AN: So I think this might be the longest chapter I've ever written for a fic...it just kept going, and I'm trying to keep to 21 chapters, so we may have some more long ones ahead. :-) Also, my goal is to start catching up on other fics this evening!

"I hope O'Brien's doing all right, looking after her poor sister," Cora said as she set the soap on the side of the bathtub. "I do worry about her…it must have been quite a shock, and quite an emergency, for her to have left so suddenly."

Robert fought an urge to put his fist through the bathroom wall. It was bad enough to hear O'Brien's name in his wife's mouth for neutral reasons, such as a mention of where the maid had kept a favorite wrap or how she put up her hair, but to hear Cora speak of her with affection and concern made him want to vomit.

Robert had taken Thomas up on his invitation to eavesdrop in the servants' courtyard, where, crouching behind some barrels and feeling like a French spy, he had heard a venomous Sarah O'Brien spew such hatred for his wife that he'd nearly had to pick himself up off the ground in shock. He'd gathered that O'Brien believed herself in danger of losing her position—which she certainly was now—and blamed this on Cora, the "stupid cow," "damn fool," and "crippled bitch." He'd felt his blood turn hot at the latter epithet especially, and his hands had shook with his rage as he'd listened to O'Brien mutter about how she intended to "make her pay." But it was none of this that had suddenly propelled him from behind the barrels and made him rush the maid, seize her by the shoulders, and shake her violently, shouting that she must be gone from his house this instant.

No, what had made him lay rough hands on a woman for the first time in his life was O'Brien's final sneer: "Bloody useless, the bitch is." He had seen Cora characterized thus far too many times, and its juxtaposition with the maid's evil intentions had been the final straw. Cora was his world, his most precious jewel, the best bit of his life, the steadying presence that got him through his days, the last warm thought that filled his mind before sleep at night. He was not sure he would be able to continue drawing breath without Cora, sweet, darling Cora…and this servant thought her useless and wanted to harm her.

Yet Robert had not shared any of this with his wife, aware of how hurt she would be at a betrayal by the maid she was so fond of. He had concocted a story where O'Brien had rushed off to nurse a dying sister in Ireland and look after her children and had asked Mrs. Hughes to repeat it to her ladyship the next morning. He'd heard Cora express sympathy and worry many times in the weeks since, and her sweetness had made him see red each time.

"Robert?" he heard her ask softly, and he realized she'd spoken earlier. "Are you all right?"

He dragged himself back to the present and forced a smile. "I'm sorry, darling, I was miles away. What did you say?"

She smiled gently. "That's all right; it wasn't anything terribly important. Just that I've had a few replies to the ad for my new maid."

"Good, good. Anyone you're bringing in for an interview?" He intended to contrive a way to meet these candidates before any of them were offered the position. While he could never have imagined that O'Brien would ever dream of harming her mistress, there had always been something about the woman he had never quite liked. The experience had made him determined that if he felt even the slightest twinge of distaste for a future maid, she would not be hired and entrusted with his wife. His pregnant wife, he thought as he surveyed the bulge in her abdomen.

"A couple, I think, on Monday. As eager as I am to have it settled, I shall miss having you for a maid."

Mrs. Hughes and Anna had been trading off maid duty in the mornings, sharing the more complex work of putting Cora's hair up and readying her for the day, but Robert had handled the nights, taking her hair down and helping her into and out of the bath and dressing her for bed.

Her hand was resting on the edge of the tub, and he raised it to his lips for a kiss. "You may have me as your maid whenever you like." He would give her anything she wanted, especially now that she was expecting, and of course he had no great objection to sitting here and watching her bathe in the first place.

"Darling, could you rub my back for a bit while I'm in this hot water?" she asked softly.

"Of course, love. Of course." He removed his jacket, pushed his sleeves up above his elbows, and moved the stool to sit at her side rather than at her feet.

A few years after Cora had been hurt, Robert had found a way to work on her muscles as a hot bath loosened them, and it had quickly become one of his favorite ways to tend to her. He always finished up rather damp himself, but he loved the relief that would slowly spread across her face, the kisses she would occasionally press to his cheek and jawline, and, most of all, the way he got to hold her. That she was undressed during this process was an added bonus.

Robert wrapped his left arm around her shoulders, drawing her near so that Cora rested her head against him. How he loved to cradle her so close and so protectively, watching as she closed her eyes, trusting him to take care of her. And how he loved the way she sighed as she settled against him!

Then he slipped his right arm underneath her and began to work his fist into her back, noting—not for the first time in recent weeks—that her muscles seemed more rigid than usual. He brushed a light kiss to her forehead, realizing she'd been in more pain than he'd thought.

