AN: Violet's sister has a small but significant cameo appearance in the next two chapters, so, as Violet says to her granddaughters in season 2, please "remember your great-aunt Roberta. She loaded the guns at Lucknow." It's my headcanon that this great-aunt Roberta was both Violet's older sister and Susan MacClare's mother. She made her younger sister, who deeply admired her and named her son after her, look like a pushover by comparison.

Also, we've had a lot of angst and a lot of fighting lately...so here's a chapter of happy Robert and Cora with no one poking at them for an afternoon. ;-)

The summer slipped by as Robert waffled back and forth about adopting a foundling. It was not so much that he disliked the idea as that it was such a very foreign concept that he wasn't at all sure what to do with it, and thus he was doing nothing.* He knew it would make Cora happy, he thought it would be good for her, he didn't mind the idea of a baby…but…but…but there were so very many buts.

In August, the Crawleys journeyed north to Scotland for ten days at Duneagle Castle, the home of Robert's cousin Susan, Countess of Newtonmore,** and her young husband and his parents. Susan was the daughter of Violet Crawley's sister, and Aunt Roberta and her husband had arrived at Duneagle as well. The trip had made for a never-ending day of travel by carriage and train, and Robert could tell by Cora's strained expression that none of it was easy on her body.

Nor was it easy on her mind. He had not thought of it beforehand, but the carriage ride down to the Downton train station had been the first time she had seen a horse since last summer. She had shivered slightly at the sight of the animal and looked away, and he had reached immediately for her hand. "I'm not afraid of him," she'd said. "It's only that it makes me remember my fall, and I don't like to think of that."

He had thought she'd forgotten the encounter once they'd arrived and settled in, but her subconscious clearly had not, for he awakened that night to the sound of muffled sobs as she wept into her pillow. She'd had a nightmare, she admitted, about last July's ride, but he learned as he stroked her hair and drew her into telling him more that it wasn't at reliving the accident that she cried, but at the first part of the dream, at the memory of walking into the stables and taking her last steps. "The worst dreams," she whispered through her tears, breaking his heart anew, "are the ones where I dream I'm walking."

He had taken her out alone the next day, not wanting to throw her immediately into the zoo that was his extended family. He worried about Susan and Aunt Roberta's affinities for caustic remarks and thought Cora would handle it best if given time to recover from the journey first. And so they were spending a warm afternoon enjoying Shrimpy's small boat on the nearby loch.

"Robert, do you think I might go for a swim?" Cora asked shyly.

"What did you have in mind?" he asked. He had long ceased to point out why she couldn't do something, having learned that nearly everything was manageable with a bit of thought.

"Well, I don't mean really swim, of course. I just meant get into the water and float for a bit. I'd wear a lifejacket, obviously." He didn't answer at first—even with a lifejacket, the idea of Cora bobbing along in the water, unable to use her legs, troubled him immensely. "I used to swim in the ocean all the time in Newport," she continued wistfully, looking longingly at the water.

He sighed. He knew she was hot under all of her skirts and petticoats, and he did not doubt that she longed for a reminder of her old life in America, as well as for a hint of normalcy.

"You haven't got anything to swim in," he said, feeling himself weaken.

She shrugged. "I could just take my clothes off and swim in my chemise."

"Cora!" he exclaimed, shocked. "You can't—not out here—"

"Oh, don't be so proper. Who's going to see me?"

They were on quite a secluded part of the loch, but… "No one, but suppose someone were to come along…"

"Then they wouldn't see my legs, because they'll be underwater, and they wouldn't see my top, because I'll be covered in a lifejacket. Please, Robert? It would be ever so nice."

He did not like to refuse her anything, but what troubled him more was the fact that, were she not crippled, she could simply take her own clothes off and dive into the water, no permission needed. Denying her something she should not have had to ask for made him feel more like her father than her husband.

"All right, but I am going in with you," he conceded. "And we'll get you in and out quickly before the whole world's seen you."

The wide smile that spread immediately across her face told him he'd made the right decision, and he began to unlace her dress. "And what are you going to swim in?" she asked mischievously as he worked.

"My clothes," he said. He'd given it no thought, but he didn't have to. "I'm not removing anything but my shoes and my socks and my jacket."

She giggled, and he soon had her undressed, the boat littered with feminine clothing. Why did women wear so many clothes? He'd wondered this many times in the last year, often noting as he lifted Cora that half her weight was her skirts.

