Charles Carson did not consider himself to be a particularly spontaneous man. In fact, in his sixty-some years on earth, he had spent almost all of them adhering to a strict and unmalleable schedule. He was the paragon of discipline and he took great pride in that, thank you very much. So, for such a man to find himself cruising along Yorkshire's winding roads without any particular destination in mind, fields of sheep and cows to his right, Elsie Hughes to his left, wholly ignoring all the work that awaited them both at the Abbey, well, such a notion was preposterous. And yet, here he so found himself.

The offending question that had led him here slipped out of his mouth before he had even given it much thought. He and Elsie had dined at Beryl's Bistro in Ripon, feasting on her famous fish and chips, chatting about this and that as if they had known each other for a very long time. On more than an occasion or two, Carson had been on the receiving end of a curious look from Beryl Mason, proprietor of the bistro and one of Elsie's closest friends. From the small rectangular kitchen window where hot plates of food would await a server, Carson could see a tuft of curly ginger hair peeking out from the other side, a pair of blue eyes staring at him, sizing him up, an eyebrow arching high on her forehead. Each time, he felt slightly unnerved.

On the second of such occurrences, Elsie caught the scene unfolding and chuckled to herself. "I think she's just shocked," she explained on her friend's behalf. "I don't often have company for lunch during the off-season."

Carson felt a relieved chuckle leave him. "Oh, good. I was imagining much worse. She's likely armed with all sorts of knives and implements back there."

"Beryl's harmless, really," she told him. "She's a lot of bark; not a lot of bite. Perhaps someday when it's not so busy during the lunch rush, I can introduce you two."

He smiled. "I'd like that." Slipping a bank note on the table, he looked at his watch and felt a sense of dread creep upon him. It felt as if they had only just arrived at Beryl's; surely, mere minutes had passed, not ninety of them. The thought of returning to the library to bury himself behind a stack of books and attempt to make headway on his article was unfathomable. Such an occupation, even a few weeks ago, would have seemed perfectly suited to him. But today, he had no such desire to return to the library of Downton Abbey.

And so, that offending question, the very one that led to a meandering drive across Yorkshire's hilly and arcadian terrain, came about suddenly.

"Say, would you fancy a drive?" Carson asked as they stood and put on their jackets and scarves. "We ought to get out of that abbey before the winter snow and ice prevents it."

Elsie had just wrapped her violet pashmina around her neck when the question was posed. She paused and a small smile quirked at her lips. "Where to?"

He shrugged. "To anywhere. Perhaps nowhere. Just a drive for its own sake?"

The small smile grew and she nodded. "Alright, you've convinced me."

That was about as little persuasion as he'd ever employed, he thought, but he was glad for her agreement all the same. Without further discussion, they departed Beryl's and climbed into his Triumph. It was quintessentially English, not unlike its owner, with its forest green paint and a Union Jack bumper sticker displayed prominently on the trunk.

"To nowhere, Ms. Hughes," he announced in all seriousness as he put the car in gear and pulled onto the highway. Her laughter was a reward in itself.

Yorkshire stretched before them and all around them. Autumn marched upon the land, seizing the greenness from the trees and the leaves and replacing it with the most glorious shades of orange, red, and yellow. The air was crisp and the sky was pale. Before too long, Carson cracked the windows a bit and the breeze blew through their hair and cooled their skin.

Elsie heard herself sigh contentedly as she felt the wind's caress. As soon as it left her, her eyes darted hastily to her right and she was mortified to see a dark glint and a smirk playing about his features. She chastened herself inwardly. Had she not just last evening vowed to retain some semblance of professionalism around this man? Turning her head away, she buried her face against the palm of her hand and looked out the window at the blur of farmland outside.

"Are you comfortable?" she heard him ask. "Temperature-wise, I mean."

"Hmm? Oh, yes. Thanks."

"You're rather deep in thought," he said, almost a little shyly. "Would you like me to turn back?"

