This piece is in response to the Hot Cobert Summer Writing Challenge on tumblr; the prompt was 'Saying "I love you" timidly.'

Timidly

Noises echoed around him. Not echoed. Moved. Like waves to and fro, louder and softer, the syllables of a strange voice gently lapping at the hull of his consciousness.

"Lord Grantham?"

He tried to force himself to stir to life, tried desperately to open his eyes, moved his chin up to shift his shoulder slightly, but he could not. Every line, stretch, and fiber of muscle felt much too heavy; his body was moored far from where he heard the voice, even farther from the hazy images that flickered in his mind:

A board of a sign marked in sharp letters: SERVIZIO GONDOLE. A black narrow gondola on a web of murky dark waters between tall buildings, arches over windows, sputtering lanterns on short, wide decks into a canal. The lantern-lit features of his new wife's face, her figure lovely in a red gown with black beading and lace trimming. Her eyes glimmering, but narrowed in concern as she leaned over, towards where he sat.

Seasick.

Embarrassingly seasick.

He heard, and felt, his mouth groan. "No."

But still the voice called again, "Lord Grantham? Can you hear me?"

The more conscious places of his mind helped his head to nod, very slightly, against the pillow, and all at once he felt discomfort.

His throat.

His head.

Oh, his stomach. Ill. He wanted to vomit.

He made his hand move to touch the place at his side that felt the sorest.

"No, no." The voice came again. "It's all right, my lord. Rest easy."

"Cora." Her name hummed in his echoing head. "Venice."

"What's that?" the voice drew nearer. "Are you in pain, my lord?"

"I've eaten too much."

He saw her unclutch her little purse and offer, in the black palm of her glove, the peppermint candy.

Humming. Humming. "I'm …"

His hand went back to his sore spot, but this time it was gently pulled away.

"The girls. Where is Cora?" he felt himself frown. He felt like weeping. "Wh-"

"We'll fetch her soon, Your Lordship."

And then, just as soon as he felt himself slipping again under the watery diffusion of the sounds swimming around him, it was deep and dark again.

. . .

"Lady Grantham?"

She startled at her name, and beside her, Edith touched her wrist. "Mama."

Edith and Mary went to stand, and Cora forced herself up too, but on weaker legs than she anticipated. She felt far too like she was on a rocking boat and not firmly on the wooden floors of a hospital.

She tried to read the doctor's expression as he drew nearer and could only see that he looked tired. Oh. Doctor Clarkson looked dreadfully tired and so markedly different here in the shallow waiting room than he had at their dinner table at home.

Hours ago.

He frightened her here with his pinched expression. She wished he'd just say it. If he wasn't alright, just say it. It was better that way. There was far too much tiptoeing around things and she hated it. In this moment she hated it. Unbidden flashes of the doctor's expression at Sybil's bedside that awful night shook her, and Cora held her breath.

She should've told him. She should have said it to Robert. He was dying there on the floor, and she couldn't tell him. He knew. She knew that he knew, but they'd promised one another after Sybil. There'd be nothing unsaid. And she couldn't say it.

He was fine. He was fine. He was fine.

She willed it. Robert was alive.

"He's come through it, and he's wakening."

She breathed. Real air, cold and soothing to her burning chest went deep into her lungs. Tears immediately flooded her vision, and she blinked, banishing them. They weren't happy tears, even in spite of the good news, but tears she'd been struggling to keep at bay since she'd cradled his head in his arms hours ago. Tears that, now that she'd been allowed a moment's rest, had found the crack in the dam she'd so carefully constructed.

"Thank you," her voice trembled, but only slightly. "Thank you, Doctor Clarkson."

She was vaguely aware of the way Mary touched her arm; she was more aware of how Mary didn't release her, even after a lengthened moment.

"Thank God," her eldest whispered, and her grasp slipped to Cora's wrist.

"Can we see him?" Edith asked.

"Not yet, I'm afraid." Cora listened to Clarkson closely. "The anesthesia still needs time to wear off, but it won't be long now. We don't allow family in until we're sure; the effects are often varied depending on the individual, and we need to monitor him, especially considering his age and how much blood he's lost. But not much longer now. He seems to be coming out of it all well enough."

At Cora's bare wrist, Mary's fingers fluttered. "And he's really all right?"

"Is it safe to telephone the others? My grandmother—that is, Lady Grantham did ask for any news as soon as I could."

