Robert stood in the corner of the library nursing a glass of whiskey as he took in the scene. Harold and his friends were crowded round a card table lodging boisterous insults at one another; the smoke from their cigars curled slowly upwards before settling above them like a heavy raincloud. They were all drunk, horribly so, on illicit booze carted up by the caseload from the basement of Harold's townhouse off East 58th street.

Robert shifted on his feet and pressed a thumb against his own glass, watching as a fingerprint appeared in the condensation. He considered that he might be rather drunk as well—a thought he quickly doused with the anesthetic burn of alcohol, taking the last sip from his now-empty glass. A footman materialized seemingly out of thin air with a decanter to refill the vessel. Yes, down with prohibition, he muttered to the waiting servant.

Had it been only three weeks since he arrived at that grimy New York port? He looked up to better calculate the time passed and was distracted by the mahogany-paneled ceiling. The dancing light from the immense marble fireplace reflected against the surface, and it made him dizzy. Yes—no—yes. It had been three weeks since he'd arrived. A month since last he was home.

The slap of a hand against the card table was enough to startle him to attention, and he listened as the raucous group of Americans pointed cigars and fingers into one another's faces, laughing as they lodged claims of card counting and other tricks at their opponents. Robert watched his brother-in-law wave them back into their seats and gesture for the footman with the decanter in one fluid motion. With their glasses refilled, the game was allowed to continue in this den of iniquity.

Really, he'd hardly seen Harold save a few dinners and this week at the trial. His trip had been spent almost entirely at Martha's immense Italianate home a few blocks away. Martha insisted he stay with her—calling Harold's looming trial a witch hunt and an impossible blemish on the family name in equal measure—and had paraded him around at any number of tea parties, lunches, and social events. He poured tea and coffee and politely answered question after question about the estate, the peerage, and even the after-effects of the war, as grey-haired women drenched in floral perfume and decked out in glittering diamonds and rubies smiled at him and complimented his charming accent.

Very often, they asked after Cora. The questions would come as they talked of crowded ballrooms from lifetimes ago. They would claim a daughter or a niece had been such close friends with the beautiful Cora Levinson. They were the only questions that didn't seem to set his teeth on edge, really, for he could smile genuinely, and he could tell them what he imagined Cora would want him to share: stories about the girls, about their grandchildren, about the London season. And they cooed with praise for his wife. She'd pulled it all off so seamlessly. And indeed, she had.

He downed the last of his drink now and rubbed a hand against his aching chest. Oh, he missed her—perhaps tonight even more than yesterday if that were possible. He trudged to an empty leather chair and waved, his arm loose and inaccurate, for the bloody footman with the whiskey. The man did not materialize this time, but his inelegant movement did have the unwitting effect of alerting his brother-in-law to his discontent.

Harold, who sat only a few feet away at the edge of the table, grinned at him with a fat cigar stuck between his teeth. Smoke wafted all around him and Robert, surrounded by the gleaming, dark wood of the library, was reminded of the opening passage of Dante's Inferno.

"My champion!" Harold's voice rang out; his friends clapped in loud, maddening unison. "Come and sit by me."

Harold gestured with his own half-full tumbler to a seat already occupied by one of his adoring sycophants. The man moved immediately, though it took Robert longer than it should have to unsteadily reach the table. Immediately, he was drawn into Harold's embrace, and the shorter man's attempt to put an arm around his shoulder was enough to make him chuckle.

"Have I told you all what a stand-up guy he is?" Harold grinned.

Robert shook his head, ready to protest, but he continued.

"—no, no. He is. You are."

Harold was quite drunk. His eyes were glassy, and he peered at Robert with a curious expression.

"All the way from England for this bullshit. Stand-up guy, my brother-in-law." With his free hand, for the cigar had been dropped onto a gold dish beside him, he picked up his glass and clinked it rather aggressively against Robert's.

"I was happy to help."

Robert was surprised by the low tone of his own voice. He blinked once, twice, and then a third time; the men across the table had doubled in his vision, and he watched with passive interest as they seemed to float back and forth.

