"When did you get back last night?"
She sounded tired, exhausted even. That was a sensation he had already got used to after her health had started to decline in the weeks that had passed since her diagnosis. It concerned him, but he knew that it was all part of her illness and he had found that commenting on it only made her more irritated about it all.
Bates had just left the suite after getting him dressed for the day, and Robert decided to wake up Cora before ringing for some breakfast for them, even though she would likely eat next to nothing. What he had not anticipated, however, was Cora already sitting up in bed, clearly wide awake when he entered the room again. With a surprised smile on his lips, he walked over to her to kiss her good morning like he usually did, sitting down on the edge of his side of the bed — which was not at all as comfortable as the bed he was used to from home, but that much was to be expected.
"Oh, quite late, I am afraid. I could not get to sleep for some reason. I hope I did not wake you up when I left and returned?"
"No, no, you did not. I woke up thirsty during the night and found your side of the bed empty, and quite cold to the touch. You must have already been gone for a while by that point. I merely wondered where you had gone."
Should he tell her that he talked to Bates? Or should he lie and say that he was only in the room next door, reading or writing an important letter that could not wait until morning?
No, this was Cora — how could he even consider lying? She would know he was not being honest the instant he opened his mouth. She always did.
"I left the suite a while after you had fallen asleep, not wanting to wake you with my constant turning," he said in the end, deeming it unnecessary to veil the truth.
"Please tell me that you did not go outside in this freezing winter weather in the middle of the night, Robert," Cora said, looking at him with a wide-eyed expression of worry on her pale face.
"Don't you worry, I was not outside on the deck in the cold. I merely went to the lower decks and talked to Bates. I could not keep this from him any longer, it would not have been fair. After all, I dragged him away from his family to travel halfway around the world without telling him anything as to why. I owed him that honesty, and it helped me sleep better afterwards. He asked me a while ago to tell him if and when there was any cause for concern, and this was as good a chance as any."
Cora stretched out her cold hand, letting it come to rest on his atop the soft bedding. She smiled shyly at him, almost guiltily. "I know this was not easy for you, though I am glad that you talked to him. I wanted to tell you to do that weeks ago, but I did not want to pressure you into this. I wanted to give you the space to do it on your own time."
His eyes wandered from her face to their hands. He looked at her long and slender fingers that appeared outright bony, her rings looking far too big on her now. It almost seemed as if the simple gold wedding band alone crushed her hand, not to mention the diamond engagement ring Rosamund helped him pick out all those years ago.
Robert looked up from where their hands were joined to meet her gaze. "How did you know that I ever would?"
"Robert, you have known that man for over three decades. The two of you have served in a war together and you fought so hard to keep him here with us not just once but twice. You kept him on as your valet even when he was an, albeit wrongly, convicted felon. Mister Bates is much more than just your valet, he is one of your closest friends. I know you, Robert. It truly was only a matter of time until you finally confided in him."
He leaned in closer, letting his free hand come up to gently stroke her cheek. "You do know me too well, my dear, it is rather scary sometimes. I did not even know that I was going down to see him until I stood in front of his door and knocked last night."
Cora and Robert both shared a genuine smile at that, knowing that she indeed knew him too well, maybe even better than he knew himself. He found it both strangely comforting and upsetting at the same time.
His hand was still resting on her face and she gently leaned into his soft touch, relishing in the feeling of his warm, slightly rough hand on her cold face. When he touched her, though, a comforting warmth started to spread within her.
They stayed that way for a little while, letting their thoughts wander freely. Robert suddenly remembered that first night after they arrived in Newport. The conversation had been heavy — rather like the one they had had yesterday, and Robert had no doubt that they would eventually circle back to that topic — but she had taken some edge off that night when she had laughed about imagining her sharing her hand cream with him. And it was true, his hands always got awfully dry in these weather conditions.
"Do you mind if I took some of your hand cream?", he asked after a while, his other hand now resting on hers, slowly and gingerly drawing circles on the back of it.
The change of topic was rather sudden and it caught Cora off-guard entirely. With an unsure smile on her face, she said in her endearing American lilt: "Not at all. It should be just over there on the dresser."
Robert followed her gaze and sure enough, he spied the small silver cream jar on the dark wooden dresser. Swaying with the boat, he got up and retrieved it from there, taking out what he deemed to be a small amount. Only he had no idea how little one actually needed, and so he ended up with enough excess cream that his wife could not help but laugh brightly at him. She did not even attempt to hide it.
"This is not funny, Cora. How am I supposed to know how much I should use? I never used any before, but the sea breeze made my hands unnecessarily dry, you said so yourself just two weeks ago. I do not want to add to your discomfort when I want to caress your cheek or hold your hands with my rough ones. What am I to do with all of this now?"
