Meanwhile, on the other side of the ocean, Cobert are getting ready for bed...
"Harold getting married, can you believe it?" asked Cora, slowly taking off the dress robe she wore over her silky light blue nightgown. She folded it neatly over the back of one of the plush chairs in the bedroom Martha had assigned them.
She felt awfully tired, outright exhausted even. There was nothing she wanted more than simply curling up next to her husband in bed. Falling asleep, basking in the warmth he would be exuding like always, sounded too good to be true and she was more than looking forward to it.
Robert had just entered the room again, wearing his favourite warm pyjamas underneath the skilfully made dress robe. He looked at her, standing close to the bed as he untied the robe and put it on the stool at the foot of the large four-poster. He cautiously looked up at her after she spoke. It had become a sort of habit for him to do that, he wanted to keep a very close eye on her, especially after that arduous journey across the ocean.
"I never thought we would see that day, but I am glad he finally found the woman for him. Look at how different he behaves at just the prospect of marrying her. I can't say I have ever seen him like this. Not that I have seen him all that much throughout the years," Robert replied, chuckling slightly at the end.
"That much is certainly true. But still, even I have never seen Harold this jolly, not even when he was a child. Or at least I can't recall it."
Cora turned around, standing in front of the lit fireplace to warm her cold self at least slightly. That was another symptom that had increased in recent weeks — she was always cold, especially her hands felt almost frozen a lot of the time. She tried smiling at Robert with her hands reaching out to the flames in the hearth.
But he saw it. It was there again, that certain look in her eyes - and this time, her tone was also tinged with the underlying emotions she kept bottled up inside.
"What is it, Cora?"
His voice was calm and controlled, trying to stifle the underlying concern for her. However, his face betrayed him, or rather his eyes did. They had always been his weakest point. No matter how much he tried to control it, his eyes would be the first to reveal his true innermost feelings, and Cora knew that all too well. She could always read him like a novel if she wanted to.
"What do you mean?" his wife asked, shooting him a weird look. It was something between an encouraging smile and a deeply worried frown. Whatever it was, Robert did not like seeing this expression on his wife's beautiful face.
"You had that saddened look in your eyes when he told us. It was very brief and I thought I had imagined it, but it was there again, just now."
He had already got into bed. Bates had been unusually quick this evening – or maybe Baxter had just taken her time with Cora, to make sure that she was feeling well enough while getting ready for bed after their long and quite wearisome journey. Whichever of the two it was, their timing was somehow off that night. Usually, he only entered when she was already in bed waiting for him, reading, until he was in bed with her.
"Nothing gets past you, does it?"
She chuckled lowly, putting on a smile to appease him and lighten the mood, but she couldn't fool him. She saw that in the way he furrowed his brows and turned to face her a bit more.
"Not when I have known you for this long, darling. Not as much as in the beginning, at least. So what is it?"
He waited for Cora to get into bed on her side and lifted the covers for her to crawl underneath and snuggle up to him.
Once she had done that and had settled into the space by his side with her face coming to rest in the crook of his neck, she replied quietly: "It is not that he is getting married. I am very excited and overjoyed that he has found his happiness at long last, as it seems. But when he said that the wedding is being planned for next August, I-"
"Oh, I see."
Silence settled over them, the two of them lost in their thoughts for quite some time. Cora stared at one of the buttons on Robert's dark blue sleep shirt, she inspected the delicate stitches holding it firmly attached to the fabric beneath. Her other hand came up to touch it, to twist it between her fingers. She had always had this habit of fidgeting like so when her mind was running rampant. Robert knew that, and so he let her go on with it. He had no idea what to say to help with that, not at that moment.
Robert in turn was staring straight ahead, out of the window and out into the dark night. They hadn't drawn the curtains yet, he noticed, and he was not at all mad about that; usually, he would have been. He looked out, his eyes searching the stars in the night sky for answers to all their questions; answers nobody was able to give with any certainty.
Then he noticed her shaking next to him. Concerned, he tore his eyes away and tilted his head down to look at her. He was half expecting to see her crying, but she wasn't. Not yet, anyway. He knew the tears would come eventually, her eyes were already looking strained and slightly reddened, still fixed on that small button. But right then, she was not shaking from crying.
"Cora?" he asked concerned.
"I am fine, just a bit cold, is all."