She groaned softly as his fingers worked along the sides of her spine, and he kissed her again. "Sweetheart, have you been hurting worse lately?"

"Clarkson said it was normal," she murmured.

"Normal?" How was anything ever normal with such an unusual injury?

"Yes, it's got to do with the way the muscles prepare for birth, even though I'm barely even showing yet. And joints get a bit looser during pregnancy, even early on, so that a woman's hips can separate far enough, which means my spine will be a bit more unstable for the next few months. It's all perfectly normal; I'm just more sensitive to it all than healthy women."

It had not occurred to him that this had anything to do with her pregnancy—she was, as she said, barely showing—but the realization that it did made his heart rise into his throat. He had been worried for the end of her pregnancy since her announcement last month, for how difficult it would be for her spine to bear the weight as her belly grew, but he had not thought she would suffer so soon, and much longer than he'd anticipated. And Cora already suffered so much…

"Cora…"

"I'm all right," she said, her tone light. "It's nothing permanent, and it's nothing your hands can't fix."

Robert kissed her again, letting his lips linger against her temple. How he feared everything to do with this pregnancy—the way it affected her now, the difficulties he knew she would have later in the fall, and above all, the birth. Oh God, the birth.

"Cora, I do so worry for you," he breathed.

"I'll be all right," she said softly. "But can we please not talk about it now?"

He heard the sudden tremor in her own voice and knew that she was frightened too, in spite of what Clarkson had told them earlier in the week.

"Of course, darling. We won't talk of it now. Just rest in my arms."

She kissed his cheek and nestled closer to him.

He felt Cora gradually relax and heard her breathing slow, and he tried to calm himself with the doctor's recent words. Clarkson, who had read every report and journal he could find on childbirth and caesareans since discovering Cora's pregnancy, had come across an 1870s study* that suggested she might manage to give birth on her own. A doctor who had been studying the womb forty years earlier had removed the lower part of the spinal cord in pigs and discovered that contractions still progressed normally in the animals' labor, even without a nerve connection. It was possible, Clarkson said, that Cora's womb might push the baby from her body of its own accord, and she might have a delivery that was no different from anyone else's.

The information had comforted them both immensely, and yet Robert knew he still had reason to worry. His wife was neither young nor healthy, and the risk of a miscarriage or stillbirth remained high. Nor was a healthy delivery a foregone conclusion for an able-bodied woman who was to be a first-time mother in her mid-forties.

And he could not bear to lose her, he thought for the millionth time as he touched his lips to her forehead. He could not.

When the bath water began to cool, he drained the tub and then helped Cora dry, dressed her in a nightgown, and carried her to bed, telling her he would join her as soon as he too was changed. He returned shortly and stretched out next to her, pulling her into his arms when she reached for him. The light weight of her head resting on his chest and her arm stretched over his stomach soothed him. He would have liked to have done more tonight, after all the time viewing and touching her body in the water, but he sensed that Cora was tired, and thus he contented himself with running his fingers through the silk of her chocolate curls and savoring the feel of her body partially draped over his, her still-small belly pressed against his side. Holding her was near enough to heaven.

Cora sighed happily, and he kissed the top of her head. "My darling, I do so love to hold you," he whispered with a sigh of his own.

"Mmm, I love it, too," she murmured. "You're always so warm, and so comfortable…and your hands always feel so wonderful!" she said, laughing softly as he began to rub slow, gentle circles on her back, wanting to soothe the muscles he had just worked so that she wouldn't be sore when she woke.

"Thank you for making me feel better," she went on, raising her head to kiss his chin. "That really does help."

"I'm glad, darling." He kissed the top of her head once more. "I'm glad there's something I can do for you."

She chuckled again and caressed his chest. "Robert, you do a great many things for me. You've always taken such loving care of me, and I'm grateful for it."

He did not respond, because he had not taken very good care of her lately, he didn't think—he'd entrusted her to O'Brien, who'd meant to do God knows what, and his guilt over that had reminded him of his guilt in getting her pregnant in the first place. And what if…what if…

She had asked him not to speak of it, and thus he held his tongue, slowly feeling his throat constrict, but then the words burst out, his voice strained: "I'm so…darling, I'm so very afraid for you…"

Cora raised herself up on her elbow to look at his face. "Nothing has happened yet," she said steadily. "And it's likely nothing will happen. You heard Clarkson."

