Chapter Sixteen
December 1962

The noise was grating. The low, constant hum of voices grew and grew and grew, but not really in volume. It was as if Robert could physically feel each individual voice as the people around him spoke. He could feel his granddaughter's voice burrow and inch its way up his shoulder, his neck, and the tension there coiled tighter. Tom then, too, and Edith.

Mary's voice, his own Mary, felt worst of all as it spread across his forehead, around his head like a vise, squeezing it. He knew he was looking at her, knew his eyes watched her mouth moving, forming each syllable that now compressed his head, pressing firmly at his temples. He tried to decipher what it was she was trying to say to him, but the language he could not comprehend.

Only the fraught discomfort of the noise.

Robert looked down into his plate, and he realized he still held his fork and knife securely in his grasps. He used them, cutting a tomato, shoveling scrambled eggs onto the back of his fork and watching with fresh rage as they immediately tumbled down back into the porcelain plate.

He shut his eyes to breathe, to block out the feeling of their voices, to forget the image of the eggs. His mind brought him back to the swimming memories of the night before, of each and every photograph they'd shown him. Each one. He remembered each and every one and had been at peace there in Cora's bedroom, listing out the names of people in the photographs. He knew them. He remembered them. He felt closer to them, the ones all deceased and gone, than he did to those who sat around this table with him now, their voices all terrible and scraping. He felt closer to them and remembered them, and when he opened his eyes he looked at the blurry faces of the people around him. The children at the end of the table, especially, whom Cora loved so much.

A nursery full.

But where was she? Where was … if they were here, and who exactly were they … who was that terribly sweet girl with the blonde curls … Edith? But Edith was just … and Cora?

He felt his brows furrow down in thought. Something wasn't right. Why wasn't she here? Unless she was in her room at breakfast?

Oh. And then cold again. And the voices grew more terrible around him, as if he were in a tunnel.

Oh. It was he who had to explain every photo for she was … but she didn't feel dead. She couldn't be dead. She was? She was.

"…at ten. I believe they'll send the photographers first …"

Mary's voice filtered through the scratching din of everything else.

" … you and little Matthew and George, of course …"

Matthew? Matthew's dead.

Robert blinked at Mary, her voice trailing behind her mouth. His own mouth felt dry and sticky. He reached for his glass of water, but the knife he had not released clattered against it instead.

He told his fingers to let go of it. Let go of it! But they did not.

"Oh, bloody hell."

Water across the table. Knife and egg and tomato on the table cloth. A soft gasp around him.

And Robert tried to stand. To escape.

Sybbie sat back in her chair, pushing it back, pushing it across the rug so that she could stand. Donk, beside her, now hoisted himself up, or at least tried to, but everyone around him watched as his thin arm gave out and he fell back into his chair.

"Donk!" Coco was bounding to him. Sybbie watched as he shook her away, mumbling his little swears.

"I'm alright. I'm all right! I need a moment's peace. A single bloody moment."

Sybbie blinked away from her grandfather and to her father who stood now between her and Donk. Tom was now helping Robert up from his seat, pulling up under his arm, the shorter man helping the taller — albeit now crooked man — up to escape. But he, too, was shaken away.

"Certainly an invasion of privacy," he grumbled as he left the dining room, George's wife, Grace, trailing at his heels, Mary still sat shocked in her chair.

Tom, though, was shaking his head. "It's a lack of sleep. Shirley said he was already awake and dressed when she came in. It was only just sunrise when he walked to the churchyard, which, Mary, I thought we discussed."

Aunt Mary finally stood, pressing her napkin against the water spill of the table cloth and using her fingers to pincer the bits of tomato and egg. "We did, and I remember telling you that he can make it there and back, which he apparently managed to do."

"Mary—"

But she had turned to Edith now, as she straightened up, gesturing with the knife he'd dropped that she held now in her hands. "And speaking of things we've discussed: I told you. I told you," here she looked at Sybbie, "and told you that it would upset him, that it would stir everything and everything was perfectly fine how I had settled it."

"Do you think this was because of last night?" Aunt Edith's eyes were wide as she stared up at her sister. Sybbie's thoughts, though, didn't quite know where to land.

