Chapter Five

late August 1890

He loved the little blue one, the oval "Bristol" blue one, with the small white huntsman and dog running across the top. He loved to take it out and look at it closely, examine the little hinges and the gilt metal that mounted the porcelain lid. He loved to arrange it back just so and then peer at it, a certain warmth stirring behind his ribs.

But hours ago, after admiring the small blue box, he'd not felt warmth at all. On the contrary, he felt a coolness, a decided frigidness in that space behind his ribs, and he supposed he knew why. After all, Cora had given him the snuff box. In nothing but a selfless want to make him glad, she'd given him the box.

Shortly after their marriage, after only being wed a moment longer than a month, they'd celebrated his birthday amid the quiet awkwardness of their honeymoon. While he was out with those distant cousins Mama had procured lodging with in the south of France, Cora had found the gift in a little shop. She'd given it to him that night, after they'd all gone to bed, in a tiny string-wrapped box, the shop's tinier pink card christened as her own by her loopy script on the back: "For your twenty-second year, and every year hereafter. Your Cora."

He wasn't sure where the card was now, stuffed away in some drawer or book, but the sentiment of it, the sentiment of the snuff box ten paces away, chilled him through and through.

So, though it was not yet autumn, and feeling rather like he had every authority to do so, he had asked Walters for a fire. He'd gone off to his washroom pushing away the thought of her and pleased that he'd be warm when he eventually emerged from the bath. But like everything in his life at the moment, he was now completely and utterly filled to the brim with regret. For, Walters had arranged the scullery maid to do just what Robert had asked, and now - regret of regrets - Robert stared at the crackling in the fireplace of his dressing room, the flames jumping all around him, much too hot.

Inside and out, he was much too hot.

It had been seven long, uncomfortable weeks since he left Cora's room, her decision still ringing in his ears. It had been nine even longer weeks since he had touched her, since she'd touched him, and now the tender places of his body that missed her most ached in a strange, restless way. He felt altogether angry, frustrated and annoyed, even, at the licentious thoughts he thought, at the unspeakably undignified dreams he dreamt. Her hair splayed across his chest, her exposed skin glowing in the firelight, the way she felt around him, warm and wet and impossibly glorious.

But no. There'd be none of that. None of that at all, and Robert's body practically ached with physical longing, that place between his hips tingling angrily, his hands yearning to touch himself to relieve some of the uncomfort.

He threw his head back further into his pillow and stared up at his ceiling, wondering bitterly for a moment if those warnings Papa had hinted at years ago were true at all: Did self-satisfaction really cause delirium? Weakness of mind? It was certainly weakness of spirit, he understood that well enough, but surely he'd be forgiven. After all, men who wrote these rules hadn't had an American wife - an American wife who did not want to bear his child. His heir.

With a frustrated groan, the thought rose up again in his head, arching its back and hissing at him. And fighting back, Robert slipped his fingers beneath his waistband and felt for himself, a pleasurable guilt washing through him.

"Robert?"

Quickly, he pulled in a breath, pulled up the covers, and pulled his hand away from his shame, jerking his head to his wife's quiet voice. The dividing door slid against the carpet.

"I hope I'm not waking you."

Robert shook his head no, gripping the covers to his waist, hiding himself. Her face gave no hints of suspicion, her features soft and golden in the reflection of the flames.

"No," he managed at last. "Did you need something?"

Cora was quiet for a moment, her body still mostly in the threshold of the room, her lips curling into a tight smile. "Oh, no. Only I wanted to remind you of the interviews tomorrow morning. For the maid."

Bitterly, Robert rolled his eyes, sure she'd notice. "Of course I won't be there. Mama did tell you."

In his periphery, Robert saw her nod slowly, her lips parting slightly. "Yes. Sorry."

The coolness in his chest blistered. And yet he could find nothing to say.

