But this can't be. She's 24 years old. This cannot be.
They had been ushered out, all of them. He didn't even know by whom. It was all such a flurry, everything had happened so fast. The shouting, the pleading, the begging, the crying. His own negotiating. It had all happened at once. And it had all amounted to nothing. It had all been for nought.
The words he had just put down in ink on the black-rimmed paper were like a slap in the face, a strong punch thrown at the pits of his stomach, stronger than any of the punches he had experienced scuffling with his classmates in his youth. Everything inside him was fighting back, recoiling, screaming at him, revolting, wanting him to tear up the note because the words he had written there were lies. Nothing but pure, vile lies.
But they weren't. It was all true and his Mama should know. She needed to know, and she needed to know from him. This could not wait until morning, she couldn't find out from anyone else but her own son. He owed at least that to her — to her and everyone else.
Setting his pen down with trembling hands he stared at the piece of paper in front of him; it was no doubt the hardest, most painful note he ever had to write.
It was as if all the pain and all the anguish coursing through him at that realisation demanded to be felt, even through all the numbness within him as he wrote to his mother of his youngest daughter's premature passing just mere hours after giving birth to his first granddaughter. The pain, it was almost unbearable. Almost.
But this can't be. She's 24 years old. This cannot be.
His own words kept ringing out in his head, over and over again. Carson would come in soon and take the wretched note away to give to some poor chap downstairs, most likely one of their hallboys. Robert felt bad for the poor devil who would have to go out in the dark of night to deliver the envelope with the news. These horrible, horrible news.
A few minutes later, the dreaded envelope handed over to their butler with utmost reluctance, he found himself still in the library, sitting in front of the fireplace, all on his own. The girls had gone to bed again, although he doubted that sleep would come easy that night for any of them. For all he knew, Matthew was trying to help Tom as best as he could; and he was undoubtedly much better suited for that task than Robert was himself at this moment. And any other, too.
She was only 24 years old. His youngest daughter. She had so much more life to live ahead of her. He simply could not wrap his head around the fact that she would never get to hold her newborn daughter, never see her grow up. He couldn't fathom that he would never see her endearing smile again. It was just beyond him. She was only 24 years old, barely more than a child herself. These thoughts kept ringing out, spinning inside his head and it was making him dizzy, anxious and so very angry at everything, the world, and most importantly himself. The unfairness of it all was just too much.
"She was only 24 years old, for God's sake!" he shouted into the darkness of the room. It was a good thing he hadn't had a glass of liquor in his hands or else that would have likely been smashed to smithereens in the hearth now.
The door to his left opened and closed delicately, and someone walked in on feathery light steps barely audible in the library that was so eerily silent otherwise after his outburst.
Robert did not turn around to look at who it was. It did not matter. His daughter had just died. Nothing mattered, not any more.
"Papa?" His eldest daughter's voice was gentle, an almost unknown softness there he had rarely ever heard from her before. She was trying her best not to startle him when she came to a halt next to him, taking a seat on the red settee to his right. "You should go to bed. Tomorrow will be a gruelling day, you need your rest."
"I can't," he breathed tonelessly after a while. Robert didn't know if she had heard his outburst just before she had entered. He hoped she had not, but he could not be sure. He was aware they all rightfully thought he had a quick temper and was quick to lash out in anger, frustration, or resentment; a character trait of his he had never liked and yet never managed to rid himself of. Still, he simply was not keen on the fact that anyone would witness him losing his temper like this on this night or any other that was to follow.
Delicately, Mary put her hand on his shoulder and watched him as he kept on staring into the dying flames with a fixed gaze, entirely unmoving. His hair was dishevelled from running his hands through it time and time again that evening, his robe was only loosely slung over his shoulders and he looked as if he had aged at least a decade in the last three hours alone. The wrinkles on his forehead seemed so much deeper than ever before, and his eyes were only dull and grey instead of bright blue and twinkly like they usually were. There was no spark in them, no life, Mary thought.
"You have to, we all do," she replied, her heart breaking even further than it already had following the events of the day as she saw her father sitting there in front of her. So lost. So alone.
Breaking away from the flames that were holding him enthralled at last, he shook his head ever so slightly to rid himself of the thoughts ricocheting in his mind before standing up from the settee. He had hoped the flames would calm him, had foolishly hoped their fiery dance in the hearth would help him make sense of the events that had transpired on this fateful night. This should have been one of the most joyous nights of his life, the day he became a grandfather for the first time. And there had been joy at her birth, joy he had not anticipated given his troubled history with the newborn girl's father. This joyous, joyous day had turned into this wretched night. The cursed night he lost his youngest daughter forever.