"No!" she replied far too quickly. A thick eyebrow arched on his forehead and she recomposed herself. "I mean, no, I'm enjoying a break from the Abbey. It's good to get away, like you said, especially while we still can."

He shifted gears and she tried not to notice how his forearm flexed as his hand gripped the shift knob and thrusted it forward. Her eyes rolled at the absurdity of a thought like this coming from her at this age and at this stage of her life. Professional work environment. Visiting scholar. Professionalism. Professionalism. Professionalism! These words repeated in her mind over and over like a mantra as her eyes underwent the gruesome task of avoiding his direction generally or his flexing forearms particularly.

"Speaking of the Abbey, I never asked how you ended up there. Robert said you took over about four years ago, is that right?"

Elsie nodded. "Aye, that's right."

"Where were you before that?"

Her blue gaze fell to the passing scenery once again. She was not keen to speak of her life before she came to Downton. It hadn't been terrible; quite the contrary. But it was bittersweet to remember a time in her life that was kinder than this one. It was easier not to mention it at all. But when she glanced back his way, however reluctantly, there was something about the way his dark eyes looked back at her ever so briefly before returning to the road, that chipped away at her resistance. Perhaps, she wondered, he might understand what had led her to Downton. She had suspected since she first heard of him that he was running away from something, too.

"I was a headmistress at an all-girls' boarding school," she told him. "Cheltenham Ladies' College in Gloucestershire."

His eyes widened. "You were not," he joked.

"I most certainly was," she countered. "For fifteen years. I taught history before that for another ten."

"History? Really? You know that's what I teach at Cambridge."

She chuckled. "I'm quite aware," she replied. "But I merely taught boarding school girls."

"That's a far greater task, then," he teased. "I just deal in a few supervisions, some lectures, and a lot of hob-nobbing with other faculty when I'm not writing articles no one will read. You actually taught young people."

"Well, I'll take that as a compliment, then."

"Good," Carson said earnestly. "I meant it as one."

That unruly lower lip found its way between her teeth again, an act that was occurring with much greater frequency these days.

"It makes sense, I suppose, that you were a headmistress," he pressed on.

"Oh? Why do you say that?"

"You run Downton a bit like one," he explained. "Very ordered, very structured. And of course, that first night I met you, I must have said something snarky and rude, no doubt. The expression you had then gave me the distinct impression that I was a schoolboy who had been summoned to the headmistress's office for a thrashing."

That lower lip was caught so tightly now that it almost hurt. "I would never thrash a schoolchild," she replied. Then she recalled that he was most certainly not a child. "A haughty scholar, on the other hand…"

"Fair point," Carson conceded with a chuckle. He was not about to debate his, or other scholars', relative haughtiness.

"Did you always dream of being a professor?"

He almost laughed at the thought. "Hardly," he insisted. "But I had a ready mind and a desire to be…someone."

They both took their eyes from the road and caught the other's gaze for the briefest of moments.

Carson continued. "I was the son of working class parents. My father worked in a factory and my mother was a seamstress. They were lovely people, well and truly, but I wanted a different way of life. So, I studied hard, earned a scholarship, and when I fell in with the right crowd, I got a taste of that something more for which I had been longing and looking. No amount of it was sufficient."

The only sound in the car was the faint whir of the engine and the whistle of the breeze through the windows.

"You know," he said in a low voice, almost a whisper, "no one else back home knows that about me–that I'm not some posh, Etonian-bred, high-brow son of an aristocrat. I've played the part well, I think, but no one else knows the truth."

Elsie inhaled a measured breath. "Why did you tell me, then?"

He thought for a moment and shrugged. "I–I'm not sure."

The Triumph continued its meandering through the hills of Yorkshire as its two occupants said in contemplative silence.

"You don't have to be all of those things to be someone, you know," she said after a time.

