"I didn't think you could be pregnant," Charlotte said, her face a mask of confusion. Cora was sitting in her daughter's bedroom just after luncheon, explaining that she had been sick with a baby, not a deadly infection. "I thought…wasn't that why you adopted Eleanor and me? Because you couldn't have children?"

"I wasn't…that is, doctors told your father and me when I was injured that I wasn't capable of bearing children. I could conceive, but childbirth was far too dangerous for me, we were told. So Papa and I chose…to make sure we didn't conceive a child, and instead we adopted the two of you."

Yet there was still a look of shock on Charlotte's face. "But I wouldn't have thought you…it's only…" The younger woman's cheeks were turning bright pink. "Eleanor and I thought…"

Like most women of their era and class, Cora's daughters had spent their adolescence completely ignorant of sex. This had been remedied for Eleanor shortly before her wedding, Cora sending her to her aunt Rosamund for a conversation, thinking herself too far removed from able-bodied intercourse to be of much use. It was suddenly evident that Eleanor had come home and shared her knowledge with her sister—of course she had—and the girls had then discussed their mother, reaching the natural conclusion that she was not capable at all. In spite of the distressing news she was sharing, Cora suddenly wanted to laugh.

"Darling, do you understand how a woman conceives a child?" she asked, trying to keep any hint of laughter out of her voice, and trying not to think of what she and Robert has just done upon waking from their rest that morning.

Charlotte nodded, her eyes on the floor. "Yes, Eleanor told me," she squeaked. "And we decided—please don't be angry, but we talked about you, and we decided you…couldn't, and that was why you couldn't have children."

Cora smiled gently. "That's perfectly logical—I thought the same when I was first crippled. But it's not true. I'm quite capable of doing what's needed to make a baby." Charlotte's face turned a deeper shade of pink at this phrase.

"But your father and I knew how dangerous it was," Cora went on, "and so we decided not to do that while I was young enough to conceive. We'd wait, we decided, until I was past childbearing age. And I thought…I thought I was. I…my bleeding had stopped, and so I thought…but we were wrong, clearly."

Charlotte took all this in in silence, and Cora sat quietly, waiting for her to speak. "But now you're pregnant," she said at last, fiddling with a small perfume bottle on her dressing table. "So…so you're going to have a baby."

"Yes," Cora said softly.

"But what will that mean?" She still would not look at her mother, and Cora tensed, wondering if she wouldn't react as her father had at first. "You said…it's dangerous?"

"It is…I can't give birth on my own, because I won't be able to push the baby out. Dr. Clarkson says I'll need to have a caesarean." Charlotte flinched, and she knew she didn't need to tell her daughter how risky the procedure was.

There was another heavy silence as Cora, unsure what to say until her daughter gave some indication what she wanted to hear, watched Charlotte blink furiously.

"Why did you do it?" Charlotte said, her voice thick. She turned to Cora at last, her chin trembling as her tears began to spill over. "Why, Mama?"

"Darling, I didn't know—that is, I thought I did know. I thought I knew I was too old."

"But you're–you're not even quite forty-five! Plenty of women have babies in their early forties!"

"I know, darling, I know," Cora said, wishing she had better words to soothe her. "I know. And Papa and I are so sorry—" She reached out to stroke her daughter's hair, but Charlotte pulled away.

"How could you let this happen?" she sobbed, standing and stepping away. "How could you?"

"Charlotte, darling…" Cora began, not sure what she would say. She had not thought anything could be more painful than Robert's anger last night, but Charlotte's grief—grief she had caused, grief she could not ease—was infinitely worse.

Her daughter shook her head. "Please," she said. "Please go. I…need to be alone."

But she did not need to be alone, Cora knew as she wheeled herself out the door. She needed to be away from her.

"The cow!" O'Brien exclaimed as soon as she and Thomas had shut the door out into the courtyard. "Ten years of my life is what I've given her! Ten bloody years!"

"Oh for God's sake, don't be so dramatic," Thomas muttered. "Don't quit, just because you're disgusted thinking of how she's gotten herself pregnant. Lord G'll likely give you more money, you know. For looking after her while she's expecting. You know how he fusses over her."

"Give me more money? Give me more money? He's going to sack me, is what he's going to do! The bastard wants someone with more experience to look after his crippled princess now."

"You've never had a pregnant lady?" he asked, raising his eyebrows.

"No, I've spent the better part of my career looking after a useless cripple! Of course I've not had a pregnant lady."

Thomas lit a cigarette and passed it to her. "Has she told you this?" he asked. "Has she told you you're going, or did you overhear it from one of them?"

"No, but she's taken out an advertisement in The Lady—heard her talking with the old lady about it, and about the responses. She'll not sack me until she's got a replacement—heaven forbid she drag a brush through her own hair! The filthy, ungrateful cow…and mark my words; if I'm going, you won't be far behind."

"Then you'd better fix this now," he muttered. "Now's your last chance—ingratiate yourself. Make yourself indispensable."

"I am bloody indispensable! The bitch can't even sit up in bed on her own."

"There must be something you can do—"

"Oh, there's bloody well something I can do! I'm the one helping her nurse drag her in and out of bed and get her in and out of the bath and all the rest of it. Accidents do happen in these cases, you know."