Clarkson turned to Edith. "Cautiously, yes. But—" He raised his hand, and Cora furrowed her brow. Listening for anything. Everything. "Be sure to relay that he is still being monitored closely. He isn't quite out of the woods yet."

Edith nodded and tossed her wide gaze at Cora. "Shall I telephone Granny now?"

"Y-," Cora found she could barely speak, and lifted her chin to try to bring in more air. "Yes. I think so."

"Your Ladyship?"

Clarkson took a step closer just as Edith had followed a nurse into a small alcove. Cora could still hear the sounds of her daughter's heels as the doctor began to speak to her in a quieter tone. Again, Cora trained what was left of her energy upon him, but somehow what he was saying was being drowned out by the rushing of her pulse in her ears.

She steadied herself. Breathed deeply, once. And then listened harder.

"-it is not the only thing that must change in order to avoid another occurrence. If it happens again, he … well, to be frank, he won't survive it."

"What are you saying?" Mary's voice lifted a touch in her question, her panic obviously rising alongside Cora's.

"Simply that dietary changes is not the sole change in lifestyle that needs to take place. Of course, in the next six to eight weeks, he will be strongly restricted, in various stages, as to what he can and cannot imbibe or ingest, slowly working his way back into a fairly normal diet–"

"But," Cora interrupted him, rudely, but not needing to hear that Robert's diet would need to change. Of course it would. She wasn't a fool. They'd taken a part of his stomach from him. "What else needs to change? To avoid…" and although she trailed off, her mouth unable to form the words, Doctor Clarkson nodded, understanding.

"Well, it's long been assumed that stomach ulcers are caused by high amounts of persistent stresses from multiple facets of life, whether that be personal, financial, familial..."

Mary grew three inches. "Stress?" She shook her head. "He's to be without stress? Doctor Clarkson, my father is the earl and therefore responsible for an enormous estate; and while it is not without its privileges, there is a certain amount of work and worry that is coupled with the title."

Doctor Clarkson sighed, annoyed, Cora knew. But Cora also knew her daughter and how, so similarly to herself, the chilly anger was only because she was afraid.

"I know it may be impossible that any life should be without stress, my lady. However, in this circumstance, I strongly suggest making it as possible as you're able. Even, or rather, especially, since he is the Earl. As you mentioned.

"Of course." Cora didn't even know what she was saying, but she nodded beside Mary, who blinked at her and then slowly nodded as well. "Thank you, Doctor Clarkson."

"I've told Granny!"

They all turned to Edith who came back into the space smiling, tentatively, and then shuddering a breath.

"She was relieved, of course. And so grateful to you, Doctor Clarkson. She asked me to give you her sincerest thanks."

"Oh," Cora watched Clarkson lower his gaze to the floor. "There's no need—"

"I'd better telephone Carson," Mary tipped her head to Cora, and the little bobs of her hair hit at her cheeks, warming her expression somehow. Cora, however, was unable to do anything but breathe just yet. "I'm sure he's anxious to hear anything."

"Er, before you do so, my lady," Clarkson's words stopped Mary just as she turned, and she took the two steps back towards Edith and Cora. "While there are nurses here through the night, we do like to suggest having someone here that the patient is comfortable with. If you think His Lordship would like to have Mr Bates–"

"No." Cora interrupted him again, and this time Mary and Edith looked at her, too. "No, I want to stay with him."

Clarkson gave her a small smile, and a nod, but Mary stepped even closer.

"Are you sure, Mama?" And she narrowed her gaze slightly. "You could get some rest, and I'll stay if you would like. Or both Edith and I? Papa may sleep for the rest of the night. And you look as if," Mary paused. "You need to change." Quieter, nearly silently so that Clarkson could not hear her well, she added, "And bathe properly."

In unison, as if her two daughters had practiced and rehearsed it, they glanced down to Cora's dress, to where she still wore Robert's blood.

She'd forgotten. She'd forgotten she'd only hurriedly washed it all off her hands, Baxter handing her a damp washcloth in order for her to clean it from her face. She'd forgotten how bloody she'd been. And she pinched at the fabric of the skirt of the gown. "Oh," her head felt lighter, and she shook it. "I'm all right. Really. It's…I'm sure there's a washroom I might use?"

She'd brought her eyes up to Clarkson who smiled again, but it was unmistakably one of pity. And Cora felt her chest tighten. She didn't want pity. Pity meant the worst. And Robert was fine.

