"Hello! It's a pleasure to meet you at last."
Matthew looked away from the footman who was taking his coat to see a middle-aged man with dark hair approaching. The earl, he presumed. Lord Grantham.
"We're delighted to be here," his mother said, stepping forward when Matthew did not to shake their cousin's hand. "Aren't we, Matthew?"
"Yes, delighted," he forced himself to say. "Delighted."
He wasn't, of course. He didn't need a crumbling old house or a title or an American fortune. He had a fortune—or at least enough money—of his own, a career of his own, a life of his own. And yet the earl had insisted, and his mother had insisted, and it had seemed reasonable enough in theory that he ought to move nearby to learn the business of being Earl of Grantham. It was, however, an entirely different matter now that he had stepped inside the abbey.
And, if he were honest with himself, now that he had met the eldest daughter of the family. Frankly, he found Charlotte Crawley forward, abrasive, and rude, as well as rather odd, and he now had the impression that his new relatives were a strange group of eccentrics.
Matthew followed his mother and the earl—Cousin Robert, he supposed—into the main hall, where they were met by an impressive line of servants as well as the women of the family, Charlotte and three others. It was a grand room, and Matthew might have been secretly awed by the furnishings or the dramatic ceiling or even the Oriental rug, but his attention was captured instead by the woman whom he presumed must be Charlotte's mother, the countess.
She was seated in an elegant wicker wheelchair. Dressed up in the same evening finery as her daughters and the old lady he assumed was her mother-in-law, but seated in a wheelchair. Was she…ill? She did not look it. Injured, then? Perhaps she had fallen a week ago and broken a leg, but was absolutely determined to be downstairs for this dinner? He half admired her determination, half wondered at her disregard for convention.
And then she smiled, disarmingly, and he quickly looked away, embarrassed at the realization that she likely knew he was staring. His gaze fell on Charlotte instead, who certainly knew he had been staring, for she had fixed him with a reproachful glare.
"Welcome to Downton," he heard the countess say, a soft American accent encasing a sweet voice.
"Thank you," he said, looking at the woman again, and he heard his mother echo his thanks.
"May I present my mother, Lady Grantham?" The earl gestured toward the elderly woman. "Mama, this is Mrs. Reginald Crawley and Mr. Matthew Crawley." The old lady gave a slight, dignified nod, and Matthew and his mother nodded as well. He could sense that his mother was far more interested in the woman in the wheelchair and her medical history, and he silently prayed that she would not say anything awkward.
"My wife, Lady Grantham," the earl went on, and the woman in the chair nodded, "and my daughters, Miss Charlotte Crawley and Miss Eleanor Crawley."
The silence that followed lasted no more than a few seconds, but to Matthew it seemed to drag on for hours. He was not sure what he was supposed to say to any of these people. He would have been at a loss under normal circumstances, but with the elephant in the room of his cousin's wheelchair, he was even more wrongfooted. Any inquiries after health would seem odd and directed towards her, but he was equally unsure whether it was polite to ignore the issue.
"Shall we go in?" the countess—Cousin Cora, wasn't it?—finally asked.
He found himself walking next to Charlotte on the way to the dining room. She was, he could tell, annoyed—likely still at his earlier comment, and now additionally at his more recent impoliteness. Yet he did not think further apologies were necessarily required.
"Your mother," he said quietly, trying to find the best way to acknowledge the situation, "is she ill?"
"No," Charlotte said firmly, "she is not ill."
He wet his lips, unsure what else to say. There seemed to be no polite way to phrase, What else is wrong with her, then?
After a pause, Charlotte said, "It was a riding accident."
"And she injured her leg?"
"No, her back."
"Ah," he said, feeling a twinge of sympathy for the countess. It wasn't that she was prevented from walking, then; rather, she must find it too painful at the moment. But then he remembered… "I thought you said your family doesn't ride?"
She looked at him as though he were an idiot, and he realized he disliked her even more than he'd thought. "Well, would you?"
"I'm sorry?"
"If you'd grown up with a mother who'd been seriously injured in a riding accident, would you want to ride?"
"You mean, it isn't a recent injury?"
Charlotte shook her head. "No, it was before I was born. She was a young woman."
"Oh." He felt far worse for her now, imagining twenty-odd years of lingering pain that occasionally, he assumed, forced her off her feet. It was an odd fit with the soft smile Cora had given him when he'd arrived. "And it troubles her still?"