He sounded petulant — and as such quite like George whenever he lost against his grandfather at whatever game he had chosen to play after their tea, and Cora had to admit that Robert also quite looked like his grandson with his current stubborn stance in front of her.
It also reminded her of her youngest daughter when she was very little. Sybil had always been the one to suggest playing together with both of her sisters, even though they never truly wanted to. Those two had strangely never got along, not even at ages six and seven. Whenever they were in yet another of their disputes over anything and everything, Sybil would stand in the middle of the room, her arms crossed over her chest or stretched out in one direction, and then she would complain in the few short sentences she knew how to say to get them to comply. And then she would always try to mediate between her sisters, trying to get them all to play the same thing together. Cora had watched that happen quite a few times through the door that their nanny had often left ajar during the day. Had Violet ever found her there, lurking in the hallway outside the nursery, she would have been victim to yet another reprimanding — it just was not right for a viscountess to spend so much time with her children and neglect her countless other duties.
There she was.
Sybil.
Her bell-like laughter somewhat diminished when she recalled that and she had a bittersweet expression on her face for a split second at the memory of her darling girl. But then she looked at her husband again, and the tears of mirth re-entered her eyes.
"Oh, come here, you donk. My hands could use some hand cream, too," she laughed, beckoning him to come back closer to her.
Her youngest daughter was suddenly standing just behind her father, or at least that's where she appeared out of nowhere. But Cora did not see the little dark-haired girl lecturing her sisters on what it meant to play together that she had remembered a few moments ago. No, she saw her darling Sybil as the young, feisty woman she had grown into, wearing a nursing uniform similar to the one she wore during the war. With one of her radiant smiles on her face, the young woman looked up brightly at her father.
Cora's gaze wandered back to her husband. Robert was still rather preoccupied with rubbing the hand cream into the rough skin of his hands, a look of sheer concentration etched onto his face, and took no notice of his surroundings.
She tried to touch his arm, but her hand reached right through him. For a moment, she frowned, almost as if she was deeply upset. Solemnly, she turned to face her mother again, her big brown eyes piercing those of her mother. Or at least Cora knew that they were supposed to be brown, even though they weren't, really. It was abundantly clear that her daughter was just a figment of her imagination, with her sudden, pale silvery-grey appearance in the middle of the room.
Sybil smiled sadly at her, her brows still furrowed and her gaze filled with so much concern and love and sorrow.
When Robert transferred some of the hand cream he did not need and she began rubbing it in just like he was, he found her still giggling at the situation. Why, however, was entirely beyond him and it started to annoy him. He had never liked to be laughed at, not even by his wife.
"Surely this can't be all that funny to you?"
"That, my dear, is where you are in the wrong. It is quite funny to me to think that for the rest of the day, your hands will be so much softer than possibly ever before, and smell heavenly of lavender and almonds," she smirked in reply while applying the cream to her hands and wrists.
"But they will be softer, that is all I want. I can live with smelling like you as long as it gets rid of some of this roughness — I do not want to cause you pain or discomfort when I touch your face or hands. And the smell shall remind me of my darling wife whenever you are out of my sight."
He was not only talking about the day ahead of him, even though he tried to hide the true sentiment behind an encouraging smile directed at her, before looking back at his hands and rubbing the cream into the skin some more. However, his wife did indeed know him too well, as they had established earlier, and thus she instinctively knew what he truly meant.
She was still standing there behind him, unmoving.
Cora wanted to get up and reach out. She wanted to run to her darling daughter and hug her close. So close. She wanted to hold her and never let go, to at least try to make up for all the years that she wasn't allowed to be near her already.
Sybil had died more than nine years ago; had been taken from them on what should have been one of the happiest days of her life. She had still had most of her life ahead of her when it was cut short so suddenly and cruelly.
Cora wanted to reach out so desperately, but she knew she couldn't. Her daughter was so far beyond her reach, and knowing that felt like someone stabbed her heart a hundred times over.
Soon, she would be reunited with her Sybil. Soon, she would get to hold her again. Soon, her suffering would find an end. Soon.
But did she really need to? Should she give up when she had so much more to live for? Sybil had had her whole life ahead of her, should have seen her beautiful daughter grow up. She should have had a happy life with Tom, she should have been allowed to grow old with him. Cora knew that was all that her daughter had wanted — but she had never had a chance to. She should have had a chance to work, should have had a chance to see what she had been fighting for all those years ago against Robert's wishes come true — she should have been able to vote. No doubt she would have been one of the first women in line to cast her vote after the act allowing her to had been passed the year before.
