Timing: post S6.
Charles Carson doesn't spend every day at the big house, not anymore. But by early February 1926, the family requires his presence to assist in planning a hunt and an extended house party that are less than a week away. Selecting the wines for such an occasion requires his seasoned palate, and the new butler is visibly relieved when his predecessor offers suggestions instead of criticism as he outlines his plans before his lordship.
His counsel no longer needed for the afternoon, Charles Carson walks with a slight saunter from the library to the green baize door. In the past month and a half, he made progress in adjusting to this new role. Mr. Barrow continues to prove himself capable, but it isn't the entire reason for Charles Carson's mostly sanguine attitude.
It is the new life it affords to both Charles and Elsie Carson that accounts for the most profound changes in the former butler. In the first few weeks, his fully-employed wife quickly found ways to alter her schedule while upholding reasonable standards in the hopes of securing one aim: more time with her husband.
On longer days, she can be home at the same time the Crawleys begin their first course at dinner. On better days, she can depart just after the servant's tea to spend a leisurely and blissful evening cooking dinner with, not for, her husband. Better still, those dinners are usually followed by moments of even greater bliss.
Charles Carson hopes it is a better day.
Quietly trekking through Downton with burgeoning, amorous thoughts is not new to Charles Carson. But as a husband, and no longer wedded to dedicating every waking moment to this house and its occupants makes him freer, more keen to capitalize on such thoughts. The servant's tea will be served in half an hour, but that half-hour and the time spent chatting with his now former staff accounted for untold minutes. Impatient for a blissful evening, he walks determinedly towards the housekeeper's sitting room.
Fortunately, the door is open and he slips in without a word. Turning in her seat, Elsie Carson smiles at the back of her husband, now focused on closing the door without a sound. In his concentration on the door handle and lock, he misses the indulgent smile of Mrs. Patmore as she spies the terribly transparent butler from the kitchen.
He isn't intending to surprise his wife, per se. Instead, he is more interested in securing their privacy for the next half hour without curious minds knowing what they might be getting up to behind her closed door.
Entreating her to silence with a finger across his lips, Charles Carson stalks closer to his wife, now standing by her desk. Finished with most of her paperwork for the day, she is equally keen to keep this interlude as quiet as possible.
His right hand finds a familiar home at the base of her neck, his thumb just able to graze her soft cheek. "Hello, wife," he whispers with warm eyes hinting at the spark lit during his walk downstairs.
"Now, Charles," she whispers, keen to remind him that they should try to keep their interludes short and sweet while she is still working.
But the reminder is lost as their lips crash together and her right hand clutches his forearm with surprising strength. This isn't the first interlude like this, but it certainly takes on a new direction as he bends his head slightly, his lower lip caught by the teeth so accustomed to chewing her own lower lip. He is spurred by the sensation, nibbling intermixed with surprising pressure and a lick of her tongue to soothe him. And a muted moan of his satisfaction and urgent need fills the room as his right hand is keen to wander about her frame.
He keeps to edges of what lays hidden above and below her uniform. For he knows those edges well, knows what hides behind them and how to remove them. His right hand, blessedly free of tremors, lands languidly on her chest. It still astounds them both how much territory his large hand covers. But he doesn't linger long, choosing instead to graze lower. His fingers only stop their downward progress when they find the edge of her corset.
Stepping back slightly, but not wanting to break contact, Elsie is soon mesmerized. Her husband's fervid looks are only punctuated by the fact that he is literally hot above his oppressive collar. His breaths are labored and out of sync with hers, but rivaling her own gasping breaths. She normally does not contemplate such things, but his fingers send what remaining awareness she has to the edge of her corset. Absently, she struggles to remember what she intended to warn her husband about.
Though there is no question asked by Charles Carson, to continue, to stop, to do anything but lavish her with his adoration, her fervent answer is elongated by escalating desire: "Yes."
But he does not move to kiss her again, not yet. Instead, his fingernails dig in slightly at the juncture of her uniform and corset, and she closes her eyes tightly as his fingers move laterally, teasingly across the swell of her breasts. Still he does not kiss her, keen to watch the kaleidoscope – of pleasure and pain at being denied what she really wants – swirl about her countenance.
When her eyes open, half-lidded by desire, her husband staggers ever-closer towards her as she seeks to precariously balance herself on her tiptoes. Finding a familiar anchor at the back of his neck, Elsie pulls him down towards her impatient lips with force. Nibbling on his lower lip once more, Elsie inwardly smiles when his moan is soon followed by his tongue seeking out her own.
