Chapter 42 – January 1890
He slides the notebook out from its hiding place in her desk drawer. It was underhand to be rifling in her things intentionally, but he thought she would forgive him on this one occasion. He opens it to the page where she had written that entry in America, the entry she had not shown him and had never intended for him to read, but which he had found that day when he had been in here with his grandmother.
He traces his finger over the words that had struck him so.
I think you do love me. Not maybe as I love you, but you do love me, in your way. I have decided that this is enough. It is more than enough to build the life we both want on, so I think we should focus on that. Life is too short to argue over the finer details. We love each other, and that must count for something.
He turns to the page opposite in the notebook, still blank. He takes her fountain pen from its case, and opens her ink. Then he writes the entry he had been planning ever since the idea had struck him after kissing Cora so madly beneath the canopy of trees on the shoot earlier. He adds the date and signs it with a kiss.
He lets the ink dry and then he closes the notebook, tucking it into his inside jacket pocket. He walks back along the gallery, back into his dressing room and then without waiting for a reply to his knock, he steps through the adjoining door. He had got into the habit of walking her down to dinner since they had returned from America. She is stood in front of the mirror adjusting her gloves.
Admiring her now, with his new feelings at the forefront of his mind, he almost chuckles out loud, after all, she looks no different. Of course, she didn't, but with how complete he felt, how perfectly whole and content, it felt as though everything should have changed, that all the colours should seem brighter, and everyone should know that today was simply the best day.
"You look lovely."
"Thank you darling." She reaches out her hand, and he squeezes it, leaning forward to brush a kiss across her cheek. She smiles softly and then leads the way to the door. The walk to the drawing room is swift, they were a little late after all. He watches as she takes a deep breath and hesitates for a second on the threshold as the footman opens the door to the room. He places his hand on the base of her back and leans into her ear.
"Relax Cora, you're more than equal to them all." He doesn't have a chance to see if his words bolster her, as they are swept into the room and immediately greeted by his parents and various other guests. Thankfully the pre-dinner conversation doesn't last long, and soon they are trailing across the hall to the dining room. He is seated between his mother and Lady Merton, but his eyes barely move from watching Cora find her seat (between Lord Merton and his father). The first course passes simply enough talking to his mother, he mainly watches Cora surreptitiously which thankfully his mother either doesn't notice or chooses to ignore. Cora's eyes catch his own a couple of times and they smile softly, knowingly. He knows she is thinking about that kiss in the trees earlier, and what it might lead to later. He is too.
"Lord Downton I rather I hope I'm going to be able to garner more of your attention than your mother did during the first course." Lady Merton's words cut through his thoughts, clearly his mother had turned the conversation.
"I beg your pardon Lady Merton, I had not realised we had turned." He takes a sip of wine in the hopes of calming his nerves. He barely knew Lady Merton, her marriage to Dickie having only taken place last month, but on the few occasions they had met, he was yet to find much redeeming about her character.
"No, you wouldn't when Lady Downton certainly has you under her little spell." Robert feels his stomach knot uncomfortably, his chest tightening at the tone of Lady Merton's words.
"I'm not sure I like your tone Lady Merton. Lady Downton has done nothing to deserve your censure." Lady Merton smirks beside him, lowering her cutlery to her plate with a clink, a few of the other guests look in their direction. She emits a hollow laugh and shakes her head. He feels his mother shift on his other side to look at them. His chest tightens, a rising sense of panic flooding away any happy feelings that had consumed him all day.
"Has she not? I was snubbed today at your own family's shooting party, so that you could chum your wife once again." Her voice has risen, and a silence settles across the rest of the table.
"Ada –" Dickie attempts to interject from across the table.
"No Dickie, I don't want to hear the excuse about how Lord Downton is only ever chummed by a lady from his family. We all saw it, Lord Downton, the way you barely spoke two words to anyone other than your wife all day, the way you kissed her so brazenly when you thought nobody was looking." He knows his cheeks stain bright red. Not so much from embarrassment, but because that had been such a private moment for him and Cora, and it hurt, that it had been overseen.
