AN: Hello all! I'm sorry I'm a few days late with this chapter—I got home from Europe a week ago, but I've been swamped both at work and at home ever since after being away for two weeks. (It was a wonderful trip, by the way—I fell in love with the northern part of England, especially Yorkshire. And visiting Highclere Castle was SO cool. Like walking around in my television!)

Anyway, thanks for being patient. Here's a very long chapter for you all! As a quick review, we left off with Charlotte (who's still very troubled by her mother's pregnancy announcement) learning that Matthew (who has proposed to Charlotte, and she's been hesitating) secretly gave Cora her new wheelchair. For reasons that were unclear in the last chapter, Charlotte was furious at this development.

Also, to people whose stories I've been following: I haven't reviewed because I haven't read anything since I left for Europe a few weeks ago. I promise to catch up soon!

Matthew was alone in the parlor of Crawley House when there was a knock at the door, followed a few minutes later by a familiar female voice raised at Molesley.

"I demand to see Mr. Crawley immediately!" he heard Charlotte nearly shout. "I don't care what he's doing; I must see him!"

"Miss Crawley, Mr. Crawley has asked not to be disturbed. He—"

"Molesley, I insist! I—"

But Matthew had by now abandoned the letter he was writing and hurried into the front hall. "Charlotte?" he asked, alarmed at the paleness in her complexion. All he could imagine was that something had happened to Cora. "What is it? Is your mother…"

"My mother," she said, her voice icy as she turned toward him, "is quite well. It's you I'd like to discuss."

Matthew took an almost-involuntary step back at the fire he saw in his cousin's eyes. There had been some irritation between them bubbling under the surface when she'd left a half hour ago after tea, but he could not think what would have transformed that irritation into her sudden fury.

"I insist that you speak with me," Charlotte went on.

"Of course, of course," he said in what he hoped was a conciliatory tone. He was equal parts curious and alarmed. "Come in—my mother isn't home."

"I don't care if your mother hears this," she snapped. "Although I'm sure you're ashamed of yourself."

"Charlotte, you must tell me what it is that I've done," he said as he led her into the parlor and closed the door behind her. "I haven't meant to upset you so."

"I'm sure you bloody well didn't mean to upset me! You didn't mean for me to find out at all!" He flinched to hear such language from a refined young lady, but his would-be fiancée was not finished.

"You never intended for me to know that you're…you're…you're a lying, stinking, manipulative…" He held his breath, genuinely unsure what epithet might pass her lips and watching her struggle with herself. "Scoundrel," she breathed, making it sound like the worst of curses.

"Who is it you imagine I've manipulated? Whom do you think I've lied to?" he asked, more perplexed than offended.

"My parents! And myself! How dare you charm me and woo me and ask for my hand when you've been plotting all along to steal my inheritance? Is this marriage your back-up plan if you can't bring it off?"

Steal her inheritance? Whatever did she imagine he wanted with her inheritance? Surely she hadn't much of one in the first place. "Charlotte," he said, keeping his voice even and looking her steadily in the eye, "I haven't the faintest idea what you're talking about."

She slapped her hand down onto the table she was standing next to, and he wondered for a second if she wouldn't strike him next. "My mother's wheelchair! What do you think you were doing giving her that wheelchair?"

Matthew didn't know how she'd found that out, and at the moment, he didn't much care. "Helping her," he said, still holding his voice steady in hopes that his calmness would snap his cousin out of whatever strange fever had suddenly gripped her. "I wanted to help her. I thought it must have been terribly frustrating never to be able to move on her own, and when I discovered I could fix that for her, I didn't think twice about it. You wouldn't have either."

"I wouldn't have been desperately trying to manipulate my parents! You think you can charm your way in—you think you can buy them—"

"For heaven's sake, Charlotte!" he snapped, losing his patience. "I don't want anything from your parents! I didn't buy your mother the chair to manipulate her into whatever it is you're imagining; I bought it for because I care for her! I worry about her, and I feel compassion for her—as you and the rest of your family do! Should I not be kind to her? Do you not want me to care about your mother?"

"What I want is for you to quit sniffing around us like a vulture in hopes of inheriting Downton!"

"What?" He stared at her, not comprehending. "Charlotte, I am inheriting Downton. I thought this was about your inheritance, not mine?"

She stared back at him, and he suddenly realized that she was just as stunned as he was. "You—I—you're not—I…who on earth told you you're inheriting Downton?" she sputtered. "I'm to inherit the estate!"

She…she was? Matthew searched frantically through his memories, but he could not recall ever having been told that he was specifically inheriting Downton and all its lands. Had that not been said? "I…I merely assumed…I…the first letter I received stated that I was the new heir of the Earl of Grantham," he said, trying to recall the wording. He'd been told that the family seat was at Downton, where the earl and his family were currently living, but…

"But you were also told that, rather unconventionally, you would only inherit the title, weren't you? That the earl had already settled his property on his eldest child?"

"What? No! No, I was never told that!" Was the estate really all to be…Charlotte's?