"Of course it was because of last night. Of course it was because you decided he needed some Freudian version of Edith Sentimentality —"

"What?" Aunt Edith's voice shook. "Freudian?"

"Mary—" and Dad's.

"Darling, you're upset —" and Uncle Henry's all at once.

"Mary! You're being ridiculous! You know this has nothing to do with going through photographs, simple photographs, with our father! Photographs that he enjoyed looking at!"

Aunt Mary was pushing in her chair, "No! No. Of course not. An outburst and his inability to sleep has nothing to do with dredging up old memories and confusing him thoroughly."

"But he wasn't confused!"

"And with the journalists coming in two hours time." Mary spun at the door of the dining room and stood straighter. "I'm going upstairs to check the room and then to check on Papa. George, ready Matthew. Sybbie and Edith, stay out of our way, please."

The dining room was silent when she left, even the children sat quiet and still, unsure of how to react. Indignance burned in Sybbie's chest. Aunt Edith's wide eyes still blinked in wide shock. Sybbie's father put a hand on her arm.

"What happened last night?"

"Nothing!" She felt herself immediately respond. "He was fine. Everything was fine." She shrugged. "He enjoyed the photos, like Aunt Edith said. And then Aunt Mary came in and she seemed upset that we —"

It was Coco who interrupted now.

"— But it's about her! The article, the selling point to open the house. It's about Granny Cora and Donk. She knows this; their letter confirming the date all but said so. So how can Gran be upset if she's planned this all along? How can she be upset with us for letting him see Granny Cora's things?"

Tom was moving from the dining room as he answered her. "Because Mary hates to be wrong."

. . .

Sybbie knew she'd still be in here, even more than a half hour after she said she'd be coming up. Sybbie herself had taken the time to cool off by settling her boys upstairs with Paul, commandeering the television she'd discovered and happily finding a grainy cartoon for them to enjoy.

"I'm afraid it's rather too cold to play out today," she whispered to her husband. "I hope you don't mind keeping them occupied here when the journalists come."

"No," he'd whispered back, touching her cheek. "Nor do I mind keeping them occupied now. So you can speak to her."

Sybbie knew who her husband had meant; she'd told him the night before when she snuggled closer to him in the bed that perhaps she'd been harsher to her aunt than need be. And so now, as she pushed in Granny's bedroom door to find Aunt Mary here, she sighed.

"I suppose you want to argue some sort of point." Mary was sat upon the chair Donk had occupied the night before, and Sybbie noticed the way she'd caught a tear with her pinky, pressing it against her flesh. She turned her chin away from her. "For I see the room is certainly presentable. And yes, of course I know that it isn't the first strange outburst Papa has had in recent weeks. So you needn't even comment."

Sybbie opened her mouth to speak, but her aunt continued speaking, looking out at the room and not at Sybbie at all.

"And yes. I do know he enjoyed the photographs. Why shouldn't he when it's the only thing he remembers clearly? He hardly remembers any of the grandchildren. Even little Matthew, which one would think would be rather easy." She pressed at another tear. "Only Coco."

"I didn't come to argue."

"Good."

"But …"

The lead-in must've made Mary curious, for Sybbie watched as she peered over her shoulder at her.

Sybbie exhaled. "Is the article really about Donk and Granny? Or is it about the house?"

She turned away again at that, and there was a long pause.

"Sybil was always the good one. The sweet one. Edith was much more clever," she met Sybbie's eye, "Though I will deny I ever said that."

Sybbie rolled her eyes and stepped in closer.

"And I was the one who should've been a son." She shrugged. "Mama or Papa never said, of course. But I wanted to be. Looking back now I'm not sure; George is a much better future Earl than I would have ever been. He certainly makes better decisions."

"You didn't answer the question. Coco says that there was a letter…that you knew the angle the journalists–"

"-Yes." Her aunt peered into her lap. "The article will be about their marriage."

Sybbie looked around the room, looked at the little side table that held the dog-eared page, looked at Granny's little glass bottles on her dressing table, at the golden chair Mary sat in. And then she looked at her aunt.

"You're upset, aren't you?"