"Lady Merton, I really think –" His father makes his own attempt at slowing the rapid decline that the dinner was taking, but she was not going to be stopped.
"It's ungentlemanly Lord Downton, and you know it. I doubt a man of your birth and breeding would be able to behave in such a way unless under the spell of a woman such as Lady Downton." If he wasn't so angry he would smile. He was under a spell, a love spell, but it hadn't been forced on him as Lady Merton was inferring. "It's what happens, I suppose, when a good man such as yourself marries so far beneath him simply to finance his estate." He sees only red, dark blotchy red, pounding in front of his eyes. He isn't sure when he stood exactly, but he is stood now, his fists are clenched, his napkin flies to the table behind his anger, knocking his wine over and sending the red liquid bleeding across the white fabric.
"How dare you!"
"Ada!" Lord Merton has stood on the other side of the table as well, and their shouts come at the same moment. Lady Merton continues on without seeming to notice.
"And to make things worse, she can't even fulfil her part of the bargain. No Crawley baby in the nursery is there Lord Downton?" All Robert sees is the blotching red and black that pounds in front of his eyes, and between that snippets of Cora's face across the room. Her eyes are not glassy as he had expected them to be, they are firm and strong. Harrowed, and sorrowful, but not upset. There is that strong, steely determination that he had seen before. His father has stood, and Lord Merton is rebuking his wife across the table. Robert doesn't hear the words, he takes the determination in Cora's eyes and turns to Lady Merton.
"Don't you dare speak about my wife in that manner Lady Merton." Dickie falls quiet across the table. "And you should learn not to make assumptions about people's situations. This isn't exactly how we would have liked to announce it, but Lady Downton and I are in fact expecting our first child." His father takes over then, as Robert knew he would, to raise a glass to them. Dickie sits back in his seat and Ada scowls down at her plate. Robert lets it all wash over him, pondering instead how exactly he was going to explain his lie to his parents and inevitably everyone else at the table once the time came. After all, Cora was not pregnant and there wasn't going to be a baby. Not yet anyway.
He looks across the table, determined to catch her eye, and tell her silently that everyone was going to be fine, and that he would rescue them (at some point) from the hole he had just created for them. But she is looking down at her lap. As she lifts one hand to her eyes he realises she is wiping away a stray tear, and his chest tightens, she had been so strong moments ago. Before he can think what to do, she is standing, lifting her napkin carefully from her lap. She keeps her face down, only glancing up at the last second to speak to his mother, her eyes are full of tears.
"Mama, I'm afraid you're going to have to excuse me, I don't feel at all well."
"I'm not surprised. I'll get the kitchen to send you up some food." Robert is almost surprised at his mother's genuine concern, but then he remembers that she now thinks Cora is pregnant. He is the only person at the table who knows Lady Merton is the source of her feigned illness.
"Shall we call for the doctor?" That is his father, having stood, along with the rest of the gentleman.
"No, it's just a headache. I'm fine." She retreats from the room, her hand brushing at her cheek with increased frequency. His father starts to question his mother about whether they should in fact call the doctor, but his mother deflects him (maybe she was aware Robert had lied, he wouldn't be surprised). Somebody further down the table, Mr Wakely, he thinks diverts the conversation to something completely mundane and thankfully a number of the people around him start to discuss that. Robert stares only at the door that had closed behind his wife.
He can feel the notebook, where he had written down those important words, against his chest from its place in his pocket. But actions spoke louder than words, and he knew on reflex that love wasn't about writing it down, or even saying it; it was about showing it. She needed him.
"I'm very sorry Mama, but you're going to have to excuse me." He's halfway around the table before he has finished the sentence. He isn't sure she even replies. He takes the stairs two at a time, the red carpet blurring in his vision. He knocks on her bedroom door. "Cora, can I come in?" There is a muffled noise from the other side of the door which he thinks is words, but mainly he can just hear her crying. He pushes the door open. She's crying furiously, streaky tears streaming down her face. In one hand she clutches a handkerchief that looks like one of his, he can already see that it's very wet. He strides across the room to where she stands, opening his arms to wrap her into his embrace. He's almost to her when she puts her hands up.