"I'll tell Carson you're staying, then." Mary shifted and Cora watched her look at Edith. "I'm sure Baxter will be sure to bring up something. And the washroom?"

"Certainly. I'll ask one of the nurses to arrange a place for you to change while Lord Grantham is still being monitored."

Mary nodded. "There, that seems sorted. Unless, of course, you would like me to stay?"

Oh, did they all pity her?

"No," she pressed a quick smile, a quick exhale, to assuage their heightened sense of doom. He was fine. Any more of this attention, the attention they'd give a widow, and she'd cry. "I'm alright. I promise."

The vision of her daughter blurred and streaked a bit in Cora's vision and she blinked furiously. Why? Why was she teary-eyed now? It was now that everything was fine—it was fine— and yet her ability to control herself was slipping further from her.

It didn't help, either, that Edith had slowly come ever closer to her, and just as Mary walked away and just as Clarkson turned to ask a few nurses a series of questions, Edith's thin arm encircled Cora's shoulders, and she squeezed her briefly, and then let her head fall along Cora's, a quick moment of physical affection.

"Oh, Mama," Edith's voice was soft, and Cora forced herself to draw her own arm up and touch her daughter's back so that the embrace could end. Edith pulled away. "How lucky we are that Doctor Clarkson was at dinner. I can't imagine what would have happened if it had burst at any other time. If he were on rounds. Out with Tom so far from help."

There was no point in this. "No, no no." Cora grasped at Edith's small, soft forearm, and she caught her eye. "He wasn't. Let's not think of that now, alright? I'm not sure I can."

"You're right. I'm sorry," Edith frowned, nodded. "But—" she drew a breath "I must admit. I never considered there would ever be a life without Papa. Now that we know he'll be alright, it's … Well, it's frightening. How quickly it all happened."

The light of her daughter's features flickered in the change of her emotions, and Cora felt herself reach to her arm again, this time taking her hand.

"Let's not focus on that, but what we can do to get him better. Yes?"

She nodded again. "Yes." And Cora gripped at both of her hands, shaking them.

"Yes," Cora echoed.

Clarkson, who had left just as Mary had, walked in again just as Mary did back into the waiting room.

"If you'd like to see him, Lady Mary," he turned to her as she approached, "Lady Edith, before you go home?"

"Oh," Edith's hands dropped Cora's. "Please."

"Right through here."

Cora stepped quietly into his hospital room, and looked around: the narrow bed, the electric lights buzzing, the short nurse in her starched white uniform and head covering. It was terrible.

Their daughters followed her, and, knowing she'd need to say something, she met the gaze of the nurse at Robert's bedside.

"Sorry if we're disturbing," she folded her hands in front of her, but her eyes betrayed her and glanced at the still figure lying in the bed.

"May I help you, Your Ladyship?"

"Yes." She looked back. "Doctor Clarkson said they might see Lord Grantham, for a moment. If that's suitable."

"Of course," the nurse smiled, a genuine and warm smile that none of them had managed yet, and Cora let their daughters go to him before her. Or perhaps instead of her.

She didn't like this. She didn't like him lying so still, so gray. Her vigil with Sybil was the acidic aftertaste of this scene: quiet, beautiful person she loved, still and so unlike themselves.

Oh, she hated this.

She made her eyes move to her daughters instead. She watched them standing side-by-side, silently at first, Edith then reaching out and caressing their papa's hand.

A hand that looked far too limp and far too pale.

Cora bit the inside of her cheek. He was fine.

"Can he hear us yet?" Edith asked the nurse who had looked back down into his medical chart, and after noting the time with her little timepiece, recorded something in his papers.

"Yes. He can, my lady."

"You're certain?" Mary's voice was the reflection of Cora's fear, and she exhaled in thanks for a daughter less polite than herself.

"He responded to me a little while ago, m'lady, though I do think he's nodded off again."

Edith must have looked alarmed, Cora wasn't sure, for the nurse smiled that smile again. "It's normal for patients to fade in and out for a little while after. Surgery is tiring for the body, my lady."

Her daughters nodded.

Edith was still holding his hand. "Did he say anything? While he was responsive?"

The nurse walked to his bedside, then, and lifted his wrist, checking his pulse. "Only a little, m'lady."

"What did he say?" Mary asked. "Was he in pain?"

The nurse's voice fell quieter. "He mentioned Venice." She looked at her watch again. "And that he'd eaten too much."

