"Good morning, milady."

Cora opened her eyes at the touch of O'Brien's hand on her shoulder, but she hadn't been asleep. As usual, she had awakened at Robert's alarm, but she had not been able to doze back off the way she was used to. Her stomach had been unsettled in the morning in recent weeks—an irritation, more than an ailment, that she could not quite figure the source of. But today it was worse, her vague queasiness crossing the line into nausea, and she'd been lying for the better part of an hour with her eyes closed and her jaw firmly set, praying it would ease soon.

"I'm not sure I'm quite well this morning, O'Brien," she said, looking up at her maid.

O'Brien studied her. "Your eyes don't look well, milady. Are you ill?"

"I'm not sure I'm ill, exactly." And she wasn't. She'd been fighting this strange sensation for too many days—and felt too well otherwise—to call it a simple illness. "I think perhaps I've eaten something that doesn't quite agree with me. Could you fetch me some toast?" The plain bread she was served with her breakfast had helped settle her stomach on all the other mornings.

"Some toast, milady? Are you sure you feel like eating?"

Cora nodded—she was, in fact, hungry, even if her stomach was rolling unpleasantly. "And please, before you go, help me sit up."

O'Brien gave her a skeptical look but murmured, "Of course, milady," and reached under her arms to raise her up in the bed, settling her back against the pillows.

But Cora had not been expecting how much sicker the movement would make her feel. "Oh," she moaned, clutching her maid's arm and squeezing her eyes shut, hoping it would pass.

"Milady?"

Suddenly, the remains of last night's dinner were pouring forth, onto O'Brien and into Cora's own lap. O'Brien gave a sharp gasp of surprise but recovered quickly, reaching up to make sure her mistress's hair was out of the way.

"Shh, milady," she murmured. "You'll be all right in a moment…there we are."

Gasping for breath, Cora straightened, regarding the mess on the sheets. She was dimly conscious of O'Brien's hand gently rubbing her back. How much had she gotten on her maid? She chanced a glance at her and saw that, while most of it was in her own lap, she'd managed to vomit a decent amount onto the other woman. How horrible!

"Are you finished, milady?" O'Brien asked softly.

"Yes, but—oh, O'Brien, I'm ever so sorry! How awful of me!"

"That's quite all right," the maid soothed. "You couldn't very well help it, and this is nothing that can't be washed."

"She very well could have helped it," O'Brien muttered to Thomas in the courtyard half an hour later. "The cow."

"Could she have?" the younger man mused. "I'm not sure how well one can control that sort of thing."

"She knew it was coming," O'Brien snapped. "She'd already said she didn't feel well, and what does she do? Wants me to help her sit up, because of course the crippled bitch can't do a thing on her own. Then I could tell, she knew something was about to happen—and she grabs ahold of me, as though I'm a slop bucket for her to throw up in. And even if she hadn't known, she could have bloody well turned her head once it started!"

Thomas snickered in a way that irritated her greatly. "Either way, I won't deny that seeing you come downstairs wearing her ladyship's vomit was a sight for sore eyes, Miss O'Brien."

"I can see you're not the one who'll be scrubbing the dress…or Lady G's bedsheets, for that matter," she huffed. "Bitch hasn't got a clue what's involved in washing." She sighed. "She's damn lucky her husband pays so well for all the bloody nursing she expects out of a maid."

Thomas inhaled again from his cigarette. "I don't imagine you'd have stayed otherwise."

The maid snorted. "I wouldn't have lasted a day with that cow without the extra money."

After she'd been sick, Cora had sent O'Brien downstairs to change with a profuse apology, asking her to send Mrs. Hughes and a housemaid in her place. Gwen had taken the dirty linens, and Cora had then managed to convince Mrs. Hughes that she was quite well enough for breakfast—she no longer felt sick, she'd promised, and indeed she felt that food might even help. The housekeeper had skeptically agreed to bring her a tray, and she was now eating it ravenously.

"Cora?" Robert's panicked voice reached her ears just before the door was flung open and he rushed in. "Darling, they said you were ill…" He took in the sight of his wife sitting up in bed, calmly polishing off a stack of toast.

She shook her head. "It was nothing—something I'd eaten, I expect, as I feel perfectly well now."

"You're…are you certain?"

"Yes," she said firmly. She did feel fine, and she did not want to be kept in bed all day by an overprotective husband. "Nothing at all is wrong."

And truly, she thought as Mrs. Hughes helped her dress, she didn't think anything was. She was not sure if this morning's incident was connected to the odd queasiness she'd felt recently—which was an annoyance, more than anything—but perhaps something rancid had been served a few nights in a row, and her stomach had finally made its displeasure known? It was nothing she bothered to give much thought to—she had, after all, only been sick once.

But as the days went by, she felt worse and worse more and more often, her increasing nausea combining with a crushing fatigue. Something, Cora was forced to conclude, was very wrong indeed, and she suspected she knew what it was: one of the internal infections Robert and the doctors had been so worried over at the time of her injury. Her condition had finally caught up with her, and there was nothing for it but to wait and see if her body could recover.

