A/N: So I'm veering away from the story a tiny bit. Forgive me? :)

That same morning as Robert and Cora docked in New York, Martha Levinson woke up in her ornately decorated bedroom in Newport. Sitting up in bed, she smiled as she remembered that today was the day—Cora was finally coming home.

It had been several years since Cora had stepped foot into the Newport house, since before her marriage, at least. Leaning back into her pillow, Martha tried to remember exactly when she had been in the house last, and it took her a few moments before remembering the precise time...

Cora was nineteen going on twenty. It was late May and the family had closed up the house in Cincinnati in favor of spending the summer months in Newport, as was customary of families of their wealth. Martha had even convinced her husband to take off some time from work and spend May and June with them. She had been sitting in the garden reading one afternoon soon after they had arrived when she heard her husband approaching from the house. Sitting beside her on the bench, he was quiet for a moment before turning to her to speak-

"Martha, I think it's time we do something about Cora."

Looking up at him from her book with a slight frown, Martha studied her husband's face for a moment before responding.

"What do you mean do something about her?"

"You know exactly what I mean, and we've had this conversation before. You saw her at the party the other night talking to that Elmsworth boy without a care in the world. She doesn't understand how the world works these days, Martha. And before long, it will be too late for us to teach her."

"Isidore—what precisely are you telling me?"

"I'm telling you we need to do something about our daughter, and soon. If she marries one of these local boys who's only after her money and has nothing to offer her, she'll waste her life known only as the daughter of a businessman with no power of her own. Do you want your daughter to always be seen as new money like we are when we walk into a room? Is that the life…the legacy, you want for Cora?

He paused to let the seriousness of his words sink in before he looked his wife directly in the eye and waited for her response. A response though, did not come. Martha sat processing his words in silence for a few moments before he stood to head back inside.

"You know I'm right, Martha. The awful truth is, we're not getting any younger. And neither is Cora."

She offered her husband a pained look before turning back to the garden, listening to his footsteps in the grass all the way back to the house.

Over the next several days Martha watched her daughter closely, her husbands words still ringing in her head. As much as she hated to admit it, as usual, he was right. She doubted that Cora was ready to marry but she saw the potential for disaster looming on the horizon; or at least what she interpreted as potential disaster. If Cora were to marry one of the sons of her husband's business partners, or some local Cincinnati or Newport boy, she would always be Cora Levinson, daughter of Isidore Levinson. Her life would peak at twenty, and she would spend the rest of her life bringing up children and always feeling a tinge of embarrassment when she was introduced at a society gathering or party. The same tinge of embarrassment Martha felt every time she interacted with the "old money" women of New York and Newport; the feeling that she would never be quite worthy enough, regardless of how large a fortune her husband amassed or how many diamonds were on her necklace.

And so with much hesitation, Martha began making plans. She conferred with her husband, who suggested London. In her wildest dreams—or nightmares—she never imagined that Cora would want to go, much less go with the intention of being courted, however as time would tell, she was proved wrong on both predictions. Cora was curious at the prospect of visiting such a far away place, and the moment she saw her daughter lock eyes with The Viscount Downton at some stuffy ball in London weeks later, she knew it was all over.

The young Viscount had asked her daughter to dance that evening, and several days later he paid their rented London home a visit to see Cora. Cora's eyes had lit up when Martha had gone to fetch her from her room to tell her about the visitor and in the pit of her stomach, she knew she would be leaving England without her daughter come the end of summer.

One visit turned into two and two turned into ten. She watched as they spent the summer in a careful dance of courtship. She could see her daughter was smitten with the boy; he was reasonably handsome, soft-spoken, and far more well mannered than any of the young men bumming around the New York social scene. The young man though, was extremely difficult for Martha to read. He smiled politely when Cora spoke to him, and his gaze would follow her when she walked out of the room, but soon after he had begun paying calls the details of the situation had begun to unravel as well. The Viscount Downton needed a wealthy wife; a fact confirmed by his father, who wrote to Martha suggesting that their children would make a practical match. Practical. Such an unromantic word, Martha remembered thinking.

The boy did seem kind, but did he love her daughter? Martha suspected not. He may have loved the idea of her, but he did not love Cora, not yet at least. He did not know or understand the girl from America who spent her childhood summers collecting shells on the beach, the girl who laughed with such vigor it could be heard from all floors of the house, and the girl whose parents had shipped her off to a foreign country to give her a chance to attain something greater than she knew. He didn't know the little girl she had raised and her greatest fear was that he never truly would.

But, when in the middle of August Cora came rushing into the drawing room wide-eyed and hand outstretched, Martha held her tongue. Gazing down at the large sparkling diamond ring that adorned her daughter's finger, and then looking up at her beaming expression, she could not bear to be the one to break the illusion. Cora, her Cora, was an adult now. And if she wanted to risk everything to gain the name Crawley and the title Countess, it was not Martha's place to stop her.

This was after all precisely what she and Cora's father had hoped for, was it not?

So that December, after extending their stay in London, she and her husband sat in the pew of a large drafty church in the countryside and watched their daughter walk down the aisle toward a young man who looked far less sure than he should have. The day before she watched as Cora dipped her pen into a dark inkwell and signed away her fortune. The fortune she and her husband had worked for, for Cora, was all gone in an instant. Not only did he have the money though, Robert Crawley had claimed her daughter as well.

When she had returned to Cincinnati with her husband after the wedding, Martha had expected life to be slightly different. News that she was the mother of a future Countess had circulated throughout all the social circles but startlingly, nothing had really changed. Now instead of being known as the wife of a dry goods millionaire, she was known as the mother than had sold her daughter off to a land-rich, money-poor future Earl. Never mind the fact that Martha only wanted Cora back, it hadn't even been her idea in the first place! It was then Martha realized that she would never be washed clean of her history, of her roots; she would never quite fit in with the society her economic status placed her in no matter how wonderfully her daughter flourished. Her only consolation was that for Cora, life would be different. At the very least, she had saved Cora.

During the first few months of Cora's absence it seemed as though there was a letter from her in the post every day. Each letter was written in Cora's careful but loopy handwriting. They were conversational; she spoke of the estate, of his family, and of the parties and events she attended in London. She knew her daughter though, and reading through each of those early letters, she knew Cora was unhappy.

Through some miracle or strike of luck several months into the marriage, the tone of the letters shifted. She could feel Cora's happiness floating off the pages, and she worried a little less each day that she had ruined her daughter's life. Cora wrote about the things she and her husband were doing on the estate, and how she finally felt as though she belonged there. When the newlyweds came to visit her and Isidore in New York a little over a year after they had married and Martha saw the way they looked at one another she was finally reassured that Cora would be not just alright, she would be happy. She saw the tender way her son-in-law looked at Cora and the way they reached for each other's hand when they thought no one was looking. Heavens, one of the maids had even caught them in a rather compromising position in a dark hallway late one evening. So when she saw the two of them off on their return to England, Martha was finally confidant that Cora's happiness was safe with Robert.

Sitting up in bed again this summer day Martha smiled once more as she thought of it all, and how the much change the last several years had brought. Cora was a mother now, as well, and she had shifted into the position of Countess with relative ease. Her husband was no longer there to bear witness to their greatest success, but as she sat up and rang for breakfast, Martha knew he would have been proud. And, best of all—in mere hours, Cora would finally be home.