"Sure, sure." Harold clapped him on the back and nodded at the footman.

Again, their glasses were filled. "You're a real sport."

Robert felt, certainly not for the first time that evening, a twinge of annoyance. It was late, far later than they ever stayed up these days, and he wondered if there might be some way to make an unnoticed escape back to Martha's. But the room only seemed to grow louder in protest, someone turning on a record player, and Harold was still saying something, for he heard his name again in the brash tone of the man's voice.

"—no, of course it wasn't necessary," he said to the dark-haired man nearest to them. Robert couldn't for the life of him remember the chap's name, though he was fairly certain he was a man of business. No—no. An architect. "—Mother insisted. But I think Robert's had more of a positive effect on her tea parties than on today's proceedings."

Robert coughed at that and cleared his throat in what he hoped was a gesture of clear displeasure.

"You know what I mean, Robert." Harold smiled and wrenched the decanter from the servant just behind them. He poured two fingers of whiskey into their glasses.

"Or—"

He spoke slowly now, turning his attention from the task back to Robert, "maybe you don't. My brother-in-law doesn't have much of a head for business," he explained to the men surrounding them. They'd all dropped their cards onto the table sometime during the exchange, having picked up on the frisson of tension between the brothers-in-law, and assessed the rather drunk aristocrat before them.

"Perhaps not."

Robert spoke the words into his upturned glass. He swallowed slowly, very slowly, and the burn did little to calm his temper. "Though I do have rather a head for avoiding charges of bribery and conspiracy."

Harold's face was impassive. If he was offended, his frozen half-smile and unblinking eyes did not reveal that fact. In some way, the blue, staring eyes reminded him of Cora—Cora when she was unhappy with him but would not say so. And the similarity chilled him. Harold continued to stare, letting silence fall over the table, and took a sip from his glass.

"You're right," Harold said finally. He nodded sagely at his own words. "Best to keep out of the fray. Right, gentlemen?" The men, wearing uneasy smiles, nodded in passive agreement.

"Carter!" Harold shouted for his butler and slapped a hand against Robert's back. "Champagne. We need champagne! We're celebrating, after all."

"Here, here!" Glasses clinked together and claps sounded out. The men returned to their cards. But Harold's hand remained pressed against Robert's back, and he leaned in to speak quietly to him.

"Apologies," he said, offering him another smile. "It's been a long day for me."

Robert nodded and rubbed a hand over his own tired eyes. "As I said, I was happy to help."

Harold chuckled, though the sound lacked any mirth. "I appreciate your selflessness."

"You're family." Robert answered politely.

"True. And it only cost us what—a million and a half? Two? Father never said exactly."

The men at the table did not hear their exchange; indeed, their voices were nearly drowned out by the sound of corks popping. But it was enough to rouse him. And, oh, he hated him then—hated all of them, really. Harold was a spoilt, immature little man with an endless parade of dull, drunken friends to follow behind.

Robert stood, clenched his swollen fingers into a fist, and wondered through the haze of drink how he could explain to Cora a physical fight with her own brother. It would make him feel better, he thought, to knock the man right onto the ground. But, no. That would not do. He could not hit him—not when Harold was still sitting and smiling up at him. What reason would he give her, in any case? After all, Harold was only telling the truth. The shameful, long-buried truth that somehow conspired to, even now, make him flush with embarrassment and regret. He said nothing but watched as Harold laughed loudly at his anger, the mirth from earlier miraculously returned to his countenance.

"Only joking," Harold replied through peals of laughter. "Lighten up."

But before Robert could respond, the door to the main hall opened and flooded the room with artificial light, revealing a gaggle of women in short, glamorous beaded dresses with bleach-blonde hair and lips painted red.

"Now it's a party," he heard Harold shout, and the room nearly vibrated with the hoots and hollers of vulgar cheers and greetings.