If Sybil had been given the chance at a possible treatment, she surely would have chosen that. If not for herself, then for Tom and for little Sybbie.
Shouldn't she be there for her eldest granddaughter and tell her about her mother? Shouldn't she be there and show her pictures of Sybil when she was young and tell her all the stories of who her mother was and all the mischief she got up to? Tom talked about her, yes, but he had known Sybil only a fraction of the time she did. He didn't know Sybil the way she did as her mother.
A few more moments passed until she spoke to Robert again, having finished applying the cream to her hands while he was still pretending to be busy with that. Her frail hand reached for his again, to still their continued moving.
"Robert?" she asked. She knew that the sound of her voice made the carefree and joyful atmosphere from before turn into something that resembled the problems they were facing much more tangibly. "Could I ask you to prolong our trip for another day or two? Could we stop in London on our way home?"
His head snapped up in surprise when he heard her, looking at her with great concern. Without much hesitation, he replied: "If that is what you need, then yes, of course. I know that this entire journey is strenuous and if a day to rest in London helps, then we will certainly do that. I will call Rosamund as soon as we land in Southampton and ask her to make up a room for us in Belgrave Square, which she will be happy to do, no doubt."
Robert's hand came up again to touch her face as he gently gazed at her, smoothing his already much softer thumb over her sallow, sunken cheek. His thinly veiled concern for her wasn't new, he had been nothing but supportive the entire time, but somehow it still felt different.
No, this wasn't right. Sybil had stood no fighting chance, but she did. The doctors said she did.
"That sounds nice, thank you. But I do not want to rest while we are there, not preponderantly. I want you to take me to Doctor Wallsom's practice in Harley Street, and maybe send for Doctor Clarkson once we make it back to land and ask him to join us there in London if he can."
He looked at her quizzically, unmoving at her words. His hand had stopped its circular motions on hers when she spoke and he did not resume his caresses immediately.
"Don't be alarmed, I am not feeling that much worse, even despite this long journey," she smiled.
"But why should I ask Doctor Clarkson to come down to London then?" Robert asked confused.
"I have thought a lot about this situation we are in the past week we spent at sea. I feel like I finally managed to get a clearer vision of everything after this trip, one that I did not have before, a new perspective. I think this journey and our conversation yesterday have changed my mind."
Robert was confused. His mouth had suddenly gone drier than the Sahara desert, and his heart was beating a hole into his ribcage at twice its usual steady beat. He did not dare to speculate about what she was trying to tell him, and so he waited with his heart and mind racing, longing for her to continue. She could not possibly be about to say what he thought she might.
"Robert, I want you to take me to that doctor so that we can talk about the treatment. You were right, I haven't truly given up, not yet. I was just too scared to admit it, I still am if I am being completely honest — but I realised that I am not done. I have so much left that makes life worth living, that makes the fight worth it."
"Cora, do you mean that?" he whispered, still not daring to believe what he thought he had just heard. "Do you truly mean that?"
"I do, my dear."
"And you are sure that this is what you want? You are sure that you are not doing this because I pestered you into changing your mind?"
"I am sure, Robert. I truly want to try the treatment, even if it only grants me a few more months at the most. But that would mean a few more months that I got to spend with you and our wonderful family, and that is more than I could possibly hope and wish for."
Cora smiled at him with glistening eyes, her expression quite bittersweet for a second when her mind went back to her youngest daughter. But she had no chance to dwell on those thoughts when Robert took hold of her hands and looked at her excitedly.
"Oh my darling, you have no idea how hearing those words makes me feel right now, I cannot even begin to describe it. Thank you for listening. I promise to stay by your side, no matter what, to help you through it all. I promise!"
Robert had refrained from hugging her in the last weeks, he had been too afraid that he would hurt her. But at that moment, he could not hold back any more. Rapturously, he took her into his arms and held her there. His hands found their way to her back and his head came to rest on hers while she buried her face in the crook of his neck.
With her face pressed to his shoulder, she deeply inhaled his usual woody, minty scent that was mixed with the lavender and almond smell of her hand cream.
It was an odd combination of scents, but Cora wanted to smell it for all eternity if she could. It was the smell of a man who loved — almost worshipped — his wife; who would have watched her die and held her hand if she had decided that was what she wanted. It was the smell of a man who would do anything for her, anything at all, and he proved it time and time again. It was the smell of the man she loved with all her heart.
Cora felt safe in his embrace and relished in the hold of his strong arms. She stayed there for what could have been both, less than a minute or over an hour — time had lost all meaning to her. She finally pushed herself away from him slightly to be able to look up at him.
With incredible certainty that astonished not only him, she said: "I know you will, and that makes me feel a little less scared of what is to come."