AN: This was going to be a drabble collection, but "drabble" means 500 words or fewer, and I tend to be wordy, so let's call it a drabble/one-shot collection. :-) It's based off a Tumblr post from GranthamGal (thanks for sharing!) of 100 ways to say I love you. I'm going to take one sentence at a time and write a Cobert drabble/one-shot from it. Probably won't do the full list, b/c 100 is a TON. But this is #41, "Go back to sleep."

At the noise of the rain on the walls and windows, Robert stirred and moved to roll over, reaching out to cuddle closer to Cora as he did so. And yet his arm met nothing more than air and cold sheets.

"Cora?" He blinked and sat up. There was no light under the washroom door…

"I'm here," her voice said quietly, and his eyes slowly focused on a thin form in a white nightdress by the window.

"What are you doing?"

She did not answer him, and he realized as his vision adjusted to the dark bedroom that her shoulders were slumped, her forehead pressed against the pane.

He hesitated, recognizing the sorrow in her posture but unsure what to do about it. He had come, after a year of shameful disregard, to love his young wife with an intensity that shook him, yet her emotions often felt like an uncharted wilderness to him. Did she want him to get up and go to her? Or was it a private moment of homesickness that he was meant to have slept through, and did she want him to roll over and pretend he'd seen nothing?

He compromised by remaining in bed, but softly asking, "Cora? Will you tell me what's wrong?"

She did not answer this either, and after a moment he took that as his signal to leave her be. But then, as he lay back down, he heard her murmur, her voice quiet with embarrassment, "I've gotten my monthly."

Well, that was the last thing he'd expected—or wanted—to hear. He was thankful it was dark and that he was looking at her back instead of her face, as he knew his own was now bright red. As much as he delighted in her very feminine body, the practical end of being female made him quite squeamish. It also made him nervous, for it was at these times that Cora was at her most difficult to understand, with feelings that seemed to swing wildly and irrationally.

"I see," he said, although he didn't really. He did not doubt the whole business was a messy hassle for her, and he knew she sometimes found it painful—he recognized suddenly that her hand was pressed against her stomach—but he could not fathom why it would make her sad and leave her standing alone by the window on a rainy night. But then she spoke again.

"It should have happened three days ago," she said quietly. "But when I was late, I thought…I thought this was finally it, you know? But I was wrong. I'm always wrong."

Oh. So that was it. Robert could hear unshed tears straining her voice, and he longed to hold her but was fearful to get up and take her in his arms without some sort of signal that she wanted that.

"I don't think there's ever going to be a baby," she went on. "I think your mother's right. I'm defective in some way."

"There is nothing defective about you," he said firmly. "Sometimes it takes awhile." In truth he was concerned, too, that there had not been a pregnancy in all this time, but he tried to remind himself that he knew of other couples whose first child had been born a good two years after the wedding.

She sniffed in reply.

"Come back to bed, sweetheart. It's cold by the window."

"I can't, Robert."

"Why not?"

She was silent for a moment. "I've…bled there."

"Ah." Before he could stop himself, he had glanced to his right: even in the darkness, he could see two dark splotches on the sheet where she had lain, and he felt a queasy sensation in his stomach at the sight.

"And that's the worst of it," she said, suddenly overcoming her mortification enough to tell him more. "Your mother will know."

"My mother?" What on earth did blood in her bed have to do with his mother?

"Yes, she gets the housemaids to tell her when they find the blood on my sheets, and then she knows I've gone another month and I'm still not pregnant, and then she'll take me aside and mention it, and—God, it's humiliating. I haven't even got privacy in my own bedroom." She said all this very quickly.

Her report angered him, but it did not surprise him, and he was quite used to working around his mother. "You trust your lady's maid, don't you?" She'd come from America with Cora, and Robert doubted she was easily bought.

"Yes, but it's the housemaids that handle the linens—"

"Not in your room anymore. O'Malley will have exclusive charge of the bedding; we'll add to her wages for the extra work if we need to. And the others can be told that it's my express order."

Cora gave a slight nod and then turned to face him. "Thank you," she whispered, wiping her eyes. She paused. "Do you think I should call her now?"

"No," he said, moving to rise. Now that she was facing him, he could see she was in pain from the way she seemed to curl slightly around her stomach, and this combined with the tear tracks shimmering on her face to make him want nothing more than for her to lie down immediately. He did not want to wait for her maid to hear the bell, rouse herself from sleep, dress, and make her way upstairs and then strip and remake the bed.

He went into the washroom, took two heavy towels from the shelf, and then sat back down on his side of the bed.

"Robert, what are you doing?" she asked softly.

"I wanted you to be able to get back in bed," he said in explanation as he spread the towels across the dark spots on the sheet. "Will this be all right?"

"Oh…yes, thank you. That's fine."

She climbed in and lay down as Robert drew the covers over her. "I'm sorry," she whispered, snuggling closer to him as he took her in his arms. "I didn't mean to—"

"Shh," he said. He pressed a light kiss to her forehead. "Don't be sorry. Just go back to sleep."