Robert knew he was far too drunk to stay for anything of this sort. And he objected to the way they were all drawn like moths to the light of the open door—to women who looked, in his bleary estimation, to be younger than Rose. It was, he thought seriously, ungentlemanly for these men to behave in such a fashion. And so, he escaped almost instantly, finding his freedom via the back-left corner of the library. He'd noticed a door carved out of the mahogany wall there earlier and had just enough sense left in him to recall it now. Finding it unlocked, Robert spilled into Harold's office entirely unnoticed.

He could hear peals of laughter as he turned the latch behind him and poked around the room. They only seemed to grow louder once he sat at Harold's desk and listened more intently to the sounds of the party.

He supposed he could wait them out.

He yawned.

He stretched his legs, and his muscles groaned in protest.

Minutes passed, but his heart still thundered as he turned the words over in his mind.

Harold thought him a fool. That much was clear. Perhaps he was a fool for coming here. But he owed her that much. Not in the way Harold had implied. But he owed her nevertheless: owed her for the way her hand slipped into his own at night, for her palm pressed against his forehead whenever he felt unwell, for every little sacrifice she made for their family without complaint, and for the very love they shared so freely even now, so many years gone. There was never a decision to be made; of course she needn't have asked him to go. He would have captained the blasted boat himself to get here in time.

But, oh, he missed her. He'd thought of her constantly. He thought of her asleep in their bed, her hair smelling of lavender and her skin pale in the early-morning light. He thought of her smiling at him from across the dinner table, her face aglow in candlelight. He thought of her voice and her laughter and thought perhaps most often of all of what she'd whispered into his ear in the great hall just before he'd gone.

Out of boredom or curiosity, Robert began to rifle through the compartments of Harold's desk. He found an untouched flask of what was, upon further inspection, gin, and thick files filled with marked-up numerical reports. The mountains of paperwork were mostly unintelligible to him, and he began to consider if Harold's assessment of his business acumen was not altogether incorrect.

Opening up another drawer, he found a packet of cigarettes, some wadded up cash, and, tucked between the pages of an address book that he flipped through, a yellowed family photograph dated December 1886 on the back in pencil. Even in the dim firelight he saw immediately a young Cora, standing taller than her brother, between her parents. He recognized the impassive half-smile as the one she often wore in the early months of their marriage. She looked impossibly young, yet somehow still herself, and it unsettled him to realize that he had not known this version of his wife. They had lived nearly all their lives together and yet there had been some time in the long-distant past when they had existed wholly without one another.

Robert considered pocketing the photograph but thought better of the potential theft when his eye cast over what he had been in pursuit of: a stack of unused writing sheets and envelopes. Snatching up a fountain pen from its stand atop the desk, he blinked down at the page before him, willing his vision to correct itself, and set pen to paper.

Darling, my dear

Cora, my darling Cora

Cora, if I could put to page what you mean

My darlling Cora, I have thought of nothing but your words to me

Cora, my darling, you must allow me to tell you how ardently I

He paused midway through this last attempt. No—that wasn't right. It was Byron, wasn't it? Or perhaps Shelley. No, he shook his head, cursing aloud. It was Austen, of course. Cora's favorite. Ignoring a splash of ink on his palm, he reached for another sheet and tried once more, settling on a familiar turn of phrase.

My dearest one…

The scratch of the metal nib drowned out the raucous proceedings in the library, and before long he had a number of pages complete—and envelops addressed, too. But as he signed the final version, noting he still saw his name printed in double vision, he wondered if perhaps he might be better off reviewing the draft come morning. And so, he pocketed what he thought was his best work and clumsily gathered up the rest to dispose of once he returned to Martha's, smoothing out the other papers he'd rifled through on the desk as well.

Engrossed as he had been in his task, Robert hoped for one blessed moment that the party had rounded to a close. But as he stood from the creaking leather chair, distant strains of decadent laughter and merriment sounded out once more. There was, he knew then, no clean escape route out of the townhouse. Taking Harold's flask as a consolation prize, he exited the office from the alternate door across the room and flagged down the first servant he crossed paths with in the dark, marbled hallway to ask for a bed to be made up for him there instead.


