Cora waited as Mitchell finished lacing up her boots, an uncharacteristic impatience snuffing out her better nature. She looked longingly to the tiny portal window, it's roundness framing the grey sky, a false moon carved into the wall. An angry storm had kept them inside the confines of the ship the past two days. The vessel pitched on with its inhabitants clinging to its walls to keep from toppling over, and though Cora's stomach had rolled perilously along with the sway of the swells, it was the staleness of the air as their confinement stretched on, that truly made her nauseous.

Her thoughts drifted, as they often did these last solitary days, to the morning she woke in Robert's arms. It had been an unexpected gift, to feel his body into the new hours of the day. Cora could count on one hand the number of times Robert had lingered after love making. And as it had those few times, his presence as the sun was just coming up always warmed her to her core. In those times she could easily pretend that theirs was not a one-sided love affair, and she could snuggle into that happy fantasy as his breath hit the bare skin of her shoulder.

But it was only a fantasy, and when Robert had woken, when he had placed a peck on her forehead and left her room without commentary, it had come to an abrupt end.

Robert had been cordially distant after that, seemingly returning to a place of weary contemplation. His silences were more pregnant, his absences from her side more prolonged. Just that afternoon Cora had gone looking for him, only to be informed by Robert's valet that he had been invited for debate and cigars by some of the gentlemen sailing with them. Luncheon had come and gone without any word and Cora was not inclined to wait on him again through tea.

"Your hat, milady." Mitchell affixed the item securely on her head and Cora winced as the hairpins scraped along her scalp.

Finally fitted for the brisk temperatures the storm had left in its wake, Cora walked with purpose through the hallway and past the grand staircase dominating the lobby. She tipped her head amicably to the others out strolling, people whose faces and names were becoming familiar to her as their days together grew in number.

Cora gripped the knob of the door leading to the upper deck, bracing herself for a chilly welcome, but was pleasantly surprised to feel some sun breaking through the clouds. Her steps took on a lightness, the fresh air adding life to her stifled lungs. The breeze coming off of the water was typical of that found on the deck of a ship. Saturated with salt, it left a briney taste in Cora's mouth, a sticky film on her exposed skin, but none of that mattered. In fact, her whole body seemed to unfurl from its forced hibernation. That sensation, along with walking in the opposite direction from where the ship was sailing, made her feel slightly intoxicated.

Intent on catching the view from the stern, Cora continued to the back of the ship. With each step she let the insecurities that had festered all morning fade away. Instead, she focused on the end of their journey and how much she was anticipating her reunion with her parents. Almost a year after her marriage to Robert, Cora felt a rift had been caused between she and her father. The few words he dropped at the end of her mother's letters grew more terse and more sparse as time passed and Cora was anxious to see him in person.

Isadore had not agreed with the match from the start. His last words said to her face had been angry ones, desperate ones that he had hissed between clenched teeth in the back of the coach that led them through Downton Village. As the villagers lined the streets to catch a glimpse of the new Viscountess and throw flowers in her direction, her father's words drowned out any of their well wishes. Isadore continued to demand she walk away even as the coach stopped at the steps of the church, Reverend Travis waiting there to greet them as they approached.

Cora had taken offense at the time, hurt by his seeming lack of confidence in her wifely abilities, angered by his stubborn refusal to be made happy by her match. Now, many months after the ink had dried on the contract entailing her dowry to Downton, Cora wondered what her father would say to the terms of that agreement, if he ever found out. She had been too afraid of his response to ever mention it in her letters.

A gust of cooler wind raced over the deck of the ship, tearing Cora away from the past. She turned up the collar of her coat and curled her gloved fingers into the fold of her fist, warming their cold tips. The sounds of high-pitched squeals cut through the conversations of the other promenading passengers. Ahead Cora could see children at play towards the back of the ship, unperturbed by the cold or the adults parting around them as they walked by.

Taking care not to disturb their game, Cora sat in a lounge chair far enough away so that she could observe them in anonymity. Two women, nannies Cora guessed, chatted to one another a few paces away, too engrossed in their conversation to be paying their charges much mind. An intense game of marbles was underfoot, and Cora couldn't help but stare at the youngest of the children gathered. A girl of no more than four, perhaps, clung to her doll as she sat further away. Her long, mahogany curls cascaded over the rich blue wool of her coat, a bonnie matching cap pinned to the top of her head.