Robert closed his eyes, hiding the tears that always pooled there when he tried to weigh the odds. Cora was so much older than she ought to be for her first baby, and so physically weak, nor could he entirely convince himself that it was safe to take a pig's reproductive system as perfectly analogous to a human's. Suppose she did need a caesarean. Suppose she…

"My dearest, we must not borrow trouble before it is due," she went on, and he felt her stroke her fingers lightly over his forehead before running them through his hair. "Clarkson will do everything he can, you will bring in the best doctors you can find, and in the meantime you're taking very good care of me. That is all we can do, and worrying won't change a bit of it."

He opened his eyes and reached up to take hold of her hand, bringing it to his lips for a kiss to her palm. "Darling, I–I can't…"

"You won't have to be without me," she whispered, finishing the sentence he could not. "I'll be all right, I promise." She couldn't promise that, but how comforting to hear the words in her sweet voice anyway. "And you certainly haven't got to be without me now. So please, be at peace tonight, dearest."

He cupped the back of her head with his hand to bring her lips to his, and they kissed warmly and slowly, each drawing and giving comfort.

"We have far more to look forward to than to worry about," Cora said as she settled against his chest again. "A lovely new baby to cuddle in a few months." He heard the soft smile in her voice. "I'm terribly excited about the thought of having a baby here again."

"I am too, although I admit I haven't thought much about him or her."

"You should," she said gently. "The baby is the lovely bit at the end of all of our worries, and it's so much nicer to focus on that."

How like Cora to think that way, he thought, pressing another kiss to the top of her head. "You're right, of course." And he was, when he considered it, glad at the thought of another child. There had been vague talk of adopting a third when the girls were little, but he had thought it too much for Cora in her condition, and so the idea had been dropped. However, he had suspected she had not lost her longing for another infant to hold.

"I can't wait to see you hold it," he said, thinking of what a pretty picture she had made in the early days of Charlotte and Eleanor's lives.

"Not to hold it yourself?" she asked, puzzled.

"Of course, but I think I'm most looking forward to watching you with it. You're so lovely as a mother, Cora."

She was silent for a moment and then said, so quietly he almost didn't hear, "Thank you for letting us get the girls, all those years ago."

"Darling, I don't think I've ever been more grateful for any decision I've ever made."

"You were hesitant, at first," she said, and he could hear a smile in her voice.

"Only because I simply couldn't imagine such an idea. But…I'm so glad you've been a mother, and I've been a father."

"Eleanor and Evelyn will be back in England soon," Cora said. "We have that to look forward to as well. I've had a few letters from her—she seems very happy."

"He hasn't bored her to tears yet, then?"

"Robert!" she exclaimed, giggling, and he laughed too.

"You haven't told her about the baby, have you?" he asked.

"No…I don't want her reading that in a letter, or worrying about it on her honeymoon. But I…I dread it, after the way Charlotte's taken it."

"Darling…" He kissed her again and continued stroking her hair and rubbing her back, wishing he had a better way to comfort her.

"I told Charlotte what Clarkson said," she murmured after a moment. "I thought—if she knew I wasn't in nearly the danger we'd all thought—I thought she might be all right, that she wouldn't be so…resentful."

"But nothing's changed."

"No, nothing's changed. She's just so…cold."

Part of him could understand why Charlotte was angry, why she likely faulted them both for the carelessness that had led to Cora's pregnancy. He could not bear to be angry with Cora any more, but there were many days when he still hated himself. Yet Charlotte had now had several weeks to consider, to move past her initial emotions, to realize how foolish her attitude was and that she was only hurting both herself and Cora…especially now that they had Clarkson's new information.

"This has gone on long enough," he said with a sigh. "I'll speak to her tomorrow."

"No, don't do that."

"No?"

"No," Cora said thoughtfully, "that will only push her further away if she feels like you're pushing her. Let me talk with her again in the morning and see…see if she'll tell me why she's still like this, even now that we know it's not nearly the risk we thought."

Robert said nothing, afraid to see her hurt again but knowing she would not concede to him in this.

Cora asked Charlotte to join her in the morning room** for a cup of tea before luncheon, thinking it seemed more private than catching her daughter in the drawing room or the library, but less invasive than pushing into Charlotte's bedroom and less her own territory than insisting Charlotte come to hers. The morning room, of course, was also Cora's, having been intended for the lady of the house to manage her correspondence and her social engagements, and she did spend most of her mornings here. It was directly beneath her bedroom, and Robert would carry her down the back stairs most days and seat her at the small desk or on the rose-patterned sofa, where she sat today.

However, she doubted either of her daughters saw it as exclusively her own room, for they'd spent most of the mornings of their childhood here. Cora had always been fond of having them near her, yet she'd always felt as though she were the nanny's guest when she'd spent time in the nursery, and most of Downton's other rooms seemed too cavernous for small children—in addition to her mother-in-law's disapproving looks and her father-in-law's perpetual concerns about broken lamps and vases. And so Cora had had her girls brought here most days, to this small, white, light-filled room where they'd played on the floor at her feet while she'd written letters or climbed onto her lap for snuggles and stories. It was in many ways the place she most associated with their childhoods.

