When Elsie returned from the village, she found Charles seated on the sofa in the parlor, looking at something he was holding in his hands. Curious, she moved a few steps closer, but stopped and drew a sharp breath when she was near enough to see what it was. It was the frame she had given him for Alice's photo. He smiled at the photo and ran his finger along the edge of the frame. Elsie hadn't seen it since he had packed up all of his personal items and moved them from his pantry to their cottage, and she wasn't sure what to think. She knew that Charles loved her, and that Alice was part of his past now, but she wondered why he was looking at the photo now.
When he glanced up and smiled warmly at her, she returned his smile and went to sit beside him. He put the frame into her hands and wrapped an arm around her shoulders. She looked down at it and her smile grew.
"Mr. and Mrs. Carson," he murmured. It was the photograph taken of them on the day they were married.
"It looks lovely, Charles," Elsie said softly. "And Alice? Where has she gone?"
"I put her photo back in my box of keepsakes," Charles answered. "I'll go through those old things from time to time and smile at the memories, and then I'll find my lovely wife and kiss her." He kissed Elsie's cheek.
She placed the framed photo on the table in front of them. "There. What do you think?" she asked.
"That's perfect, Elsie," he answered. "Now anyone who comes to tea will see the lovely gift you gave me."
"I'm very glad you liked it," Elsie said, looking down at her hands, clasped in her lap.
"I did and I do," he said. "The frame is beautiful, but I like it for other reasons as well."
"What do you mean?" She looked up at him, her brow furrowing a little.
Charles reclined a bit, stretching his legs out in front of him, and looked into the distance, his face very thoughtful. "I put it on my desk, as you suggested, and whenever I looked at it I thought a great deal of Alice, and the happy times we had shared. But I always thought a little of you, too. I wondered why you would give me such a gift, something so valuable, for the sake of my healing heart."
"You needed to remember her, Charles," she said gently.
"Well, it was very sweet of you, and it reminded me what a kind person you are, underneath all of that stubborn fearlessness," he said, a little teasingly, and took her hand and kissed it. Elsie's eyes were fixed on their joined hands and a soft smile touched her lips. "I began to see you differently, to really look at you. Each time I looked at the photo, I thought a little less about Alice and a little more about you." Again, she did not speak, only smiled. "And at last my regrets about losing Alice dwindled to nothing. I was at peace, and there you were."
Elsie looked up at him, dimpling, and kissed his cheek. "I certainly didn't expect the gift to have such an effect, but I'm very glad it did," she said. "I could see the regret in you, and I hoped I could help you let go of it." She paused for a moment. "I loved you, even then."
Charles kissed her cheek and lingered. "Thank you for loving me," he said, touching his forehead to hers.
"You're very welcome, Charles," she breathed.
He kissed her lips then, cradling her face in his palm. Her fingers played with the hair at the back of his neck and he pulled her closer, kissing her more deeply. She sighed against his mouth and regretfully broke the kiss.
"It's time for tea," Elsie whispered, breathless.
"Hang the tea," he whispered back.
"I've got some chocolate biscuits for you today," she said softly.
"Very well," Charles said with resignation, letting her go.
She rose from her seat, though reluctantly. "Ready in just a few minutes," she said.
Charles's eyes followed her as she left the room. Once she had gone, they moved to the framed photo on the table, and he allowed himself to be lost in his memories for a little while. He remembered when he had started to see Elsie differently.
When Charlie Grigg appeared in their lives, he was angry with her at first for bringing it about, but it was around that time that her manner toward him changed. He couldn't say exactly how, but it did. She still challenged him, but there was something different in her eyes as she spoke softly to him about the open wound that she didn't yet understand, and they stood in silence for a long moment. The air was charged with something he couldn't identify. He could not stop thinking of Grigg and Alice, but he also could not refuse doing as she urged him, for somewhere deep inside he knew she was right.