She was beautiful, picture perfect in every way, and a dull ache began pulsating deep in Cora's chest, her muscles tingling with a familiar pain. It was the same discomfort that developed when she held Robert's cousin Patrick, his chubby little body filling up all of the right spaces in her arms, his baby smell tickling her nose. The pain had disappeared when her hands could press against the still flat plane of her abdomen, her tiny child growing inside, but that had been but a brief moment. Her happiness cut short and shattered by her own feeble body.

Cora longed for it, motherhood. With every throb of her heart, she longed for it but she was beginning to despair that it was not meant to be.

The scene blurred, it rippled and stung, salt in a weeping wound and Cora looked away, quickly, blinking rapidly. She couldn't remember wanting something more than the swell of a belly full of her child. It surpassed every impulse Cora had ever had, including the desire that had led her to accept Robert's proposal. That she should be denied the one thing she was most desperate for after so long of trying seemed a cruel turn that she didn't deserve.

There was so much love within her heart, love too fragile to be freely given to Robert, not after his pained look the one time she had exposed it. Cora needed something to love with abandon.

"Mitchell said you were out here."

Robert's shoes came into Cora's line of vision first. The tips of his highly polished, Italian leather Derby's peering out from the hem of his wool pants. She could almost see her reflection in them. The shoes lifted off of the deck, one and then the other as he shuffled and Cora could well imagine the look on Robert's face as he waited for her to acknowledge him, the blinking eyes, the curve of his brows as they bristled together in confused impatience.

Robert cleared his throat but instead of glancing up at him, Cora looked again to the children playing. The young girl cradled her doll lovingly and with her face just inches away from the painted porcelain one, she whispered platitudes lost in the breeze. She stroked the auburn curls with such serious care, and Cora remembered the days of her own childhood, the maternal attentions she lavished on her beloved dolls as a child. It hurt to look any longer, so Cora turned her head up to Robert, only to find his eyes lingering where hers had just been.

"Aren't they quite marvelous?" Robert asked absently, his voice far away. It held the same need Cora felt in her breast.

Cora could only nod in response, her gaze falling to the hands she held twisted together in her lap. She shuddered, unsure if the wind had just gathered strength or if she had been previously impervious to it. Robert noticed her movement.

"Are you cold?" Robert asked while squatting lower to see her face, an unexpected gesture that had the ache in her chest falling into the pit of her stomach, where it settled.

Cora's throat tingled and her mouth felt suddenly parched. She squeezed her hands together tighter.

Jerking her head quickly, Cora said, "No, but I think I would like to lie down."

Robert's eyes widened and he looked her over closely. "You look a bit drawn. I hope you aren't getting ill!"

Cora's chuckle, meant to reassure, came out weaker than intended. Fatigue kept her planted to her seat and she swallowed down the thickness climbing up the back of her throat. Robert took her elbow quickly, the tense pulsing of his jaw indication that the distress she was feeling had played out over her face. She let Robert's large hands guide her up, one staying firmly on her arm as the other wrapped around her back. The waves of nausea crested harder now that she was standing and walking and Cora's vision watered as Robert led her quickly through the ship.

The path to their rooms seemed endless as Cora tried to breath through the urge to be sick. The relief of seeing her stateroom's door come into view was unparalleled and Cora clamped her teeth together purposefully, counting to ten silently, her nostrils flaring.

"Almost there," Robert's voice attempted to soothe while he navigated the knob and kept an arm around her.

Cora closed her eyes, listening to the latch disengage with the door frame. It was already late in the afternoon and the grey sky still sheltered the sun, casting the room in an eerie light. A gas lamp flickered on the wall, as did a fire in the hearth, no doubt lit by Mitchell in her anticipation of Cora's return. Robert took her hands in his and led her to the bed and Cora sat, some of the nausea receding, though a strange vertigo still threatened.

The mattress protested as she sank into it. Cora watched as Robert moved the small parlor chair close to the bed and sat on it's edge, their knees touching. He concentrated on the clasps of her cloak, each pewter end snapped away from its pair, the sound of their disentanglement mixing with the crackle of wood. The familiar scent of oak meeting flame quelled the lingering queasiness, as did the light touch of Robert's fingertips as he pushed the cloak from Cora's shoulders. She sighed, letting the garment fall away from her and she let her head fall back slightly on her neck.

Robert gently pushed on her shoulder, coaxing her back until she laid on the bed, a pillow tucked under her embrace. Unfolding the soft blanket on end of the bed, Robert spread it over her before sitting down. His smooth palm rested on her forehead and Cora sighed.

"Should I send for the doctor?" Robert's voice was low.