Aunt Mary's breath shuddered. And she nodded. "Papa hates it. He hates it. Hates to be reminded of their beginnings. But what was I to do? They were only interested in the Cash for a Title angle, the way it was in those days. And I couldn't put them off. And we need the money. Because soon —"

"— Death Duties. I know. George told me."

"I suppose it's a blessing he has no real grasp of the present. He won't know that the last thing people will know of him is that he married her for her money."

Sybbie tipped her head. "They'll write that he loved her, too, Aunt Mary. Still loves her. That he still visits her."

Mary laughed sardonically. "Yes. And that he sometimes doesn't even recall that she's dead." Sybbie watched her aunt shut her eyes, and when she opened them she took in a deep breath. "Last night, when you promised to look out for him, I realized what a mess today would be. But I had no choice. We had no real choice, George and I. We had to, for Downton." Sybbie stayed quiet as Mary looked around her mother's room and then back again at Sybbie. "It's our duty."

There was quiet for a moment between them, a moment that Sybbie let her aunt have to rearm herself, to build back up that harder exterior she needed. And when it looked like she'd managed that, Sybbie spoke. "Caroline mentioned hiring a nurse for him. Specializing in memory. Paul and I could pay —"

But Mary held up her hand. "No need. He … he has us. And I don't suspect he'll live to be 105."

All she could do was nod. "I won't give Donk the letters."

Mary met her gaze, and Sybbie offered her aunt a small smile.

"You're right. They were Granny's. And they would likely hurt him. Probably confuse him even more."

Her aunt looked back through the window.

"Nor will I ask him about the stillbirth."

"Miscarriage," Mary sighed, deeply. "It was a miscarriage, which has been blown completely out of proportion." She watched Aunt Mary pick at a small fluff from her skirt. "Just as everything else has seemed to be."

Here, she stood.

"But perhaps I'm partially to blame for that." Mary clasped her hands before her. "I do tend to do things in excess."

They both turned at the small knock at the doorframe, and George's honey-colored head peered in. "Mummy, it'll be time soon. I've collected Matthew. I've asked Shirley to help dress Donk."

Mary nodded. "We'll do the interview in the drawing room, I think. Perhaps it best if Papa doesn't see them in here."

George nodded and then caught Sybbie's eye. "I agree, especially after what just transpired. Shirley says he's in a state."

"What do we do? Tell Aunt Edith to stall the journalists? To ask the newspaper to return later?" she turned to Aunt Mary. "Or maybe they can just take the photographs. We can give them the pictures Co has chosen and when they return them we can do the interview then?"

But Mary had been shaking her head. "No. I don't believe in putting off the inevitable. We must go through with it."

Sybbie shifted her gaze between George and Mary, between these two who indeed were the captains of their family. She nodded.

"Do you still want me to keep away?"

Aunt Mary walked toward and past her, touching her wrist very briefly. "No. And," she looked down between him. "Perhaps ask him if he wants the letters. Because you're right, too. He should be involved."

. . .

Her aunt's trousered knee brushed softly against her own, and Sybbie glanced to her at her right. Aunt Edith smiled very, very briefly to acknowledge the contact, but they didn't speak. They couldn't. The journalist sat in the chair near the sitting room door, the fireplace at his left side warm, crackling, and inviting as he scratched down the date and names of the people sitting nearest him: Lady Mary Talbot, George Crawley, and the young Matthew Crawley. Donk sat in a chair on his own —the heavy, needle-pointed thing pulled to the center of the rug, closer to the journalist, to the photographer — in pride of place. Edith and Sybbie sat behind the couch, near the piano, watching. Sybbie heard the camera the photographer held take a photo beside her, and she looked up at him, catching his eye for a moment before he turned away.

Her eyes went back to Donk.

"So, just to confirm what we've discussed," the journalist flipped notebook papers over and read from them, "The central piece of the house was the monks' refectory of an abbey that King Henry sold after the Dissolution of the Monasteries. It developed over time as a residential home and country seat for the Earl of Grantham, being first built in 1679. Erm … The house as we know it now was redesigned by the famous architect Sir Charles Barry in the 1840s. Yes?"

Donk didn't nod, but lifted his white brows.

"Of course great houses take quite a lot of funding and revenue to operate and in the 1880s, it was in danger of being sold away piecemeal?"