Without so much as looking at Mary, he wrapped his dressing gown tighter around himself once more to retain at least a bit of dignity and walked upstairs, with her following closely in silence. There was nothing anyone could say, absolutely nothing, that could take away even just some of the shock and pain they all felt. Robert knew that, and so did Mary.
Right as Mary was about to pass by him to go to her own bedroom, his hand already resting on the doorknob leading to his and Cora's room, she stopped him with a gentle hand placed on his upper arm.
"Don't, Papa," she whispered remorsefully. When she saw her father standing there, she remembered her mother's request that sent her searching for him in the first place. She wasn't sure whether her mother was even inside her bedroom or not, but she did not want to take any chances. "Mama told me to ask you to sleep in your dressing room tonight."
He stared at her bewildered, pure disbelief written all over his face.
Was she serious?
The regretful and almost guilty expression on Mary's face told him that she was. Her eyes were so commiserating, barely hiding her sorrow at everything that had happened since her niece was born a few hours ago. The way this night had unfolded was more than a shock and it was something they would all have to overcome.
"I think she just needs to be alone tonight, Papa."
"But surel-"
"Please, Papa."
She was pleading with him. But Mary did not plead, never. He wondered what Cora had said to her that had her so adamant he should stay away that night. Yet, he did not have the heart to question her, or even go against his wife's wishes. If this was her decision, then he would honour it tonight.
With much more than only a heavy heart, his hand dropped from the knob and fell to his side. He turned again and walked over to the next door down the hall, the one that led to his dressing room. It was a good thing he always asked for this to be kept prepared, even if that was only to keep up false pretences more than anything else. On rare occasions, this came in quite handy, although he never could have imagined to in this particular situation.
Morning came sooner than he would have wanted and he felt as if he had not slept a wink. Which might just as well have been the case. The first rays of sunshine falling onto his face through the barely drawn curtains tickled his nose and woke him from the uneasy slumber he had finally fallen into in the wee hours. For a while he just lay there. He simply lay there on his back, wondering why he had slept so badly, and, most importantly, why he had not woken up in bed next to his wife. It was rather peculiar that he slept in this narrow and quite uncomfortable bed in his dressing room instead of the warm and comfortable bed he had shared with Cora for the better part of 30 years.
And then it dawned on him. Suddenly, with unexpected force, all the events of the past night caught up with his consciousness and he remembered. He remembered it all. All the fighting, the shouting, all the horrors. Although he wished he did not. Or, better yet, he wished it had never happened, that there was nothing to remember other than the birth of his granddaughter.
Reluctantly, he pulled the cord next to the bed that would ring for Thomas, and then he sank back down on the edge of his bed. Sitting there with his back turned to the door, he buried his face in his hands, desperately trying to find enough strength in him to face whatever this day would bring.
Getting dressed that morning was a silent affair. That fact alone was not unusual. Trust was not something that was coming easy to him when it came to Barrow, he certainly was no Bates by any measure, and so Robert simply resorted to mostly unimportant chitchat most of the time. But that day, he could not even muster up enough strength to do that. And as things were, neither of the two men knew what to say anyway. Maybe not saying anything was for the better. It was easier to maintain some dignity if one was not crying in front of his employees while getting dressed. Or that's a thought that occurred to Robert while the footman-turned-valet was fastening his cufflinks for him.
However, that cloud of silence, shock, and disbelief seemed to follow him wherever he went. Breakfast went by with not a single word spoken beyond a "Good Morning" directed at Carson when he entered to find himself alone in the dining room with the butler. Even steadfast Carson looked more than visibly shaken by what had unfolded the night before.
The Earl joined Matthew in the library later on, a long while after Grassby's had taken Sybil away. But first, he had retreated to his dressing room, just to catch his breath and try to clear his mind enough to make arrangements for the burial with his other son-in-law. Someone had to, after all. And that someone would not be Tom, because the man was a wreck as far as he knew, according to what Matthew told him. Robert truly couldn't hold it against him, he had just lost his wife. No matter what he thought of the Irish chauffeur who had swept his daughter away to distant shores; his heart went out to him nonetheless.
Robert had been there when they came to take her, he had walked behind them as they carried her down from her room. The room where it had happened. He had stood next to Tom, Matthew, and his daughters as the car drove off and took her away. Forever. They were all there, except for her. Cora had stayed away the entire day, locked inside her bedroom, apart from a small moment in the afternoon she had spent with them in the drawing room. He had hoped she would give him something — a look, anything. But no, she would not so much as meet his eye, not even when she spoke of his wrongdoings in front of their family, leaving him to fight for his composure in her wake. She did not even come down to dinner, and at the end of the night, Mary repeated her mother's request from the night before.
So, Cora wanted him to stay away again, but he found he simply couldn't. Even before getting undressed and ready for the night with Thomas' help, he went against his daughter's clear instructions and entered their bedroom through the door from his dressing room.