He kept his eyes trained on his duvet for a long moment, the quiet between them icing over, frost lingering and cracking though the fire popped and snapped. Too quiet. Much too quiet, until at last, she broke, speaking.

"Then, good night, Robert."

He brought his chin toward her and nodded, but could not meet her eyes.

And as she shut the door again, it was not anger or bitterness he felt. No, no. He realized with some strange unease that it was not any of those feelings that created the coolness in his chest. No. The feeling was not anger at all.

It lasted throughout the day, the feeling from the night before. It was an uncomfortable sensation that Robert soon found made every bite he'd eaten and every sip of tea he'd imbibed throughout the hours turn sourly in his stomach. And dinner was certainly no different. In fact, it was worse. Much worse.

With his mother sitting to his left, his father to his right, Cora directly across from him, and King Charles's white horse turning its head down behind him, nearly coming through the painting above the buffet and over his head, Robert's mouth went dry as he chewed the chicken he tried to eat, the meat turning to cotton in his mouth.

The room was much too quiet. The tinkering of silver on porcelain screamed out before him, the quiet din of the dining room proclaiming that something was not quite right, that, once again, something ugly was swimming beneath the glassy surface of their conversation. Oh rather, lack thereof.

It was just the four of them at the table - it was much too frequently just the four of them and their servants in this huge room - and the quiet, and the space, and the tiny, devilish whisper in Robert's head that it could very well be just the four of them for much longer than he'd like, suddenly made him strangely claustrophobic. Lifting his chin in some vain attempt at loosening his collar, he reached for his glass of claret.

His movement must have caused a ripple of attention, for as Robert pressed the remnants of the wine between his lips, Papa cleared his throat.

"I hope you had some luck today."

The table remained quiet though Papa had spoken. Mama pursed her lips as she cut into another bite of chicken; Cora, Robert noticed, pulled in a long deep breath, and held it.

Papa allowed a few minutes more of quiet to settle over the four of them before, again, he made some strange precursor of sound, like an uncomfortable grumble, and spoke.

"Walters says there were quite a number of applicants. Were there any you liked, particularly?"

Both Robert and his father looked to Walters standing at the corner of the rug, and Robert even softened his features in a forced sort of smile, but like before, Cora remained silent and still.

"Yes." Violet answered tersely, and put down her fork and knife. When she picked up her glass, Robert understood that the conversation was over.

Cora, it seemed, did not. "Though we are still deciding."

"We've selected a few we like," Mama did not look Cora's way, "Ones that fit the correct qualifications."

"- your qualifications." Cora's voice, had it not been so quiet, would have gone unnoticed. Unfortunately, when only four dine at a table, most nothing goes amiss.

"The qualifications that befit a proper Lady's Maid. Which, I did try to explain this morning before they arrived," Violet put down her glass and her eyes flitted to the footmen around them. "But we won't discuss it now, Cora -"

" - Not now, no. In front of the applicants seemed perfectly acceptable -"

"- Cora." Mama's eyes, which Robert had fully expected to show anger and scorn, did not. Wide as they were, they went to Cora for only a moment, and then back again to the footmen and Walters before settling again on her plate. "We'll discuss it later. We mustn't bore everyone."

Everyone.

The word hung over the table like a pall, and it drug up the unidentifiable emotion that tightened in Robert's throat. He swallowed down the tightness and looked across to Cora; he found that she, too, was looking across to him. At contact, she broke away, blinking rapidly, her hands working beneath the table at her serviette. He felt hot, flustered, and reached for his wine, once again the four of them descending into silence, the forks and knives loud and terribly, terribly unsettling.

Cora didn't stay for drinks after dinner; she didn't set foot in the library at all. Robert watched her as they left the dining room, her direction straight and purposeful as she headed for the stairs. Mama saw, too, and audibly sighed behind him; she continued to move toward the library, leaving whatever had happened earlier to work itself out. And like a fool, Robert turned as well and followed his parents into the library, even though the soft glow of Cora's face from the night before immediately came to mind.