Mary sat straighter. "Well, not exactly piecemeal, but there were some debts, yes."

Sybbie noticed that the journalist made no corrections in his notebook, but muttered a small, "Alright. But, in danger, nonetheless?"

"Yes, but —"

"It would have gone. Yes," George added.

The journalist nodded. "And in the fashion of the many other American heiresses, the late Lady Grantham saved the estate in 18…90. Early 1890."

"'In the fashion' you say?"

Sybbie watched Donk blink at the journalist who quickly met Aunt Mary's eye and then looked back at him.

"Well, we're going to discuss how there was such an influx of American heiresses in the late 1800s. Jennie Jerome, that is, Lady Randolph Churchill; Conseulo Montagu, the Duchess of Manchester —"

"Lady Grantham's story isn't quite the same as theirs."

"It is a bit, Donk," dear George. "And they mean absolutely no offense. It's interesting, and it took a great deal of bravery on their part. Rather heroic, too, I'd say."

Sybbie watched as the journalist perked up. She also sensed as the photographer stilled behind her, listening. "Yes, Lord Grantham. The public is now quite interested in the way things were then."

"I was under the impression that the public was interested in the house, not my marriage."

Mary was shaking her head as she answered, "It's both, Papa. And I agree with George: the interest is a compliment to the estate, to you, and to Mama."

Donk looked back at the journalist, the man who couldn't have been older than Sybbie herself, without a line on his face or a hint of gray to his hair. No, Sybbie realized, he was likely younger than everyone here. Donk lifted his chin, the way he did when he was about to go along with something he didn't quite agree with, and narrowed his wrinkled eyes.

"And so how will this work? You've taken a history of the house, have the date of our marriage. What else do you need to know?"

The little notebook that the journalist held was shifted in his hands, and Sybbie watched as he let his gaze bounce from Mary and George and then back to Donk. "Well," his fingers, still holding his pencil, scratched a little at his temple as he read some words he'd written before he arrived, and Sybbie felt anxious for him. She had sometimes been on that end of Donk's disapproving gaze, and knew the heat that was surely rising up the man's neck and cheeks. "A little of how it must have been for her? For both of you? To navigate a new marriage coming from such different worlds. If the village accepted her early on? Your parents?"

Donk looked to Mary. "I am failing to understand how this pertains to the house."

"Because Mama saved the house by your marriage, Papa." She was exasperated. She looked at the journalist. "And you may tell the photographer that he's welcome to go up at any time to take the photos he requires. My sister," she gestured to Edith who sat straighter, "the Marchioness of Hexam." They smiled at one another. "She can show you anything you need."

Aunt Edith slowly stood, and Sybbie noticed, too, as the photographer shifted slightly, nodding. "Thank you."

"Of course," Aunt Mary turned back to the journalist and, as Donk had done before, lifted her chin.

Sybbie could tell this was all veering off the path the journalist had so carefully laid. He, again, looked at his notebook.

"But, sorry –" the young man stuttered.

Aunt Edith had paused by the door, the photographer at her heels.

"You see, we'd felt it disrespectful to take a photo of the churchyard, of where she's buried, but we'd hoped to get a photo of the, that is," the younger man looked at the faces of everyone gathered, and then back to his photographer.

At last, this man spoke, his Scottish accent tumbling out, warming the room in spite of the chill of the conversation.

"We heard there was a memorial here for her, for your wife. Could create more interest if we included it."

"I'm having a difficult time following. What is this?"

Sybbie's throat tightened at Donk's words. Mary was shaking her head. "Of course you may."

"What are they speaking of, George?"

"Granny's –"

"And have they gotten her permission to do this?"

Donk's words left them in silence, the only sound being the strap of the photographer's camera jangling down from his shoulder at his slight movement.

George inched closer to the edge of the sofa. "Donk –"

"And where . . . where is she?"

Sybbie stood.

"She should be here. I don't feel at all comfortable discussing any of this without her."

She walked around the sofa where Mary stared at her father with wide eyes. The journalist had leaned back in his seat mumbling a small apology.

"Donk," Sybbie touched at his hand.