Cora shook her head. "No. I feel much better already."

"Good," Robert replied, the hand he used to test her temperature now stroking the fine hairs that gathered along her hairline. Cora fought the urge to clasp his hand tight to her breast bone.

I love you, Cora cried within the confines of her own thoughts. And she did. It was a feeling that grew, despite the time it spent in the shadows of her heart. Cora had hung all of her hopes, pushed away all of her father's misgivings, on the belief that if given time, Robert would come to love her too. That he cared for her, felt some responsibility towards her, Cora couldn't deny. She would even dare to say that they had a friendship, one that became easier every day. But love? No...no, that had not blossomed. Nor, Cora believed, could it now.


Robert shook the small square of paper he held in his hands but the tiny letters curving around the sketched roads remained illegible. The hand drawn map he'd purchased from a Maltese boy on the dock might as well have been a page of hieroglyphics for all the help it offered navigating the island's narrow streets. Squinting to make sense of the foreign words, Robert jumped onto his toes as a loud honking from behind demanded his attention. Flattening up against the stone wall of a non-descript building, Robert watched as the donkey responsible for the noisome sound trotted by, loaded down with sacks and blankets, its owner ambling behind. The man shrugged his shoulders and gave Robert a toothless grin, obviously in much less of a hurry than his beast.

The temperate climate of the Mediterranean was a shift from what Robert had grown accustomed to on the ship. He pulled out a kerchief from his breast pocket to wipe the moisture quickly forming on the back of his neck. Studying the maze of roads winding away from him, Robert looked back down to his map, and then quickly glanced up again. He should have brought Jones with him.

After several more moments of growing frustration, Robert angrily folded the paper into precise quadrants and clenched his fist around it. Inhaling deeply through his nose, Robert stretched his neck to look up, trying to decipher the strange hybrid language scrolled out on the signs hanging from above each doorway. Taking a few steps forward, his footfalls echoed a newly restored determination as his shoes slapped the cobblestones.

The fraying papers in a window several paces away told him that he had found his destination. Robert leaned into the open doorway of the small office tucked in the corner of a quiet street. The rapid fire, tick, tick, tick of the telegraph machine was a welcome noise and Robert clasped the frame of the door, preparing to step up, when he paused.

Suddenly he wasn't so sure about himself and not for the first time, he wondered at his stupidity. Robert recalled back to Christmas and New Year's Eve, the correspondence he had with Cora's mother. Just the idea of the subterfuge they deployed to create their plan made Robert sweat more than he already was. It had been Martha's idea to leave Isadore in the dark about Cora and he joining their holiday. Thinking she knew both her husband and daughter better than he had left him little room for arguing her logic, but now Robert wondered if it hadn't been a colossal mistake. He could only imagine the look on Cora's face when they finally met up with her parents, being greeted by shock and perhaps ire as opposed to the happiness and excitement she undoubtedly anticipated. Robert had planned to telegram Martha during the ship's brief stop in Malta, and beg her to reconsider telling Isadore before their arrival. But now he couldn't help but worry his efforts would be too late.

An old woman sat behind the machine, transcribing it's message as it chittered on. Her eyes wandered up to him and her sun-hardened face broke out into deep tanned grooves. She nodded to him in acknowledgment before returning to her work. Robert lingered in the doorway, passing his folded up map from one hand to the other, waiting for her attention. From where he stood, Robert could appreciate the space the telegraph office occupied, it's cramped walls, its sparse furnishings. The machine itself shook with the force of transmitting all of those dashes and dots and Robert would not have been surprised to be told that it was the very first of its kind.

The office grew quiet and Robert turned to see the old woman watching him expectantly. Her mouth moved and a rush of words left it, aimed in his direction though Robert could not understand them. Robert shook his head.

"English?" Robert asked.

"No, no." The woman shrugged apologetically.

Robert walked to the desk anyway, fishing out the paper that he had stuffed into his coat pocket before leaving his stateroom on the Victoria. Spreading it out on the worn surface of the counter separating them Robert pointed to the words written in his precise hand. The woman bent closer to the paper, lifting her head up and down and Robert's spine straightened, the feeling of being mollified making him bristle.

"I need you to send this," Robert demanded not caring that it was a useless request. "To Egypt."