Now, three whiskeys later, Robert stumbled as he climbed the darkened stairs to his dressing room, alone. The painting on the landing seemed to stare at him as he climbed, and the red carpet beneath his feet shuffled and sighed.

He did not imagine this six months ago. Six months ago, when he watched as she signed her name on the contract, when he took that same hand and slipped the little golden ring on her finger, when he watched her smile to herself as his cousin bounced baby Patrick on his knee, he fully expected things to be different. He didn't know much about...about all of that, but he didn't think it would take so long. He didn't think the two of them would have any difficulty, that Cora's smooth, flat stomach would be happily swollen at this point. He didn't think she would want to stop, want to wait.

He didn't think.

Pausing at his door, staring at the knob, Robert's eyes widened in small surprise that he'd gotten here without his realizing it, and they twitched, itchingly. Slowly, he looked toward the door immediately to his right, the door which would lead him to her. To Cora. And with the warmth of whiskey in his belly, and with the tightness of his throat still laced with the feeling he still could not name, his feet moved on their own, and his hand turned the knob of her room, pulling open the door.

Pushing his shoulder on the green back of the next, the door was opened. The midnight colors of her room, darkened blues and golds and peachy-pinks, twinkled and Cora, dressed in her long, white nightgown, paused at her bedside, a sheet she was pulling back held tightly in her hand.

"I'm sorry for pushing in," he heard himself say to her, and he immediately regretted it. Her face grew hard and her eyes grew cold.

He cleared his throat and looked about the room, but not really focusing on one thing. The small candlelight by her bed cast her shadow on the opposite wall and Robert watched it dance for a moment before looking away again.

"Did you need something?"

His words from the night before were made harsher from her lips, and when he looked at her he could see she knew precisely what they had meant. It was not a question.

"Cora, I only, only wanted to come and...and see -"

She moved, pulling back her covers and climbing into her bed as if she were not listening, as if he were not there at all, opening her book and flipping - nearly tearing - the pages to where her bookmark rest.

"- I wanted to see how you were."

"Is that so." She did not give him her gaze.

"Yes. I don't know what occurred earlier today, but -"

Her book was slapped closed, and even in Robert's bumbling state, he saw how pointedly she stared at him now. "But you are aware something did happen. You're aware that I was, that I am, upset."

He opened his mouth and began to say something, anything to mollify her, but she continued to speak instead.

"I don't understand it; I just don't understand it."

"What?" He took a step forward, and he reached out for the bed to steady himself.

"Please."

When Robert looked up again, he saw that she was no longer looking at him. The line of her jaw had softened, her brush of lashes fluttered down toward her book, and her lips dipped into a nearly imperceptible frown. The flicker of the candle from her nightstand made a sort of halo around her loosened curls, a sort of aura of gold around the contours of her profile, and Robert suddenly had the strongest urge to capture her this way, somehow, to enclose her just this way in a frame with golden rosebuds.

"Don't say anything now..."

Her voice startled him, as if he had forgotten she was physically there at all, and it made the feeling, that strange, curious sensation lurking around his ribs, flutter.

"...it'd be for the best if we both just went to sleep."

"Cora -"

She closed her eyes, and Robert felt the flutter grow heavier, a certain panic seeping in. Why? Why? He wasn't sure.

"Good night." And like before, her voice did not mean the words it spoke, the sentiment lost completely as it left her lips.

Robert turned slowly away from her. He looked at the dividing door in the dim light, and then at the chest of drawers beside it. There were white roses there, and petals had fallen.

"Good night," he whispered and moved toward the door.

Inside his dressing room was chilled and eerily quiet. The curtains were still pulled apart and the long window allowed moonlight in, streams of silver spilling over the glass case of his snuff boxes, the little blue one twinkling in the light.

He needed to ring for Charles. He needed to dress for bed, needed to rest for early morning rounds with Papa, but something stilled his fingers from searching for the pull. Something kept resounding what she had said, that he had known she was upset. That she didn't understand.

