This is just a little prequel to chapter 1.
Charles blamed himself for giving in to the impulse and Elsie Hughes of course; women were always to blame. He supposed the reason he'd given in was that after 30 years of forcefully resisting any and all impulses he was rather surprised that he still had any. Now he was having lots of impulses and was almost overwhelmed with the desire to give in to them. He blamed Mrs. Hughes because all these impulses had to do with her.
These impulses were not necessarily new. When she first came to Downton as head housemaid, he had been very attracted to her. He felt that as butler he should not take advantage of his position and so had resisted those impulses. When she rose to the position of housekeeper, he had entertained the notion of exploring his attraction, but having very little experience with romance, he'd never really figured out how to do it. As more time went by, he found that his concern over losing her friendship outweighed his desire for a romantic relationship, most of the time anyway. Now that he had given in to the impulse, his desire for her outweighed everything.
He blamed Elsie Hughes for all of this, because if she had been wearing her usual high-necked dress, he would never have felt her skin. She had been in his pantry talking to him about mundane household matters while he was preparing to go up to serve dinner. He'd pulled on his jacket, and she reached up to straighten his tie, as she had done many times. Since she was standing on tiptoe to reach him, he'd placed his hand on her shoulder to steady her. His right forefinger had brushed the smooth white skin on the side of her neck instead of stiff black fabric. The feeling mesmerized him to the point that he felt the need to stroke her neck with his finger so that he could feel more of her skin. She'd gasped slightly drawing his attention to her lips. Suddenly the impulse struck him to explore what the skin of her lips would feel like with his own. His hand went from stroking lightly to gripping the back of her neck as he drew her to him. As he kissed her, he trailed his hand to her shoulder and down to her bottom to draw her to him, wishing all the while that there was no stiff black dress between his hand and her skin.
Drawing her tight against him had made him realize that he felt anything but just friendship for her. It had likely made her realize, too, as the few layers of fabric in between were not that thick. He wanted to feel more of her, all of her actually, with all of him. He'd previously imagined that they would likely grow old together in their friendly way, enjoying each other's company while living separate lives. Now he most certainly did not want to live separately from her. If he was truthful he never wanted to separate from her again. He wanted to spend all his nights, and perhaps some days as well, enjoying more than just her company.
The knock on his pantry door and William's call had caused him to pull back reluctantly. He paused to catch his breath and managed to call out that he would be with him in a minute in a somewhat normal voice. Turning back to Elsie, he was gratified to notice that she seemed just a little breathless, too.
"Elsie, I'm-," he began.
"Charles Carson, don't you dare apologize for kissing me," Elsie interrupted.
"I wasn't going to apologize," he said defensively, "I was going to say that I'm late and would like to continue this after our dinner."
"Don't you think we should discuss this?" she asked.
"Maybe, after dinner," he said firmly, and then continued smiling, "Sometimes talking is over-rated, though."
She gave a short laugh, "Sometimes it is. You should fix your tie before you go out."
"You don't want to do it for me?" he asked grinning a little wickedly.
"Not if you want to make it upstairs to serve dinner," she replied wryly.
After he'd finished serving dinner upstairs and was making his way into the servants' hall for his own, he reflected that perhaps giving in to impulses wasn't so bad after all.