AN: This wasn't quite my original plan for chapter four, but a few of my reviewers were saying they missed fluffy Cobert, so here's a long, fluffy chapter of Robert taking care of Cora before our love bunnies curl up in bed together. ;-) (See, I do listen to your reviews! So do keep leaving them!)

Cora heard the click of the dividing door just as O'Brien finished tying off her braid. Robert did not say anything in greeting—a sure sign that he was annoyed with someone—and she watched in the mirror as he sat heavily down in a chair.

She had a fairly good idea who the someone might be this evening.

"Thank you, O'Brien," Cora said, accepting the small jar of lotion that her maid passed her and placing a small blob in her palm. "That will be all."

"Heavens, what a strange woman," she went on, addressing her husband this time, her tone light as she rubbed the lotion into her hands.

Robert replied with a disgruntled snort.

"We were told she used to be a nurse, you know," she said. "So perhaps that explains the interest."

"Cora," he began, and she heard his irritation with Cousin Isobel in his voice.

"Robert," she said, twisting slightly in her chair to look at him, "you mustn't think I was offended."

"You didn't look happy," he said.

"Well, I can't deny it was…uncomfortable, I suppose. I don't think I've ever been questioned so directly—certainly not by someone I've just met."

"I should think not!"

"But truly, I wasn't upset. She wasn't rude—"

"Clearly, we have a very different definition of rude," he scoffed.

"That is, of course that sort of behavior is rude, but in comparison to everything else I've heard for the last twenty-odd years…plenty of people have been truly rude. The king among them, in fact!" She saw Robert's fist clench at the memory of Eleanor's debut. "But Cousin Isobel meant no harm. I think she was merely interested. Oddly interested, but she's nothing more than eccentric, Robert. I think she's really quite harmless."

He raised an eyebrow. "You're certain you weren't hurt by any of it?"

She gave him a small smile and shook her head, equal measures amused and pleased at his protectiveness. "Not at all, darling."

The sharpness in his posture disappeared as he turned the conversation toward her. "Shall I get you to bed, then?"

"Yes, please." Robert stood and then bent over her chair, lifting her as she wrapped her arms around his neck.

Although there were several nurses in the family's employ who were, in pairs, quite capable of lifting Cora, Robert had always preferred to handle most of the transfers himself. He had told her early on how much he liked having her in his arms, and she had told him how loved and safe and cared for it made her feel, and thus it had become a habit that neither would have wanted to break. Twenty years on, she still could not help but think of him as a knight in shining armor each time he carried her. She was awed by his strength—Robert was in his late forties now, but she had never seen him strain to lift her—as well as by his tenderness. It was only with Robert that she was honest about how painful her injury still was, and in response he was so achingly gentle with her that it sometimes brought tears to her eyes.

Tonight it was quite painful indeed—unfortunate timing that had simultaneously made the dinner more of a trial, as well as made any nosiness from Isobel Crawley seem perfectly irrelevant. Cora couldn't truly feel beneath her broken vertebra, but she was always conscious of a constant burning from the nerve damage she'd suffered at the time. Then there was the rest of her back—she ached everywhere that she had normal feeling, with her muscles knotting from days spent sitting immobile in her chair, from the strain of compensating for the control she lacked further down, from the stress of her damaged spine. She knew it had been the same even in her twenties, but it seemed as though she'd grown stiffer with each passing year. It had occurred to her that she no longer bothered to wish she could walk—rather, she merely wished not to hurt.

Some days, of course, were better or worse than others, and tonight she could not keep from wincing as Robert laid her down on the bed, as careful as he was.

He caught it, of course—he always caught it. "Is it bad tonight, darling?" he asked, his brow furrowing.

She did not answer him directly. She did not like to answer these questions directly—she hated to complain (somehow, that only made her feel worse), and Robert could usually read the answers in her eyes anyway.

"Could you stretch me?" she asked instead. "Just my back—my legs were done this afternoon."

"Of course, of course," he said, his eyes growing darker with concern. There was always something sweetly comforting in his expression when he was worried about her, as though he were caressing her with his gaze.

He moved to the foot of the bed, took her heels in his hands, and tugged gently, a movement that lengthened her spine. The burning in her muscles sharpened, but there was a feeling of release as well, and she concentrated on that as Robert held the stretch. Then he bent her knees and pushed them down towards the bed, once on each side of her, while she twisted her upper body in the opposite direction, taking a sharp breath at the sensation.

"Breathe," she heard him say softly. "Breathe through it, love." She exhaled slowly, and then he helped her into a seated position, from which he bent her forward, pulling on each of her arms. When he had finished that, he wrapped his arms firmly around her upper body and slowly twisted her, a quick, surprised, "Oh!" escaping her lips at the sudden pop she felt in her back as he did so. She closed her eyes, sighing in relief as he twisted her in the other direction.

