AN: Everyone, thank you so much for the reviews on the last chapter and for all the reviews I've been getting on The Mistress He Loves recently. They motivate me to write more! And there is a multi chapter story (with long chapters!) that has been circling around the back of my mind but somehow I am afraid of starting because I am afraid I'll never finish it. But we'll see.
I hope you like this chapter. Let me know what you think!
Kat
September 1896
.
"Martha!" he yells. He cannot believe it. His daughter is walking up to their house. The daughter who refused to return to America with them, the daughter who preferred working as a nanny to living a middle class life. Of course she is now a teacher but she could have been a teacher here as well.
"Martha!" he calls again and his wife joins him in the hallway.
"What is it?"
"Cora," he says and points out the window next to their door.
"I don't believe it," his wife says and then asks "who is that with her?"
He hadn't even noticed that there was someone walking beside her.
"I don't believe it," Martha says the moment the doorbell rings.
He opens the door himself and stares not only into his daughter's face but also into the face of Lord Downton.
"What are you doing here?" he asks and Cora smiles at him.
"Visiting you on our honeymoon," she says and he is lost for words.
"Homeymoon?" Martha shrieks and he has no idea what all the fuss is about.
"Yes Mother. If you were kind enough to let us in, we could explain."
He sees Lord Downton putting his hand on the small of Cora's back and gently helping her across the threshold. He has no idea what all this means.
"She married him Isidore," Martha whispers to him. "She married him. God knows how she did it but she will be the Countess of Grantham."
Slowly he starts to understand. His daughter got married without telling him and she married a future earl. He has no idea what this means for him but he knows that it can only mean that things are about to improve.
Cora and Lord Downton tell them a story about love that had been surpressed for months and Lord Downton's father and sister intervening and them eloping to London of all places and getting married against Lady Grantham's explicit wishes.
"What did your mother say after the wedding?" Martha asks Lord Downton and the young man starts to cough.
"We haven't told her yet," Lord Downton says and looks a little sheepishly.
"Lord Grantham will have broken the news," Cora adds and then continues "and it is best we were not there to witness it."
"So you fled to America," Martha replies with quite a lot of mirth in her voice.
"Cora thought we would be save here," Lord Grantham says and she nods.
"You won't give as away Mother, will you?"
"Of course we won't," his wife replies and he nods. "We wouldn't dream of it, my girl," he says and Cora nods.
"I suppose you are staying at a fancy hotel but Harold's room is free," he continues and Cora nods again.
"That would be very kind. Thank you. You wouldn't mind staying here Robert, would you?"
"No," his son-in-law replies. "Not in the slightest."
Over the next few days he is able to observe his daughter and her aristocratic husband. They seem a good match despite their different backgrounds.
.
.
They have been staying at her parents' home for almost three weeks now and they have been in America for more than six. It is enough.
"Cora," he says and she turns around to look at him. She is so lovely when she wakes up in the morning.
"What?" she asks still half asleep.
"As much as I have enjoyed meeting your parents, it is time for us to return to England."
"I know," she says and sits up in bed.