He is hungry for her.
They walk along the shore in the evening light. It is not quite three hours since they left Downton, their wedding party still in full swing, but it feels inconceivable that it should be so. They are in another world now.
She is carrying her hat. She is quiet. She is, he reflects, a woman of many silences. Warm silences, disapproving silences. Hurt silences, and teasing ones. The politic, the reverend, and the utterly bewildering silences have become as much a part of the soundscape of his life as the jingling of her keys, and she keeps them as ready for use as the scissors or the needle case chained at her waist. For cutting or repairing.
This though, is a contented silence. It is his favourite of the silences they share, and on any other day – how strange to remember that there have been other days and there will be more – he would hold it sacred. But they have been silent for too long and he is hungry for her.
Not for her body or her kiss. Or rather; yes. That. Without question. But that is too much to think of all at once, here on the strand. Right now, his pressing need is for her secrets.
He has brought her to the sea because of the words they shared that last time, straying in the surf. He has brought her to the eastern shore because of the silence in her eyes at the suggestion of heading west. It was an easy performance to call it pragmatism, to make noise about timetables and changes and hotels until her eyes were laughing at him again. The story in Lytham St Anne will keep.
But his need for her secrets will not.
He does not care much which ones he gets or in what order. Only that he have the time to hear them through. For years and years he has watched her hold her secrets between her teeth and her bottom lip. Some have escaped, a few precious keepsakes of which, he is quite sure, he is the only keeper besides herself. More maddening than that are the stories he has almost heard. How often has she started the prologue, or hinted at a punchline in which he has felt himself ready to become engrossed, only to end in interruption.
Sometimes a maid has called her, or the family have rung for him. Sometimes their own propriety has cut them short – pushed through his spine like a back brace, straightened his shoulders. In her it's a lowering of her eyes and pressing her teeth against her lip. Involuntary movements that remind him of hypnotists' shows from those days on which he does not care to dwell.
(Once Scarborough might have made him balk as he thought of music halls and bacchanal. Now he thinks only of her hand.)
And that was how it should be. He had no right to her secrets. But somehow his memory has become littered with hints – her sister, her childhood, something about her mother's shawl, a turned ankle in her first placement, the thing with the hawthorn. He is starving to learn more now that she is his, and he's trying to work out how to begin to ask.
She speaks before he can.
"Where did you learn to talk the way you do?" she asks.
It's the first thing she's said in minutes, and he finds himself glancing down at his feet to stop it from literally wrong-footing him.
"The way I talk?" He does not understand the question.
"Your fine, butler's voice," she says, and he cannot tell if she is teasing or – could it possibly be accusatory? "I can't imagine you were born speaking so."
"When I was born, Mrs Hughes, I did not speak at all."
"You know what I mean!" And there is definitely a smile in her voice, but he still doesn't know what she's driving at. What's wrong with how he talks?
"Why do you ask?"
"Because I've always wondered," she says. "And I reckoned now I have the right to ask a few of those questions that have built up over the years."
She's exasperating. He stops short and just looks at her, so exasperated is he. Has he married Auguste Dupin? Her thoughts have been so in tandem with his that it is almost comical. But she is faster and more to the point, and now how can he explain how similar his own thoughts have been to hers without sounding like a desperate child playing copycat?
Perhaps his surprise looks like annoyance. She drops her gaze a little.
"I meant no harm," she says.
He realises he has not answered her question and it must seem as though he is holding tight to old boundaries. How are they ever to overcome the ocean of unsaid things between them? Well, here is a place they can start.
"From the age of eight, it was a conscious act of will," he says grandly.
"Your will to become a butler?" she asks, taking his bait.
"The will of Mr William Fitzgerald: schoolmaster, tyrant, and enemy of all Yorkshire vowels," he explains.
This wins him a smile and a squeeze of his hand. He wishes there were more to the story. He wants to give her more. He offers all the rest that he has.
"I suppose I worked on it too," he admits. "Even beyond Mr Fitzgerald. I was serious about getting on. But now – it's just my voice. I don't think about it."
There's a little hum in her smile this time, and it seems she's pleased with what he's shared however meager it seems to him. They resume their walk.
"I used to worry a bit about my voice, when I was younger," she says.
It's said softly, but he can feel the depths beneath that. He has wondered before whether anyone has ever used her voice against her in her years in service. Whether she's met prejudices invisible to him for her birthplace as well as her sex. To him, her voice is musical. But he remembers when she was hired – back before they knew the profundity of her worth. She'd been the best candidate by far; would have gotten the job for a certainty in any case (in truth, he cannot remember the particulars but he's sure this must have been so. How could it have been otherwise?). The Dowager, though, had taken delight in the density of her accent. Had hired her while Lord and Lady Grantham were already in London for an early ball, quite behind Lady Grantham's back. And he remembers with discomfort the Dowager's gleeful prediction that Lady Grantham might not understand her. He is glad at how soundly that backfired.
His thoughts have wandered and he realises he has not answered her.
"What about your voice in particular?" he asks.
"My accent!" she says. And even in those two words it is apparent in its swoop and click.
He frowns. Feigns confusion.
"Now that you mention it, there is perhaps something a little... no, I'm not sure I know what you mean."
"Are you making fun of me, Mr Carson?"
He is, and he's enjoying it. He frowns more deeply still.
"I see," he nods sagely. "It's the 'r's, I take it? A trace of Lancaster, perhaps?"
"Don't you Lancaster me, Charles Carson. Or we'll have the Battle of Bannockburn to fight all over."
"What? Mrs Hughes, I am shocked by this. You never told me you were Scottish! You have married me under false pretences."