"How was your tea with Matthew?" Cora asked quietly as Charlotte stepped into the drawing room. It had been five days since she had told her oldest about the pregnancy, and while they were certainly speaking, and Charlotte had not been sharp, there was a coolness in her, a distance, a tendency to retreat from Cora's presence. Cora believed her when she said she was not angry, but she was at a loss to fix the situation, and it was slowly breaking her heart to watch her frightened daughter pull away when she so desperately wanted to soothe her.

"I haven't given him an answer yet, if that's what you're asking," Charlotte said, moving toward the fireplace and examining an ornate vase on the mantel. She had not fully looked at her mother all week.

"It wasn't, quite, but I might have asked that eventually, so thank you." Ordinarily, Cora would have asked why, or asked how Matthew was taking Charlotte's silence, but their relationship at the moment felt too thin to withstand any probing. "Did you stop and see your grandmother as well?"

"Yes, and she's still steaming over the maid's impending departure."

Cora could not help but smile. "Yes, I know. I've taken out a few ads for her."

"Matthew's annoyed, I think," Charlotte said after a moment's silence. "He wasn't, at first, but the last few days…I don't know. He told me not to 'stall' and asked if I was waiting to see what your baby was. I told him of course I wasn't, because what difference would it make, but he gave me a hard look and didn't answer. And the truth, of course, is that it does make a difference, because I'm not sure…do I want to be just a solicitor's wife, if you had a boy? But what other choice would I have? I doubt I'm going to marry an aristocrat."

Of course Matthew had plenty of income, of course Charlotte would live comfortably as his wife, but Cora knew it would certainly be in contrast to her life at Downton. And of course, that was her fault as well—it struck her as distinctly cruel to announce to someone of Charlotte's age that the great inheritance they had counted on for twenty years might no longer be theirs. As Eleanor would, Charlotte would inherit a small cash sum upon Cora and Robert's deaths, but it would not be a significant means of support. The inheritances of daughters weren't intended to be.

"Darling," Cora began awkwardly, "Papa and I never wanted…that is, I know it's unfair to—"

"Oh, for heaven's sake, Mama," Charlotte snapped, "I'm not angry about the money."

"But you are angry?" Cora asked softly. If only her daughter would admit it, perhaps they might get somewhere. "You are angry with us?"

For the first time since she'd entered the room, Charlotte turned, lifting her eyes to meet Cora's, and for a long moment they held each other's gaze. "No," she whispered at last. "No, I'm not angry with you. I don't–I don't want to be angry with you, not now."

But whether she wanted it or not, there was resentment in her eyes, and Cora knew it would not easily fade. How she wished none of this had happened!

Before she could speak—not that she'd known what to say—Charlotte went on. "I don't know what this means for Matthew's interest, either. I'd think if he truly were a fortune hunter, he'd drop me now, or he'd be stalling too to see if the baby is a boy, and then he'd drop me after my brother was born. But is he pushing me for an answer because he thinks I'll tell him no, and then he'll have a simple way out?"

It was a ridiculous line of thought—surely, if Matthew had merely wanted Charlotte's inheritance, he would push the formal engagement off until after the birth, as she had just suggested herself—that suggested to Cora how desperately uncertain Charlotte was about everything now. Wanting to give her daughter something she could settle in her mind, something she could cling to in the midst of their family's current stress, Cora made the immediate decision to tell her about the wheelchair.

"Darling, I don't think Matthew's a fortune hunter. I've thought that for a long time. He's very…he's quite averse to anything that might manipulate you. He told me—he told me some time ago that he wanted you to fall for him, and him alone."

Charlotte blinked. "What? You've discussed this with him?"

"Not since his proposal, no. But…you remember when I got the new chair?"

"Yes, the one Papa ordered from London."

"Papa didn't order it from London. Matthew brought it back from Manchester."

"What?"

"Matthew brought it back from Manchester," Cora repeated. "A doctor he knows there—an old friend of his father's—works with crippled patients, and Matthew went to him to ask if there might be a way to construct a wheelchair that I could move myself. There was, and he bought one, and brought it to Downton while you and Eleanor were gone, because he didn't want you to know it had come from him. He asked me not to tell you it was his gift, because he wanted to pursue you, and he did not want to buy your affections or make you feel that you'd been manipulated. He said he wanted to win you on his own merits. And darling, that's not something many fortune hunters say."

Charlotte's expression had at first been stunned, but it was slowly turning white, hardening into something like fury, and Cora could not comprehend why. Did she want to think her suitor a fortune hunter?

"He bought you something," Charlotte said, her voice trembling, "a wonderful, extravagant gift, so that you and Papa were grateful to him, and then he told you to lie to me so I wouldn't know what he'd done?"

"I wouldn't phrase it quite like that—"

"I've been stupid," Charlotte snapped, more to herself than to her mother. "Inexcusably stupid."

And she swept from the room.

AN: On Friday, I'm leaving for 2 weeks in Europe—England (Durham, York, Grantham, and London) and Budapest. (And I do have tickets for Highclere Castle!) It's going to be awesome, but unfortunately it means that I won't be posting any updates for a couple weeks, as I won't have time to write while I'm gone. But I promise I'm not abandoning you, and I promise to be back with chapter 17 the second week of May! Please don't lose interest while you wait! :-)