A/N I never did manage to find a beta for this. If anyone has a little free time and is interested let me know. There are 3 chapters. Will include adult material.
Hat in Hand
"You ran off!"
Contrite, Charlie put his head down.
"You left here on your half day to go to the fair two years ago and you never came back! No month's notice! No goodbyes! Not even a letter left behind on your pillow for me to find!"
As Lord Grantham stood, Charlie had to tilt his head up to meet his Lordship's angry gaze. There weren't many men left that Charlie still had to look up at to see eye to eye.
"And now you have the audacity to show back up on my doorstep hat in hand looking for what?"
His Lordship's level of vitriol was unexpected. Charlie was hardly the first footman to have run off in the night, yet the usually genial – to anyone who wasn't his own offspring - Lord Grantham seemed absolutely enraged even after all this time.
"I just wanted an audience, My Lord. I wanted to apologize."
"To what end? You cannot really expect to again find employment here! Because such disloyalty and lack of integrity will not be tolerated."
"No, my Lord. Of course not." Charlie tried to explain why he had felt the need to come. "It's just I've come to feel awful about having left Downton. Especially, the way that I did. I wanted to apologize to you and to Lady Grantham for -"
His mentioning of Lady Grantham did not go over well. "- Your patron saint is not here to save you!"
Lady Grantham had always had a soft spot for him – and to be quite honest him for her. Lord and Lady Grantham had attended the funeral for his mother after the puerile fever had claimed her. His father had Charlie's stillborn baby sister buried in the same coffin not to save money – though that was always a concern – but because Lady Grantham suggested if it were her she would want it that way.
"No, Milord. I didn't expect she would."
After the funeral in her very own carriage she had taken Charlie home to the Abbey and given him a place there so that his father would not have to send him to his mother's sister who lived too far away for his father, the groom, to visit even on his half days.
Staring with a look of absolute dread at his own young wife who more than five years into their marriage – long after the entire village had given her up as barren - had finally succeeded in falling pregnant, Lord Grantham had offered not a word through it all.
"You are a disgrace!"
It would never do to admit it, but Charlie had waited until this late in the day to call in the knowledge that Lady Grantham would be home. From inquiries made in the village upon his train's arrival, Charlie knew the Earl was hosting a small dinner party this evening. He had timed his calling to be certain Lady Grantham would be home while not interfering with the timing of the party. Yet, she did not appear to be home – certainly if she were Lord Grantham's shouting would have attracted her attention by now.
"Your mere presence here offends. I want you ... gone!" The Earl seemed to almost choke on that last word.
Her absence, his Lordship's air of unhappiness, his uncharacteristic acrimoniousness ... Charlie was beginning to get a rather unsettling feeling. "My Lord ... where is Lady Grantham?"
Angrily, Lord Grantham lashed out. "I told you! She's not here! She's ... " His expression contorted and again his Lordship's voice caught on the word. " ... gone."
The defeated way Lord Grantham sank into his chair with his head in his hands made Charlie think that Lord Grantham did not mean to Downton Village or Ripon or even London.
But no surely if something had happened to the Earl's pretty young wife someone would have mentioned the news to him upon his arrival. But then he had been gone nearly two years and what would have been new news to him wouldn't necessarily have been news to anyone living in the village.
Charlie's voice trembled as entirely out of line, he asked again. "My Lord, where is Lady Grantham?"
Head in his hands, Lord Grantham's broad shoulders shook, but offered Charlie no answers.
Lord Grantham's bellowing had been so loud that neither of them had heard the front door's opening.
While the Lord Grantham that Charlie remembered was seldom one to raise his voice the same could not be said of Lady Grantham.
At the sound of her voice coming from the front hall, Lord Grantham picked up his head. He moved from the room at an ungentlemanly pace. Confused, Charlie followed after.
Nanny must have made some sort of remark about the condition in which the Grantham children were being returned to her because Lady Grantham lit into her. Charlie's heart soared listening to the melodious sound of Lady Grantham putting the other woman in her place.
"Then it would seem you will need to bathe them both before and after I take them out. If you feel I cause you too much work I assure you I can greatly reduced it."
"You are late! You should have been home hours ago!"
Charlie was startled. Lady Grantham spoke acerbicly as often as not to anyone and everyone including his Lordship, but Charlie had never heard Lord Grantham speak sharply to her Ladyship.
Seeing that Lord Grantham was already in a foul mood, Nanny was quick to pick up Lady Rosamund and usher the little Lord Downton up the staircase to the nursery and out of their father's presence.
"Why did you not take Nanny with you when you went out?" Lord Grantham demanded.
Raising her voice loud enough to be sure Nanny would hear her, Lady Grantham answered. "Because I don't like Nanny."
"What happened to your dress?"
Not interested in making sure Nanny heard the answer to that question, Lady Grantham answered at a more reasonable volume. "I bought the children each an ice cream before we left for home. I knew we were running late so I let them take it in the carriage - not one of my more brilliant ideas. The carriage hit a spot in the road. Robert dropped his."
"Yes, I can see. And to reward him for ruining your dress you what? Turned back and got him another one?"
Rather than continue to argue with his Lordship, Lady Grantham turned to him.
Unlike her husband, she didn't seem put off by his presence. "Oh good, Charlie, you're back. How was the fair?"