His cousin stared silently at him, her lips moving slightly as though she could not quite force words out. "You…you really weren't, were you?" she breathed at last. "You…you didn't know?"

"God, no, Charlotte," he said. "No, I had no idea. I just…clearly, I jumped to conclusions, and…I…God knows what you must think…"

"I heard you," she said suddenly, her words quickly pouring out. "I heard you, the day you first arrived, talking to your mother about inheriting the house, and I assumed you must know Downton was to be mine, but you were determined to charm my father into giving it to you, because you wanted an estate to go with your eventual title. And—"

"And you thought I was out to steal your inheritance," he finished.

"Yes! And then I thought you were only courting me because you'd given up on having it transferred to you, so you'd just take it the old-fashioned way by marriage—"

"No! I only ever—"

"Then I found out that you'd bought the wheelchair—and you'd wanted that kept from me—and I thought it was one more attempt to manipulate my parents, because you wanted an inheritance."

"No! No, I don't want any of it. I never wanted any of it—I didn't even want it when I thought it was mine; I certainly don't want it if it's yours!"

"You–you don't even want it?" she asked. "You're not even disappointed to know it won't be yours?"

"It might not have been, anyway," he said thoughtfully. "If your mother's baby is a boy…"

"Of course, but now you know you've got no chance at all."

It was funny, he thought suddenly, very funny, and he began to laugh. Of course it should seem odd to her to know he did not want such a grand inheritance, and what a relief it was to know it would not be forced on him!

"Matthew?" Charlotte asked.

"It's a relief," he said through his laughter. "It's a relief to know it won't be mine. I never wanted to be an earl; I never wanted a great estate."

"You will still be an earl, unless the baby is a boy," she reminded him. "You're still the heir to my father's title, and there's no changing that. You just aren't the heir to his property."

"Yes, but I won't be a real earl in anyone's eyes, not if I've got no land. I can go on with my life if Downton's not to be mine."

Charlotte gave him a long look. "What is it?" he asked hesitantly, suspecting that he had somehow offended or upset her once again.

"But…won't it still be yours, Matthew?" she asked softly. "If the baby's not a boy, that is…and if you marry me?"

"What?" he heard himself ask stupidly, his mind spinning as he did the math. Yes, of course it would be his, theirs, if they were married. He had not escaped Downton, not if he was to marry its future owner.

"If you marry me," she repeated, "all my property will be yours. So you will have the estate. If you…do you still want to marry me?"

Of course he did. Whether he wanted to marry her had never been the question. Perhaps, he found himself musing, had he known from the beginning that to marry Charlotte was to marry Downton, he might have shied away from her. He was, he almost chuckled to think, the opposite of a fortune hunter. But now, now that he had fallen hopelessly, irrevocably in love with her…now he would have married her had it forced him to become the next Prince Albert.

"Of course I want to marry you," he said. "Charlotte, there's nothing on earth that could convince me I didn't want to marry you. I…my darling, I love you."

He watched as she nodded, her lip quivering, and then burst into tears.

She had cried her tears of joy and relief and surprise in his arms, and then he had kissed her and they had sat down together on the sofa, her head still resting against Matthew's shoulder as his fingers stroked lightly over her hair. She did not think she ever wanted to move, and she was beginning to hope that Isobel would never return home. His earlier proposal had been the stilted sort she had always expected as a young aristocrat—there had been affection underlying it, but no grand declarations, certainly no kiss or anything beyond the soft pressing of her hand. But now—now that her hesitations had been cleared away, now that she knew how she felt, now that he knew how she felt—and, oh God, she did love him—it was as though the entire world had shifted, and she could not press her body close enough to his.

"Darling," he said now—how she was quickly growing to love that word in his mouth!—"when would you like to be married?"

Charlotte was quiet for a moment—she could not see past the fall, after her mother… "Soon," she said softly. "I want—I would want my mother to see it."

"And of course, she would want to attend," Matthew said.

Charlotte did not acknowledge the sentence, finding it too painful in her current circumstances to discuss her mother's feelings for her.

"So we'll marry before her confinement," he went on. Before her death, Charlotte wanted to say, but she loved him for pretending this was nothing more than a normal pregnancy.

"Perhaps in September?" she asked. "Right after Eleanor and Evelyn return to England." Cora was not due until December, but Charlotte was deeply afraid they did not even have that long, for she suspected her mother might not carry to term. There might not be a new baby at all.

"September, then." There was a moment's silence as Matthew continued to play with a strand of hair that had worked itself free from her chignon. "If your mother has a boy, of course, we won't have Downton," he said thoughtfully.

"No, and you will be relieved."

"Well, yes," he said with a soft chuckle. "But…will you still be glad you married me? Charlotte, can you be just a solicitor's wife?"

"If you're the solicitor," she said, knowing the answer instantly. She loved Matthew. Of course she loved Matthew. How had she ever not known that she loved Matthew?

He took her chin in his hand and kissed her.