All thoughts of the tea are keenly with Charles Carson now, for he knows he cannot feel her without her uniform and corset for at least another hour. But that time, so short in comparison to the years in which his lust and love for her simmered on the back burner to their commitments to Downton, feels interminable in that moment.
And as long as their time in her sitting room remains undisturbed, Charles Carson is keen to allow their love and lust to heat to a boil.
His hands are everywhere now, impatient and desperate to feel her, keen to match the skill of her incomparable mouth. Her waist is heaven to him, even more so when it is free from the confines of her corset. His palm at the dip of it, his fingers grazing softly on her bum, is otherwordly. And he imagines her without the uniform and corset for the moment only to find himself keen to explore other destinations.
For her legs, so soft and strong, prove to distract him as she shifts on her toes. And his right hand curls slightly about the buckle of her chatelaine before endeavoring to venture lower. He bends slightly, tasting her distracting neck before lightly nipping his way to that delicious spot below her ear. The ministrations make his wife lose her balance momentarily, the effect of which causes her chatelaine chains to sway between them.
But the chatelaine is a shield, a symbol, and a weapon – a reminder Charles Carson feels keenly.
And literally.
The chatelaine scissors wound him with a quick, sharp cut. The blood quickly seeps through a cut just above a knuckle on his right hand. Pulling back sharply, he bites down on a barking howl. He looks like a bear with a wounded paw – a comic sight to his wife despite her commiseration.
"Charles, oh, my dear," she laments genuinely even while trying not to laugh.
His right hand his between them now, a small amount of blood pooling above the knuckle of his pointing finger. She stops him from attempting to nurse the wound himself, his lips a poor substitute for the small kit of medical supplies she keeps in her desk.
"Come here," she entreats, pulling gently on his hand and forearm to make him sit in her desk chair.
Fishing out her kit, she assesses the cut as a minor, but stinging, wound. But her husband is silent, oddly so.
"I'm sorry my scissors caught you," she confesses honestly even as she bites back on a grin, unsuccessfully.
He is meek in his response. "I wasn't aware of their sharpness."
Unable to place the tenor of his voice, she continues with her tender service. "I tried to warn you," she adds.
His eyes are on her now – sharp and probing. "Warn me? You've never warned me about your scissors."
"No, I tried to warn you about keeping our…" dalliance? Interlude? It still seems odd to put a name to what they do, sometimes. She starts again. "I didn't get a real chance to say we should restrain ourselves until we get home, and when I'm not in uniform. Tea will start any minute, now, and I'm frankly surprised no one has managed to interrupt us."
She doesn't say it, but she certainly thinks this marring cut to his magnificent hands would not be there if he had literally kept his hands to himself. But his passionate attentions are glorious and she is right to want them, for their desire for each other no longer must hide in the shadows of a quiet, chaste nightcap.
But such thoughts do not wear well with him, and the true nature of his frustration becomes clear to Elsie Carson soon enough.
Sitting in her desk chair, Charles carefully avoids the cut on his hand even while clutching it with his left. His ministrations are all too familiar after the sobering events of the past few months.
Her heart aches at the sight of the self-soothing gesture. Her mind replays their last few moments - their entire day together – she cannot remember the sight of a tremor in his right hand. She certainly did not feel one as his hands skillfully clutched and wandered about her. But does a tremor not always have to accompany a pain that might also lurk, she wondered.
His furrowed brow is nothing compared to his clenched jaw. She knows this frustration now, the unease. And that it reinserted itself into a moment of such bliss and happy folly fills her with fierce determination to shoo away the gathering storm clouds as quickly as possible.
Her hands are soon a barrier between his own, and she returns to tending to his wound in short order.
"Don't," she remonstrates.
He hisses, and she's half-certain it's from her warning instead of the sting of the cleanser she uses to wipe the blood away and clear the wound on his hand. The wound in his mind, for what he believes to be a treachery of his hand caused nothing less, will take longer to heal.
This time, she is more gentle, her eyes filled with unshed tears for him. But she will be strong, for he needs her to be so, even though he doesn't ask or demand such things from her. "Don't let this get to you."
She is close to him, hovering slightly above him, which makes the connection of their gazes that much more intense.
There is a wordless dialogue – a tense exchange of acknowledgment that she knows what he thinks caused this minute disfigurement of his hand and how it affects his sense of self. After a long minute, there is resignation on his part. And she meets his gaze without pity, only love.
"It's difficult," he admits, but without shame. And this gives her some hope and courage.
She doesn't rush to fill the silence immediately in the wake of this confession. It does no good to act as if this momentary setback never happened. But she still feels a keen need to acknowledge his strength in the midst of this vulnerability.
