A/N: I am a sentimental soul and this chapter is all sorts of fluffy and sentimental. Hope you don't mind.


"Elsie?" Charles voice rumbled through the cottage.

"Yes?" Elsie called from the bedroom.

"What are you doing?"

"Changing the bed. What are you doing?" Elsie smiled to herself as she pushed the sheet between the bed and the mattress.

"I have been waiting for you. Your tea has gone cold."

"I'll be down shortly. I am surprised at you, Mr Carson, sitting in the parlour in the middle of the day. Have you no work?"

"I do have but one job..." His voice trailed away.

"And what is that?" Elsie threw up the quilt and it landed perfectly on top of the blankets.

"Oh... you'll find out." Charles voice came closer and she heard his footsteps. She turned, a pillow in hand and found him standing in the doorway.

"I remember you doing this when you were head housemaid." He took a few steps towards the bed. "You would pick up a sheet and send it flying. I always wondered how you made it fall so precisely on the bed, hardly a crease."

"Practice." She answered, placing the pillow on top of the quilt. She looked at her work, smoothed out a crease with the back of her hand.

"There's other things you are well practiced in these days." Charles took her hand and pulled it slightly, so she would take a step and turn to him.

"Are there?" Never had she imagined that Charles Carson had such a wicked sense of humour. He had said repeatedly that he was no gentleman (which she very much disagreed with), but to know that he would seduce her at every hour of the day, that he would make risqué jokes and that he would be so tactile, she would never have guessed.

He lowered his face to hers and she leaned towards him for a kiss.

"Very well practiced..." He repeated. He let his hand run down his wife's side.

"Anna is coming over in a bit." Elsie announced and took his hand and squeezed it. "Come, lets go downstairs. Is there still tea in the pot?" They left the bedroom hand in hand and clumsily walked down the stairs, both unwilling to let go of the other.

"Why is Anna coming over?" Charles asked, settling Elsie on the settee and pouring her a cup of tea.

"Oh..." She sipped her tea. "This is indeed gone cold." She grabbed Charles' wrist when he wanted to get up to make her other tea. "Stay..." She kissed his lips lightly when he leaned in.

"I suppose Anna is coming over to tell us that they have come to a conclusion." She kissed him again.

"A conclusion?" More kisses, his arm around her waist, her head on his shoulder between kisses.

"That they have made their decision."

His hand touched her cheek, her neck. "They will probably have gotten the funding for the Downton Arms and they will go and live there and make a wonderful go of it." She let herself be pressed back against the cushions, put her arms around his neck.

"Leaving service for an uncertain life like that..." She pulled him closer, lifted her leg and wrapped it around his hips, pulling him close.

"They are leaving to make a life of their own." She kissed him again, hungrily.

"Would you have liked that?" He slid his hand down her side, grabbed hold of her bottom, pulled her even closer.

His tongue slipped between her lips, found hers, they duelled, danced. Elsie moaned softly when he started to lift the hem of her dress, touched the inside of her thigh.

"Liked what?" She couldn't think, he licked the side of her neck with the tip if his tongue.

"A life out of service, a shop or something?" He pushed her stocking down, she felt the tingle deep within her, arched her back to push herself fully against him. He was breathing heavily, his sentences were fragmented.

"I don't know..." She worked at the buttons of his shirt. "Maybe..." She pushed it off his shoulders. "Sometimes..." She nipped at the newly exposed skin.

"If only..." Her stockings were both off, he let his fingers wander the inside of her thighs and she felt how he slipped them between her skin and the elastic of her knickers and she hardly knew how to react.

"Don't... We can't change the past." She undid the fastenings of his trousers.

"If we could... what would you like?" He stopped his administrations for a moment, looked at her, intently.

She stared into his eyes, so intently, she thought she could almost see his soul in there.

"I would have told you 'I love you' so much sooner."

"Like I would." He pushed a strand of hair from her forehead.

"I don't know if it would have changed our lives." She put her hands on his cheeks, cupping his face.

"Maybe we would have left service, together, like Anna and Mr Bates."

"We don't know if they are leaving, I just think they might. Anna would so much like a family." A familiar tightness settled in her chest.

"Would you have liked a family?"

He was relentless in his questions. They were no longer panting, her legs were relaxed on the settee, he put on his shirt now she let go of his face.

"I think I would have liked to have had a family with you. But I don't think our lives are any less because we don't."

She pushed him away with a gentle hand and picked up her stockings and pulled them back on. He pulled up his trousers. He sat next to her, opened his arms and she cuddled up close.

"If we would have left service and we were the way we are now, I have no doubt there would have been a lot of babies..." He whispered in her hair. She chuckled.

"Who knows, maybe Anna and John will have lots of babies. And Ethel might marry. Or even Daisy."

"We are already parents in a way, aren't we?"

She heard how his voice caught and grabbed his hand, squeezed it.

"Maybe not parents. But we have a family." She pressed her head tighter against his chest, let herself be embraced by him.

Then there is the long anticipated knock and she got up, planted a kiss on his hair.

"That will be Anna."

"Yes."

"I'll let her in and you will make us some tea. There is a tin of biscuits on the shelf."

"Alright." They smiled at each other.

"I love you."

"I love you too."


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