"Sybil," he held her hand in return, and her mother's name twisted sharply in her chest. "The memorial?" Sybbie peered down at her grandfather, peered down at the way his duller eyes searched her face as if begging her to say otherwise. She felt the discomfort of the journalists at her back, she felt the embarrassment of her aunt at her right, the stare of her cousin and his son. "Cora isn't gone," he repeated so quietly that his aged voice trembled.

And Sybbie leaned very closely to his ear; his soft white hair tickled at her cheek. "She is," she whispered, and then pulled away to see that he understood. She frowned at his wide-eyed look of small shock, an expression Aunt Mary wore only just beside them. Sybbie swallowed, her mother's name wrapping around her heart. "Granny's gone," she repeated again, "but, the men here want to help others remember her. For how wonderful she was. For how she loved you. For how she saved Downton." It took a long moment before he nodded, before he squeezed her hand in return. "Shall I sit beside you?"

Sybbie smiled when he nodded, and then looked back at the journalists.

"It's alright," she assured them, and with a glance at her aunt, assured her, too. "He does sometimes need what we all need," she tipped her head, "a little grounding. An anchor."

"Yes," the young man quietly answered back, bringing his eyes finally to Donk, "how true that is."

"That's what my granny was for us," George, then, and Sybbie looked at her sweet cousin. His blue eyes twinkled. "She was our family's anchor. Wasn't she, Donk?"

Again, his soft hand twitched against Sybbie's; and then he once again lifted his chin. "She was everything."

. . .

"They got off all right," George came back into the library, his cheeks pinked from standing outside beside Coco, saying their goodbyes to the journalists, waving them away in the cold December air.

"They said they had such a good day," Coco flounced onto the red sofa, her dark ponytail swinging behind her. "The photographer told Daddy he'd gotten a lot of really nice shots."

George had walked to the burning hearth, standing before it, his hands behind his back. He glanced to the sound of the great many children in the small library, the puppets again being played with, the elder cousins talking in high voices and peals of laughter reverberating around the room. "They said they'd send copies of the photos."

Sybbie smiled at that a little, in spite of the tired ache the whole morning had left in her chest. It had been a small surprise to everyone, Aunt Mary especially, when the photographer had suggested, with that warm touch of his Rs, that the entire family take, even the children – all twelve great-grandchildren – take a photograph with Donk. Sybbie had seen the way Aunt Mary had shot a worried glance to Aunt Edith, but that didn't really matter. George had been delighted by the idea, the idea that the entire family would somehow be captured this way, in a tribute to Downton. It was fitting, Sybbie could sense he thought. And of course, in a way it was. But even if it was not, Aunt Mary would have gotten no ally against such a thing in Aunt Edith. Edith had looked chilled thoroughly since she'd gone to the memorial with the photographer, and she hadn't warmed yet, even though hours had passed.

"Oh, I am glad. It's been ages since we'd all taken one," Grace's soft voice was near Sybbie, but she didn't turn to her cousin's wife as she spoke. She let the words curl gently around her, letting her brain bend softly with them into warmer emotions and feelings and not the squeeze of reality that she'd endured during their interview with the journalist. "It'll be so nice to have, especially in the coming years."

The curl had fallen, and again reality had won.

"Where is Robert?" Henry asked at some length, after the weight of Grace's soft words, the meaning of them, had settled between them all. Sybbie let out a small breath.

"Upstairs," Caroline answered. "The interview must've worn him out."

It had.

"What sorts of things did they ask, Sybbie? George?" Marigold's round eyes blinked up at George from Sybbie's face, and Sybbie followed her gaze, also catching George's eye.

The entire thing had been a disaster. Donk seemingly unwilling to answer so many of the questions they'd asked about Granny, about their life together, about how they'd begun their marriage as two separate people, from two separate worlds, both beginning with such different ideas of what a marriage like this would mean.

And no, the journalist hadn't asked that, not in those ways. But Sybbie heard it. And she had felt it in Donk's answers, his quiet, "We learned quickly about one another, from one another. Together," had stilled the room. It had been the longest answer he'd given. Mary, George, and Sybbie had answered the others. They had to. He had been unwilling, and he had been confused. Details of six and seven decades ago came to his lips so easily; answers to questions of the present completely inaccurate or silent.

