Half the Story Hidden— Chapter 2, Part g: Fair Nature's Confounded Base

Author Note: Still a touch of adult content in this chapter, although it does mostly fade to black this time.

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Continued: August 1927, 6 days later - After the morning funeral and early luncheon in the great hall for the wake of the late Dowager Countess of Grantham.

Chapter 2, Part g: Fair Nature's Confounded Base

Mid to late afternoon: Near The Stable-hand's Stream

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Much later, when the heat of the day has calmed and the late afternoon is melding seamlessly into an early evening haze of alternating low warmth and cool breezes, Elsie saunters, albeit with slightly stiff hips and a sore back, over to their blanket. She is sporting Charle's oversized Argyll knit jumper like a dress. It graces her naked form from when she went to discretely bathe herself at the edge of the stream. Charles' sleepy face is now mopped clean of his grief and despair, and Elsie finds him just as incongruously attired as she is. He is lying back with his head propped up against the picnic basket, sipping white wine in his open white shirt sleeves and with Elsie's swirling paisley printed mauve, cream and deep purple shawl draped across his hips to protect his modesty. He has always said that he loves that shawl on her as it reminds him of the tones of their wedding day. She sees the breeze tickle through his chest hairs and his skin shimmers lightly at its feathery touch. He just looks so utterly lovely to her.

And she just looks so ridiculously adorable to him, and just incredibly… Oh! Just so incredibly well-loved. I did that! I still did that for her! Somehow. And her eyes! Bright. Brighton bright.

She has removed all of the hair pins that were digging into her and the golden sunlight is glancing off the silver streaks as she slides her delicate fine fingers through those abundant locks, trying to remove some of the tangles formed during their most recent escapades. She is as undeniably exhausted as he is, but she also feels sated and luscious and fulsome. And to him, she is somehow innocent and sweetly vulnerable all at once when she wears his oversized jumper like that. He has half a mind to throw all of his wine aside and just ravish her all over again right here in the open air. Hang it all if I never live to see another day, Lord, just let me feel even half of the closeness we have just shared once more. Right now, please….Oh, Good God! How I always want her!

He rumbles out some modified lines of their much loved Thomson's Seasons poems for her, sweet and lazy and low, "From the stream that down the distant rocks hoarse-murmuring fell, and plaintive breeze played amongst the bending willows, from bathing, fair Musidora to her Damon doth return."*

She smiles sweetly at him, "And has young Damon been re-humanised back into man again?"

He huffs out a breath through a small smile as he tweaks the edge of his new silken paisley skirt. "Robed in loose array… And Checked, at last, By love's respectful modesty* wouldn't you say, my Love?" He states quite brightly and then he looks inward and adds more seriously, "And more fully humanised than he would ever have thought possible after all of this morning's events."

He reaches up to tug at the lower hem of his jumper as it sits around her thighs to draw his Elsie-Love gently back into the circle of his arms. He kisses her temple as he breathes in the heavenly scent of floral summer warmth from her silky hair.

Elsie slowly picks and eats from a cool bunch of grapes** she has placed upon his bare chest and alternately feeds sweet full fruit to him as he lounges blissfully in the fading summer sun, bathing in a richness wine and his gorgeous wife's glowing love.

"Hmmm…" she hums like a lazy fuzzy little honey bee buzzing near the open window of his mind. "How do you feel right now, Charles-Love? Elsie asks as she drapes her leg over his thigh and motions for him to tilt the glass to her lips before she settles back further with him, resting her head over his heart.

"In this very moment, a chagair?"

"Mmm-Hmm," she replies languidly as she twirls her fingertips through the silver hairs on his chest and kisses onto his pectoral muscle and then moves her sun blest and heavy head up to his shoulder. He slowly runs the silken waterfall of her hair through his lazy wanting fingers as he turns to kiss her temple once more.

"In this exact moment, Fair Lady Carson?" he asks again in that low, sleepy humming rumble that he has after they make love and which makes her skin feel shimmery all over just to hear it.