"You wanted to see me this morning?"

Cora looked up to see Charlotte lingering in the doorway, as though she were having second thoughts on whether she wanted to come in at all. She sighed inwardly at her daughter's cool greeting, noting its stiffness.

"Yes, darling. Sit down; William is bringing tea in a moment."

Charlotte nodded and joined Cora on the couch, perching on the edge of the seat cushion as though this were an unpleasant social call she hoped to cut short.

"I've had another letter from your sister," Cora began, searching for a neutral topic as they waited for the tea to arrive.

"Yes, she writes me as well," Charlotte said simply, but she did not elaborate, nor did she prolong eye contact with her mother.

As Robert had said, this had gone on too long. It had been a month of silences and avoidance, and now Cora could barely make conversation with her own child. She had thought it best to let Charlotte come to terms with the situation on her own—Charlotte had been quite clear that she did not want to discuss it further—and had thought she ought to give her daughter the space she needed to grieve. Yet she seemed more distant each day, and the news Cora had imparted a few days earlier that the prognosis was not nearly as dire as they thought had made alarmingly little difference.

Cora let silence fall as they waited for the footman, not wanting to be interrupted in the conversation that must be had, and at last William had come and gone and she was pouring two cups of tea.

"I had hoped," she began carefully as Charlotte accepted hers and dropped in a lump of sugar, "that you might tell me what it is that's upsetting you."

"I'm not upset."

"You don't seem very happy."

"Well, I am. I am happy. Quite happy for you."

Cora forced herself not to sigh. She was not here to drag congratulations on her pregnancy out of Charlotte. "It's only that I thought you might be…gladder to hear the news I shared with you from Clarkson."

"I was glad!" Charlotte exclaimed, and the shock on her face seemed perfectly sincere. "Of course I was glad to learn how much better the odds are than we'd thought. Do you think I want you to die?"

It seemed an exceptionally odd thing to say, when she thought it was Charlotte's anger over the risk to her life that had brought them to this point. "Of course not! I had thought—your father and I had assumed—that you've been so…withdrawn lately because you resented our allowing this to happen. Because you were angry I'd taken such a risk. Have I misunderstood something?" Cora set her teacup down and studied Charlotte's face.

"I suppose not entirely," the younger woman said thoughtfully. "I was upset about that. I did resent you for it. It…it just seemed that you'd been so foolish, and so careless." Charlotte shrugged. "But I didn't feel that way very long—a week at the most. I understand why you thought what you thought, and I understand why you and Papa…did what you did. And I'm not upset now. I'm not upset!"

Why did she persist in denying the obvious? "Darling, I'm not angry with you," Cora said gently. "I wouldn't ever be angry with you for any feeling you might have. But if all that's true, then I don't understand what's made you so distant, and I wish you'd tell me. Because, darling, I want to know what's wrong." A month ago she would have smoothed Charlotte's hair as she spoke, but she had seen Charlotte freeze at her touch enough times in recent weeks that she was wary of reaching for her.

Charlotte set her own cup on the small table and then sat back and looked steadily at Cora. "I am happy for you," she said. "I promise I am. But I…this is tremendously hard for me, and I don't deny that it's hard. I'm surprised you don't understand that it's hard." There had been irritation in her voice at the last sentence, but after a pause, she suddenly reached out and seized her mother's hand with both of hers. Cora started at the contact, for Charlotte had not touched her in weeks. "But please believe me when I tell you that I'm glad for you. Because I do love you, and I am grateful to you, and I want you to be happy. And I know—I realize you must have wanted to be a mother all your life, and now you finally will be."

Cora knew that she flinched, drawing back at the words and pulling her hands away, but she could not help it, for she did not think it would have felt any different had Charlotte simply slapped her face.

"Have I–have I not been your mother?" she whispered.

"Oh, of course, you were, you were," Charlotte said quickly. Were. Not, you are. Cora felt her heart break at the casual rejection and willed herself not to cry. "And I'm grateful," Charlotte went on, her voice strained, "truly I am. But this…" She gestured vaguely at Cora's stomach. "This is…real now. You'll actually have your own child—you won't have to love someone else's instead. You…you won't need substitutes anymore."