Robert was at his desk in the library, marveling over his attorney's irresponsibility. When I searched through the papers on my desk, Murray's letter said, I discovered the details of your will that were to be forwarded to Mr. Crawley. Clearly, the papers never made it out of my office and certainly never reached him. The fault and mistake were mine and mine alone.

Robert shook his head, reading the lines again. How disastrous this might have proved, and how lucky they had been that Matthew was more relieved than angry to learn he wasn't the heir he thought he was. Had the truth been the bombshell it easily could have been, he would have been in the market for a new attorney, but given that no lasting harm had been done, Robert saw no reason to dismiss the man. He was in far too good of a mood at the news of his eldest daughter's engagement to a young man he liked and admired.

"Your lordship?"

He looked behind him to see the butler standing in the doorway. "Yes, Carson?"

"My lord, Thomas was hoping he might have a word." Carson's voice dripped with disapproval at this announcement. "He says it's urgent that he speak directly to your lordship."

The footman? This was certainly unorthodox, but a footman wanting to address him directly was certainly no worse than Murray's botching of the Matthew situation. "By all means, send him in."

He was soon alone with the young man who had been first footman for two years' time. "You wanted to see me, Thomas?" he asked, more curious than irritated.

"Yes, milord." Thomas cleared his throat. "I wanted to speak with you about…about her ladyship's maid. About Miss O'Brien."

"Miss O'Brien?" Whatever did a footman have to do with a lady's maid?

"Yes, milord. Miss O'Brien and I are…on good terms, you could say. And so she speaks freely with me, milord. She…she's angry with her ladyship."

"Angry?" What reason could O'Brien have to be angry with Cora? What right had she to be angry? What right had any of these people to be angry? "It's not her place to be angry, Thomas. It's not any of your places."

"Certainly not, milord. But Miss O'Brien…she's not just angry; she despises her ladyship. It's been that way for some time."

The thought that Cora could be despised by anyone was so foreign that Robert did not know what to say. He was not entirely sure he believed it—he could not imagine what motive the footman would have to lie, or how he would benefit from a maid's sacking, but perhaps O'Brien was unpopular downstairs? "Why are you telling me this?" he asked suspiciously.

"Because, your lordship, Miss O'Brien has said she's going to hurt her ladyship."

"How?" he asked, his mouth going dry. "What has she said?"

Likely this was all the result of petty bickering downstairs. Likely there wasn't a pinch of truth in any of it. But…what if there was? And what if something were to happen to Cora?

"I'm not sure how she'll do it, milord. She hasn't been specific—I'm not sure she's certain how. She's only commented on how it's her that helps her ladyship with everything, helps her in and out of her bath and in and out of her chair, and she keeps saying accidents do happen. I don't know if she means to drop her, or—"

"Good God," Robert breathed, trying not to imagine Cora falling or being pushed from her chair. She might be hurt badly, and the baby…

"I knew I had to tell you, milord. I'm sure any of us would have sounded the alarm before harm came to any member of this family, but it troubled me even more, milord, because it was her ladyship. Because it wasn't right to hurt a cripple."

Robert's right hand was gripping the edge of his desk so hard he thought it might crack. How dare anyone think of hurting Cora…

But you don't know for sure, a small voice in the back of his head said. You don't know it's true. And he knew very well he could not turn a woman who had served faithfully for years out on the street based on hearsay, no matter how ugly or frightening the rumors were.

"Can you prove this?" he asked Thomas. "Can anyone substantiate this besides you?"

"No, milord," Thomas said. "Miss O'Brien keeps to herself, doesn't talk much with the others. She's not very popular downstairs, I wouldn't say." Ah, perhaps it was as Robert had suspected. But before he could speak, the footman went on, and Robert was chilled to hear a wavering of true fear in the younger man's voice.

"But it is true, milord. I swear it on my position, and I don't want to see her ladyship hurt. Would you—if you must have proof—would you consider coming to the courtyard this evening, and keeping to the shadows? Or sending someone you know you can trust? I'll bring Miss O'Brien outside, milord, and draw her into conversation, and you'll hear her words with your own ears."

AN: No, I don't believe Thomas would raise the alarm to prevent any member of the family from being hurt, as he claims here. Had O'Brien told him in canon that she planned to hurt Cora in season 1, I doubt he would have turned a hair, especially given his, "she'll get over it; they're no bigger than a hamster at that stage," comments.

However, in this AU, I think Thomas (even nasty season 1 Thomas) would feel sympathy for Cora. I think he'd identify with her vulnerability, with her poor treatment from other aristocrats, and with her not-quite-all-the-way-there position socially, because I think he'd see similarities to his own position as a gay man. So while I don't imagine that he's overly fond of her, and he has no problem listening to O'Brien insult her, I think he'd draw the line at O'Brien physically hurting her.

Also, given that it's always the other servants who have to help innocents get off, I think Murray is a terrible attorney, and I can totally see him botching something like this. How in season 6 did it occur to no one except Molesley and Baxter that verifying Bates's alibi might help him?