Hello all! This fic idea came to me suddenly and I just had to jot it down. This is going to be a more relaxed, less developed fic compared to the other one I'm working on. I don't even have a proper title for this, that's how unplanned this all was. Anyway, here's a spur of the moment start of a fic.
A Charlie That Came To Dinner
"Everybody has their secrets, Mr. Carson." That was what she told him, and he knew very little of her own secrets.
"And... you have your secrets, Mrs. Hughes?" he retorted with his eyebrows raised high and his face as pale as the Grantham ghost the maids all claim to be looming in the attics. If it were anyone else, Elsie would call it some kind of awkward flirting, but Mr. Carson was far from a flirt.
She did not answer. Why? She could not say exactly. He bowed his head as if in shame—and she knew he was thinking of that night all those years ago. Yes, that was another secret of hers—a secret they both vowed to never bring up again, if she recalled correctly—but not the one she most cherished. She thinks of it when she enters his pantry... where their sin was made.
"Shall we get on, Mr. Carson?" she asked, and he cleared his throat.
"Yes, of course," he managed to stutter out as he led her out of his pantry and into the servants hall.
Her letter from Joe came the next day, which was a very dreary morning at the Abbey. Lord Grantham's cousin and heir had just died—and a terrible death it was—on the ship called Titanic. Joe asked her to come sooner than she was expected; two weeks sooner, to be exact. Ivy was now dead and he was having a difficult time adjusting, the poor man. And heaven knows Charlie was no help to him. Perhaps in the field, but not in the kitchen. And dear Peter had gone a year earlier to join the army.
She lied to Mr. Carson about an non-existent ill cousin of hers to get the time off. "Is this the same cousin as before?" he asked her curiously.
That was right. She told him she had an ill cousin the last time she had gone. She could have used Becky as her excuse—and it would have been a valid one at that—but she felt dirty using her own innocent sister to cover up her sins, so she made up a cousin: Beitris Hughes, a sickly spinster in Carlisle—her non-existent uncle's only child. "Yes," she said, "but this sickness seems to be much less urgent than the one before. I should only be gone for a day or two."
"Very well," he said, looking back down at his wine book—oh how he seemed to love checking that thing. "We'll have to manage."
Yes, they all had their secrets—some bigger than others, but Elsie's secrets all seemed to jumble together.
The train ride to the farm was quick and quite uneventful. She sat with a woman and her baby. The baby slept for most of the trip, and both mother and Elsie cooed at it the entire ride there. She had seen the woman a few times in the village, and always at church, so she knew better than to ask Elsie if she had any children of her own. Of course not, the woman must have thought; she was the housekeeper at Downton Abbey. And she would be right. What housekeeper has time for children?
She arrived at the farm in time for afternoon tea. The house was nice and warm, but far from clean. She could see there was an attempt at cleanliness, but with Ivy's noticeable absence it was all in disarray. The kitchen was the worst part of it all: plates and pans all stacked in the sink, empty milk bottles piled up on the counter, crumbs and stains on the kitchen table, and Moose, their very adorable black Labrador Retriever, was licking something green off the floor. Oh, she felt exhausted just looking at it.
"Where's Charlie gone off too?" she asked as Joe pulled a chair out for her to sit.
"Oh, she's somewhere 'round all this mess," he said. He went to fill the kettle with water and placed it on the stove top. "Faye, one of our cows, became ill overnight—she was out with it all morning. She must still be out there."
She hesitated for a moment, before asking, "And how is she? She isn't causing you too much trouble I hope."
He laughed. "No more than usual."
And Elsie smiled. She was a stubborn girl, and she never cared much for rules, but her kindness outshined all of that.
"But," he said, a nervousness in his voice. He sat down next to her—and Elsie felt dread come over her. "I'm glad we've got this time to speak." He slid his hand over to hers. The touch felt so foreign to her, and she felt the urge to pull away, to place both of her hands securely in her lap, but the last thing she wanted to do was offend him—not after all he had done for her. "I'm lost without a woman in my life, Elsie. I can barely take care of myself—much less a child, and a girl at that. If Peter were here, maybe it would be different..."
"You want me to take her," she said—and the thought brought an unfamiliar tingling in her stomach.
"No, no," he said, and she stroked her hand, a foreign gesture to her. "I'm saying I want you here—with us. Elsie, I'm asking you to marry me."
She now felt it appropriate to pull her hand away. "Joe, you know I can't do that," she said. "I have Becky to think about..."
His expression changed for a moment. Perhaps he forgot about Becky's existence, or maybe he thought she might have passed on already. "Well, we can bring Becky here with us," he continued after a moment of reflection. "She can share a room with Charlie."
"Joe—" The front door opened and light footsteps drew near. "This is quite a bit you're asking. I think I need some time to think it all over."