A/N: This story has been for you, for everyone has taken the time to get caught up in my bit of suspense. So it's been two years, in that time I think I've grown up a lot, I'm sure a lot has changed for all of you. It's time this story was finished... whether anyone remembers reading it or not. A quick note - this is in fact another chapter. I'm very self-critical of the entire thing but regardless of fluctuating quality; let us return to the late hours of the night and the early hours of the morning…
19. Flames Burn Out
November 1919
When the Sun rises, when the dawn breaks day;
It makes itself a spectacle of the sky.
It casts its brightness all about it and later it dies.
Lighting up what may have been grey,
What may have been harsh, empty or cold.
Come night, it breaks up its light into stars ten-fold.
My sons are my stars, my daughters my breaking day
And my lady, my love, my heart,
She is my life. And I pray that she stays.
Robert Crawley
Night was set over the picturesque; the full moon glowering from behind shifting clouds while light drizzle fell. It could have been any night, any night in a thousand. All extraordinary moments are made so by the fact that they could have been just any moment in time, but they weren't. They made history.
In the thick of the night, the big house was quiet. Save for the occasional scrawling of a doctor's pen, many a ticking clock, clicking footsteps, an infant's cry… and a mother's cry.
Robert wasn't the only one disturbed by nightmares. Cora tossed and turned and woke and slept and woke again. The agony of labour had left her too exhausted to sleep; the anxiety for her son's welfare unsettled her mind.
Her husband lay in bed next door, the nurse was regularly in and out of her room to monitor Cora during the critical hours and apparently times hadn't changed enough for him to be found in her bed. The dreams took her back to Napier and every sordid event over her pregnancy. 'Come with me.' Her own words whispered in her head. 'I think you know why I've brought you here…' Unfamiliar hands at her waist, anonymous lips at her neck.
"No," she murmured. "Don't." You bitch.
"Robert…" How could you?
"I didn't mean to-" Cora tossed. You are with child, Lady Grantham.
"I can't be-" She turned. My dear, I think you ought to tell the truth.
"Mama?" I want a divorce!
"Robert!" she pleaded to her vision. Society will be told of a complication that ended in the tragic loss of the child…
"My baby-" Don't be so helpless.
It sounds like the baby has an irregular heartbeat.
"But-" Unfortunately mortality is a likely factor…
Stay with me.
Lady Grantham…? Check her pulse.
Is the baby alright?
Mama?
Cora?
Robert knew he couldn't always be happy. It wasn't possible. Maybe it was in some men but not in him. That was not the way he was built, he had to feel the lows to feel the highs otherwise he grew numb and that helped nobody. The tragedy lies there - being happy without knowing it. If one was always happy, how does he know it until he wakes up from it?
He knew the worrying wasn't over when he bid Cora a good night and blew a prayer over her head that she slept well and stayed for tomorrow and all tomorrows after. Robert was allowed to watch over his new sons a little while before bed and he repeated a similar prayer for each of them.
That morning he awoke at 5 o'clock, at sun up. An anxiety was fluttering around in his chest, an excitement, a despair, a hope combined into an inner unsettling. Putting on his dressing gown, he crossed his dressing room to the marital bedroom. Listening at the door before he turned the handle, there was no sound coming from the room. Robert let himself in and poked his head around the door. Cora was dozing while the nurse was taking her pulse.
"Robert… Robert… Robert…" she whispered unrestfully.
"She's dreaming?" the Earl whispered, the nurse consented a nod and removed herself to a chair to record a pulse. Not daring to wake her, Robert returned to his room to wait for a reasonable time to ring for Bates.
Lady Grantham we need to talk-
This is ridiculous!
Is it mine?
I'm here, darling.
How can you still want each other?
"I love him."
After everything?
"I'm here, darling I'm here."
Madam pity me… I love you.
"No!"
"Shh, Cora, I'm here."
She gasped as though she'd been living under water. She blinked but only cold light and silhouettes danced upon her vision – darkness was preferable.
"Lady Grantham, can you hear me? Are you able to open your eyes?" A familiar Scottish lilt. Because the voice was familiar, she made the hesitant decision to obey and forced herself to awaken. The good doctor smiled and nodded, pleased with her response. The difficult hours were passed and life had not left with them.
Her heart was light, her head held high and her arms an arc for her husband's hold, his an embrace for hers. They stepped to a gentle rhythm, moving slowly with the music.
"You're beautiful." It was said as strong and as true as the first time he'd told her. She liked that he didn't tell her often, it meant more to be said sparingly.
"I'm yours," she answered. He emitted a content murmur from his broad chest.
"Beautifully mine."
Cora smiled upwardly at him, her familiar blue eyes twinkling like moonlight on a low tide. Their hands had held one another so long, Cora felt her touch was a part of his, unsure where it began or ended.
They were waltzing in slow circles around their bedroom. The service which christened their sons into their faith had gone very well. A crying match ensued between the boys at the altar but it only served to fuel jokes and comments from the kindly bishop enlisted to welcome the lords into their new religion. Named Jeremy Patrick and Adam Isidore, their middle names paying to their grandfathers, now slept soundly in their nursery. The staff busied about downstairs, the guests had stampeded indoors with the band as rain began to descend. Since the band had started up again in the foyer, Robert and Cora had found a moment's peace – after settling their guests – to take a moment for themselves in the familiarity of the bedroom.
