Robert had been angry with Cora when he'd left her room, and he was angry for some time afterwards, fuming at the chance she had taken. But as he slowly calmed down, he realized that of course she had not believed there was any real chance of getting pregnant. Of course she had acted in good faith that they were safe. And of course she had not done it for selfish reasons. He had never known anyone less selfish than Cora—for heaven's sake, she had recoiled at the thought of saving her own life if it would cost their baby his or hers. No, Cora had made love to him, he knew instinctively, to please him and to show him that she loved him.
And he, in turn, had raised his voice to her. Shouted at her. Called her a selfish liar. Hurt her deeply and made her cry, and all for the crime of carrying his child, at great risk to herself.
Robert felt a burning behind his eyes at the memory of her face as he'd torn into her, and for a moment he thought he might cry himself. It only made him angrier—for Robert was, indeed, still angry. But not at Cora—he had never, he was slowly realizing, truly been angry at Cora. It was he himself at whom he was angry: the one who had not protected his wife as he ought, who had selfishly succumbed to his own desires and taken her in spite of his worries, who had let this terrible harm come to her.
For protecting and caring for Cora had long been the central piece of Robert's life. He had never shaken the horror of the knowledge that she had been paralyzed in his presence, that he had not called out in time to warn her away from the too-high fence that her horse had taken at too great a speed, that he had not been close enough to prevent her fall. It was not so much guilt, for he knew rationally that there was nothing he could have done, as it was a deep sense that he must not let any more harm come to her, that he must never again fail to protect his wife.
He still dreamed about her fall sometimes, as he suspected he would tonight. Yet in the years since the accident, the facts in his subconscious had altered. Rarely did he watch Cora be thrown from her horse from a distance, as he had in reality; instead, his dream self would be right alongside of her as she began to tumble, and he would reach out for her, his fingers brushing the edge of her sleeve…but he could never get enough of a grip to catch her, and each time, she'd slip through his fingers like sand.
As she was slipping now. Robert could barely draw breath when he thought of her condition, as he imagined her growing big with the child she could not push from her own body, imagined her lying dead in their bed after a traumatic operation.
And there was nothing, absolutely nothing, that he could do to change any of it. For of course he did not want a black market "doctor" to rip the child from her womb in a procedure just as deadly as anything Clarkson would try months from now. Nor was there still time to easily induce a miscarriage.
Why had he ever suggested that to her? In this circumstance, he thought it no more wrong than telling a doctor who knows he will lose at least one to save the mother and not the child, but of course Cora would never have agreed to it, and of course it would only frighten and upset her. She had always been a mother before anything else.
Robert thought, as he tossed and turned in his own bed, that perhaps he should go to her now and beg forgiveness. But he told himself no—surely, after he had left, Cora had turned from hurt to angry and was rightly furious with him. It was not that he dreaded the lashing he surely deserved—indeed, so angry was he with himself that he welcomed her censure—but surely she was asleep by now, and if he went and woke her, there would be hours of shouting and tears. She needed, he was sure, a good night's rest before she saw him again.
That was the last thing he himself got, of course. Even had he not been tormented by guilt and fear, Robert always found it difficult to sleep without Cora. While he was sure he would have fallen for a healthy Cora just as he'd fallen for a crippled one—indeed, there could be no universe where he did not fall in love with Cora—he could not imagine that they would ever have been quite this close had her legs worked. They would have loved each other, yes, and shared a bed, yes, but they would have had lives apart, and there would have been bits of each other that they did not know.
But it was not that way now. Cora was so dependent on help, and he so loved to be the one to look after her in place of the staff, that she had learned to look to him for nearly everything, and he had tried to meet her every need. She was not just a wife or a lover but an extra limb, and an overnight separation felt like an amputation. For while Cora needed Robert and often worried that she was a burden on him, the truth was that he needed her. Her gentle presence comforted and calmed him, and it soothed his own body to take care of hers.
Robert slept fitfully, reaching out for Cora in his sleep and jerking awake each time his arms met only air and bedsheets. At last, he awoke to his alarm at seven and got up immediately. It was earlier than his wife would generally wake, but he could wait no longer to speak with her, and thus he slipped through the dividing door.
On the other side, he found a sight much more heartbreaking than he'd expected, for Cora's tears had quite clearly not hardened into anger after he'd left, nor had she been comforted by justified fury. No, she appeared to have wept until she'd fallen asleep, her eyes still puffy and swollen, her nose still red, her breath issuing from her mouth as though her head was far too congested to draw air through her nose.