When Robert awoke the next morning to a deafening thump, thump, thump, he was stunned to realize the Americans were still somehow celebrating Harold's serendipitous legal victory. He was even more stunned to realize a moment later that the sound was in fact emanating from his own head, which felt heavier than a block of ice and pulsed violently in protest when he moved himself to a seated position.

He hadn't a clue of the time, though bright morning light was streaming clearly through the open curtains. The servants must have been through, too; emerging from beneath the heavy bedclothes in only his pants, he found his suit from the night before hanging and freshly pressed and another suit, somehow ferried over from his things at Martha's, hanging beside it.

Robert dressed himself, moving slower than molasses without Barrow's assistance, and cursed every sip of alcohol he'd taken the night before as he trudged downstairs and readied himself to face the Levinsons for yet another day.

Impossibly, Harold looked no worse for wear when Robert came upon him at the breakfast table, his face half-covered by the morning newspaper. An enormous plate of food lay on the table before him, and he held a cup suspended in mid-air as a footman refreshed his coffee.

"You're up earlier than I expected," he commented once Robert took the seat opposite.

"Quite."

Harold offered him half the newspaper, but Robert shook his head—even that movement conspiring to make him wince in pain. A footman appeared with another plate of breakfast food, or what he assumed was breakfast to an American, and he looked up at the ceiling to avoid the smell. Moments passed before his stomach felt sure enough to hazard a bite.

He chewed slowly on a piece of bacon as Harold finally set the newspaper down in front of him.

"I apologize for what I said last night," he said abruptly.

Robert hesitated. He remembered snippets of dialogue; he remembered briefly wanting to punch Harold right in the middle of the library among all his idiot friends. But he remembered little of what they'd said to one another.

"There's no need," he answered finally, swallowing the bacon and saying a silent prayer it stayed down.

Harold cleared his throat. "No, there is. It was unkind. What I said about the money."

Ah. The money. Cora's dowry. It remained in many ways the albatross around his neck—even now, even years after it was lost. He had come to realize, years into their marriage, that the shame would likely never leave him. Not completely.

"Maybe so. But you did not say anything that was untrue."

Harold looked at him strangely, then. He folded the newspaper and set it onto the table beside him.

"You know, I never understood why my parents did what they did. Or, why Cora did what she did. In a way, I always thought she'd come back—"

Robert frowned, but Harold, who had been looking down at his plate, looked up with a faint smile.

"—I think I understand it a bit more now."

"I—don't follow."

Harold chuckled. Without further comment, he reached into his breast pocket, pulled out a few folded pieces of paper, and passed them across the table.

"I'm glad you came, Robert. Really. Thank you for everything." He stood, nodded once, and exited the breakfast room in a few quick steps, leaving Robert to unfold the small bundle on his own.

Momentarily confused, his eyes scanned a series of smudged, crinkled pages before recollections of the night before settled heavily upon him.

My darlling Cora, I have thought of nothing but your words to me upon our farewell goodbye and I must, must tell you how desperately, no, madly, no, ardently, I love you

He balled up the page quicker than he would have otherwise thought possible given his dulled reflexes and shoved the offending pages into his trouser pocket. Good god–hadn't he stuffed those into his jacket? Or thrown them into the wastepaper bin? He thought hazily back over the events of the previous night and could now only recall stealing upstairs with Harold's gleaming silver flask full of gin. Red cheeked, he pushed around the food on his plate and thought miserably about the four more days standing between him and the ship leaving the New York harbor.

He pushed a hand into his pocket once more and felt the sharp corners of his ill-begotten letter. Hadn't he done his familial duty? Perhaps he might now be granted an early reprieve. He would do nearly anything, he considered, to return home to Cora.


Robert stretched lazily and felt himself sink deeper into the soft bedsheets. The bedroom was blessedly warm and quiet, and he felt perfectly happy as he awoke in the sun-drenched room. Cora grinned at him as she crossed the foot of the bed, having extracted herself from his arms to gather up her rumpled nightclothes from the floor and to ring for breakfast.