Without saying a word, he pulled her closer to his side and pulled the covers up even higher, so that they then rested just underneath her chin and he tucked the side of it in a way that she was fully enveloped in it. He was glad to feel her shaking stop just shortly after he had put both his arms around her shivering form under the covers. Then, they had both fell silent again, for a few minutes at least.
"Do you think I will be able to make it?"
She did not look at him, she could not. The question had been burning on her mind ever since her brother had spoken about his imminent wedding and she could not keep it in any longer, even though she had tried.
He shifted gently, trying not to disrupt her too much while turning fully onto his side to face her.
"I wish I could tell you. I truly wish I could. But you heard what Doctor Clarkson said, there is no way of being sure about anything with an illness as treacherous as the one you have. I do not mean to pick a fight about your decision again, truly, but this is what the doctors said. And I trust them. There is no way of knowing. Maybe you will, maybe you will not — we cannot know, not for certain. But I do know almost certainly that you will be far too weak for this journey when the time comes. The entirety of last week was horrible enough for you, and I honestly do not want to imagine us on that boat in almost 10 months' time, when your illness has wreaked even more havoc inside your body. It hurts more than enough to see you like this and I honestly don't want to imagine what our life will be like in a few months or even just a few weeks."
There they were. The tears. He had known they were inevitable. And still, it broke his heart a little more to see them roll down her beautiful, angelic face. Slowly, his hands came up to rest on either side of her pale and tired face.
Gently, so very gently, his thumbs began wiping the tears away, caressing her pale cheeks.
There was something so loving in this gesture that Cora forgot about all of it, just for a few seconds, as she relished in the feeling of his warm, slightly rough fingers on her skin. She would have to share her hand cream with him in the morning, she thought. The colder weather always made his hands so much drier than they were usually and the salty sea air had not helped matters at all. She could already see the look on his face when she handed him the small pot of cream. That thought alone made her emit a light chuckle.
It garnered her a confused look from him and she thought he looked adorable like that. His hair was already slightly tousled from lying down earlier and he still had that very loving gaze, now mixed with utter confusion, on his wrinkled face.
"Oh, don't worry, I just thought of something funny."
"Care to share?" he said, smirking slightly, still not removing his hands from her skin.
"I just thought about how surprised you will look at me tomorrow morning when I will be sharing my hand cream with you."
"And why would you do that, dear?" he asked, even more confused than before, one grey eyebrow now arched towards his receding hairline.
"Because your hands always get incredibly dry in colder weather conditions, especially with the constantly changing air from our travels. You do need it, darling."
Instantly, Robert removed his hands from her face. He was suddenly quite self-aware and afraid that the roughness she had described had hurt her in some way, or was more of a discomfort as opposed to being comforting for her, which was what he had intended.
"No, please don't. I enjoyed it. And I do not mind the slight roughness, not at all," Cora quickly said.
She smiled at him. That irresistible smile. He could never deny her anything, not when she smiled at him like that, and so he resumed his earlier administrations despite the absence of new tears.
"This only makes it harder to tell them," she whispered a while later, her eyes closed as she enjoyed the careful and gentle attention of her husband.
Robert hummed in response, unsure what to say to that. He knew what she meant, given the circumstances of their hurried journey and the reason for it.
"We need to tell them soon, don't we?" she asked then, still not meeting his gaze.
"Yes, we should. It wouldn't be kind to keep it from them for much longer when it is the initial reason for our trip. They will ask again soon, anyway, I am sure. Your mother is not one to let a topic drop this easily, even with your brother's revelation, and she has already asked twice today. Adding to that, I do not think that either of us could keep this game of charades up for any longer than three days. One of us would let something slip eventually and we would make more of a mess than we already are."
Finally, her eyes opened and met his in the dimly lit room.
"And once again, you are right, darling."
She pushed herself up in his arms, her head resting only centimetres away from his on the pillow and then she leaned in, closing her eyes as her lips touched his.
It was a sweet kiss, almost innocent. This was not a kiss that would lead to anything, they both knew, but it was also not quite like the usual quick pecks they shared during the day when they thought no one was watching or paying them any attention, either.
The kiss didn't last long, but it said everything they couldn't say in so many words. After it was over, Robert pulled her back down into his arms. His head came to rest on top of hers, where he placed small kisses on her carefully plaited hair.
"Good night and sleep well, my dearest."
He never got a reply that night – Cora had already fallen asleep in the warmth of his embrace and he followed her to the land of dreams only mere minutes later, never letting go of her, even in his deep sleep.