"Venice?" Edith twisted at her waist to look at Cora, and then she turned back to the nurse. "Is that…normal? To be nonsensical?"

The nurse gently laid Robert's hand back against the bed and took up her pen to mark in his file. "Oh, yes, m'lady. The after-effects seem strange, but he is aware."

"Is he?" Edith shook her head, doubt coloring her words.

"He is, m'lady. Only a little while ago he called for all of you."

Cora's lip trembled, and she had to press her mouth. He had wanted them earlier? He had wanted them and they weren't there.

"Oh, darling Papa," Mary whispered, and without warning, suddenly leant over and softly kissed his forehead. "Rest and good night."

Cora felt bile rise in her throat, and she turned and left the room, her hands shaking.

He looked like a corpse. And Mary had kissed him like one.

. . .

The light was suddenly brighter around him, even in his lidded darkness. The light was suddenly warming the lids of his eyes in waves of red. But the water was gone. Dry land.

"Lord Grantham?" Doctor Clarkson.

Robert pulled his eyes open, blearily, and peered out around him. A blur. He shut his eyes and tried to sit up.

"Not quite yet, my lord."

He wasn't sure why Doctor Clarkson chuckled slightly the way he did, but Robert flopped back down anyway, happily.

"I'm going to ask you a few questions, Lord Grantham. Can you hear me?"

Robert nodded. Yes, he could. Quite well. He let his eyes peer open again. Ah. The ceiling.

"Are you able to move your fingers? Your toes?"

Robert did so and felt himself chortle. "Mmm." Confirmed. He could wiggle those.

"Well done. Well done. Now, let's try a swallow?"

Robert lifted his chin, and when that was not successful lowered it again, and swallowed down the very little wetness that he could draw. "Mmm."

What? What was he doing?

"Very good. Now then, you may feel your throat is a little dry, a little sore. That's perfectly normal. Ah, Lady Grantham."

Oh, Cora. It was Cora. It was Cora.

Robert felt his arm reach out of its own accord for her. "Cora," he heard himself croak. "Cora?"

And then, even though he had since closed his eyes again, he knew it was her who grasped his hand. Oh, it was unmistakably her. Warm and soft, her fingers all the right weight and length. The feel of her fingertips at his wrist tumbling them into their well-worn intimacy.

In the periphery of his awareness he heard Clarkson speaking to her, but he didn't care.

"Cora?"

Her hand squeezed his. Tightly. "And when he's released, will he need to return to hospital, for tests or treatments?"

Hospital? Robert moved his feet against the coarseness of the quilt.

Oh. Quite.

"Perhaps, though I'm optimistic."

Robert felt himself nodding along. And then again, felt himself call, "Cora?"

He ignored the way Doctor Clarkson was muttering something over there, for Cora—oh his wonderful Cora—leant down close to him, and the cascade of white jasmine smelled better than anything else he'd ever smelled in his life. "Yes, darling."

"You're here." He opened his eyes. Oh, she was here. "You'll stay here with me."

"Yes, yes," she smiled at him and his heart leapt. "Of course I am."

She stood straight, away from him, but tightened the grip on his hand.

Oh, her lovely hand. He pulled gently at it, heard her heel step backward. Pulled gently again, and he kissed it.

And again.

And he didn't care that Doctor Clarkson was there.

Oh, jasmine again. The warmth of her.

"Robert. Just one moment. Yes?"

"I do love you. So very, very much." Robert felt tears prick at his eyes, and he squeezed them tighter. When had he shut them? He wasn't sure. But when he squeezed them, a tear escaped. He suddenly felt sad and anxious. "I thought I was dying. I…I don't want to be apart from you."

And in the clearest moment since he'd woken, in a moment he knew he'd remember always and always, with her face blurry but illuminated in the brilliance of the hospital light, her tiara from dinner still twinkling in her dark hair, she leaned ever closer and more mouthed than whispered, "You won't be." And then she pressed a kiss to his forehead, quickly and chastely.

And then, louder, "Now, let me speak with the doctor."

And while hers and Doctor Clarkson's voices mingled together, Robert held close to her soft hand, a hand that grasped his so tightly he could feel the pinch of her wedding band even against his tingling hand.

. . .

Cora had allowed Mary to have Stark drive her home to bathe. But quickly. She'd allowed Mary to take her place beside Robert's bed, for Mary to tell her, in a rather patronizing tone, "now go and rest," even though she had no intention of doing so. She was going back to the hospital and to Robert.