"You look very content," she smiled, pulling the nightdress over her head before slipping back beneath the sheets. She rolled to her side and pressed a smooth hand to the rough skin of his cheek.

"I am rather." He reached up to grasp her hand and kissed her palm.

He'd been home for nearly a week now and had mostly found his way back into long-held routines. The house was together again after the bazaar, and he'd returned to a number of ongoing projects across the estate with Mary and Tom. He had not yet, however, returned to the breakfast table—electing instead to steal bits of toast and tea from Cora's tray as he listened to her chatter on about all manner of things. Seeing her in the afternoon for a walk or for tea in the library was not yet enough. He had returned from America a man starved, and each moment spent with her now seemed to restore him to fuller health.

He shuffled just a bit closer and leaned in to kiss her, delighting in the way she hummed against his mouth.

"Darling—"

"Hm?"

He opened his eyes again and kissed the edge of her chin before returning to her lips.

"I've already rung for Baxter," she murmured, halfheartedly pushing him back to his side of the bed.

"Tell her—"

He paused, then, and reached a hand below the sheets to find the edge of her nightgown. "Tell her we've changed our minds; we don't need breakfast."

He kissed her once more, his hand finding the smooth skin at her hip then, and he felt his stomach flip as she smiled and laughed unguardedly into the small space between them.

"I do need breakfast after last night," she said, applying a firmer hand to his shoulder to push him backward into the pillows. He frowned in mock consternation.

"Fine." Cora laughed again at the dramatic sigh he emitted and reached far into the tangled bedclothes, nearly down to their feet, to produce his discarded pajamas from the night before.

"Put these on before you scandalize Baxter," she teased.

He'd only just wrestled the still-buttoned top over his head when the woman in question knocked once, twice, and a third time at the solid wood door. Cora waited just a pause before calling her in.

Robert smiled politely at the lady's maid, who seemed to somehow be moving even faster and more efficiently this morning, if that were possible, and he noted in silent thanks that there appeared to be two servings of toast on the tray and an extra teacup.

Almost immediately after settling the tray on Cora's lap, the woman bobbed her head once, offering the briefest Milord, Milady, before stepping backward and looking at the door. But before Baxter could perform her hasty retreat, Cora noticed a large bundle of post brought up and arranged inelegantly on the corner of the tray.

"What's all this?"

There was a long pause before the lady's maid responded.

"I—I think it's all from America," she said simply.

Frowning, Cora waved the woman off—the woman who seemed altogether too happy to pace quickly back out of the room—and reached for the stack to investigate further.

"If Harold's done something else," she muttered.

"What on earth else could he do?" Robert chuckled, grabbing for a piece of toast. "Become a pirate and smuggle treasure on the open seas?"

His laughter faltered, though, just as he bit into a piece of bread slathered with raspberry jam and settled his gaze on the all too familiar handwriting, and the all too familiar return address, scratched across the envelope—across, he realized with a lurch, each envelope that Cora had fanned out across her lap.

"Darling," Cora laughed. "Did you send me—" He watched her count. "—five letters before you left?"

Dropping the toast onto his lap, Robert reached with great speed to snatch up the offending post only to have Cora slap away his hand.

"They're addressed to me," she grinned. "And be careful; you'll have me spill my tea."

They were, unfortunately, all addressed to her. Though his accuracy had been found rather wanting. The letters ranged in address from Cora, Countess of Grantham to simply Cora, with the rest of their address to follow.

Cora used the edge of her butter knife to slice open the first letter and Robert felt the tips of his ears begin to burn. Reading over her shoulder, he could see plainly enough his own handwriting looping across the first page.

Cora, my darling, you must allow me to tell you how ardently . . . . I admire and love you

The rest of the page was blank, save a Robert xxx at the very bottom.

"Robert," she laughed lightly again and looked at him with a raised brow. "Is that Austen?"

