A/N: So sorry for spamming the fandom, but since I was in the document manager, I thought I should take the time to upload this.
This is an extension story to the Lady Elizabeth universe from my Five Names and Five Christmases fics. You see there was a chat on tumblr, there were many ideas for how the Lady Elizabeth might conclude her story with Mr Carson, but I think basically they summed up to four ways. The first of which you'll find below. The idea is is, you get to choose which ending you would like for them to have. Each of the four will be different in setting and situation and one or two may seem rather less believable and stretch reality a little, but as Fellowes said on Text Santa; no one cares (hopefully). This one gets a little NSFW near the end.
In which Mr Carson disregards the class divide entirely and they live a little.
A Little Of What You Fancy
It starts just after they lose poor dear Matthew. The world changes again, their world more than most and she finds herself spending more time at Downton, less at home or on the Continent as she planned.
She might have only been Sybil's Godmother, but she loves all the girls; even Mary with her painfully sharp tongue.
She stays with Violet at first, splits her time between Isobel's house and the Abbey. She can't imagine what it must be like to lose a son, not one that made it through birth and childhood, through that terrible war only to perish just as he became a father himself. No, she cannot begin to understand the pain her friend feels, but she hopes her presence helps. If nothing else she keeps Violet entertained enough that Isobel doesn't find herself on the end of a poorly timed remark as often as she could.
Mary she understands a little better; it cannot possibly be the same of course, but the poor thing has found herself rather surrounded by widows these days.
She is glad most though, for Tom. He is the only one who has a hope of knowing what Mary is going through and she thinks this might bring them closer, if Mary will let it.
After a while, she starts to stay at the Abbey again when she visits. She adores young Sybbie and she fears Edith might be feeling a little left out, but mostly she is afraid of what she might do to Violet if she stays with the woman another night.
Mrs White always has a room ready for her and since Charlie got bigger, Ethel has become more of a housemaid than a ladies maid. {Not a kitchen maid though, no that was one disastrous attempt that no one wishes to repeat.} Anna Bates copes as she always has, but mostly she finds she prefers to dress and undress alone. That way, if she wants to pause with her dress off and her corset and shift on, to sit in a chair and read a chapter or two of her book by candlelight before continuing on to bed, well, she can without a maid hovering at her side to collect her things. She simply lays everything aside to be collected when she leaves her room in the morning; it isn't as though she is going to complain if her dresses take a day or two longer to be returned to her.
Freedom, that's what she likes. Violet would say that she has been alone for too long, flung out up in the North or visiting in Europe; has strayed too far from 'the way things are done', and she is correct, of course but she is wrong to think that being any other way now could make her happy.
She supposes this is what comes when young women marry older men, she and George were happy enough together, but he had his life and she hers and without children, there wasn't really much that pulled them together but balls and parties and conversation over afternoon tea.
He never worried if she spent her mornings in the gardens, or learning to cook in the kitchens, so long as when they hosted she treated their servants as that, and presented herself as a Lady should when in society. He had known who he was marrying and God rest him, he never asked her to change too much to fit into his life.
She sees very little reason why now, as she gets older and finds herself under far less scrutiny, she should consider living any other way. The world today is a young person's world; is she not allowed to savour the years she has left on her own terms; finding happiness wherever it might lie?
It is these thoughts, and a glass too many of Robert's favourite scotch, that starts everything. Or at least gives her the Dutch courage to truly begin something she feels started quite some time ago.
Edith retires early, Mary having taken supper in her room. Cora and Robert disappeared some time ago and finding herself alone, the familiar presence of Mr Carson looming in the corner, she reaches for a second glass and pours a finger of scotch into it.
"For you, Mr Carson." She walks to him, holds out the glass which he takes likely by habit alone.
"Lady Hawthorne I couldn't—"
"What you can't do, Mr Carson, is let it go to waste now it's been poured." She picks her own glass up from the table, sips at the smoky drink. "Besides, I'm sure it isn't proper for a woman to drink alone."
"Then, if you will excuse my overstepping, milady, perhaps you should retire for the evening."
She had known of course, that this would not be easy. She has not been blind these last years to her feelings for him — and she will use that word, in her own mind at least —, knows that when she sees the street artists along the Seine, the wonderful landscapes they paint by the hour, she wants to turn to him and ask which he thinks are the better likeness. She realises that these are not thoughts that Ladies have about their friend's servants, but friends have of friends, lovers have for each other. She realises too that she cannot know his own thoughts or feelings, but she has seen, has felt his eyes on her. Is sure she has not imagined his interest. But all those reasons she has told herself over the years for why they cannot be more than Lady and servant; if she has thought them then he will have too, and will hold more tightly to them than her position requires she do.
"I should, Mr Carson, you're right. But you see, I'd still be alone then."
Keeping her head tipped down she looks up at him from beneath her lashes. {Something she learnt from an actress in New York.}
He swallows, adjusts his waistcoat with his free hand. "Milady, I'm not certain—"
"Mr Carson, have you ever wanted something you know you shouldn't? Thought about it to the point of distraction?"
He swallows again, "Lady Hawthorne, if there is anything that you want—"
She interrupts him with a wave of her hand, closes the distance between them with careful steps. "There are many things I want, Mr Carson. Some of them I think you might be able to give me, others I'm sure you could if you would try. But I'll settle first, for you sharing a drink with me. Don't worry about Lord Grantham," she adds, "I will be sure to say I tricked you into it if it comes to that."
She believes she sees him waver, the glass in his hand rising just a little higher.