It took Cora's breath away to hear Charlotte parrot the phrases Cora had heard from so many well-meaning acquaintances when she and Robert had first adopted: "Pity that's not your real baby." "It's such a shame you can't have a child of your own." "How good of you to want to love some unfortunate woman's child." "If you can't have your own child, it's lovely you've got such a sweet baby to substitute." Cora had merely stared in shock, anger, and hurt the first few times she'd heard such sentiments, amazed that anyone could think Charlotte anything less than her own, real child, but she'd quickly learned to respond, to correct, to reprimand, and to rebuke, depending on the source. It had never occurred to her that she might one day hear such things from her own daughter.

"Darling, you must not think this way," she gasped. "You know how much Papa and I love you; you know—"

But Charlotte cut her off, shaking her head. "I'm not angry. Please don't think I'm angry. I know you don't mean to hurt me; I know you've done none of this on purpose. And I know you can't help but realize the difference between Eleanor and I and your real baby. I don't blame you for that."

Cora seized both of her hands. "Charlotte, you are my real baby."

She was suddenly seeing not dozens of friends and strangers of the 1890s, but Charlotte herself as a toddler, as the three-year-old who had come running to her the night they had adopted Eleanor. Cora and Robert had made the ill-judged decision to bring her along for their return to London's Foundling Hospital—a place that seemed so much more dark and hopeless than they'd remembered—and a frightened Charlotte had awakened that evening from a nightmare, sobbing that she did not want to be returned to the home now that they had another baby, and would they send her back if she was bad? It had broken Cora's heart at the time, but it was far more painful to realize that, underneath Charlotte's outward confidence, the old insecurity that she was somehow returnable or replaceable, somehow not fully theirs, had never entirely let her go.

"You couldn't be any more real," Cora went on, raising each hand to her lips for a kiss, "and you couldn't be any more my baby." She felt a tear—a tear of regret that she had let Charlotte feel this way for weeks, a tear of pain at her daughter's pain—slip down her cheek, and she did not want to cry in front of Charlotte, but she did not want to let go of her hands to wipe it away.

Yet her daughter's expression seemed to change the second she saw it, softening with something like…hope. "Mama?" she whispered. The word was barely audible, and her lips formed it slowly, as though she were trying it out.

And it was then that Cora realized what had been eerie about Charlotte's speech. It was not just that it was cold; it was that she had not called Cora "Mama" for weeks. She had not called her anything else; she had simply avoided any direct address at all.

"My darling, you are my own child," she said, letting go of one hand to touch Charlotte's cheek. "You are not a substitute—you could never be anyone's substitute. You are not mine, and this baby is not mine, because of which womb you've come from. You are my children because I love you, and there is nothing that will ever change that, ever."

"You don't…you don't think you'll feel…differently about this one? Even after you've carried it for so many months?"

"I will feel differently," Cora said, feeling the truth of her own words. "This baby is different from you, and Eleanor is different from you. I love you all the same, but you are different from your siblings, Charlotte…because it was you, not this baby, who made me a mother. I'd given up on that after my accident, and then…my darling, when they first placed you in my arms, all I could do was weep, because I loved you so much it was almost more than I could bear. I loved you more than I had ever imagined was possible."

Cora could see tears swimming in Charlotte's eyes, too, as her daughter moved to embrace her, and they both squeezed each other tightly, Charlotte burying her face in her mother's neck. Cora kissed her possessively, feeling the same love exploding in her heart that she had felt on that crisp autumn day in 1890.

"Oh, my darling," she breathed as she held on. "My precious, precious girl. Do not ever think you're not loved."

*Yep, this is totally a real study, conducted by a young doctor who's regarded as one of the fathers of anesthesia. Since life-after-paralysis wasn't much of a thing in the 1870s, he wasn't looking to see whether you could give birth without a working spinal cord; he was just interested in childbirth and wanted to see whether the uterus could work without brain signals. He proved that it could, but I doubted that would have been known by Clarkson (or even the spinal cord doctor who treated Cora when she was first injured) until he did further reading.

**So I discovered on my visit to Highclere that there are several lovely rooms that they never use on the show. I think that's such a shame, as well as a bit odd when you consider that it's a big house, but the family never congregates anywhere but the drawing room, the library, and the dining room, so I've decided to rectify a bit of that in my fics. The morning room was one of my favorites, because it just seemed so very Cora…light-filled, elegant, and feminine without being fussy. Google "Highclere morning room" and see if you can find a photo. :-) The back stairs Cora mentions here are another elegant staircase in use by the family, but they're less grand than the main stairs used for all the filming. They go from right outside Cora's room to outside the morning room (and they would actually be the most direct way for Cobert to get upstairs at the end of the night when they leave the drawing room, so it's rather strange if you know the floor plan that they are only ever shown using the main stairs).