"They asked about Granny." Sybbie listened to George's response to their cousin, but did not look up at him. "Some things that were, in my opinion at least, a bit personal, really."

"But isn't it all a bit personal?" Sybbie did look up at Grace though, across from her. Her dark hair was tucked behind her ears, her soft eyes blinking. She watched George's wife as she continued to speak. "But we all knew, by opening the house, that it would be. Of course the house on its own is interesting." She scanned the library, and Sybbie felt as nearly everyone around her did the same: George, Caroline, Aunt Mary, Marigold. "But the house isn't really what people come for on its own. How much richer is the story of Downton when one knows it has sheltered such great love?"

"And will for some time yet," George smiled, and held out his hand to his wife on the sofa, who blushing up at him, took it.

Sybbie watched as Aunt Mary looked into her lap.

. . .

When Sybbie peeked around his door, she saw he'd been nestled in his armchair, near a crackling fire, blankets snuggly tucked beside his lap. He looked comfortable there, but frail, too, his hands trembling a little as he pulled the silky blanket up closer. When he spotted her, he lifted his brows.

"Sybbie."

She laughed once, and moved inside, turning to close the door behind her and then maneuvering around the foot of the bed to sit upon it, across from her grandfather. The bundles of letters she held in her left hand had tripled in weight, and she let the pack rest upon the mattress, its thinning fibers soft as cotton beneath her fingertips.

"I suppose I should've told you I was having a tray in my room. The day's done me in."

Sybbie shook her head at her grandfather. "No. Shirley told us. Don't worry."

"And everyone's upstairs? In bed?"

"Nearly," Sybbie looked at her lap. "Uncle Henry is watching television with Philippe. Bonding, I suppose."

Donk's jaw moved the slightest bit. "Wh-who's this?"

"Philippe, Donk," Sybbie exhaled. "Caroline's husband."

"Caroline." His voice was far away, then, and his eyes drifted to the fire. "Married."

Sybbie nodded. "With two boys. She's been married for quite a while, Donk."

He didn't respond. He only gazed into the fire, still, until Sybbie saw him speak, more than heard. The sound of his words were quiet and dim, like a light flickering out. "I can't remember." Sybbie watched his chest rise beneath the blanket, the housecoat, the dance of shadows over his frail chest, and then he exhaled. "I see her as a child, in my mind. Barely out of ribbons."

She looked down into her lap and exhaled, too, before she spoke.

"I sometimes see my own children that way. The years do catch you unawares at times, don't they?"

"No." Donk still stared into the fire. "That isn't what I mean."

Sybbie knew what he meant, and so she chose not to answer and let the crackle of fire fill the chill of silence between them. It was only when her thumb brushed the blunt corner of the bundle that she stirred.

"I know you said you've had a long day …"

He brought his wrinkled gaze to her, his eyes rheumier than she remembered them being before.

"… but Aunt Mary and I," she brought the letters into her lap. "Well, these are Granny's. You were upset that we'd thrown out her things before. You said that none of it was rubbish. You found the little ticket?"

He lifted his chin, his eyes drifting to the bundle in her lap.

"These were in her old sitting room. In a secretary. Barrow searched out a key and we found them," she let herself fall forward toward him, passing the green-ribboned bundle into his lap. "They're addressed to The Viscountess Downton."

She thought she would've heard the small oh his lips formed, but she did not. Silently, gently, frailly, he turned the letters over in his lap and held them.

"Aunt Mary agreed you should have them. Or at least ask if you'd like them. "

"Have you read them?"

Sybbie felt her chest tighten, and she drew in a breath. "Yes." The prick of tears stung at her eyes, though she wasn't sure why. Perhaps the day had done her in, too. "I'm sorry."

"Don't apologize," he answered back; he untied the ribbon. "Have you shown your mother?"

Her nostrils flared; her lip trembled. Sybbie shook her emotion away. "I think you mean Granny."

Her grandfather blinked up at her. "Does she know you have these?"

In spite of the proximity between them, she suddenly felt as if he were very far away from her. Years apart. "Everyone knows."

She watched through her watery vision as his knuckled fingers worked clumsily at the knot and bundle, touching at various envelopes, holding one up and trumpeting it out and then in. "My glasses are …" she watched him narrow his eyes. "Read one to me."

