Dinner seemed to drag on and on and no amount of forced chit-chat from Martha, no matter how pleasant it might have been, could change that, least of all for Harold. Not that night. Not when they were all so anxiously awaiting news from the doctor.

After dinner, they had all collectively moved to the sitting room where a nice fire had already been lit. Winter was just around the corner, the temperatures were dropping considerably day by day and it was only a matter of time until the rain that had not ceased since their arrival would turn to sleet and, eventually, snow. The logs crackled in the hearth, the glowing embers bathing the room in soft orange hues, and a cosy warmth filled the room.

Martha sat in her usual spot in the armchair facing the door, with Cora perched on the settee to her left. Robert had opted for the second armchair nearby, leaving the space next to Cora empty so that Harold could sit there. After all, it was Harold who had invited them, no doubt to spend more time with her after that immense scare twelve months ago.

Harold, however, showed no inclination to sit down anytime soon. None whatsoever. Instead, he kept pacing the length of the room, stopping at every lap he had done to reach into his waistcoat and fish out his pocket watch to check the time. Not even Martha's attempt at trying to calm him with some alcohol helped; the glass of whiskey taken from the depths of their cellars had just been discarded on the mantelpiece as quickly as it had arrived.

Only a few minutes later, Harold had nervously offered the drink to Robert, but the Earl had also declined. Before he and Cora even set foot on the boat, he had made it his mission to take prohibition at least a bit more seriously than the last time or the time before. Even though Harold still had his contacts supplying him with the odd bottle here and there and the Levinsons boasting an already quite extensive selection of wines, brandies, and whiskeys in their cellar anyway, he did not want to drink as much as he used to. It was not good for him, and he knew that. Being the only one to indulge in a drink while in the company of his mother-in-law was also not quite befitting his idea of a grand evening.

And neither was being separated from his wife when his brother-in-law did not seem to want to sit down. So, as quickly and unobtrusively as he possibly could, Robert stood and sat back down, this time close to Cora on the settee. So close, in fact, that his shoulder kept brushing hers with every breath they took, and the gentle sensation filled him with an ease he had not known he needed to feel that night.

In the anxious silence that continued to fill the room after the list of topics for small talk had run dry, the familiar dull thump of Harold's steps on the ornate carpet seemed to be amplified, ricocheting from the walls. As was the scratching of Martha's throat and the following cough before she eventually spoke, her tone slightly agitated.

"Harold, would you please sit down already? The carpet is wearing thin from all your pacing and you are not helping anyone this way, least of all her. Please, just take a seat and stop driving all of us mad, will you?"

While Robert glanced from Harold, who did not even bat an eyelid at his mother's words, to Martha and back to Harold again, Cora simply chuckled lightly and leaned over to Martha.

"Let him be, Mother. It cannot be stopped. Robert was the same every time I was in labour with the girls, or so I have been told," Cora smirked at that, her eyes following Harold just as he was passing by Robert once again. While glancing at her husband out of the corner of her eyes, she added, still smirking: "And I can very easily believe it."

"Who told you that?" her husband immediately got out, his voice high-pitched and his face blank as he stared at her.

"Your mother and sister, of course. That was among the first things they said to me after I had given birth to Mary, actually," Cora laughed, taking obvious pleasure in telling this particular story.

"They would never!" he protested most vehemently.

"Oh, Robert. Yes, they would and they did. Almost forty years ago," she continued, still trying to stifle her laughter, just like her mother next to her. Sobering up somewhat, the Countess turned around to face her husband instead of her brother now. Swiftly, she took his warm hand, squeezed it gently, and said: "But never mind them, because you know what? That was when I knew."

"Knew what now?"

His light blue eyes found hers. He searched for the answer in them with his brow furrowed in adorable confusion. Mindlessly, his thumb began to trace circles on the back of her hand — a gesture she was only too familiar with. One that made her smile involuntarily.

"That you loved me, well and truly loved me," Cora whispered. She looked away for a brief second, focusing on their joined hands and the rings on her fingers. Rings that had been there for so long, reminding her day in and day out how lucky she was to have been loved so fiercely and for so many years. She might not have been one to do physical labour, certainly not like all their servants did, but still. The warm glow of her golden jewellery was showing scratches that no amount of polishing could get rid of. They were marks of their age, marks of a life lived.

Her eyes still fixed on the gold rings adorning her pale hand, she began to recount: "You had said it before. Once. I just could not make myself believe you meant it the first time the words left your mouth. Those three simple words, coming out slurred and slow, almost too quiet for me to hear. You were barely awake, drunk on sleep, after I accidentally woke you up in the middle of the night. After being married to a man who married me for my dowry and my dowry alone it was simply hard to imagine things could ever change, especially after a year had already passed. I had given up hope by then."

Her other hand came up and covered his; as much as it could, anyway.

He was always the one comforting her and now it was on her to do the same. She knew only too well that the guilt was still eating away at him, even after all these years — mostly happy years — they had spent together. He might not have been asking as incessantly as he used to, but she knew he was still wondering. Slowly, her eyes wandered up again and settled on his face once more.

"And then your mother walked in that day, sat down next to the bed and simply looked at me. Then, she smiled. And told me how anxious you were. That you had been pacing the library downstairs all morning and only grudgingly, and after quite some protesting, went out with your father on your rounds when he could not bear it any longer after luncheon. And she mused about how happy you would be when you got back and were told that your daughter had been born in your absence. There was no scorn there that day, no malice. None of the things I had got used to hearing from her came that day, and I knew that she was, for once, fully earnest in her words."

His eyes that had previously settled on their joined hands found hers and she saw tears had begun to well up in them.

