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1.
The servants' hall seemed to him to be oddly disorganised as he arrived there the next day for his breakfast and he narrowed his eyes slightly, trying to perceive what was different. The maids were louder, for one, as was Mrs Patmore, as well as several chairs being occupied rather earlier than was usually expected. It occurred to him that the mood was almost that of a holiday. Then he realised and wondered that it should have escaped his attention even momentarily: Elsie was not there, most unusual; her often being more punctual than himself. Good Lord, he thought, if this was the state things deteriorated to when she was late for breakfast, thank heaven she took an evening off as infrequently as he did so himself.
Clearing his throat, the noise lulled- the rabble becoming more aware of his presence and rising from their seats. The almost the whole staff lining the table, he was unhappily aware of the empty gap at his right-hand side. He surveyed his colleagues.
"Now that we've all quietened down a little," he began, hoping that they would take the hint about their unmerited riotous attitude, "Has anyone seen Mrs Hughes this morning?"
They exchanged many glances amongst themselves and reached the collective conclusion that they had not.
"Not at all?" he asked again.
"No, Mr Carson," Anna replied on behalf of all of them, "None of us have seen her since supper time last night."
As they were the most likely of anyone to have seen her, he cast his eyes over the maids again and then to the lady's maid.
"What about you, Miss O'Brien?"
He got the impression that the question jerked Miss O'Brien out of a period of not paying attention. She looked at him almost in confusion, but recovered her short manner soon enough.
"Why're you all looking at me?" she asked defensively, it was true that most of the servants' hall was now watching her and waiting for her response, "I 'aven't murdered her in her bed, if that's what you mean! Mind," she added, "It didn't sound like she've needed it: coughing like a maniac for most of the night, she was, I could hear her right across the corridor."
"How do you know it was her?" he asked, as usual Miss O'Brien was suspiciously well informed.
"Because when I got up in the night for a glass of water, I heard her through the door. It were her all right."
She seemed fairly confident of her accuracy and, irritating as it was to admit it, Sarah O'Brien was generally a reliable and inexhaustible source of household information; so he believed her. Instructing them to continue with their breakfast, he departed towards the sleeping quarters.
2.
He knocked on her door but entered even when he received no response. As he had expected, she was still in bed and apparently deeply asleep. Crossing cautiously to her bed side, he saw that she seemed to be sprawled out in the most disorganised fashion- most unlike her on principle- almost as if she had been up in the night and thrown herself back onto the mattress with little ceremony. He noted a thin of perspiration on her brow and gently placed his hand on her forehead; as he expected her temperature was sky high.
"Oh, Elsie," he murmured almost without thinking about it, a surge of pity momentarily filling him.
The impossible woman had managed, as Miss O'Brien had indicated, to make herself ill even in spite of his trying to prevent it. The light pressure of his hand on her forehead caused her to stir and she woke groggily.
"Charles," it came out croaky and it was clear from her face that she was surprised at the sight of him, "What the devil are you doing in here?"
He smiled fondly down at her.
"And what the devil are you doing still in bed?" he asked in reply.
She frowned for a moment in incomprehension, then seeming to register the lightness of the room asked:
"Why? What time is it?"
"Half past eight."
"Oh good god!"
She tried to sit up at great speed but his hand- which neither seemed to have noticed he hand left by her forehead- prevented her from doing so. Instead, seeming to have induced a headache in herself, she groaned and sank back down into her pillows, coughing heartily as she lay.
"You can't possibly work today," he declared firmly.
"Nonsense," she retorted, struggling to sit up again, "I've got to get up; her Ladyship-..."
"I went to see her Ladyship before I came up here," he informed her, "I described to her the state you were in yesterday, that you were coughing in the night and that you had slept in this morning and she very sympathetically said that you ought to stay in bed. We'll manage without you for today."
Even in a rather bleary-eyed state she still managed to raise a sceptical eyebrow.
"Will you now?" she asked tersely.
No, was his inward answer, if the hubbub downstairs was anything to go by.
"Yes," he insisted.
"I hope you didn't actually say I was in a "state" when you were talking to Her Ladyship," she remark sourly.
He made no reply other than shaking his head rather incredulously. Noticing how her feet were halfway out of bed and nudging them back onto the mattress with his knees; "Now go back to sleep. You don't look as if you got much last night."
Unable to contradict it and fully aware that feigning vanity and offence at the slur on her appearance she tried a different tac, not altogether submitting to lying down.
"Who told you I was coughing in the night?" she asked suspiciously, "I'm assuming that you haven't been checking on me on an hourly basis?"
"I have my sources," he replied.
"O'Brien?" she asked, "It must be, Thomas can't have heard me all the way from his room."
Her astuteness even when sniffing energetically was remarkable. He nodded as he grasped the bedclothes to pull them back over her, wondering if he would have to resort to pinning her to the mattress to ensure that she stayed there. In the midst of his reflection she renewed her attempts to get up- evidently he would.
"Please let me get up."
"Mrs Hughes," he addressed her firmly and formally hoping she would grasp his seriousness, "When was the last time you slept in?"
She thought a for moment but did not reply.
"Am I to take it, then," he asked, glad that she seemed to have proven him right, "That it has never happened before?"
She scowled but allowed him to fold the cover up to her chin.
"And stay there until this afternoon at the very earliest," he instructed to be given a further scowl in return, "I'll bring you something up at lunch in case you're hungry."
He took that he received no reply as good; at least she was no longer arguing back. As he turned to leave an odd light struck his eye that he hadn't previously noticed, as if something more than the curtains was obscuring the window. He turned back to look at it and was met with the sight of a very odd looking and unfamiliar garment, apparently unwrapped and arranged to hang in the fashion of washing on a line. His curiosity got the better of him.
"Elsie," he asked, pointing "What's that?"
A portion of her face appeared from inside the sheet and then followed the direction in which he was pointing. The fiendish look of delight on the visible section of her face made him rather anxious.
"That," she told him, her tone muffled but rather frank, "Is my corset. It got very damp yesterday and I had to leave it there overnight."
His mortification was hefty recompense for the submissiveness that he had managed to get out of her, and he had the feeling that that was exactly what she had intended as she turned over to face the wall without further ado.
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