Charles looked at her gift quite often as he sat at his desk, and as his thoughts moved from Alice to Elsie, he examined his own heart, and the more recent past. After Alice. He began to identify the memories he had acquired at Downton with Elsie. He could remember experiencing flashes of feeling when she looked at him in a certain way, when she smiled, when she was at her best and at her worst, and when he saw her feeling low. It was an instance of the latter from which they began to move forward. A year or so after he had placed Alice's framed photo on his desk they were in her sitting room one evening and Elsie told him of a problem she was puzzling over, some conundrum involving staff and guests and family. He spoke sympathetically and then was silent, watching her profile, her crinkled brow, and her troubled eyes. He knew that she would, as always, find the solution to her problem before long, but at that moment she looked perplexed and rather unsettled. Her hand was resting on the table between them, and he reached out and covered it with his own. She looked up at him, surprised, and then simply smiled. He smiled back at her and that was the beginning. Somehow he knew then that Elsie would never leave him, and that she understood him. He'd once said to her, rather offhandedly, that people drift in and out of one's life, but even when he'd said it he had known it was not entirely true. She had not drifted in or out of his life. Elsie never drifted anywhere, really. She had arrived at Downton with purpose and energy, and she would stay in his life with that same resoluteness of character. This knowledge of the eventual conclusion of their story gave Charles a profound feeling of relief. Retirement was not a bleak prospect to him anymore; he no longer planned to die in his livery. He moved the photo of Alice off of his desk and onto a small table in his pantry. He had thought of hiding it away in a desk drawer, but he didn't want to part with it entirely, because it was a gift from her. After that things between them continued to progress gradually. When they were alone in the evening, he held her hand across the table, and every Sunday she walked to church on his arm. Over the months following their unspoken understanding, they began to more freely exchange gentle little touches, even when there were others about, the sort of touches that were not improper, but that they simply had not shared before.
About two years after Elsie gave him the picture frame, Charles took the most important step. The memory was very clear in his mind. They were standing in the doorway of her sitting room late one night, when everyone had gone to bed, and he kissed her hand as had become his habit when they separated for the night. This time, though, something compelled him to reach out and caress her cheek. She looked into his eyes, unmoving, and the air around them went still and silent. Charles was sure that neither he nor Elsie breathed at all. He wanted to kiss her, but he did not. At last he let his hand fall from her face, and they parted without speaking. The next morning during a lull in his workday, he found her in her sitting room and asked her to marry him. She was surprised for only a moment. She had known he would ask at some point; it was not a matter of whether, but when. It was only after she had said yes that he whispered in her ear that he loved her, as they embraced for the first time. He kissed her and told her that he had thought his heart was dead and broken, but that it was very much alive and whole and full of love. This love had been so much a part of him for so many years that he hadn't even noticed it until he saw her as she really was, and then looked into his own heart.
Charles's eyes now drifted over to the photograph on the table. It seemed fitting to put their wedding photo in that frame, and to put Alice away with his other memories. He'd gotten a second chance at love, and he would no longer regret losing Alice, for had he made a life with her, he would never have known Elsie. There was no point in wondering now whether one choice might have been better than the other, for he couldn't really imagine being happier than he was with Elsie. A young man's passion was different than what he felt now, but he did feel passion again. It was less frenetic and desperate, but somehow deeper and more intense.
#####
In the kitchen, Elsie prepared the tea tray while she waited for the kettle to boil. She still felt a bit flustered from Charles's kiss. She had been unprepared for some of the physical intimacies of marriage. She had certainly expected what happened in the privacy of the bedroom, but, ironically, not the rest of it. When he reached for her at night and caressed her through her nightgown, it seemed right and fitting, but when he pulled her into his lap to kiss her as they sat in the parlor of an afternoon, she blushed fiercely and felt like a naughty housemaid necking with a footman in a deserted room, liable at any moment to be discovered by the stern-faced housekeeper. Sometimes she could almost hear her own quick step and jingling keys in the distance when she found herself in Charles's arms in the middle of the day. Elsie knew it was her many years as housekeeper of Downton Abbey that caused her to feel so unbalanced by this new aspect of her life. She had not had to fight off the advances of footmen since her days as a housemaid, but if she were to command the respect of her subordinates, she knew she must be even more strict with herself than she was with them. She must always be neat and tidy, must work at least as hard everyone else, must never be seen resting, and must behave properly within the role she performed in the household. Elsie's compassion and sense of justice sometimes led her to help those who had not maintained the same standards for themselves, but no one doubted her integrity because her own conduct had always been above reproach.