"That's when I knew you had told me the truth before." she continued. "It was before I saw you lay eyes on Mary for the first time, before you kissed me as I cradled her. It was before you sat on the edge of the bed, clumsily holding her in your arms, and even before you came bursting through that door, panting as if you had run a marathon. It was your mother telling me about such an ordinary situation that morning, not too unlike this one right now. It was her describing your anxious behaviour that day that told me more than I needed to know to believe you. I knew for certain you had told me the truth in your sleep-drunken state."

"Cora," Robert whispered. He was at a complete loss for words. He could not think of a single thing to reply other than that. There were no words that could ever even begin to describe the profound and almost overpowering emotions coursing through him following that admission.

In his trance-like state he had not noticed, but Harold had taken up his pacing again. It took another cough from Martha followed by a bellowed: "Harold!" for him to shake out of his reverie.

Grumbling, Harold let himself fall into the armchair Robert had previously occupied. "I can't just sit here, Mother. I want to, but I simply can't," he said, finally giving up.

"But that does not change the fact that you cannot help Madeline now. Just settle down and wait for the doctor to do his job and tell us when it's all done."

"What if something happens, what if something goes wrong?"

"Don't be ridiculous! What could go wrong?" the elderly woman snapped, leaning forward in her armchair while glaring at her son.

"Plenty of things, or have you forgotten about Matthew? What about Sybil? Who says Madeline doesn't have eclampsia as well? This family knows far too much about things that could go wrong whenever a baby is born."

Now it was on Cora to pipe up and join the little discussion between her mother and brother that was about to get quite heated if nobody intervened. She tried her best to sound calm and collected, aiming to lessen his worries. It was true, they did know an awful lot about these things. Still, she managed an encouraging smile in his direction and said: "Harold, calm down. That is just our side of the family, not yours. Madeline will be fine. And besides, there has not been a tragedy like that in our family since Marigold was born. And that was years ago now. It will all work out splendidly, you'll see."

Harold could only huff in response. He knew that his sister was right. There had been no prior sign that could suggest something going wrong with his wife, and neither he nor his wife were likely to go take the car out for a spin that night.

There were no signs of any pre-existing conditions, but life did not work that way. There weren't always signs. Sometimes things just happened. For no apparent reason. That was how he explained her illness to himself. His sister had never done anything wrong in her life that would warrant her almost succumbing to cancer, but there they were — or rather she — only narrowly escaping death a few months ago. It was not fair, even though she made it out alive.

Before he could venture closer into these darker corners of his mind, the butler walked in and said: "Mister Levinson, Doctor Moore told me to send for you."

The elderly man had not even finished the sentence when Harold was already up on his feet and on the way out the door, all but bolting up the stairs.

"Oh, thank goodness, it was about time he was put out of this misery," Martha sighed once the door had clicked shut behind the butler. Shifting in her armchair to look directly at Cora, her blue eyes were piercing her daughter's. "Were you ever going to tell me the truth about Marigold?"

Robert gulped, and he nervously glanced over at Cora. But as usual, his wife seemed unflappable. Given the decades of sometimes more than lively conversations between her and Violet, he then thought that he should not be quite this surprised.

"I do not know what you mean," she said nonchalantly with a slight shrug of her shoulders.

"I may not know who the girl really is, but I am more than certain that Edith did not simply take in a ward out of the blue, and nobody in the family so much as thought about questioning it. I was not born yesterday, and I would prefer not to be treated as if I were senile. Not by you nor by anyone else, thank you very much."

A quick look over at Robert, her question silently reflected in her expression. The slight nod of his head. The onslaught of guilt disappeared as quickly as it had come. And just like that, she made the split-second decision to do what she thought she would never do again. Share her daughter's secret with yet another person. Although she would have preferred to do it another time.

"It is a long story, Mother. Maybe we should wait until tomorrow."

"Nonsense. We still have time to kill here, and judging by you being so secretive about it, I doubt you would want Harold to hear."

She heaved a deep breath. "Do you remember Michael Gregson?"

"Yes. How could I forget the man who got himself killed in Germany while trying to get a divorce, leaving his entire publishing company to my granddaughter? I told you, I am not senile, not yet."

"Good. Well. You see."

It was a rare occurrence for Robert to see Cora stammer, trying to buy herself time to come up with the right words to say what she was asked to say. "It seems that Edith, well-"

"For goodness' sake, Cora! Get it out," Martha said impatiently.

"Edith and Michael-" Robert tried, sounding just as unsure and nervous as Cora before.

"Alright, just answer me this: Is Marigold Edith's daughter?"

Relieved, Cora and Robert looked at each other and nodded. It seemed that, even despite all their indecisive stuttering and stammering, Martha had instinctively known what they were trying to word in a delicate way befitting this delicate matter.

"The poor thing," Martha mused then. "Did he ever find out about her before he passed away?"

"No," Robert then said. "He went to Germany and it did not take him long at all to make the acquaintance of some very dangerous people, people closely connected to this man named Hitler. He was in the wrong place at the wrong time with the wrong people and got caught up in what they called the Bierkellerputsch. They told us he died the night he got there. However, it took them over a year to find out what exactly had happened to him. So no, he never got to see her and he had no idea she existed."

"To put this long and complicated story short, Edith fabricated this story and even had a tenant farmer play along to keep her daughter close without becoming a notorious woman until that did not work any longer. And then she officially took her in as her ward."

Martha sat back in her chair again, relaxing at last. She nodded slowly but did not say a word for quite some time. Her silence unnerved both, Robert and Cora. They were quite literally on the edge of their seats, but they would not pressure her into giving a reaction. That was not at all in anyone's best interest, and they knew that.

Then, the elderly woman coughed again and asked: "Does Bertie know?"

Again, the Earl and Countess merely nodded.

"Good, that is all that matters. We will speak no more of this then."