"Don't touch me Robert, don't you dare!" The anger surprises him, or rather that it is aimed at him. He takes an inadvertent step back. Her words are surprisingly clear given how much she is crying. He is so shocked by her reaction that he can't even think of a suitable reply. "I don't want you anywhere near me, not tonight."
"Cora? What have I –"
"I can't believe that she told you! She promised me that she would let me tell you in my own time. And as for you, announcing it to the whole dinner table when we haven't even discussed it between us! What were you thinking Robert!? I might not be some well-bred English girl, but I am your wife and I thought I had at least earned your respect, even if I'm seemingly incapable of earning anyone else's."
"Cora, what on earth are you talking about? Who told me what?"
"Don't pretend with me Robert! Don't you dare stand there and protect your mother! She told you, it must have been her, because she's the only person that knows!"
"Knows what Cora? Honestly, I am completely lost, I've no idea what you're talking about." Her anger lessens, he watches as the rage flickers and softens to a soft shimmer, much of it replaced by a blanket of confusion.
"About the baby." Her words are a whisper, they catch at the back of her throat with the tears and the starched dryness from her shouting. He hears though and the world seems to stop for the second time today. Everything seems to fall away around the two of them. The love he had so recently realised stretches further now, it almost feels like it shifts in shape around him to encompass the as yet unknown, third person. Their baby.
"Baby? Wait, you're pregnant?"
"Yes, but –" He lifts her from the ground, cutting her off. His arm is firmly encased around her waist and he buries his face against her neck, planting a kiss there. She wraps an arm around his neck.
"Oh goodness Cora, that's just the best news in the world." He lowers her slowly back to the ground, but he doesn't let go of her. He wouldn't ever let go of her again if he could help it. He reaches a hand up to her face and starts to wipe the drying tears from her eyes.
"Robert, I'm so confused. Are you saying you didn't know I was pregnant, that Mama hadn't told you?"
"I didn't know, not until now, stood here with you."
"Then why did you say that I was downstairs?"
"I don't know, it just came out. I couldn't stand Lady Merton's comments. She was making me so angry, and I just sort of said it, hoping it would make her be quiet. I knew she was going to upset you."
"I suppose it's sort of funny then, that it was in fact what you said that upset me. I felt so betrayed by your mother in that moment."
"Well, I suppose she's been of infinite use then, since you've told me now, which will please her, because she likes to be of use."
"You sound like Mr Darcy." She chuckles softly, leaning forward to plant a soft kiss to his throat.
"Maybe I do. After all, I do believe I thought only of you." His heart hammers, he had been planning to wait, to tell her in Paris, but he can't. He can feel her breath on his neck, she is pregnant with his child, her body is pressed against his own and where his hand rests on her back he can feel the faint pounding of her heart. "I love you Cora, so very much."
Her hand stops rubbing his shoulder, and she stops wiping her nose with his handkerchief. He can feel the acceleration of her heart beneath his hand, but everything else is still, not even her finger twitches. His own heart shudders as the silence draws on, and then, with no warning she lifts her chin and tilts her face to his. Her eyes are glassy, but not with the earlier tears, they are glassy with new, happy tears.
"Kiss me."
"I love you Cora, so very much." At first, she thinks she has misheard him, the hand she had wound around his shoulders stills on reflex and she tries to open her ears to hear the sentence all over again. She replays it in her head slowly. Her clogged throat begins to open again, and the tears of anger and regret are forgotten, replaced instead by the glassy film of joyful tears. She had thought for so long that this moment would never come, that she would be stuck forever in a one-sided love. She might have felt recently that he was growing nearer to her, but the reality of knowing it to be true was different than she had expected. A lightness settles over her. The world had felt like it had been closing around her only seconds before, but now it seems to stretch infinitely in front of her. Robert loved her, and she could survive anything knowing that.
