A/N: This is in response to a prompt challenge from Chelsie-Prompts entitled: Dance. This is the second installment in an unintentional series that follows an AU Charles and Elsie Carson and their three children: Kate, Margaret, and Charlie. This entry is set in Spring 1939 just on the brink of World War II. It is a prequel to Chapter 30: Glances. So if you haven't read that you can read this first and then read that so things make sense. Or read that first, or whatever. Happy Downton S7 Day!
Spring 1939
As his fists clench and unclench, fingertips curling around and tugging on the bottom of his waistcoat, Charles Carson anxiously awaits the arrival of his daughter. His wife is tucked away in another room with a group of small group of women fussing over the details of today's event. He sees them scurrying in and out one of the bedrooms. Elsie's younger sister Becky suddenly pops her head around the corner and instructs Charles in no uncertain terms to keep himself and any other man ten feet from that bedroom door or face her wrath. A few minutes later, joyous laughter, hands brought together in applause, and choruses of congratulations, cause Charles's heart to beat wildly as he scrubs an unsteady hand through his hair.
After today their lives will be altered. Forever.
"You may come in now," Becky beckons him with a wide grin as she tucks her hand into the crook of his elbow.
When the village women, their friends, pull away, Charles is speechless at what he sees before him.
"What's the matter, Charles? Has the cat got your tongue?" Elsie teases gently.
"No," he quietly answers with an almost imperceptible shake of his head as he sinks his right hand into his trouser pocket to check that the new coin that he placed there this morning is still there.
"Well, Dad, what do you think?"
"You are beautiful Kate," Charles replies to his eldest daughter who is standing across the room in all her bridal finery. "I don't think that I've ever seen a lovelier bride. Michael will be …"
Elsie smiles fondly at her bear of a husband. Charles is her stalwart man. He is sensible and reserved, calm and always steady, but a man who now with tears in his eyes cannot find his voice as he fully realizes that soon he will walk their first born down the aisle of St. Michael's And All Angel's Church to her awaiting groom. As they gaze at the bride-to-be, Elsie wraps an arm around her younger daughter Margaret's waist, tells her that she'll be next one to be married, after she completes university. The room has gone quiet, and Elsie surveys all of their friends, her dearest friend Mrs. Mason has her handkerchief brought to her the corners of her eyes, pressing away the tears there. Even wise-cracking Becky, who is more a sister to Kate than to Elsie, seems to have the sniffles.
As Charles finally finds his footing, Elsie quietly clears the room of weeping women telling them that they will meet them in a few minutes at the church. When Becky has ushered them out of the house and to the waiting cars outside, the house falls silent once again, except for the three quiet voices of mother, father, and daughter. A final few words before lives change and new lives begin.
In church, Elsie sits beside her son who is so much the image of her father. Short and stocky with strong shoulders and equally strong opinions, Charlie Carson wears his naval uniform with pride. When he'd told them he was signing up, Elsie had forbidden it. She soon found that her son had her Scottish stubbornness and her iron will. Forbidding him to do something proved counterproductive, and Charlie enlisted the moment his mother uttered the very words of opposition. Charles had told her that the boy must make his own decisions. In the end, she'd come around to see that both of her men were right. Apparently, the boy has salt water in his veins.
But she worries. Storm clouds are gathering quickly, and there is the talk of war in the air.
Elsie cannot help but remember the last time she worried over a Carson man at war. She was a young wife cradling a newborn babe to her bosom. Now she watches as her husband stands tall and proud beside that young woman as his gives her hand in marriage.
When Charles has placed a kiss on his daughter's cheek and taken his seat beside Elsie, she feels the warmth of his bare hand slip into her gloved one, his fingers curling softly but firmly around hers. She casts her eyes downward at their joined hands as her husband brings his right hand to cover their joined ones and when she looks up, she finds him studying their hands in serious contemplation. Elsie cannot help the gentle smile that tugs at the corner of her lips. She's almost positive that she knows what he's thinking because she is thinking it too. It seems like yesterday that they were the ones standing at the altar where Kate and Michael now stand, pledging themselves to one another for as long as life allows.
