikes her, but wanting to check on her to make sure that she is alright is touching regardless of that.

"Send her here tomorrow, I'd like to see her and I am sure she will want to talk about Mary sacking Carlilse which will happen tomorrow as well."

"Well, you'll have something to talk about then."

"Yes. Carlisle, Mary, Matthew, Sybil and Tom. It is quite a lot, so I should probably go to sleep now lest I fall asleep tomorrow while your mother talks to me."

"She would never forgive you for that." She knows Robert isn't serious but she wants to go to sleep all the same. So she lies down, takes his hand and closes her eyes. She feels Robert placing a soft kiss on her forehead and then she falls asleep.


AN: Thank you so much for the many reviews, they are really encouraging (I am bordering on frustration at the moment, so some people telling me that they like what I write is a huge help).

I have an insane amount of work to do over the next two and a half weeks and will probably not be able to update regularly, maybe even not at all (although I hope it won't come to that). I hope you won't forget about me :)

Kat