"Are you sure, Donk?" Sybbie frowned at him, though she wasn't sure he'd see in the dim light of the fire. "They're rather sad."

She was a little surprised at his scoff at that. "Then it shall suit the evening well."

Sybbie tipped her head and sighed. "Oh, dearest Donk." And he smiled at her, softly.

Swallowing down the sharp edges of the sorrow she felt, she took the letters from her grandfather and sat back into the foot of his mattress. She pressed her lips and tried to breathe more evenly as she searched one out from within the bundle. Extracting an envelope, she set the others beside her.

She was careful with it, the paper thin and yellowed, as she gently took it from the envelope that had traveled across the same ocean she herself had flown across to be here. She unfolded it and saw the graceful dips and curls of the script peering up at her, masking the sentiment she knew was there.

She glanced at Donk and seeing how he watched her expectedly, she cleared her throat.

"It's from Granny's Aunt Ruth."

She waited a moment for him to respond, and he did not.

"September 1890.

Cora,

I apologize for the delay in my response. I began to write half a dozen times and found that each time I lacked the sentiment I want most to convey to you now."

Sybbie paused and looked up at Donk. He'd shifted his gaze to his lap. She continued, "Oh, my pretty Cora. You are still such a child. In spite of your marriage, your new country, your victory in securing your viscountess's coronet, you remain helplessly naive, and I feel partially to blame. While I do not doubt your love for your husband, I do ask that you remember that the role you play in this marriage is not one of love. It is of duty."

She adjusted the letter toward the firelight and took in a trembling breath. "Yes, duty to your husband, duty to your title, duty to the entail you have signed, but also a duty to your mother and father who have given you this opportunity to better yourself, to better your family. You say you want to wait to be sure of his love for you, but I disagree. I know you too well, my girl. It is not solely love that gives you pause. It is fear. I do not feel I need to explain this."

She took another few breaths before she began again."I will end on this: You are not a child now. You mustn't be a child any longer. This role you have chosen, this path, will not be easy if you continue to allow emotions to be a player in the game you must win. Of course you will continue to feel them, but to give them a voice is a danger to the life you've chosen."

She lowered her voice. "And love has already taken so much from you, pretty Cora. Please. Put the ugliness and distrust of the entail to rest with the birth of a son. How can you expect him to ever love you if you won't perform your duty? If not for Robert's sake, then for your father's."

Sybbie let the letter fall to her lap, but could not bring her eyes to her grandfather. "Then she signs it 'your devoted aunt, Ruth'." Silence. Sybbie traced over the script of the handwriting again before squaring her shoulders and folding the note back over the worn folds this distant family member who had been dead for years and years had originally made, a lifetime ago. She tucked the letter back onto the envelope, carefully, and imagined her young grandmother doing the same.

"I'm not sure I want to read another," Sybbie heard herself say at last.

"I'm glad you saw she was wrong," Donk quietly said, and Sybbie brought her eyes to him.

But he did not look at her. His gaze was far-away, cast over her shoulder, toward the door. He stared at that spot and Sybbie slowly turned her gaze there too.

There was nothing but shadow.

Her heart began to beat harder, madly. Her eyes filled with tears. She looked back at her grandfather – her aged, fragile grandfather – and saw the ghost of a smile at the corner of his mouth, his eyes unblinking from the spot of shadows of his room.

Crying, Sybbie stood and went to him, gathering him in an embrace he weakly, confusedly, returned.

Her arms were warm around his neck, his shoulders, and he brought his hand up slowly to her shoulder blade, patting it. The cashmere of her cardigan felt soft under his fingers, fingers that were so accustomed to feeling hardly anything at all, and Robert let himself touch at the green wool once, twice.

He could hear her, feel her, weeping against him, her little gasps in his ear. Though Robert wasn't sure why. He wasn't sure.

He let his aching eyes travel back to her, through the curtains of dark hair near his face as Sybil held him, through the shadows of the fire shifting in his room. He lifted his brows and peered near the door to look at her again. And when he found her, he watched the way she moved with the flicker of flame and found himself wondering why she did not return his gaze.