Oh, he should have returned last night! She'd surely been awake when he had first considered it—she must have cried for hours. And by all appearances, she would have eagerly received him, for she was hugging his pillow tightly to her. He'd learned years ago that it had been Cora's habit during the war to hold his pillow while she slept, comforting herself with his scent, and he knew she still did this occasionally if he spent a night or two away in London.
On those nights, though, she was put to bed with it already in her arms. Yet she'd not been able to reach it easily when he'd left last night, and she'd evidently been unwilling to call for O'Brien. She'd thus stretched and twisted toward his side of the bed, a position he feared her spine would regret as soon as she awoke. Don't let her be hurting, he begged whomever might be listening—having caused her physical pain as well, he thought, would be more than he could bear.
As it was, Robert could have happily shot himself. Not only had his treatment of Cora been appalling; he'd then left his crippled, pregnant wife alone to cry herself to sleep. And she—gracious, forgiving creature that she was—had responded not with anger, but with longing for him, wishing that he who had wounded her were still in her arms.
He did not deserve a child with this woman.
Gently, he caressed her shoulder. "Cora? Cora, darling."
She stirred, sleepily blinking her eyes open.
"Cora," he began, his throat closing as he tried to find the right words, his hand still holding her shoulder.
But now she was awake enough to focus, and at the sight of his face, she began to cry again, a fresh sob bubbling up from her chest.
"I'm sorry, Robert," she gasped. "I really am so very sorry!"
"Oh, my darling," he breathed, feeling his chest rip. If only she would shout at him, and tell him how horribly he'd behaved. That he could have borne so much more easily than her apology.
Robert ran his hand over her hair, bringing it to rest on her wet cheek. "Please don't cry anymore, darling," he begged. "And please don't say you're sorry—you have nothing to be sorry for, nothing. I'm the one who's sorry—terribly, terribly sorry."
Cora shook her head. "No," she managed to say. "No, it's all my fault."
God, no. He had done this, he had made her feel this way. As though she had done something wrong in having a body that naturally gave life. He felt as though an invisible chorus stood around the room, pointing hundreds of fingers at him, the guilty one who had brought on her tears.
"No, Cora, no," he said, his own voice low with emotion. "Nothing is your fault, and you have done nothing wrong. I'm so sorry, darling. I'm so very, very sorry for how I treated you last night." But she shook her head again and continued to cry.
"May I pick you up?" he asked. Ordinarily he would have just done it, but he could not shake the sense that he had no right to her now. Yet Cora nodded, and he carefully slipped his arms beneath her shoulders and knees and lifted her, feeling another pang in his heart at the sharp gasp that broke into her sobs as the movement jarred her back. Robert hated the pain she was always in, had prayed many times to suffer it for her, to be allowed to take it into his body even briefly, so that his wife might have a day's peace. And now, he had made it worse.
Cora nestled close to him as she always did when he carried her—how much less painful it would have been to have her hurling vases and alarm clocks at him!—and he sat both of them down in a chair, Cora on his lap like a child. He could feel how stiffly she was holding herself, how she was carefully trying to stretch into a less uncomfortable position for her spine.
"Oh, my darling," he breathed again, but before he could say anything more, she spoke.
"Are you not still angry?" she choked. "Please say you forgive me!"
Had she been furious and wanted to punish him, he did not think she could have found any words that would have caused him more pain.
"Please," he heard himself beg, "no more of your apologies! And please don't ask my forgiveness when I so desperately need yours!" His voice was raised again, but in desperation now instead of anger, and at this new volume, it was as though she'd heard him for the first time.
"Wh–what?" she gasped, her sobs halting at her surprise.
"My darling, I treated you terribly last night," he said, cupping her cheek with his hand. "Absolutely terribly. I had no right to speak to you the way I did, no right to shout at you, no right to call you names. You deserved none of that, and I know I hurt you terribly. And I am so, so sorry, my dearest."
"But you were right—I have been selfish," she said, her voice breaking on the last word and her tears beginning anew.
"Oh, my darling," he said again, pulling her close and gently bringing her head to his shoulder, where she buried her face in his neck. "You have not been selfish. I don't think you've ever in your life been selfish." And she hadn't, he knew, thinking of how hard she had pushed her broken body to be able to care for their little daughters herself. How hard she would push herself now. "Please don't tell yourself that. You thought you were sure that everything was safe, and you wanted to love me in the fullest way possible. There is nothing wrong, and nothing selfish, in that."