"Did that help?" he asked, stroking her cheek once she was straight again.

She nodded. "Yes, it's better. Thank you." She was still hurting, but the earlier throbbing had eased.

"Here, let me turn you over," he said, reaching to lift her again. "I need to give you a massage."

"You don't have to," she said immediately as he picked her up and helped her lie down on her stomach. "You just did this on—"

He silenced her with a hand pressed to her shoulder. "Please. I don't like it when you're in pain, Cora." There was a desperate sincerity in his voice that made her want to kiss him, but of course that was too difficult from this position, so she merely nodded, reaching up to cover his hand with her own.

Robert had begun giving her frequent massages in the early months after her fall, having discovered that relaxing her muscles eased the nerve pain. She couldn't feel his hands, but she could feel the eventual relief they brought.

"What did you make of him?" she asked after a few minutes of silence, trying to distract herself. Her nerves never took well to the pressure at first, and tonight was no exception.

"Who, Cousin Matthew?"

"Yes, him."

"Pleasant enough. A decent man, or so he seemed. He was at least well-mannered enough to be embarrassed by his mother."

Cora smiled into her pillow. She sensed that Robert would not soon forget their first meeting with Isobel Crawley. "Perhaps I could call on her later this week—you know, give her every detail she wants to know."

"You've got no obligation whatsoever to do that, Cora."

"I don't mind, not really. Not in private." She sucked in her breath as the knives stabbing her lower back seemed to twist.

Robert leaned down to kiss her shoulder. "I'm sorry," he said sympathetically. "I know this always hurts you at first. It should ease in a moment, darling."

And slowly—after minutes that seemed to drag for hours—it did. Cora sighed, feeling the fire slowly cooling, the blade in her back changing from a long, jagged hunting knife to kitchen cutlery and, finally, to a blunt pair of scissors: an annoyance, not an agony.

Robert recognized the change in her muscles and in her breathing that meant he'd succeeded, and she soon felt his hands move higher, above where she had sensation.

"I don't mind talking with her," she went on, picking up her earlier subject. "It might prevent another scene."

She got something that was half a laugh and half a snort from Robert. "It might. Getting her a governess might help as well."

She chuckled in response. "In all seriousness, she was a nurse. I understand I'm something of a unicorn to the medical world. Think how far you had to go to find a doctor who even thought survival was possible."

Robert kissed her shoulder again, and she closed her eyes, enjoying the massage. She despised the pain that made this necessary, but she loved the feel of his hands on her body, hearing an unspoken I love you in every stroke. He'd grown quite good at this over the years, too, seeming to know instinctively where she was hurting and how much pressure to apply—she could not recall the last time she'd had to offer any directions.

"Oh, that's good," she murmured, feeling his fingers working carefully over the sore area beneath her right shoulder blade.

"You're a mess of knots here," she heard him say. And then: "Charlotte didn't seem to much take to Matthew."

"You didn't think so?" In truth Cora had noticed an air of coldness in their older daughter as well, and she'd been trying to convince herself that she had imagined it.

"No, I thought she seemed…put out by him, somehow. She went to see them this afternoon, you know—perhaps they got off on the wrong foot."

"Perhaps." She knew that, while Charlotte had a very tender heart that was often on full display in private, her daughter had an equal tendency toward a prickly irritability with anyone outside their immediate family. Cora could easily imagine her taking an instant dislike to an innocuous comment of Matthew's, and the whole meeting going downhill from there.

It was not what she'd been planning for. Not at all.

"I had thought…" she began, then trailed off. It seemed almost silly to mention her hopes now, when they'd been so clearly and so quickly shown to be a fool's dream.

"What, darling? What did you think?"

"Mmm, nothing," she said. "Never mind." She was not sure she had the mental capacity to discuss anything more at the moment anyway—she felt as though her body were melting into the mattress, and she sighed.

Robert chuckled and fell silent as well.

She had nearly dozed off when she felt his hands still and heard him whisper, "Is that better, love?"

She nodded. "Yes, very much better," she said, her voice sleepy to her own ears. "Thank you ever so much."

He kissed her cheek this time, and then she felt the mattress shift as he climbed into bed.

"Can you turn me on my left side?" she murmured. It was easier to snuggle with him that way.

He helped her change position and then drew the covers over them both before lying down and wrapping her in his arms. It was always like this—they had never found it natural or possible to roll in opposite directions after Robert had spent the time before bed stretching her legs or rubbing her back. Cora found his arms a perfect comfort as she lay in the dark in a bed she could not leave on her own, and Robert liked to reassure himself that she was still here, still well, her heart still beating against his chest.

They shared a slow, languid kiss before falling asleep.