She's laughing outright now. He has made her laugh like that. He pulls her to him and presses a kiss to the top of her head.
They've reached the rock they'd chosen as they end point of their walk, and turn back, the sun lower now, but the evening no less glorious.
He feels it is his turn. His chance to ask. But he does not wish to risk straying into difficult territory. More than anything he wants her to keep smiling as she walks beside him. He loves her so very much.
He will ask about the hawthorn.
"Mrs Hughes, I've always wondered about the blossoms you used to bring in every spring."
"Have you?" she asks. She doesn't look confused, or ask what blossoms he means, so he knows he is right that a story lay buried there, and he feels vindicated and a little proud of his own perspicacity.
"I have," he says. "I remember the day you became housekeeper. We were all getting ready to leave for the season, and the house was in turmoil. And the very first thing you did – as I recall it – was to drop everything and go cut some blossoms from a tree in the garden for the vase in your sitting room."
"You have a good memory, Mr Carson."
She moves closer to him and wraps both hands about his upper arm. This is a safe story for her; he's chosen well, he thinks.
"I thought it odd. And then every year, for perhaps ten years, you brought in the same blossom whenever it was in bloom. Hawthorn from the tree at the edge of the vegetable garden."
She looks so mischievous, and there is nothing to interrupt them in the long term, so he risks pausing a moment, just to watch her smile.
"What's your question, Mr Carson?" she prompts.
"I suppose I wondered why it meant so much."
She's quiet for a moment, as though considering the best way in.
"Well, for that we must go back much further," she says at last
"To your childhood?"
"To my first spring at Downton – if you can cast your mind back so far."
He does not say that he was thinking of it only moments ago.
"I brought May blossom into the house that spring too. The tree was so heavy with it, and it was the sweet-smelling type, it seemed an obvious way to brighten up the servants' hall."
He nods. He'd forgotten she called the hawthorn tree 'the May'. Elsie May, he thinks. Another question to add to the queue. But for now he waits for the rest of the story.
"Mrs Garrow nearly lost her life when she saw it. I don't suppose you remember that? 'What was I thinking? Had I no shame? How could I bring such stuff into the house?'"
He shakes his head.
"Well you were there," she says. "Because you heard her yelling. I can't imagine what you must have thought she'd found me with."
Can it be possible that she's still a little embarrassed to imagine him thinking her morals unsound for a moment twenty years or more ago?
"I was in the doghouse for weeks," she says ruefully. "Apparently I'd brought death into the house."
"Mrs Garrow liked her oldwives' tales," he acknowledges.
"She liked them when she could use them to shame people," says Elsie bluntly.
"And you promised yourself one day you'd have her job and your blossoms both?" It's barely a guess. He can tell it's true.
"I did at that."
Their guesthouse is in sight now, though they're still well away from those few other people who are out and about this evening in the off season.
"So why did you stop? Did you feel at last that enough years had passed and you'd proven your point?"
She shakes her head, smiling. "Nothing so profound."
"What then?"
She shrugs. "The tree just grew too tall to reach."
It's said so lightly, so carelessly. She's saying something else as she walks on before she stops in confusion when she finds he isn't following her.
"Whatever's the matter?" she asks.
"Elsie May Carson," he says firmly. "I am six feet tall and some inches." He grasps her hand desperate to impress upon her the importance of this. "Promise me you'll never, ever fail to ask for something you want that I can provide."
She stares down at her hands clutched in his.
"It was only some blossoms, Mr Carson."
"Promise me."
There is so much more at stake here. Perhaps no stories between them can ever truly be entirely safe when there is so much to say.
She hesitates. Then she pulls her hands from his and places them on his chest. Her eyes are quite serious as she looks up at him, his proud, fierce, foolish, wonderful wife.
"I promise," she says.
They trade more stories over tea. Short and long ones, about the past and the not so distant past. Elsie is more content than she can ever remember being. She thirsts for his stories, and though she has guessed many of his secrets it is different to hear them aloud. And there are surprises too – he always could surprise her. The very fact that they are here as they are is the most shocking thing in the world.
It is another thing again to share her stories with him. She has neither his poetics nor his theatrics. She's spent her life learning to be invisible, but how good a thing it is to be seen and known by this fine man. She wonders if she'll ever fully manage to explain to him how she values him.
It is getting late. His hair is ruffled from the sea breeze. His voice is low and warm, as she loves it most. Perhaps she might tell him something of her family. Not Becky, not yet. But there must be a thousand tales from her past. She starts to tell him about the china cow, and then stops herself. She thinks of Scheherazade, who told her husband stories for a thousand and one nights to stave off execution. She is suddenly terribly afraid of how her stories might seem to him tonight.
His gaze is open and waiting. He is in his shirt sleeves and his top button is open. This is no longer the time for tales of the past.
"No," she says firmly aloud. "Enough of that now."
He looks disappointed, which is mollifying.
"I understand," he says. "Not all stories are to be shared. You must be allowed to keep some secrets."
He is always so generous when he thinks she is pulling away from him. But he does not always understand her.
"Some secrets, yes," she keeps her voice soft. "Though this one's nothing so terribly important. I only mean there will be other nights, Mr Carson. But now it's time I changed for bed."
"You must be tired," he says.
There is, she hopes, a hint of a question in his voice.
She stands and crosses the small space between them and places her hand on his chest above his heart. She gathers all her courage – she's afraid, but determined, and she will know this man completely and try her best to ask for the things he will willingly give her.
Her fingers tremble only slightly as she presses her mouth to his firmly before pulling back to meet his dark, honest eyes.
"No," she says. "I'm not tired. But it's time for bed."