"And–and you're not angry?" she sniffed.
"No, darling, no. I'm not angry. I shouldn't ever have been angry—I don't think I was angry, truly, not at you." Robert held her in silence for a moment, gently stroking her back, listening as her weeping grew quieter. "I was frightened, darling—I still am frightened. That's why I spoke to you the way I did. I'm half out of my mind with fear for you." He tightened his hold on her as his own voice cracked, and he burrowed his nose into her hair, breathing in her scent and determined not to cry, too. He could not lose Cora. He could not.
"It's not hopeless," she said a moment later, her voice shaky and small. "There may be things we can do. Specialists we can find."
"Every doctor in England who has ever performed a successful caesarean is going to be in your bedroom that day," he said, pressing a fierce kiss to her temple, and she managed a soft laugh that held a hint of her tears.
"I'm glad you're not angry," she whispered. "I didn't think I could do this without you."
This what? Carry a baby? Give birth? Die? He was too afraid to ask.
"You haven't got to do anything without me, sweetheart," he said, kissing her again. "And I am so sorry for how I acted last night. I'm so sorry I hurt you."
"I forgive you, darling," she said softly, kissing his cheek, and he felt a keen sense that this was wholly undeserved. She wiped her eyes with the back of her hand, and Robert reached for his pocket to retrieve a handkerchief…only to remember he was still in his pajamas, too.
"Let me," he said, pulling his sleeve down over his thumb and then using it to gently dry her tears. Cora gazed steadily at him while he did so, a new sadness in her eyes.
"I hate this for our baby," she said suddenly. "I hate that we've greeted him or her with fear and grief."
And this was the woman whom he'd called selfish, and who had believed that of herself. He'd yet to give a thought to the child.
"But we'll love it. We'll love it just as much as Charlotte and Eleanor."
"I'm glad to hear you say that," she said. "I was afraid you… That is, I want you to love it, even if…especially if I'm…"
"Of course I'll love it, Cora," he said, his voice growing thick with emotion again. "I couldn't not love a child that was half you."
In the silence that followed, she began to yawn. "Did you sleep much last night, darling?" he asked, thinking he knew the answer.
Cora shook her head. "No, not much at all."
"I'm afraid I didn't either…would you like to nap for a couple hours together?"
"Yes," she said quietly. "As long as we're together."
He kissed her lips softly and then managed the awkward business of standing up with her in his arms.
"Darling, why don't I lay you on your belly, and I'll rub your back until you're asleep?" He knew it was one of Cora's favorite ways to fall asleep, but she hesitated to ask for it, once telling him that it seemed "so very indulgent" to doze off while he worked on her back. "So very indulgent," though, was precisely what he wanted for her this morning. "You deserve a bit of pampering."
"That sounds lovely," she said with a sigh. "Thank you."
He set her down on her side of the bed then helped her roll over, arranging the pillows under her ankles and stomach that she needed for comfort while lying on her front. Then he stretched out next to her, fitting his body against hers, as they were used to sleeping…as they loved to sleep. His hand settled onto her back, gently exploring her muscles as he searched for what she'd strained last night. He knew he'd found it when Cora tensed, whimpering softly as he probed a hardened muscle on the left.
"Shh, love," he murmured, kissing her forehead and letting his lips linger there as he eased his fingers into the knots. Slowly, he felt the furrows in her brow begin to relax under his lips as the muscles in her back relaxed under his hand, and he pressed another kiss against her head, feeling his own heart soothe as he soothed her body.
"Robert?" Cora asked suddenly, her voice soft but not yet sleepy. "I…I want to hold it."
"Hold what, love?"
She opened her closed eyes, and he saw the same sadness there that had been present when they'd talked of loving the child. "My baby," she said. "Whatever happens, I–I want to hold it. I don't want Clarkson to put me under for the procedure, if he doesn't think he can pull me back." She made a soft choking noise as she tried to fight tears. "I just want…I just want a few minutes with it…"
"Oh, my sweet Cora," he breathed, pressing a kiss to the bridge of her nose. "I intend for you to have far, far more than a few minutes with this baby."
And he did. He did. He would question every doctor in England and on the continent, as he had when she was first injured. He would not accept this as final.