And there she sat now, having ushered her daughter out again, against much protestation. She sat beside Robert's sleeping form in the wooden chair that she was sure other wives of other ailing men had sat in, keeping vigil. Someone had brought in a pillow for her back, though her back scarcely touched it. Her body leaned so far forward to the bed, both of her hands holding his sleeping one, that her elbows were able to rest there at the edge of the hard mattress.

And she stayed still for long moments this way and watched him stirring, his eyes moving behind the lids.

She hadn't watched him sleep in so long, she had slowly realized. She did, sometimes still, when she woke from a dream or from being too cold. She'd glance over at the mountain of his sleeping form, and watch his easy breaths go in and out before she sighed, warmer, and fell back to sleep. But she hadn't adored him in years, hadn't worshiped the peaceful form of him, not the way she had when they were first married.

So she sat now in the silent morning, barely nine o'clock, sunlight reaching four or five tiles farther upon the floor than it had when she'd left this morning, by his side and studied him hungrily. She studied him the way she'd studied paintings by the masters in the art classes of her youth, all tingling inside and in awe, her hand mimicking the forms they'd created in quick strokes of pencil upon her sketch pad. Her eyes did that now. They etched upon her heart every line on his face because she needed to remember it forever. And ever. She too easily saw the smooth, round features of the young man she'd fallen in love with, but the man she was married to now was so familiar that, when she shut her eyes, she couldn't recall the way he looked now at all. It was similar to the way that one's bedroom becomes so familiar to oneself, the comfort there, that she forgets the way it looks until she's been away on a long journey. And upon return realizes how lovely it is.

How lovely he was.

She drunk in every angle, every curve, every shadow on his face, and she felt her chin begin to tremble at how he was still here with her. And how she couldn't possibly imagine otherwise.

Oh, she closed her eyes and pushed that away. He was alright, and it was sunny out, and his color was not the gray lifeless pallor it had been hours before.

Cora held his hand tighter when he stirred again, and this time, the movement behind his lids opened them, slightly.

"Hello," she smiled as he blinked awake. She caressed the back of his hand. "Are you deciding to wake up at last?"

He groaned.

"Yes, you will be sore." Her thumb stroked against the thickness of his fingers. "You've had quite a night."

"Mmm." Robert stretched up his round chin and the prickles of a silvery beard that he never let grow glittered momentarily in the sunlight. "My tummy."

She kept his hand at his side when he went to move it. "Don't touch it. There are sutures there from your surgery."

"Oh, God," he groaned again, and this time his broad chest rose beneath the blue and white quilt. "Surgery." And then, "Where is Mama?"

Cora rolled her eyes, but she smiled. "She's at home, more than likely sound asleep. But don't worry. We've told her you came through it all right."

"And Mary and Edith?"

She adjusted her hand against his own, her fingers grasping at one of his. "Mary and Edith were here through the surgery and then Mary was here again this morning to see you. I've sent her back home to be with the children. I'm sure they'll both be back this afternoon."

At last, he brought his eyes to hers, and Cora held her breath. Oh, the blues of his were dull and there were streaks of red in what should be the whites of them that made him look as if he'd been awake for weeks. The huge dark circles that were sunk beneath them made him look as if he'd been through hell. Again, embarrassingly, her chin wobbled.

Oh, what was wrong with her? She commanded herself to calm down.

"The nurse said you spoke to her of Venice," she said with a forced smirk, finally able to look at him again. "Do you remember any of that?"

His other hand, the one Cora did not hold, went to his forehead. "Certainly not. I remember you…" she watched him squint at the ceiling, "...speaking with Clarkson."

She chuckled. "Yes. That was only a handful of hours ago, after the girls had gone. You may as well have been in Venice."

"Our honeymoon," he said abruptly. And he blinked up at her. "In that bloody gondola."

Her eyes and nose burned. She was crying again. The memories of their honeymoon felt as if they were from a different life now, her young husband falling seasick and her sharp concern at seeing him ill for the first time. He had seemed too strong to be ill. But he wasn't. He was human just like she was. And mortal. And now she looked into her lap to quell the sudden wash of tears in her eyes.

"Cora?"

Her name was gruff in his throat,. She tried to control her breathing, to calm herself.

"Oh, my dearest one." His voice sounded as if the words were only creaked out between the driest, rusty hinges of a door, and she hated it. "I'm –"

"You should rest, darling," she managed, and to her surprise, she heard a rumble of a laugh and then a groan.