She did not tell Robert, going to great lengths to hide her queasiness and her constant longing for rest. She could find no way to say it, no easy way to break his heart. And if she truly was dying, he'd know soon enough.

"Mama? Are you in your room?"

It was in the midst of one of Cora's afternoon lie-downs while Robert was out on the estate that she heard Charlotte's voice call out, accompanied by a soft knock on her door.

"Yes, sweetheart. Come in."

Charlotte pushed open the door and glanced first to the chaise, as though expecting to find her mother relaxing there, before her eyes fell on Cora in the bed. "Oh…what are you doing in bed?" she asked, her brow furrowing.

"Just resting." Cora forced a smile, trying to push her nausea away. "I…had a rather restless night and thought I might lie down for a bit."

"Would you like me to come back?" Charlotte asked quickly. There was a skittishness in her eyes, a darkness that implied she was eager to speak with Cora and equally eager not to.

"No, no." She so rarely felt well these days anyway, and Charlotte's expression made her quite curious. "Go ahead."

"Would you like me to help you sit up?"

"No, that's not necessary. I'm comfortable." And if you move me, she added silently, I'm likely to vomit all over you.

Charlotte nodded and sat down on Robert's side of the bed, her top teeth worrying her bottom lip. "I would have told you last night," she said after a moment, "only I couldn't get you alone."

Cora raised her hand to brush Charlotte's cheek. "What is it, darling?"

"Matthew and I went out for a walk before dinner last night. While everyone else was having drinks in the drawing room."

"Yes, I saw you leave."

"He started telling me how fond he's grown of Downton, and of all of us…but he's fondest, he said, of me. He said…" Charlotte blushed prettily. "Mama, he said very sweet things."

Cora smiled. "I'm sure he did." Charlotte did not seem to have minded, so perhaps there was hope here.

"And then he asked me to marry him."

"Heavens!" Cora was quite glad she was already lying down, for that announcement would surely have set the room to spinning again. "Charlotte, are you quite serious? Matthew proposed?"

Her daughter nodded.

"And what did you say?"

"I said I didn't know."

"Charlotte!" She was not so much angry as surprised—she could not remember the last time Charlotte had been unsure of anything. "Do you not want to marry him? I'd begun to think you didn't dislike him—" In fact, she'd begun to think Charlotte, who she had watched carefully over the following weeks, was falling in love with Matthew and his attentions.

"I don't. That is, I don't think I do. I think…I think I'm fond of him."

"I think you're more than fond of him, darling," Cora said quietly.

"No. Or maybe. Oh, I don't know!" The phrase was not spoken as Cora had often heard Eleanor say it, Eleanor, who delighted in being half in love, giddy with flirtations and vague feelings for anyone who filled a slot on her dance card. It was an agonized cry, as though Charlotte knew that if she could only unlock the answer, she might have the key to the whole world.

Cora reached for her hand, bringing it to her lips, and they were silent for a moment, Charlotte's hand tucked in her mother's.

"Why don't you know?" Cora asked eventually. "Can you say what confuses you?"

Charlotte nodded. "I don't know if he's fond of me!"

It was the last thing Cora had expected to hear, but it was revealing in its simplicity. Charlotte did not know her own feelings because she did not know Matthew's. In other words, she did love him, but she was afraid to acknowledge it for fear that it would not be properly returned. It was an all-too-familiar feeling from the early days of Cora's own marriage.

"It's almost odd to think it," Charlotte went on. "When Matthew first arrived, I–I had the impression that he–he wanted my inheritance. But I'd begun to think…I don't know…that I'd misunderstood, that I'd taken him wrong. But now I can't help but wonder…is this all about the money, and is that why he wants me? For my inheritance?"

"So you take Matthew for a fortune hunter?"

"I don't know. I don't know how I could know. Did you…did you know Papa wanted your money? How did you know?" Charlotte dropped her eyes, clearly embarrassed to bring up the inauspicious beginning of her parents' marriage, and Cora laughed gently.

"Of course I knew, but that's what all the men wanted from me. That was why I'd come to England—to find a titled fortune hunter. It was a rather different situation."

"So you wouldn't…know if Matthew only wanted my money?"

Cora paused. She did not believe, in her heart of hearts, that Matthew was pursuing Charlotte in an attempt to combine his future title with Downton and its fortune, but she hesitated to swear to it. The strongest piece of evidence for his sincerity, she thought, was his desire not to manipulate Charlotte with the purchase of the wheelchair, and of course she could not share that.

"I don't believe he's a fortune hunter, darling," she said at last. "But I can't prove it. And it's what you feel about it all that matters."

"I know," said Charlotte, sighing deeply. "I know. And I don't know. That's why I told him I couldn't answer yet."

AN: I hope you enjoyed O'Brien ending up with vomit all over her as much as I enjoyed writing it. ;-) It wasn't my original plan for Cora to get any on her, and then I thought, you know, she really does deserve that...