When Carson eventually looked at her, his dark eyes resigned, a sad smile on his lips, he nodded. "Perhaps," he said in a way that told her he didn't quite believe that, not at all.

A somber mood enveloped them and Elsie, for one, was not fond of it. "Say, have you ever been to York?" she asked, hoping that a change of course might brighten his mood and rid him of his melancholy.

"I–I have," he answered. "Not since I was a boy, though."

"Shall we, then? It's not far from here and I take it that neither of us are in any hurry to head back to the Abbey to finish work today."

A dark chuckle left him. "No, I dare say not."

She nodded and grinned. "Good, then it's settled. To York, Professor Carson."

When Carson was a boy, his parents worked hard and often, and family holidays to far-off warmer climes were simply out of the question. When the Carsons did have a rare moment and funds for a break, nearby towns or the seashore would be their only destinations. He had a distinct memory of a trip to York, though, and it was a pleasant one.

Perhaps he had been six or seven, all knobby knees and gap-toothed. His parents had brought him to The Shambles, that medieval cluster of shops and pubs about narrow streets, with crooked buildings that seemed structurally unsound, with little banners of the British flag that flickered in the breeze as strings of them wove through the alleys. Much of what was sold in those shops was out of reach for the family of three, but the act of looking and wondering was sufficient enough back then. Tight as money had been, Carson remembered one small indulgence.

While his father perused a bookstore, his mother had grabbed his hand and led him into a sweets shop, putting a conspiratorial finger over her mouth as if to convey to her young son that this was to be secret between the two of them. Among rows and rows of colorful sweets in jars, she whispered to him, "Pick whatever you'd like, Charlie."

His eyes had grown wide at such a prospect. It was uncommon and unlikely to be repeated often, so young Charles studied the candies on display, inspecting them, endeavoring to make the right choice. Eventually, he settled on sherbet lemon, pointing to the jar with his little finger and tugging on his mother's arm so she'd understand that he'd come to a decision. Her smile was warm and she handed the store clerk some coins in exchange for a small bag of the yellow candies.

They sat on a bench and popped sherbet lemons into their mouths one by one, letting them dissolve on their tongues as they watched passersby going about their errands in The Shambles. It had been a delightful day, one of his favorites.

As he wandered through the narrow streets of York with Elsie Hughes today, however, Carson began to wonder if there was something about this city, something about its charm, that made all his days here delightful.

They had parked the Triumph in some car park near the River Foss and ambled along its banks until they ended up in The Shambles. Their pace was slow and easy; they had nowhere to be. As they wove through the narrow streets, almost unchanged since Carson had been there last as a boy, they stopped at whatever shop piqued their curiosity. He couldn't help but smile as he watched Elsie inspect little trinkets or scarves, holding the fabric in her hands and stroking it. It was so tactile and for some reason, that amused him.

To any outsider who happened upon them, they had the appearance of an old married couple having a lovely and lazy Saturday afternoon, enjoying their time pointing out oddities and getting a rise out of the other.

"How does this look?" he asked her teasingly as he put on a bowler hat, holding his hands up to his head as if forming a frame for her scrutiny. They had wandered into a gentleman's clothing store with upscale suits, hats, and accessories. It was all far too fancy for Carson's tastes, whose usual wardrobe consisted of an Oxford shirt and a blazer.

Elsie turned around from her inspection of a table full of cufflinks. She grinned widely and laughed. "Well, don't you look like you came straight from the 1900s!" she teased him, abandoning the cufflinks table and stepping closer to him to get a better look at him. "You ought to get it, Charles. It suits you."

The lone sales clerk saw this exchange and swooped in to seal the deal. "Your wife is correct, sir. That hat suits you perfectly," he said in a charming Yorkshire accent.

Wife? Oh, heavens. Carson felt his blood turn hot and his mouth gaped open, floundering to find words. He felt embarrassed all of a sudden, and didn't dare look at Elsie; he was almost certain that she was equally, if not more embarrassed than he.