As the vicar's voice rings loud and clear through the halls of the ancient church, Elsie remembers that once, Charles was the nervous groom standing by her side and she was the bride in the white gown. Oh her dress wasn't as extravagant as the one that her daughter wears, but she didn't mind. Elsie's wedding suit was lovely, but there was no intricate lace, no church length train flowing behind her. None of that mattered to her. The only thing that mattered to Elsie was the man standing beside her, home on leave, and hers for a fortnight. That was all that mattered.
Charles isn't listening to much of what's being said; the reading of the verses and the order of service is all programmed. Anyone can read words off a page. Instead, he's holding onto his wife's hand as if his life depends on it. Everyone in the village thinks him the resolute one. The stalwart. The village hospital surgeon whose hands never flinch, never tremble. But he trembles today. He wonders if Elsie feels it. He remembers the day that he saw his own bride in white. The moment that he stopped breathing for that briefest of seconds as she walked down the aisle to meet him. He knew that he had never seen her more beautiful than in that moment. But as he sits beside her now, after all these years, he thinks her more beautiful now which makes what he has to tell her all the more difficult.
Charles wonders if Elsie feels the shifting of the sands the way that he feels it. He feels as if everything he's known until this moment has changed.
A son in uniform, a daughter at university, and now the eldest married.
An empty house.
War imminent.
And now he must leave her. Alone in that house. That empty house. But she has her work, he reasons. She'll be fine. She'll keep busy, and she has her friends. But he owes her today. He'll not deny her today's happiness.
"Kate's very happy," Elsie murmurs over the rim of her champagne glass just before taking a sip.
"I hope that Michael intends to keep her that way," Charles grumbles.
"Oh, I think that he will. They're well matched," she concludes.
Elsie hears the deep sigh of her husband, and though Charles is fond of his new son-in-law, she knows that he still hasn't made peace with the notion that his eldest has married and left home; that she is moving to London and will set up housekeeping there. But she thinks that a mother has a different vantage point, a different perspective from which a father sees a daughter. Charles still sees the little girl with the big hazel eyes and dark curls meeting him at the door each night hugging him tightly around his legs. He sees the little girl who sat on his lap, her head on his chest as he read bedtime stories and planted fatherly kisses to her hair.
Elsie sees those things too, but she also sees in Kate a strong and capable young woman. Sharing her father's exacting standards, those who don't know her well think her arrogant. But Elsie knows that Kate simply wants things done properly, wants them done the right way the first time. That trait will serve her well as a nurse working in a busy London hospital. Elsie sees a bit of herself as well. Kate doesn't suffer fools, but also has a kind heart and is a fierce protector of those she loves.
Charles pushes his chair back and stands, his hand outstretched to his wife. An invitation extended.
She smiles and places her hand in his. An invitation accepted.
They glide across the dancefloor with practiced ease and flashes of memories, like snapshots in a photograph alumn flood Charles's mind. He remembers the first time that a band played and he held Elsie close. He chuckles to himself at the chasteness of it all. The stiff posture of a waltz at the Downton Hospital Charity Ball. How old Lady Grantham scoured the crowds making certain that all of the medical students and nurses kept a respectable distance as they danced. He wonders if she remembers.
"Something has improved your mood," Elsie teases.
"Oh, I remembered the first time we shared a dance," he rumbles.
"And that is funny?" she quips as she pulls back and looks up at him.
"No," he assures her as he pulls her close again. "I just remembered that our dances then were very chaste and I very much wanted to dance like this." Charles places a kiss on her cheek.
"You're being very sentimental."
"I told Kate that I'd never seen a more beautiful bride." Charles pauses and gently tugs his right hand free only to place it on his wife's cheek. His hand still steady at the small of Elsie's back, they are locked still in time while all the others float around them in time with the music. With deep blue eyes and through dark black lashes, Elsie looks up at her husband and finds that he has turned quite serious. Just when she is about to ask him what he is on about he kisses her for all and sundry to see. Elsie is astonished that her upright and proper husband would display such a private moment, such tender affections for her in public.
"I lied Elsie," he confesses as their lips part. "Her mother was the most beautiful bride that I've ever seen. You still are beautiful in my eyes."
TBC…. Thank you for reading. You have probably figured out Charles's dilemma. If you have read Chapter 30 in Prompts then you know what he dreads telling Elsie. At some point, I will combine these prompt responses for our little AU family here into their own story. Thank you for reading. A little review would be lovely. x