"Kiss me." His forehead falls down onto hers, his nose brushing down the length of her own. She had so many questions, but they could wait, right now she needed to be with him as one. She wanted nothing other than to spend the night making love. The arm that had been wound around her stays put, and he runs the other down the side of her face, wiping the stray water from her cheek. His breath is warm over her lips. His nose is still playing with her own, tempting her. "Robert," she sighs his name softly, desperately trying to coax his lips onto hers, she wanted him to kiss her with his newfound feelings. She didn't want to start this, she wanted him to. She wanted that pleasure of having him want her, properly, from deep within his soul and not just physically.
He finally obliges her, his lips sealing first around only her upper lip, and then the corner of her mouth, before he presses his mouth to hers. His touch is hard and deliberate, his hand pushing into her hair to tilt her face up to his own. She needs no encouragement, her arms are winding their way around his neck, her hands pushing into his hair. His hold on her doesn't break, he has pulled her waist to be flush against his own body. His kiss is insistent, his tongue flicking in her mouth, and with her own in a pattern that wasn't new, but it did feel different because the way he held her felt different. He was holding her in a way that normally meant this was only heading in one direction, but right now, she feels that they could stand like this, and kiss like this without it ever progressing to anything more. She wanted it to, of course, but it also didn't have to anymore. It was like they could survive without that, as long as they had this.
She moves her hand down over his shoulder to his dinner jacket, prizing it away from his shoulders. He follows her movement and shrugs it to the floor, barely breaking his mouth from hers. She fumbles with his dinner shirt and tie, and with some help from his hands, and a few small giggles between kisses they join his dinner jacket on the floor. He wrestles off the rest of his clothes without her help, before lowering his kisses to the side of her neck. There was a soft spot there that he sometimes found merely by chance that she liked. When he finds it now she lets a slow moan crush against the skin of his own exposed neck. He kisses her there again, harder. Her legs soften at the knees and she is pleased he is still holding her securely.
It's with a small amount of shock, that she feels cold air on her back. She had been so distracted by his kisses that she had been unaware he had been using the foil of kissing her neck to slowly prize apart the fastenings down the back of her dress. She shakes it off her shoulders and the fabric gives way. He pushes it down over her hips. She thinks she hears a soft rip somewhere, but she ignores it, stepping out of the pooling fabric as it falls to the ground. His hand slides back into place on the small of her back, pushing up underneath her corset and tugging at the strings at the bottom. After much pulling, laughing, cursing (she had never realised quite how appealing that was before) the corset and chemise join her other clothes on the floor.
His slides one thumb along the underside of her exposed breasts and she shivers at his touch. She feels his hum of pleasure as she sighs into his mouth. She runs her hands down his back, feeling the smooth curves of his muscles before she reaches the softer skin of his buttocks. She slides her hand around his hip, heading for the taunt arousal she can feel against her stomach. She grasps him within her hand, and he murmurs her name into her mouth. She has more confidence in this than the last time she had held him. She finds the rhythm quickly enough, his hot wet kisses urging her onwards.
"Cora," her name is half strangled between his kisses and heavy breaths. His hand encircles her wrist, stilling her ministrations immediately. He rests his forehead against hers and chuckles softly when she tries to twist her hand to grasp him again. "Give me a chance to make love to you properly please, I'll never last if you keep that up." He chuckles again and she bites the inside of her cheek, with mild embarrassment but also pleasure. Robert had never been so direct before, and the phrase 'make love' made her feel fainter than the kisses he was planting on her neck again.
"I could say the same about these kisses." She winds an arm around his neck and grasps at his shoulders to keep her legs from giving way.
"That's my intention my dearest one." He lifts her up then, one arm still around her waist, the other hoisting one of her legs to sit around his hip. He carries her to the bed where he lays her down before removing her shoes and stockings. She hears the sound of at least one stocking ripping as he pulls them from the suspender belt almost viciously.