Pulling out her hat pin, Lady Grantham took off her hat. She handed it to him as if he had been gone his allotted half day and not nearly two years. There was a touch of silver in her auburn locks that he couldn't recall previously.
"Not as enjoyable as I thought it would be, Milady." Charlie admitted holding her hat in his hands.
Managing with her tone to make him feel like she was looking down at him despite their height differences, she warned him. "You'll understand if we don't allow you any more half days when the fair is in town."
Charlie smiled at her graciousness.
Lord Grantham did not. "We are not taking him back! I won't have him again as a second footman in this house!"
"It's true. We haven't any need of further second footmen." Lady Grantham agreed good-naturedly. "We'll have to make you a first footman."
Lord Grantham sputtered. "We will do no such thing!"
Deliberately missing his point, Lady Grantham inquired of her husband. "You think it time Robert had a valet of his own? To me he seems awfully young for it, but I do defer to your judgment."
"You have always been sweet on that boy. From the time you brought him home to be the new boot boy, but no! Absolutely not! We are not hiring him back!"
Charlie wondered just what goings on he had missed at Downton in the past few years as it seemed he was not the only one to have fallen in his Lordship's favor. While once Lady Grantham just glancing too long at something would have had Lord Grantham running like a footman to get it for her, he now criticized and outright refused her.
"Lady Violet, I won't have it. He ran out on me! I won't have such disloyalty in my own house. I won't!"
His Lordship seemed to be quite successfully working himself back up into a lather. "To think after everything that I have done for you! For your family! That you would betray me! That you would just walk away like that!"
Looking quite stricken, Lady Grantham said no more.
Despite her silence, Lord Grantham continued his blustering. "He has brought shame and dishonor upon this household. I won't hear of it. That is final."
"Well that settles it then, doesn't it? Lord Grantham has spoken." Holding out her hand to take back her hat, Lady Grantham admitted defeat. "I shall be terribly disappointed to see you go, Charlie."
"Thank you, milady. You are too kind."
As Charlie moved to take his leave with a coquettish tilt of her head, Lady Grantham made one last attempt. "My Lord ... at least give him a reference. He was the best boot boy we ever had. Your boots haven't had such shine since he was promoted to hallboy."
"The only reference he shall get from me will be sure to highlight his wayward ways!"
Charlie frowned not in disappointment for the lack of reference, but because he had never known such discord between Lord and Lady Grantham.
Her shoulders slumping ever so slightly, Lady Grantham gave up the pretense that she thought Lord Grantham could be swayed.
"And another thing - if you are going to go out alone with the children I would greatly prefer you only take one."
The slump of her shoulders was gone as Lady Grantham coldly asked, "Why?"
When Lord Grantham did not immediately respond, Lady Grantham repeated herself. "Why?"
She continued to press him as if daring him to say the word. "Why Lord Grantham? Do you think me incapable of managing our children?"
Her walking stick by necessity occupying a hand, Lady Grantham would have only one hand available to hold the hand of a child.
Charlie held his breath wondering the extent to which things had changed in his former world.
No one ever dared mention Lady Grantham's condition. It was never even alluded to in Lord Grantham's presence and certainly not brought up by Lord Grantham himself.
The precedent for that and so many other things had been set on the day of Lord and Lady Grantham's wedding when upon seeing the Earl's young bride-to-be for the first time the Archbishop had in his shock been heard to cry out, "My Lord! She is a cripple!"
Demanding satisfaction, an incensed Lord Grantham had challenged the Archbishop to a duel. Neither Lord Grantham's brother, his mother, nor even the Reverend could persuade Lord Grantham of the folly of challenging a man of the cloth to a duel. Lord Grantham refused to back down.
Naturally neither the Archbishop nor the Reverend had been willing to proceed with the ceremony under those circumstances so the proceedings had come to a standstill.
It was the future Countess of Grantham who had defused the situation by claiming to have distinctly heard the Archbishop say the word 'child'. While either word was entirely accurate, only one was deemed offensive.
She had demanded Lord Grantham apologize to the Archbishop immediately so that they might proceed or else send her back to her father's nursery.
With the Archbishop and the the Reverend swearing to the lie on the steps of the church, rather than contradict his bride-to-be, Lord Grantham had withdrawn his demand and the wedding had proceeded.
Charlie held his breath, but even pressed Lord Grantham would not say it.
Squeezing the bridge of his nose, Lord Grantham looked down. "I only meant -"
Lady Grantham cut him off. "- If Lord Grantham will not write you a letter of recommendation I will write you a letter of introduction. I know of several families who would be most pleased to have you. After I change for dinner I will attend to it. Wait in the library."
Solemnly, Charlie nodded.
The fight having quite gone out of him, Lord Grantham tried to start again more calmly. "Lady -"
Looking up, he realized his wife, with the hem or her dress in one hand and using her walking stick with the other, was already a quarter of the way up the staircase. Charlie watched as Lord Grantham again moving at a less than dignified pace went following up after her.
Managing to catch up with her, Lord Grantham tried to put his hand under her elbow. Pulling her arm out of his grasp, she swatted his hand away.
Only as the pair disappeared from view did a crestfallen Charlie head into the library.
tbc
A/N as always reviews are greatly appreciated.