She wasn't in bed. That was the first place he looked. She also wasn't reclining on her chaise longue, the second place his eyes darted to. He could not see even a trace of his wife as he looked around.
This was odd. Where could she be if not in her room at this time of night?
"What do you want?" came her small voice from somewhere to his left, and he abruptly turned to find her sitting on her cushioned windowsill. She looked frightful, as if she had not slept at all and instead spent every waking hour crying her heart out, which she had likely done.
"I was only coming to see how you were. I haven't seen you since this afternoon," he replied, his usually strong voice so small in the room that felt unnaturally cold all of a sudden.
"I am doing quite how one would expect after the loss of a child. I did not feel like going out today," she replied, her tone clipped, returning her gaze to the creased handkerchief she held in her lap. He could see her fingertips carefully tracing the monogram stitched onto one of the corners with light blue thread.
It was obvious she wanted him to go, that she was uncomfortable, but he couldn't. He couldn't leave her like that. Not when she was in such a state.
"Mama asked after you today after you left," he then said rather incidentally, shifting uncomfortably from one foot to the other.
"I was not feeling well."
"I told her, she understood only too well," he replied softly. Robert began to walk towards her, but the quick look she threw at him made him stop dead in his tracks. Awkwardly standing there in the middle of the room once more, he added: "Matthew and I arranged most of the funeral today, it will be held next Friday. We will send the notifications out tomorrow. Do you want to look over what we're writing?"
"No," she said. Her voice was unusually sharp as she declined, and Robert only barely stopped himself from visibly flinching at the foreign sound. He was not at all used to hearing her speak so coldly to him. "You do not care about what I think either way, you made that quite clear."
"Cora, that is no-"
"Don't you dare tell me that I am wrong!" Cora hissed, her voice now dangerously quiet in the room, effectively cutting him off and shutting him up. "If you had listened to me, if you had cared even just a bit about my opinion, then we would not have to send out those invitations. Had you not been so dismissive of everything Doctor Clarkson said — of everything I said — Sybil would have been sent to the hospital hours before it all happened. She would still be alive." She was still decidedly looking away from him as she spoke, first quietly with only a slight quiver in her voice that then turned into almost shouting at him. "If only you had cared about my opinion, or anyone else's. But you did not. You never do. You only ever care about what you think. And now our daughter is gone!" Finally, as she said those words, her voice broke, it simply gave out at the end. And with it, all the fight she had left in her seemed to disappear as well. Now, she just looked so completely and utterly exhausted to her core.
"My dear, it is not your opinion I did not trust, it was Doctor Clarkson's. His diagnoses were not at all reliable in the past, and Philipp Tapsell is a known expert in this field," Robert tried to explain calmly. He would not show how badly her words hurt him. He would not show how much he wished things were different. He would not show how much he needed to hold his wife close for some comfort in these trying times.
As he said this and looked at her reduced form huddled up on the windowsill, he could see the fight in her return, all the anger and the resentment. "And I told you to listen to Clarkson! Which you did not. So clearly you do not value my opinion at all. You have never been pregnant, you do not know what it is like. You do not know about the symptoms, and nor do you want to. Anything medical is not of any interest to you. Doctor Clarkson knew her all her life, he knew her history. He saw the symptoms and he told us to act quickly. And all you did was dismiss him and block her last chance at survival. You doomed her."
Tears were freely running down her cheeks, she had stopped wiping angrily at them when she turned to face him fully at last.
Everything in him screamed at him to take the few steps and hold her, to dry those tears, and so against his better judgment he did. His arms already beginning to stretch out towards her sitting figure, he took the first step. "But Cora-"
"No, Robert," she said sternly, looking at the ground beneath her feet once more. Refusing to meet his eye, she added, sounding utterly exhausted: "Go. Please, just go."
He stopped again. His arms fell limply to his sides and he closed his eyes. Her words were like knives, stabbing him over and over again. She sounded so defeated, so tired, and worst of all, she did not want him there to help. Robert understood that this was hard on her, losing her youngest daughter in such a way.
But he lost her, too. Sybil was his daughter, too. Only people seemed to forget about that.
"Go, Robert. I am not asking you, I am telling you. Go," she repeated as he closed his eyes, trying not to show how much her words hurt him.
Swallowing down the lump in his throat, he replied: "I'll say goodnight then," and left the bedroom through the door behind him without ever getting a reply from her.
Cora sat there on the padded windowsill for another minute, trying to control the tears that were still coming ceaselessly. She cried for her daughter, who died so many years before her time. She cried for her granddaughter, who would never get to meet her mother. And she also cried for her marriage, because she had no idea how she could ever forgive him. Maybe all her forgiveness had died with their daughter.