"Well." He looked up at the canopy and exhaled slowly. "You know we'd all had a bit to drink at your brother's that last night."

"Yes, you mentioned that."

"I think a servant may have mistaken some…errant jottings…for post I intended to send."

Her brow remained raised. "Why, pray tell, would they do that?"

"I may have left them addressed in my breast pocket," he said slowly, reaching up to scratch at the back of his neck.

"I see. And all the rest?" She nodded down at the remaining mail.

"Much the same, I'd imagine."

"Perhaps I should open them just to be sure."

"Cora—"

He pleaded for their return as she opened the second one with altogether too much glee. And then the third. And then the fourth. She laughed and grinned in equal measure as she read aloud bits of nonsensical dialogue. Until she reached the last one. When he chanced another look, he saw writing that did indeed look more familiar, for it was the one letter he did intend to send.

My dearest one…

She was quiet for some moments as she read through the few pages, the lettering much neater and precise. He could recall now, far beyond the haze of drink from that night, most of what he'd written. He sipped awkwardly from his teacup and stared out the window until he felt her slip her hand into his own.

"I want so very much for you to know," she read aloud, her voice sounding strangely high to him, "that I think of you in each moment, with my every breath. And your words to me that day are what I take to bed each night and wake up to every morning."

Cora placed the letter carefully down onto the blanket between them and looked up at him, her eyes bright. She made to laugh, as she often did when faced with strong emotion, but found her throat tight and settled for a lopsided grin instead.

"Heavens. That's strong talk for an Englishman."

"As I said," he explained gruffly, "your brother and his friends had gotten me quite drunk."

She grinned down at their clasped hands and squeezed lightly. "It's very sweet. Thank you."

"Anyway. You started it."

"Did I?" She looked confused, genuinely so, and he exhaled sharply.

"You most certainly did. In the great hall? As we were saying our goodbyes?"

He could see realization dawn on her, and could see, too, the moment she settled for a look of false confusion once again.

"I can hardly remember anything before the bazaar."

Robert watched her carefully. She had turned her attention back to the breakfast tray and was poking carefully around the delicate bone china. He knew that she remembered just as well as he did their conversation that morning. The way everyone had filtered out of the house, leaving them alone just for a moment of privacy. The way they'd stood so close to one another, closer than they might have otherwise, and the way she'd looked up at him and told him to kiss her. And then after, as they'd walked toward the front door hand-in-hand, she'd tugged on his sleeve just before they reached the vestibule and their waiting family. She'd stopped short, holding them there for the briefest of moments, and leaned up to whisper in his ear, I do love you so very, very much.

He'd had to bite back a silly grin as he spoke to that Blake fellow and to Evelyn Napier. He'd hardly been able to look back at her as he said his farewells to the girls and to Mama. And he remembered thinking as the car pulled down the drive that it might not be too late to snatch up all the cases and barricade himself back inside the house. Oh, how he'd hated to leave her then.

But now, with weeks and two passages across the raging seas between them, he could see how she blushed down into her morning tea to recall that sudden burst of outward expression. Leaning over to kiss her cheek, he considered then that he did not need or want for anything at all.

"It's alright," he murmured into her hair.

She turned to look up at him and found him grinning madly.

"We'll call it even," he explained, grabbing the pile of blackmail-worthy letters.

Cora's laughter joined his own and she shook her head in surrender. "Fine."

They did not speak again for some minutes until Cora, breathless, pressed a hand to his chest. It was, he knew, getting rather late into the day. It was time to gather himself up, ring for Bates, and lurch into the myriad tasks ahead of him. They could return to this subject later in the evening. But as he moved backward slightly, in the direction of his own nightstand, Cora hooked a finger on his half-open pajama shirt and smiled wickedly.

"Go and put this over there," she said, gesturing at the breakfast tray. "And come back to bed."

"Really?"

She nodded indulgently. "Perhaps I can inspire another impassioned missive."

He laughed and shook his head, crawling across the bed to cover her body with his own.

"My darling, you must allow me to tell you how ardently I should like nothing more."