He's above her then, his mouth crashing into hers as his hand weaves its way to her warm centre, his fingers twisting her almost to the point of oblivion, he knew just how to do that now. She wants to beg him to please push himself inside of her, but she can't find the words between his kisses and her moans of satisfaction. When he presses his mouth to the curve of her neck she turns her face into the shell of his ear and bites as she pants his name.
His damp fingers are pulling her knee onto his hip before her breathing has even half recovered and then he is inside her, absorbing the secondary waves of her climax. He had never done it like that before, nor had he started quite as slow as he does now, not since that very first time almost a year ago.
Her burning coil of desire, so recently discharged begins to tighten again almost immediately, the slow, deep pace leaving her tugging at his shoulders and pulling his mouth down to hers. She pushes her tongue deep into his mouth, and he reciprocates by pushing ever deeper inside her. She isn't sure which one of them is making more noise, his murmurs in her ear mingle with her own. She knows nothing she says is coherent anymore. It's probably minutes, but it feels like seconds, and also hours all at once, when his hand grasps roughly at her bottom and she clearly hears her name whispered into the shell of her ear just as he finishes inside her. A millisecond later, she follows him as a new endearment follows her name.
"My love."
Her heart beat thumps loudly between her ears, her breathing coming in deep long breaths. He moves to lay beside her, his hand rubbing soft sweeps across her stomach and their baby. He is still trailing kisses along her neck and shoulder and his leg is still twisted around hers. She relishes the simplicity of it all, the ease in which they are lying together. It has always been nice, but it had never been so peaceful before. There had always been this cloud hanging over them, about the discrepancy with their feelings. She had got so used to it being there that she had learnt to ignore it, but now it had been blown away. The rainbow it had created between them was no longer, for they both now stood together in the blissful sunlight. They lay together in the rising rays of their new dawn for some time, before he finally speaks.
"When did you find out about the baby?"
"Only a couple of weeks ago. I didn't want to tell you until I was a little further along."
"How did Mama find out?"
"Well, you know how she was using Henderson to spy on me." He nods, a small frown furrowing his brow. "She cornered me at the hospital the day I went to see the doctor."
"And did the doctor have any concerns?"
"No, it seems that so far at least everything is progressing as it should. But it's still early Robert and –" He tolds up his hands, cutting her off, then he reaches forward and grasps her hands.
"There are no 'buts' Cora, not tonight, no worries tonight. Let's just live in this moment of complete happiness." He's kissing her again, and she is powerless to resist him. His hands are running circles over her stomach and there is a completeness in the inclusion of their child, that makes her shiver with a pleasure completely different to the pleasures he elicits with his mouth.
"When did you realise you loved me?"
"Today, in the middle of the shoot. It was when you pointed out that going back to Paris was such a romantic choice. I realised that was why I had chosen it. I did want it to be romantic. Subconsciously my brain had taken me to that decision because I am in love with you. The honest truth is, I think my subconscious mind has been privy to that information for a while." She smiles softly against his shoulder, leaving a feather of a kiss there.
"Is that the real reason you wouldn't be parted from me at the shoot?"
"Of course. There was no way I was letting you chum anyone else when I had just made the realisation that I was in love with you. I passed through most of the day in a daze, Cora, I was thinking almost completely of you."
"Only almost?" She teases him softly, lifting her chin so that their eyes meet.
"Well, I had to dedicate some thoughts to controlling myself, otherwise we would have had more than a brazen kiss in the woods of the estate." Her cheeks flush, Robert had never been so direct before. That he even had such thoughts surprised her, he always appeared so refined and proper. Even though she knew well enough that his actions could be led by desire, she was unaware until this moment that his thoughts could be consumed in such a way as well. "When did you realise you were in love with me?" It was a fair question, and not one that had been raised between them before, why would it, when it was a subject that he had tried so very hard to avoid.