But to his surprise, he heard her roll with the clerk's mistake. "Thank you," she said in a dulcet tone. "That's very kind of you, but we really ought to get going." Without wasting a beat, she pulled the bowler hat from his head, set it back on its stand, placed her hand on his back and ushered him out of the shop. Once they were safely back on the crowded narrow streets and away from the clerk's earshot, she said, "That was a close one, Charlie! I'd hate for you to get snookered into buying a £300 hat."

He chuckled in a nervous sort of way. She seemed so breezy about the whole thing and it unnerved him. He couldn't understand why it had. "Right, right," he murmured. "Couldn't have that now…"

His hair was ruffled from the hat; he was sure he looked feral. Quickly, he ran a hand through it and smoothed it down. They continued their ambling through the narrow streets. It was crowded and on quite a few occasions, their arms brushed against the other. He was fifteen years old all of a sudden, nervously walking out with a schoolgirl from his class, trying to appear nonchalant while he calculated his next ten moves.

"How about this shop?" Elsie asked, mercifully jolting him from his thoughts. She had stopped in front of a sweets shop, the very same one that Carson and his mother had visited fifty-some years ago. It was just as he had remembered, with the same red trim along the massive bay window and a bench next to the front door where they had shared their secret sherbet lemons.

Carson nodded and they went inside. A few minutes later, the two of them emerged, each toting a bag of sweets. Carson had a bag of sherbet lemons and Elsie, a bag of mint chocolate buttons. Their pace carried them leisurely through the crooked streets as they munched on their treats. A few times, they offered their bag to the other and made a trade, sharing their sweets as casually as if they did this quite often.

"You know," Carson began, "the last time I had sherbet lemons was the last time I was in York. I must have been no more than seven, I'd say. My mother and I snuck away to that same shop while my father was otherwise occupied down the street and she let me pick whatever sweet I wanted. Money was tight then, so getting a whole bag of sweets to myself was a real treat."

Elsie looked at him and smiled with a warmth he had not yet seen from her. "I can just imagine it now: little Charlie Carson charming his mother into buying him sweets."

He laughed and popped another lemon candy into his mouth. "Hardly," he insisted. "My mother was just a saint. No one has ever accused me of being charming."

"I'm sure many people find you charming." She reached into his bag and took a sherbet lemon for herself, popping it promptly into her mouth with a flourish of her hand. Her lips puckered at its tartness and Carson couldn't help but stare.

"Do you?" he heard himself ask. The words had slipped out before he could stop them. It was too late to take them back.

He waited. For a slap, for a scoff, for a roll of her eyes. But none came. Instead, he saw a smirk play across her lips, some mischievous glint in her eyes.

"Almost," she said before reaching back into his bag, stealing another one of his lemon candies, and continuing on with her walk down The Shambles.

Still in place, frozen and unmoving, Carson realized then that he was deeply in trouble. Very, very deeply in trouble. Clearing his throat, he took a few large strides to catch up with her.

"Shall we head back?" he proposed. "I'm starting to get a bit peckish."

"Good idea. Daisy should be finishing up dinner in a bit," she replied. A pause followed, and it almost sounded like hesitation. But eventually, she asked, "Would you still be interested in a glass of port after dinner?"

"I should be delighted."

Elsie nodded, seemingly satisfied with his answer. "Good."

And so the two meandered back to the Triumph side by side. They would not acknowledge that their pace was slightly altered, just a hair faster than it had been all day. There were important things awaiting them at the Abbey and both were eager to return.

A/N: Thank you all for the support for the last chapter! This website has been quite wonky this week, so thanks for bearing with us writers. I hope you all enjoyed this installment. I wanted to include a retelling of that scene in the most recent DA movie with Carson and Lady Bagshaw. While humorous, I thought it deserved a Chelsie version!

Please let me know your thoughts about this chapter if you can spare a moment! I love hearing what you all are thinking about the story :)