Robert sighed. They didn't, did they? They did not understand one another, and the acknowledgement set an ache in Robert's chest.

Sighing, Robert moved again to her room, and he forced away second-thoughts as he maneuvered through the doors, as he went again into her space, finding to his small surprise that it was dark, that her candle had been blown out. The silver from his window seeped in behind him, though, and her silhouette as she rose from her mattress was kissed by it in the dark.

"Robert?"

He didn't know quite what he was doing, but he was certain he would do it.

He moved to her bed, wordlessly, but thinking so loudly, so loudly he was sure she could hear him. The way her features - those pale feature made into moonbeams by the milky light around them - warmed over, softening; the way her chest suddenly rose and fell, she knew what he was coming toward her for.

And so he climbed upon her bed, and without ceremony, threaded his fingers through her curls, pulling him toward her.

It was the courage of whiskey, he knew it, and what was more, she knew it, too, he supposed, the way she broke away and whispered his name again, as if asking if he were cognizant of his actions.

But he didn't care. He wanted her; touching her, feeling her beneath him, it made the sensation he'd felt throughout the day rise up and turn into a heat, a pounding delicious heat that whispered out a word he wasn't sure he should say aloud. Instead, he poured the word into his fingers, into his hips, into his tongue as it found her own.

Her hands worked at his shirtfront, the too-stiff collar coming loose at her touch. His waistcoat, his braces - these things fell away, melted away, her room spinning and moving away from them, her bed their only anchor to the earth.

Her skin was warm beneath her cool gown, it was smooth, it was velvet beneath the tips of his fingers. Hazy as it was, the things around him all a blur, he could feel every detail of her body. He could feel the way her flesh rose, prickling sweetly behind the trail of his touch. He moaned at the soft swell of her breast when he cupped it in his hand, the rosy peak of it turning to a pearl in his palm. Her name was all he could think, and he whispered it onto her lips.

And she whispered his in return.

The buckle of his trousers was now undone, and moving more to the center of her bed, he lost his underthings as well, his own hands now freeing her of her nightgown, the curves of her body too like a painting he'd seen in a book as a boy, a schoolboy's first glimpse of a woman's naked form. His throat rumbled with a noise he didn't think to make, and he wrapped his hand around the small of her back, her waist nearly fitting into the spread of his fingertips. And he heard her echo the sound he'd only just made.

She wanted him. She wanted him here as much as he wanted her, and the realization of it spurred him on, his other hand guiding her legs apart so that he could fall between them.

He kissed her deeper, her mouth altogether salty and sweet; her tender palms touched his cheeks, his jaw, and her nails dug into his hair, pulling it.

"Darling…" he heard himself say, and Cora answered with a moan, another turn of a kiss.

He took it as her welcoming, and he pushed inside of her.

Oh, inside him was all the warmth and lightness that only came of this, from their joining, somewhere deep within himself flipping and turning slowly, as if it were all a dance beneath water. Gravity had no power here.

Her hips moved against him, her mouth opening and gasping softly as he pushed further into her.

"Cora," he said again, and he moved his lips to her ear, letting them rest lightly against the lobe. "Cora, darling."

She moaned again, and he buried his face in her neck, taking in her scent as he moved inside of her.

His heart beat out that whisper again, and again, and again, and he felt his lips mouthing the word, telling her without sound, breathing it against her skin: I love you. I love you.

Oh, God. He did love her. He did love her, he did. And he grew closer as he thought it, as one of her hands traced across his shoulder blade, a white petal falling onto the tabletop.

"Please," he heard her between her breaths. "I don't -"

Oh, but it was now - surprising even himself, he nodded against her, pulling himself away from her just when he wanted to be inside her most.

And afterward, as he caught his breath, he felt her lips pressing lightly over his cheekbone, his eyelids, his jaw, her kisses covering his face. Her kisses covering his smile.