Charles's own insistence on maintaining high standards of propriety had always exceeded even hers, which was why she was so astonished by his behavior as a husband. She had expected him simply to be a milder, softer version of the man she already knew, but in the three weeks since they had married he had shown his affection for her more openly at home than she ever would have expected, or even dreamed. Elsie wondered if this was what he had been like as a young man. She would make no complaint, but it would take some getting used to, after decades by his side in which they only occasionally exchanged even the slightest touch. Even when their unspoken understanding was born at last, the change was so gradual that the existing staff didn't seem to notice, though a housemaid hired around that time saw clearly the subtle intimacy between them. The girl wondered what there was between the butler and housekeeper and even went as far as to question some of her peers about it, but they thought it a ridiculous notion and laughed at her for being fanciful. She tucked the idea into the back of her mind, unable to dismiss it entirely, but had no reason to be uneasy about it. The house ran well and she got along with most of the other staff, so the occasional tender glances she caught between the butler and the housekeeper weren't cause for any concern. If she turned out to be right and something eventually came of it, she would be able to crow over the maids and footmen who had poked fun at her. And crow she did, when she was vindicated at last. Charles and Elsie's announcement at dinner caused chaos enough on its own, but the row that followed between the maid and her less observant adversaries required the housekeeper to drag the girl into her sitting room for a blistering lecture and a demand that she explain herself. She was suitably contrite for her instigation of the shouting match, but as she left Elsie's sitting room in disgrace she was unapologetic about the subject of the quarrel. Anyone could see how much you loved each other, Mrs. Hughes, the maid said defiantly. The rest of them are fools, but I won't fault them for that. After all, they can't help it. Anyway, I think it's romantic. Elsie had managed to maintain her severe demeanor until the girl had turned on her heel and marched out and the door was shut behind her, but after that she sat down at her desk and nearly laughed aloud. She was unsure whether she felt more amused, startled, or embarrassed, but she couldn't keep from smiling.
The kettle was boiling now, so Elsie turned off the stove and poured water over the tea leaves and took the tray out to the parlor, where she found her husband in the same place she had left him, apparently daydreaming.
"You're in another world, Charles. Whatever were you thinking of?" she asked.
"You," he said simply, reaching his hand out to her. Elsie put down the tray and came to stand before him, smiling. He indicated that she should sit on his knee and, after some hesitation, she did, wrapping her arms loosely around his neck and resting her head on his shoulder.
"We should drink it before it gets cold, my dear, and eat our chocolate biscuits," she said. "But I suppose you'll say, 'hang the biscuits, Elsie,' won't you?" she asked, mimicking his tone.
"After you've taken the trouble to prepare this lovely tea?" Charles said. "Nonsense." He released her and she busied herself with the tea things. When she handed him his cup and sat down with her own, he thanked her. "We'll have our tea and chocolate biscuits, Elsie," he conceded. "But after that I will say that everything else can go hang for a little while." He twitched his eyebrows at her.
Elsie could not hide her blush and she took too large a sip of tea to avoid having to say anything. It burned a bit going down, but she didn't mind. She did not usually care about much of anything when Charles looked at her that way. She sipped her tea carefully, but did not break the loving gaze which seemed to hold her captive. This time would be no different. Elsie suspected they wouldn't get around to eating the biscuits.
The End.