"I've only just woken. Rest seems…" he held her hand tighter "... rather redundant."

She looked up at him, the image of him all tear-stained now, and her heart hurt, ached and stung so that she had to sit taller to soothe it.

"You haven't left," he said next. "Perhaps it's you who should rest."

"I've gone home to wash," she argued, but he shook his head. He moved her hand in his, so that his larger grasp completely swallowed hers up, and again the hurt, the ache, the sting was too much.

And she felt angry again.

"You shouldn't have kept pushing yourself, Robert. Last night …" She collected some thread of a thought that, even in her exhaustion, made no sense to her, but she didn't care. She had to speak or she'd cry, and she could not cry. "You've been ill for weeks and yet you've kept telling me to stop fussing. If you had simply asked for help …You've allowed the stress and responsibilities of it all to overwhelm you, and it's imperative now that you learn to let others help, to not take on everything like you do, all pride and no humility. I know you feel it's your duty, but it's also your duty to take care of yourself."

She shuddered when he lifted her hand to his lips and kissed her. Admitting defeat.

"You're right."

No. She didn't want that, her eyes teared again.

"I apologize for putting you through this."

"Oh, don't." She was crying now. She hated it. She swiped at her cheeks and tried to pull her other hand away, but he wouldn't let go of her. She stemmed the emotion again and lifted her chin. "You aren't getting off quite so easily."

"Because you love me? This stubborn old fool?"

Cora gasped a bit at that, the wound too fresh, the feeling of nausea still there that lingered around the moment he told her loved her, and she couldn't say it back. But she knew why.

She was so frightened that she…if she said it, he would've died. Wouldn't he have? Some illogical part of her brain–her heart–screamed it at her, even now. It was too final to say it to him. If they'd said it then, he…she shook her head. And then realized, when she saw the way his brows dipped down, that it appeared she was saying no.

She looked at their hands, and then again into her lap.

"I do."

Her voice was too soft, and she swallowed.

"I do," she said again so he could hear her, and then looked at him, but he hadn't heard for his expression was unchanged. He still blinked at her, waiting for her to answer him.

"I–"

"I'm glad to see you're awake, Lord Grantham!"

Her cheeks rose in a quick, embarrassed little burn at Clarkson's entrance, knowing the way her hand was resting at Robert's chest. Knowing the way her cheeks surely glistened from her weak moment. Why? Why was she embarrassed? She wasn't sure she knew. It was for Robert. He'd nearly died and … oh, this man deserved it, didn't he? Robert who had already easily said he loved her in front of Clarkson, holding her hand, and in front of his mother, last night, as he bled into Cora's hands. But for her? She felt as if her love for him was so much of herself, so much of her very soul, that to say it felt altogether inadequate and yet overwhelming. And certainly much too much of herself to share with anyone but him.

Like stripping herself bare. And vulnerable.

"We'll just take some notes of your vital signs this morning, your heart rate and breathing, and then we'll discuss the plans for your recovery. What you can expect."

Clarkson, of course, paid no mind, but Cora still felt Robert's squeeze of her hand.

And quietly, gradually, even with Clarkson standing there, she knew that Robert needed her to say it to him.

She watched as the doctor approached him with his stethoscope, as he pressed it against the spot where Cora knew Robert's heart lied, and she drew in a breath. She'd pressed her head there so many nights and heard what Clarkson heard now, that blessed rhythm that meant he was still hers.

"I love you," she whispered at last, even surprising herself at her small courage. They'd sounded as if they'd come so naturally, as if the words had always lived on the next breath she exhaled. But it didn't feel natural at all. She'd trembled at the truth in them, and the fear of how real they were.

She flitted her eyes to the doctor to be sure he hadn't heard, but Clarkson looked down at Robert and not at her. If he had heard it, she wasn't sure. But her cheeks burned in embarrassment anyway.

But Robert had heard. The change in his features–less tired, less weak–told her as much. Or at least he had seen the way her mouth moved over the words she so infrequently said aloud that her lips felt different after they were said–different because they were usually followed by a kiss.

Oh, but then, she was sure he had, for in spite of Clarkson standing there, now awkwardly moving the stethoscope around where Robert brought his and Cora's still joined hands, he brought hers up again and kissed it. Her courage simultaneously rewarded and punished.

"Robert," she scolded, glancing at Clarkson, and at last Robert let her pull her hand away.