Yet having her sit before him in only her chemise made her seem as though she might as well be naked, and with a furtive glance around that provoked an eye-roll from her, he quickly wrapped her in the life jacket. Then, wanting to get in the water as soon as she did, he took off the articles of clothing he'd said he would.

"Are you ready?" he asked, lifting her. Cora nodded eagerly.

But he wasn't, he realized as he stood at the edge of the boat with his wife in his arms. Dropping her into the loch went against every fiber of his being, and he tightened his grip and stared at the water.

"Robert?" she attempted after a moment.

"Cora, I'm not so sure that—"

"Oh please? I'll be perfectly fine. I'll float; I've got a lifejacket on. And you're coming in right after me." He nodded, and holding his breath, stooped down to lower her into the water. Her deadened legs dropped rather ungracefully beneath the surface, but the jacket caught the rest of her body, and she bobbed next to the little boat, reaching out to grasp the side of it.

"See?" she said, smiling. "Just fine. And the water feels wonderful." But he was already slipping in next to her, frightened to leave her alone for more than a few seconds.

"Do you want me to swim around a bit and try to pull you with me?"

She chewed her lip and did not answer.

"I don't mind," he said. "You can't pull me under—and if it's too difficult for me to stay afloat, I'll stop."

"No," she said slowly. "I'm not worried about that; I was just wondering, now that I'm in the water…"

"What?"

Without another word, she let go of the boat, pushing off it slightly. Then she began to move her arms in something near a breaststroke, and, ever so slowly, she began to swim, inching forward, away from him and the boat. She could…swim? On her own? With no one's assistance?***

He watched, stunned, until she stopped and turned back to him, her lip trembling.

"Cora?" He hurriedly swam towards her, reaching her as her tears began to spill over.

"I'm all right," she whispered, smiling and wiping her eyes as the tears continued to flow. "It's only—I wouldn't have thought I could—and I didn't think I'd ever move on my own again."

"Oh darling…" He kissed her cheek, remembering her words last night. He knew he could not quite comprehend what it would be like not to be able to cross a room—or even move forward a few inches—without calling for help, what it would be like to be held prisoner by one's own body.

But Cora blinked her tears away and then was off again, swimming freely and taking slow laps around the boat, and they spent a happy afternoon laughing and splashing and floating in the loch. It was another world, suddenly, to have her moving without his help, to act almost as equals here. When they tired, he climbed back into the boat and drew her back in after him, trying not to think of how her soaked, nearly see-through chemise clung to her body.

"That was wonderful," she said as he seated her on the bench and began to help her dry off. He could hear tears threatening again, but she was beaming from ear to ear. "I felt so…free. It wasn't quite like walking, but…almost. And just to be vertical…I hadn't realized how much I'd missed that. I'm sorry." She wiped her eyes and gave a shaky laugh. "I don't mean to be so emotional over a swim."

"Of course you're emotional," he said. He was feeling a tightness in his own throat at her words. "And when we get back to England, I'll have a pool built at Downton," he went on, inventing wildly as he spoke. "With a roof. An indoor bath that you can use all year."

"Can we–can we afford that?" she asked.

"We will afford it," he said, kissing her forehead. It didn't matter what it cost—he'd sell every painting and vase in the abbey if he had to.

*Adoption in the Victorian era was nowhere near the widespread thing it is today. There were certainly people who took in the children of relatives or friends, like Mr. Drewe pretends to be doing, and there were also childless couples like the family Edith finds in Switzerland who adopted babies from people they didn't know, but it was still comparatively rare. Most infertile couples wouldn't have thought, as they often do today, "Hey, why don't we adopt?" It simply wasn't a common thing to do, and thus I don't think Robert's immediate response would be a yes or no, but more of a, "Cora wants to do what?"

**Shrimpy and Susan's son, James, is referred to as the Earl of Newtonmore, so I assume this would have been Shrimpy's title before his own father died.

***Yes, it's possible to swim with your legs paralyzed. (Isn't that cool?) You don't even really need a lifejacket—once you've learned to do it properly, you can keep yourself above water just as well as an able-bodied person. However, I have taken some artistic liberties with this scene. Learning to swim without using your legs does take practice and coaching, so it's a bit unrealistic for Cora to be able to do it so well on her first try. (Although having been a strong swimmer in her childhood would certainly work in her favor.) Also, it's not really safe for someone like Cora to be swimming in water as cool as a Scottish loch probably is. Paralysis usually means that you have trouble regulating your body temperature below your injury, so if Cora were dropped into cold water, hypothermia could occur. At the very least, she wouldn't be comfortable very long. But I decided to set all of that aside for the sake of the story.