She meets his eye then, drops the act. All of her acts. She stands before him as herself, the thought alone starts a fine tremble throughout her body. Her voice, when it comes, is lowered with her accent, as raw as the day she learnt to hide it. "Don't you ever wonder what it might be like, Mr Carson, to take what you want, when it's being offered to you? To live a little?"
She holds her breath for a beat, for two but lets it out in a fast rush when he lifts his glass to his lips and takes a good mouthful.
The spirit is there on his breath when he leans towards her ear to whisper. "Are you quite sure you know what you want, milady?"
Her free hand rests against his chest, her fingers splay out across his waistcoat. "Very, Mr Carson. Very."
—
Of course, it is only the start. They don't kiss, there in the library. She moves back from him and they both finish their drinks, unable to look away from each other.
When she retires a few minutes later, he does not accompany her, she does not expect him to, but goes downstairs instead to complete his chores and she stands alone in her room, hand pressed hard to her heart. The scotch burns through her, makes her pulse pound in her head.
She expects to feel regret, fear. To worry that she has made a fool of herself, has insulted a man she would never want to. She has heard of Ladies that find comfort in their footman, the groomsmen. Young pretty boys to pass the time with. But this is not that.
In truth, she would like just as much to sit with Mr Carson over breakfast and discuss current events, as she would anything else she might have set in motion tonight.
She waits for the fear, but it doesn't come. Her eyes settle on the book by her bed, not the one she left there this morning — finished, but another bound in black. She smiles and reaches for the buttons at her side.
As she told him; she is sure of what she wants, of what she thinks they both want. Tonight more than ever.
—
She reads the book he left her late into the night. Sleep does not come easily to her these days, and more than anything she wants to savour the feelings the evening have brought her. To replay Mr Carson's voice as he leant down to speak in her ear. The coarse feel of his waistcoat, the warmth of him beneath that seeped into her fingertips.
The next morning she smiles at him as usual as she enters the breakfast room, he tilts his head and there is nothing different, nothing to indicate that anything occurred the night before, that an understanding was reached.
The note is hidden in her morning post and she smiles into her napkin as she reads it.
I wish to live a little tonight
"You seem happy this morning, Aunt Elsie. Have you had good news from Manchester?"
She sips at her tea, folds the note in half and half again and tucks it into the band of her sleeve, turns to Edith. "Closer than that, my dear. But yes. Good news indeed." She avoids looking to Mr Carson but sees the twitch he gives all the same, the smile that very nearly lifts his lips. "Now, what do you have planned for the day Robert?"
—
The first time that he comes to her, she finds she cannot draw a steady breath.
It seems odd that she cannot call him by his Christian name, that she does not even mention her own to him.
She is glad at least that he does not call her 'milady', does not call her anything at all as he kneels beside the bed and removes her stockings one after the other, his fingers brushing her calves as he slips the flimsy cotton down to her ankles and off her feet.
Her dress tonight is simple, she has given in a little to the modern trend of a rather straight gown, but cannot quite let go of her corset for a brassier. And so her form is still stiff and artificial as she perches on the mattress.
His fingers shake as he reaches for the clasp at her neck and she catches his wrist in her own.
"I won't force you." She says, searches out his eyes and holds his gaze. "If you don't want this, I need you to know that you're free to walk away. I'll say nothing, and things will go on as they always have." It will hurt certainly, to have almost had this and to know that she can't because he does not want it, but it would hurt so much more to find out that whatever they might have, she has it through coercion and without honest consent.
He smiles at her then, turns his hand and pulls until their palms meet. His fingers slip between hers, filling the gaps. "In another life this would be easy."
She laughs, shakes her head and leans forward until her breath hits his cheek and bounces back at her. "I don't think this is ever easy, but it might be less of a scandal."
He closes the last of the space between them, his lips touching hers with force. She can be sure, at least, that he wants this.
His hands are steady now when he reaches for her dress, slips the hook from the eye and watches the fall of French satin puddle in her lap.
He tips her back and she lifts her hips until she lies against the sheets in just her corset and shift, the silk knickers that tie with little blue bows.
Her jewellery rests heavy against her neck and the pins in her hair dig into the back of her head and yet, as he settles down beside her, his jacket folded neatly on the armchair, she doesn't care a whit about any of it.
"Remind me." She says a while later, when she has her hand beneath his half-open shirt and his teeth nip almost playfully at her collarbone. "I must ask your thoughts on this MacDonald fellow, they say we could see a Labour Government soon."
He pulls away from her, his hair tangled on one side where her fingers are twisted up in it. "It will never happen." He says, "The country would fall to ruin."
There's no hesitation in his answer, no demurring or sidestepping. He gives his opinion freely and even as his hands slip lower on her body, as his lips follow; tasting the skin of her stomach, his tongue dipping into her navel, even as he touches her where only one ever has before, her eyes fill with tears not for his touch, not for the tenderness in the way his fingers dip beneath her curls but in knowing that finally, she has access to the true Mr Carson, the man behind the Butler.
She gasps as his fingertip slips inside her and tilts her head back into her pillows.
Love, she wonders, it might really be love.
—
It is years before they are discovered, months still after that while they convince Mr Barrow to hold his tongue.
It is Mr Carson, in the end, who does what she cannot. Who retires with an excuse of age and moves North.
It is not a perfect life; she can never be Mrs Carson and he can never be just Charles. But they are happy and on a Sunday morning in January, she looks across his table, meets his eyes above the paper and smiles as he bites his toast.
"And you said we'd never see a Labour Government."
He raises an eyebrow, curls his lip and gives the paper a firm shake to straighten it.
"The end is nigh." He says and she laughs.