The woman started speaking quickly to him, her hands gesturing along with her rapid fire words. Robert strained to follow her, to even pick out one recognizable string of syllables, but nothing could be deciphered. Groaning, Robert picked up his message to Martha and turned sharply away. Barging his way through the door, Robert stumbled onto the sidewalk just as a parade of natives gathered in the street, a religious procession heavily underway. Women passed him, their long white dresses sweeping the cobbles of the street as they marched slowly by, accompanied by men in dark morning suits. They sang a hymn in time to their measured, lumbering steps, their voices reverberating off of the ancient buildings closing them off from the main thoroughfare of the town. Up ahead, leading the pack, Robert could see a statue of the Virgin Mary sitting on a velvet pillow, hoisted above the heads of the marchers.

Quickly trying to navigate a path out of the fray, Robert jostled and bumped his way through the entourage lining up beside the procession. Old men yelled at him, waving their hands as Robert stuttered his apologies. The breath left his lungs in shorter gasps, the constant jab of elbows and shoulders into his person making him frantic in his need to find an opening out of the sea of people. They were equally determined to carry him along, a tide of bodies pushing him further away from the direction he wanted to go in. It only took a few more near stumbles for Robert's thin tolerance to shatter and he abandoned his civility, pushing his way off of the street.

Robert popped out of the crowd finally, the wave of people cresting behind him as he clasped his knees, hunching over to catch his breath. In their wake, they left an eerie stillness, the winding street absent of life or sound. Straightening his hat Robert was shocked to find his fingers trembling. The air became breathable once again and as he pulled it deep into his lungs, the thumping of his heart slowed. He passed through the same streets he'd used to find the telegraph office, noting the cafes and small shops he had previously rushed by. The sun, which had been vibrant and rotund in the blue sky all day, dipped closer to the roofs of the buildings in the square, reflecting its rays off of the terra cotta shingles.

No matter where he was, dusk always tended to be Robert's favorite time of day.

The thought jarred a nerve within him and his stomach lurched. Fumbling for his pocket watch he flicked open its covering. 5PM. Cursing, Robert began to run toward the dock. He estimated he was still several blocks away and the ship had been scheduled to depart at 5PM sharp. In the distance he could hear the deep, rumbling sound of the steamer blowing its warning horn and Robert pushed his feet to move faster.

Sprinting through an abandoned alleyway, Robert came through the other side in view of the Victoria. Stewards were pulling up the walkway, readying the ship for departure and Robert yelled out at them, waving his arms. One man stopped his work and scowled.

Slowing his pace only marginally, it was then that Robert recognized Cora's outline pacing the upper rail, one hand on her hip, the other cupped over her eyes, shielding them as she looked for him on the horizon.

"Cora!" Robert yelled, hopping up the ramp the crew had placed back in its position.

Cora's hand fell away from her face and the tense line of her lips turned up into a wide smile.

"Robert!" Cora called, stepping away from the officer that she had obviously been pleading with to hold the ship, and ran toward him.

Her bare fingers grasped his hands, and though he was covered in a layer of perspiration, her skin was cold. Robert rubbed her palms between his, a skittering relieved string of laughter escaping his lips. The crew members grumbled as they resumed their tasks for leaving port.

"I thought they were going to leave without you!" Cora cried, still clinging to his hands.

"I'm sorry," Robert replied softly, placing a faint kiss on her forehead. And he was. Her eyes closed at his contact, her long lashes tickling her pale cheeks.

Cora's lips curled upward. When she opened her eyes, they no longer looked weighed down with worry. The blue irises searching him were dark, reflecting the change in light as the sun continued its descent toward the horizon. Unlike their departure from Southampton, the deck remained predominantly empty, only a handful of couples strolling its circumference. With his failure to reach Martha still occupying his conscience, Robert was in no hurry to retreat to his room, left to obsess over how badly he had bungled things.

Instead, Robert took Cora's arm and led her around the promenade to the back of the ship, hoping the exposure to fresh air would supply him with inspiration on what he should do. The vessel lurched to life and quickly gained speed, cutting through the azure waters of the Mediterranean. Robert and Cora found themselves alone, watching the sun set, it growing smaller and smaller as they raced East. An array of pinks and purples colored the darkening sky, while golds and ambers bounced off of the water.

"Have you ever seen anything more beautiful?" Cora breathed, the lazy smile of her profile illuminated by all of the refracting rays of dying light.

Robert couldn't speak, his mind unable to conjure the right words. By her heavy lidded gaze, which never left the sky, Robert knew she didn't expect an answer and he was glad of that. How could he possibly say what he felt? How could he possibly make her understand?

"Yes," Robert whispered, so low that Cora remained unmoved, ignorant of his response. And as she continued to watch the sun, Robert could not take his eyes off of her.