"I realised at that dinner party your mother held, before we were engaged. The one where she invited Prince Christian and Lady Evelyn. I was late to enter dinner, and when I did Evelyn was leaning over you in deep conversation. But you looked up, and met my gaze. I realised in that moment that fate had brought me here to fall in love with you and that I had done so." He chuckles softly, leaning forward to press a kiss to her forehead.
"That's interesting, because that same night Rosamund came and told me that she thought you were in love with me, and that I would be a fool to let you walk away. Clearly, she is far wiser than I give her credit for." They bask in that realisation for a moment. Her hand rubs absentminded circles on his chest, and their legs are still twisted together. It's the look in his eyes when she meets his gaze that transports her back in time, to the ballrooms of London and their first night of dancing.
"You know, I might have realised I was in love with you at the dinner party. But to quote Mr Darcy, 'I was in the middle before I knew I had begun.' The truth is, I think I fell for you that night we first danced together. I remember watching you almost all night across the dance floor. I couldn't tell you who else I even danced with, all I remember is your eyes, and our dance."
"Didn't we spend half the dance arguing?"
"I was in your arms Robert and we were talking. I was talking to the man I'd been thinking about since we first met in Paris, I don't think my heart was that affected by the exact words spoken." He kisses her without warning. His arm reaching under her knee and pulling her close to him. Their bodies are entangled all over again and slowly he is easing her to lie on top of him. Their kisses don't break, and she marvels once again at how different this man truly was now he was in command of his emotions. How free he now appeared relieved from the burden of his guilt.
"You know, I was going to wait and tell you that I loved you in Paris. In reality, I realise I never would have been able to keep it from you for that long." She laughs.
"You didn't manage more than a few hours!" Their laughter joins together and she lets herself fall back onto the bed beside him, then leans into him, resting her face against his chest, and holding him close. "I'm pleased you didn't wait. I'm pleased it was here, in this room. The bedroom that is ours. This is where we started our marriage and hopefully it will be the room in which our children our born and our love matures. I think it is right, that those words were first uttered in here."
"I'd never thought of that. Although," he suddenly starts to sit up, weaving his legs out from their joint entanglement, "it is not the first place I have admitted to them." His disappears from view, rifling through the pile of clothes on the floor until he finds his dinner jacket. He pulls out something from the inside pocket and takes her dressing gown from the chaise longue, before coming back to join her on the bed. He passes her the dressing gown which she slips on. It's then that her eyes fall on the item he had fetched from his jacket.
Her notebook. Their notebook.
She'd almost forgotten about it. The last time she had written in it they had still been in America. The letter in which she had told him that he did love her, in his way. He is flicking through the pages and then he stops and turns the book around to face her. On the page opposite that last letter – a letter it was now obvious had not gone as unseen as she had hoped – he's written his own note.
You're right my dearest one, we do love each other.
But you're also wrong, it's not a different sort of love, it's the same.
I love you, Cora, now and always.
He has signed the bottom, added a kiss, and the date.
She smiles softly, tracing her fingers over his writing. It had been a dream for so long, it had been something that she had thought destined to remain a dream forever, and yet, here they were. First entwined by God and the vows of marriage, then by duty and the need for an heir, and now entwined in love.
"I love you too, very, very much."
AN: I hope everyone got at least something that they wanted from this chapter. I think this was re-write number six!
I do intend to write an epilogue, but I am not sure how long that will take me. I have numerous ideas for it, and I am not happy with any of them at the moment. I think therefore, in so many ways this is the end of this story. This is the natural end to the narrative anyhow as the epilogue is likely to be a more in the canon timeframe.
Therefore, I just wanted to take this opportunity to thank you all so so much for everything. It's been seven years since I had this idea of Cobert meeting in Paris before London. It was two years after that before I even published the first chapter. But through it all many of you have continued to read, review, like, follow and favourite this story. I can't express how grateful I am to you all. This story would not have got finished without your encouragements. Cobert love to every single one of you.