"I know," she murmurs before the ghost of a smile begins to grow. "But I'll let you in on a little secret."
He catches the compulsion to match her smile. The act is done almost effortlessly now that they are wed, despite this business with his hand.
The chatelaine rustles again as she steps slightly backwards. Raising her left hand, he leans forward to grasp it, kissing the top of it with a flourish. Smiling, she waits a moment.
He wants desperately not to be swallowed by his dark thoughts, his disappointment in his body. He sighs, allowing himself to be medicated by her calming presence. "What's this secret, then?"
She points to a small scar just below the knuckle of her middle finger on her left hand. It is a fading mark, still capable of being discerned in the afternoon light of her sitting room. But what's more, he had first felt the slightly raised mark months before, catalogued it in his fingertips when his hands were sure and tremored only from the intensity of his desire for her.
"This scar has faded over time, but it's been with me for as long as I've been housekeeper. Those same scissors, still sharp after all these years, caught my hand as it caught yours." She studies him then, is pleased with his steady, interested gaze.
"You were in London with the family, and I was growing accustomed to being housekeeper. I thought that such acclimatizing was limited to managing the rotas and the house accounts. But," she murmurs while fingering her faded scar, "that also meant getting used to managing the most enduring part of my uniform. Though not a young girl, it was a new role for me, and it took some time to get used to it."
There is tension in his shoulders, receding only slightly at her confession.
"We all have scars, Charles. Some are made through accident, through mindlessness when one ought to know better. But some are made from inexperience. And however they come to us – they will fade, but we grow wiser because of them."
Her scarred hand at his cheek is a soothing balm, and he is unable to resist the need to close his eyes slightly at the sensation.
Her voice washes over him, reminding of a simple truth and her fathomless wisdom. "Even at our ages, we still have much to learn."
She wonders if he will reject this, if he will choose instead to attribute the small cut on his hand as another example that despite knowing better, a man of his age is still subject to the sting of the unforgiving onslaught of time.
But Charles Carson is still a man of surprises, especially when it comes to Elsie Carson.
His voice is at once authoritative and indulgent. "I shall try to learn to avoid your chatelaine in the future when we're… in the middle of something." One brow elevates as his chin drops, silently indicating just what 'in the middle of something' is supposed to mean.
Mirth slowly fills Elsie Carson's countenance. And the tears that threatened earlier now bring a resplendent shine to her sapphire eyes.
Not to be outdone, a thought beckons. "If I may suggest, Mr. Carson," her housekeeper's voice intones with a slight hint to her mischievous thoughts.
Her formal use of his title is not lost on her husband.
"Suggest away, Mrs. Carson." He never uses her true title at Downton, at least not before anyone else. But it is a title to which she responds most favorably when they are, as he so put it, in the middle of something.
Her lips press firmly together at his words, and she breathes strongly through her nose to compose herself. "If I may suggest, that, when we are next… in the middle of something, you might try holding on to the chains of my chatelaine? You'll likely avoid a repeat of earlier and it might keep us from forgetting our surroundings."
Her chin dips slightly at her confession, for they did not normally skate that close to the edge. But there were moments. And she could discern instantly that he was now lost in thought over those very moments as his eyes drifted from her face. Her own eyes focused on her hands, now clasped before her waist.
From the periphery, she spots his hand, now sporting a small wound that no longer bleeds. It moves towards her chatelaine, free of pain, relieved of tremors for the time. And, with a quick but gentle tug on the chains of her chatelaine, Elsie Carson soon finds herself quite in the middle of something while seated on her husband's lap.
The wounds Charles Carson wears, externally and internally, begin to heal as his hand continues to clasp her chatelaine.
When they emerge from her sitting room, much later, tea is nearly finished (little do they know, a new policy was enacted by Mrs. Patmore – or was it the increasingly benevolent Mr. Barrow – to never interrupt the couple when it was known they were in the same office).
But the couple doesn't mind, doesn't mind it at all, as they start home a bit earlier that crisp afternoon.
This one covered quite a bit of emotions, and I hope each of them mingled well in your minds. Initially, I thought it would be funny to explore when and how Charles learns just how sharp those chatelaine scissors are (PL commented about how sharp they are when answering questions about her favorite DA prop). But, in a post-DA world, it might not be so funny given his hand. Thus, you have the story above.
So, let me know what you think if you have a moment. And, please PM me if you detect any glaring errors. For some reason, writing in the present tense is always an arduous task.
Many thanks to you all - x