The wedding day was bright and sunny, with all of the things that can be perfect and glorious about the English countryside when it isn't pouring rain. Eleanor and Robert rode through the village streets lined with cheering crowds to the local church, where she was married by Reverend Travis to the heir to the viscountancy of Branksome. The wedding was attended by an excellent showing of Yorkshire gentry, but Cora could take no pleasure in the guest list—she was too busy reminding herself to think of nothing but Eleanor and Evelyn, to focus on this day alone, to ignore what she might learn tomorrow from Dr. Clarkson. She tried not to wonder, as Travis prayed for the couple's fertility, if she would live to see Eleanor's first baby; tried not to notice the tearful way Charlotte kept looking at her; tried not to think of Robert's coming grief as he squeezed her hand during the vows.

Of course, she failed utterly in all of this.

The reception afterwards was a smashing success, and soon she and Robert were kissing their youngest daughter goodbye as Eleanor and Evelyn stepped into their carriage, bound for a train to London where they would spend their wedding night before departing for a honeymoon on the continent. Dinner was a quiet, private affair after the guests had left, the family reduced to a threesome. Exhausted from the emotion and excitement of the day, her dread of tomorrow, and the fatigue she could not shake, Cora did not linger in the drawing room and asked Robert to take her up almost immediately. There was a throbbing behind her eyes, too, and she sighed as she rested her head against his shoulder. Headaches were another discouraging symptom that had arisen in the last couple weeks, suggesting to her that her body was losing its fight with the infection.

"Shall I help you tonight, love, or would you rather I rang for O'Brien?" Robert asked as he carried her into her bedroom.

"I'd rather have you, please," she said, not sure if he planned to stay up later than her and wanting his company as long as possible.

"Of course, darling." He set her down in the chair at her dressing table and began to remove the pins in her hair. Her eyes fluttered closed as he worked, but she didn't bother to fight it—Robert, who was never suspicious, had readily accepted her explanation that the stress of the wedding, combined with the changes in her body in the last year, had made her unusually tired, and she had been fortunate to be able to hide most of her other symptoms from him. An optimist who, his mother often said, propped up his optimism with blinders, he was also not given to searching for disturbing information, and thus Cora knew he was highly unlikely to jump to any conclusion that she was seriously unwell.

Her eyes still closed, she gave a tired sigh, feeling a crushing weariness deep in her bones as he began to massage her scalp where the pins had dug in all day.

"You're exhausted," he said gently.

"Yes, but that feels heavenly," she murmured, leaning forward to rest her head in her hands. "Don't stop."

"You've got another headache, don't you?" he asked, and she nodded.

He bent and laid a feather-light kiss on her temple, a gesture that made her suddenly want to cry. Don't, she told herself sharply, knowing it would only make her feel worse, and managed to swallow her tears. She concentrated instead on the firm circles his fingers made, the pain in her head slowly fading.

"I wish you'd seen Clarkson earlier and not waited until tomorrow," Robert said. "He might have been able to give you something that would have made you feel better today."

She wasn't sure how to answer, and so she didn't. The reality was that, after she saw Clarkson tomorrow, they were all going to feel a great deal worse.

"Let's get you to bed, love," she heard him say softly a few minutes later. He gently brushed her hair and helped her out of her evening clothes and into her nightdress.

"Are you going back downstairs?" she asked as he lifted her.

"No, I'll ring for Bates and then join you. It's been a long day. But don't keep yourself awake waiting for me," he said as he settled her into bed.

Yet Cora did exactly that, determined that she would fall asleep with his arms around her—today of all days, on the day they'd seen the first of their daughters' weddings and on the night before she had to break his heart.

"I'm still awake," she murmured sleepily as she heard him shuffle quietly back into her room. "Don't worry about waking me."

Robert chuckled and climbed into bed next to her. "Well, I'll never protest the chance for a good night kiss," he said, settling his body against hers and kissing her lips gently.

"I thought the wedding was lovely," she told him. "Really lovely. I couldn't have wished for anything better."

"And she's getting a good man," he said. "I've got no complaints about my daughter marrying Evelyn Napier. Other than that I've got some of the most boring evenings of my life ahead of me as I sit and drink port in the dining room with him during their visits."

Cora could not help but giggle. "That will only make you want to join us faster, so I won't complain. He gets that from his father, you know."

"Don't I know it!" he exclaimed, and she laughed again. "But he also has his late mother's kindness," he added thoughtfully.

"Yes, he does." Cora could not hold back a yawn, and Robert kissed her forehead.

"Shh," he said. "You need to get some sleep. We'll talk more about Eleanor and the wedding tomorrow."

Yes, tomorrow, she thought, her blood running cold. Tomorrow it would all be real—tomorrow she would have a diagnosis, maybe even a timeline, and she would have to tell her husband.

She closed her eyes and tried not to think of the morning, burying her nose in Robert's chest and focusing on his scent.

"I'll certainly send the urine specimen off to London, my lady, but I'd be surprised if they wrote back with news of infection. There's no sign at all in its appearance, and I must be honest and tell you that your symptoms don't sound like an infection."

Having finished his examination of her, Dr. Clarkson was seated in a chair in her room, Cora stretched out across from him on the chaise in her dressing gown.

"They don't?" She wanted to feel elated, but she was too nervous over what else he might say.

"No, Lady Grantham. They don't." Clarkson paused in a way that worried her immensely, as though he had bad news to deliver and weren't quite sure how to say it.

"But…but I'm still ill? Ill with something else?"

"I don't think you're ill, exactly." He paused again. "Would you permit me to examine your breasts? You haven't got to remove anything."