Charlotte looked down her nose at him. "Cousin Matthew, I am not sure troubles is the word I would use."
Clearly this was not a profitable line of inquiry, at least not with this young woman. He would express his concern directly to her mother later this evening. "Well, I'm glad to have a chance to meet your whole family," he began, searching for a topic of conversation that would leave Charlotte slightly less waspish. She did not respond, and he took the lack of a glare or snappish comment to be something of a victory.
They were soon in the dining room, where events took a turn for the truly unexpected. Lord Grantham, who had been pushing his wife's wheelchair, stopped at the edge of the room and bent over her. She wrapped her arms around his neck, he slipped one arm behind her shoulders and the other beneath her knees, and then he lifted her, carried her to the table, and set her down in one of the chairs. He took a moment to ensure that she was seated comfortably and then pushed the chair in toward the table.
It was all a series of neat, quick, practiced maneuvers, and the earl and countess took no notice of their guests as they completed the exercise. Yet it was the last thing Matthew had expected to occur—if he'd thought about it at all, he would have expected the earl to push her as near to the table as possible and then let her transfer herself into a regular chair, for surely she could bear to walk a step or two—and he could not prevent himself from murmuring, "Good God," under his breath when Lord Grantham first lifted his wife. He heard his mother give a small gasp at the same moment.
Most unfortunately, Cousin Charlotte seemed to have heard him. "Don't tell me you've never seen someone lift another person before," she snapped.
Indeed, that was far from an everyday sight for Matthew, but the lifting—unconventional as it was, in the dining room of a great house—was not his central concern. Rather, he had gotten the distinct impression from the way Lady Grantham's legs had hung—and from the way her husband had helped her arrange herself in the dining room chair—that the lower half of her body did not work at all.
He thought back to Charlotte's earlier comments: I am not sure troubles is the word I would use…seriously injured in a riding accident…I am their adopted daughter…my parents' situation was not common…
Was he perhaps looking at the sort of spinal injury he'd only read about? The sort that left you paralyzed? But Charlotte had said her mother had been injured more than twenty years ago—and didn't paralysis kill a person within a matter of months? His only firsthand experience had been a legal case a few years ago involving a suit from the family of a deceased miner who had been thus injured, and who had, as expected, died three weeks after his accident. Surely that was not what was wrong with his cousin Cora.
In any event, he knew better than to ask her eldest daughter.
And then his mother spoke. "Cousin Cora," she began, her tone eager. Please be making a comment about the house, he prayed desperately. Please be inquiring about tonight's dinner. Yet he knew his mother, who had been trained as a nurse, was far more interested in the countess's medical condition than he was.
She was also far more forward, and far nosier. "Do your legs not work at all?" Isobel Crawley continued.
Matthew winced inwardly. Charlotte's face turned stark white, and her lips disappeared into a thin line. And Cora, who was clearly not used to such a direct question, visibly flinched. But then she managed a small smile.
"No, Cousin Isobel, they do not. But please, have a seat."
Charlotte's face was still thunderous, but Robert and Cora did not seem to have taken offense, and Matthew hoped very much that his mother would recognize the brush off for what it was and leave the subject alone.
But of course she didn't. "They don't work at all?" Isobel said as they took seats and were served their soup course. "It's not only that you can't walk—you can't even move them?"
"No, I cannot," Cora replied. "But tell me—"
"Are they paralyzed, then? You have no feeling?"
"Yes, paralyzed. How did you find your—"
"And where in your body does the paralysis begin?"
Cora's expression was merely bemused, but Robert appeared to be growing nearly as irritated as Charlotte. "Mother," Matthew broke in, "I'm not sure this is quite the subject we should be—"
"I'm assuming roughly at your waist?" Isobel continued, as though she had not heard him.
"Yes, I—"
"Is this a spinal cord injury? I've read about those, and I'm quite curious—"
"It is, yes," Cora said, a slight tinge coming into her cheeks. "I fell off a horse when I was twenty. But it's hardly fair to you and Matthew if I sit here and talk about myself!"
"Of course not," Robert agreed, in a forceful tone that would brook no disagreement. "We're quite interested to hear about Cousin Matthew's work in Manchester, and his plans here in Downton."