His hands squeezed her gently and traced gentles lines along the contours of her body as their dancing stance broke and they embraced more closely. Her palms lay flat to his back, her eyelashes making butterfly kisses along his cheek.
"Oh, to be in love," she sighed.
"I know exactly what you mean."
And he sealed it with a soft greeting of their lips.
It was a very very cold day. April, London, 1921. Fact and figure and signed. A thick piece of parchment lay resting and ready to age, on an oak coffee table in 21 Regent Street's parlour. The ink was fresh and glistening, the dim light shining through the great double windows making it gleam as it dried. One to witness, two to bait, and three who had struck the match together.
What a sordid thing, the meeting of these people in a dusty and grim property one end of fine and famous Regent Street. The solicitor, his wallet heavy, his knowledge uneasy, his work a burden and all this weight making him weary. The Lord and his Lady reduced of their pride to dwell in dealings unbefitting to them. Their sons, two toddlers of youth enough that they might forget this encounter all together. And finally, the fifth man, the owner of the greying walls, the dust-stacked furniture, the colourless carpets. The one that had all the words, the abuse ready and thought out, straight to hand should he need a quick tongue for his defence. It seemed however, his ready-made verbalised retaliation would be wasted.
For nobody knew what to say.
"After everything, I do have a conscience," said the unwanted man.
Frowns turned upon his words in response. Curiosity, anger and confusion.
"How very heartening-"
"Robert, let him speak," Cora reprimanded.
The Earl's frowned expression shifted to his wife.
"I have to admit something I wasn't going to," Evelyn started again, after a pointed stare at Robert. "But I can't let you think I signed because I'm a coward-"
"Mama, can we go home?" a toddler interrupted. He climbed into Lady Grantham's lap while her other son sat at her skirts and played with a rattle.
"Very soon Jem, come here," collecting her son in experienced arms, she began rocking him. With silence, the attention returned to Evelyn. His furrowed brow and glazed eyes expressed a struggle to maintain composure having watched the interaction between mother and child.
"What I am going to impart," he said carefully, "Is my sole reason for signing your declaration of silence. I want you to know that." Evelyn shifted a hand through his hair and sighed. "With great difficulty I have come to accept this is how it is. I must tell you that your sons are yours, Lord Grantham."
"I know that." Came the quick response.
"No… No you don't. Whatever you may say, you can only know now that they are truly yours… because I… because they can't be mine."
Robert was struggling to comprehend, but Cora understood completely.
"What are you saying?" Robert asked.
"After medical examination under-taken at my own concern, I have learnt that I cannot father a child. Any child."
"I understand now." Cora spoke next before she could be interrupted. "When you came to Downton to tell Edith about the Captain, you were surprised – not to find me with child – you'd surely heard somewhere in London – but to find me as pregnant as I was, you thought that maybe-"
"-maybe the dates added up and the doctors were wrong about… me." Evelyn concluded. "Regrettably I was the one in the wrong."
Silence set in again as this information threaded through the clock work of thought and comprehension.
"Thank you for telling us," Cora said eventually, meaning her thanks. Evelyn replied with a heavy nod, a disturbed expression gracing his face. "But I think in return we should tell you-"
"Cora, he doesn't need to know," Robert swiftly interrupted.
"I think it's only fair… When the boys were born healthy we knew their parentage. If I'd been pregnant during the Spanish flu epidemic, the chances allowed that they might not have lived or would have survived to be sickly."
"I won't offend you by asking if you have assured your calculations."
"Why make us bring the boys if you knew they couldn't be yours?" Cora asked. "You could have spared them this."
"I know and I'm sorry. But I had to see if there was… well, any likeness… See is believing. I couldn't quite comprehend they were real somehow."
Defeated, Evelyn considered how after all the effort, all the waste of time gone into this he could not have persuaded himself somewhere further back in time that maybe these children were not his. Drawn in by attraction and glued to obsession by love, he had to draw his mind away from the ache of it all now he'd formally agreed that it was time to let it all go...
"They don't look a thing like you." Robert growled in such sudden indignation it made Cora jump.
"Don't rub it in," she said quietly, hoping for Napier to remain unprovoked at Robert's gratuitious spit at him.
"Evidently not, knowing what we now know." Evelyn fixed his gaze with Robert's. "But I must say I hope you've learned a lesson, Grantham."
"I don't think it your place to care for my education."
"Like it wasn't my place to fall into bed with Cora?"
"She is Lady Grantham to you."
"And I am her lover to you."
"There was no love," Robert's teeth clenched.
"Let's go," Cora said quietly, taking her boys by their hands.
"You'll go nowhere until I'm satisfied this blaggard knows he's unworthy of you-" Evelyn protested.
"We're going," Cora said, keeping her voice even and calm. "You have no right to make our lives your business anymore."
"Well, I…" he swallowed, stuck for response. Mind blank. "Fine… fine. Your decision. But you forget I was there. And from my perspective, there was love."
"From your perspective only," Cora retorted as Robert opened his mouth to verbalise his rage. He relaxed somewhat in the presence of his wife's steely response. The fire was finally out. And so the Crawleys vacated Evelyn Napier's company for what would be the rest of their lives.
A/N: Surprise!? I hate that I couldn't round this off in keeping with the original idea for an epilogue. My plans didn't go into practise so well. So some may be pleased to know that instead this is the final chapter and much fluffy epilogue shall arrive in due course… Though no promises, it could be another 2 years? My thanks for Settees-under-siege who Beta'd a slightly earlier version months ago.