Cora blushed furiously but nodded, looking away from the doctor as he came to lay his hand on her left breast, cupping it and prodding slightly. She winced at the pressure—in the last few months, she'd developed a tenderness there, not unlike what she was used to feeling in the days before her monthly. In light of everything else, she'd ignored it, assuming the feeling was a byproduct of the cessation of her bleeding.

But Clarkson caught her expression immediately. "Are they painful, your ladyship?" he asked, withdrawing his hand.

"A bit tender…they've been that way for awhile, but I didn't think it was anything more than the change in my body. Does it mean something?"

He didn't answer, instead reaching out to prod her stomach again. He'd examined it earlier when she'd told him of the occasional pains she'd had there, a concerned expression settling onto his face at the time that returned now. Too frightened at his demeanor to question him, Cora silently watched his hand.

"I admit I'm quite surprised," Clarkson said as he returned to his seat. "And I owe you and his lordship the sincerest of apologies. I was aware that, occasionally, middle age can accompany a surge in fertility, but I thought in your case—given that your bleeding had stopped entirely…"

"Doctor," she said softly, her mouth going dry at the implication of his words, "are you…are you suggesting…"

"Yes, Lady Grantham. I think you're with child."

The words rang in her ears as though he had shouted them. Her first instinct was to ask whether he was sure, but it seemed a silly question when she realized that she was sure. She knew, suddenly, that there was another being in her body, that she and Robert had made new life together, and she recognized each of her symptoms as those she had so carefully watched for during the short six months she'd spent as an able-bodied viscountess.

How glad she would have been to hear Clarkson's words then. How eager.

But all Cora could feel now was fear. Fear and regret—fear for her life, for her child's, for her family's grief, and regret that it had been her own foolishness that had brought this on. Her own foolish eagerness, her inability to wait the few more months that Clarkson had urged. Her determination to make a Christmas gift of sex. How foolishly, unspeakably, unforgivably stupid.

"Am I going to die?" she whispered, offering a silent apology to her unborn child that its mother should meet the news of its existence with such morbid thoughts. "Is my baby going to die?"

Clarkson sighed. "I can't say, my lady. I would say that is…"

"Likely?" she breathed when he did not finish his sentence. He did not answer, but the grim look on his face told her everything she needed to know.

Cora looked away, trying to gaze out the window but unable to see anything beyond the blur of her unshed tears. She'd suspected, of course, that she was dying, and thus it was not a shock to hear it, even if the cause were a surprise. But to know that her family's suffering would be at her own hand…how Robert would punish himself for this…

"You must not think it's definite," she heard Clarkson say gently, and she turned back to him, trying to focus on the white coat in front of her. He passed her his handkerchief, and she dabbed her eyes clear. "I'm sure that's what you were told when you were first injured, but—"

"Yes, it was."

"And I don't doubt you would never have survived a birth in 1890, because you'll certainly require a caesarean.* But the procedure isn't quite the death sentence it was then—some women are surviving. There have been advances made."

"So it's…it's possible…"

"I don't want to give you false hope, Lady Grantham," Clarkson said, his voice firm but kind. "I will do my absolute best for you, as will any specialist his lordship hires. And it's possible that we might be able to accomplish a successful delivery—it's happening more and more with caesareans. But it remains a very risky procedure, with a very high mortality rate, and you, of course, are already quite frail."

She nodded, hearing what was unsaid just as clearly as what was.

"I also imagine the pregnancy itself will be quite difficult for you. Given your age, and given your condition. I'm not sure I fully expect you to carry to term.**"

She knew, somehow, without having truly considered it, that she had expected to hear that. "Of course." She paused. "How…how far along am I?"

"It's hard to say, especially since you're not truly showing yet. But a good three months, I think." She nodded, idly doing the math. Christmas, she supposed. How darkly ironic.

"Will there be anything else, my lady?" Clarkson asked after a moment's silence. Cora shook her head.

"Would you like me to speak with his lordship? Will he want to speak with me?"

She shook her head again. "No, best leave his lordship to me."

She could not imagine how she would ever tell him.

*Caesareans have been performed for hundreds—even thousands—of years, but for the vast majority of that time, they weren't a life-saving measure for the mother. Patients nearly always died, so a caesarean was usually only done as an attempt to save the baby once it was already clear that the mother wouldn't survive anyway. Caesareans weren't always fatal—the mortality rate in the U.K. in 1865 was around 85%—but the likelihood of surviving one when Cora was young was still very small. However, the 1890s and early 1900s did see some medical improvements, so by the time of this pregnancy in 1913, survival was a possibility…just not a wonderfully likely one, especially when dealing with someone whose health is already dicey, like Cora's.

Interestingly, Cora does not have to have a c-section. Paralyzed women can actually give birth without assistance—apparently, your muscles will do the pushing for you, even if your brain doesn't tell them to, which is very cool. (Just like, if you're paralyzed from the neck down, your heart will keep beating, because you don't have to tell your heart to beat.) However, with no background research (since he certainly wasn't expecting Cora to be pregnant), and with no precedent of a paraplegic giving birth, I think Clarkson would assume she'd need a c-section (as I did before I started researching it).

**This has been acknowledged before in the Cobert fandom, with other fics that mention how close Robert may have come to losing Cora with her miscarriage in season 1, but I wanted to point out that losing the baby later in the pregnancy, at this point in history, is also very dangerous. So Clarkson isn't saying, "You might have a miscarriage, and then medically everything would be fine," and Cora isn't hearing it that way. It's nearly as much of a threat to her health as the birth would be.