I did that! I did that for him!

"Mmm-hmm…"

He places his wine aside, for it is but secondary joy to him right now as he stretches the arm she is curled into down over the full length of her hair and over her waist so that he may then run a single broad fingertip underneath the edge of that delightful thick jumper and over the silky skin of his favourite little plump rise of flesh that sits just over her hip bone. Delicate. And strong and soft — and just oh so womanly. He feels himself growing warmer just at the thought of kissing her right there. Repeatedly. Hotly. Sucking at it. Nipping at it, until she calls for him to give her so much more of himself again. Oh, Dear God! This woman! His other hand moves to tilt her chin up so that he may gaze straight into her clear blue eyes. "In this most singular and precise moment, my pretty Elspeth," he says with all the gravitas of his old butler persona announcing the arrival of royalty into the Ballroom of the Abbey, "I feel like the absolute King of the Castle," he breathes into her mouth as he kisses her slowly and sensuously.

"Well, then," she replies breathlessly when she can once more take in cool air and command clear thoughts, "that ought to be quite enough for any man to be getting on with, oh, noble Sir Carson de Clicky Knees."

"Much …much more than enough I think you will find, Milady," And he gently rolls his delightful wife onto her back upon their rug and proceeds to make a most thorough inspection tour over all of the finest beauty that the estate of Downton has ever laid out before a Lord. Beneath the cosy warmth and weight of his favourite navy jumper, he traces loving paths of blissful gratitude for his fair lady wife.

"My sweetest love" he breathes across the warm and soft and rolling meadow of her skin.

Elsie sighs long and slides languorously beneath the heady swirl of warmth that her husband always so lovingly inspires in her.

Dear GOD ! This man is truly mine!

"You…" she manages to gasp out as he nips onto that little sensitive patch of skin at her hip bone, and then suckles on it, "Ooh…you, Sir Carson de Clicky Knees…are completely in-in-corrigible. Oooh…"

" MmHmmm, indeed " he murmurs blissfully, now against the softest downy skin at the top of her inner thigh, lightly dragging his silky smooth bottom lip and tongue back and forth over that delightful little place that makes her sigh his name in a slightly guttural purr that makes him shudder with delight. She lightly tugs at his hair to move him closer to where she most surely wants him "And I do not ever want to be reformed, Pretty Elspeth, for I am quite insatiable when it comes to all of this… I do think you will find, my dearest…sweeet-est… lushhh waif o' mine," he rumbles hotly —hungrily —and ever so close to her centre.

"Ooo...Oh! Oh My! …Hmmm…Oh! Yeeesss…hmmm… but I do so love you for it, Charles Ernest Carson.

"It does appear to be what I am meant for, Milady," he states with sure conviction "Lady Elspeth Mae Carson" he whispers over her, stirring the sure warmth of their connection as he once more kisses his fair lady wife— deeply, languidly, and most intimately.

Her enchanting light laughter ripples into a quietly moaning stream of utter delight that flutters across their lush, soft and secret field.

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Later still: Homeward bound

Ruffled of hair, sated, sun blest, slightly tipsy, and exhausted by grief; and yet, somehow also triumphant and flushed with a strange success, they walk silently on, arm in arm. They support each other as they both limp slightly from their various injuries and exertions, and from the weight of all of their goods and chattels, including the now silent Lady Frances Grayling in her net. They head back towards their cottage through the verdant field of barley along the very same path that Charles had cut a direct swathe through not so many hours before on this strange and glorious summer's days. The same two people on the same path —only different now and heading towards something entirely new. And now, at least, they both feel a little more ready to face yet another, unknown day. Together. Together— once more unto the breach, dear Friends,***—the very dearest, most devotedly loving and resolute of friends— following their spirits as they face tomorrow's charge.

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Pondering their day deeply as they walk, Elsie's flittering mind alights most incongruously upon a particularly unusual thought and she muses it aloud, "I must say, it was a little odd to have enjoyed such heady moments in a green summer field with you, my dear Mr Carson, while the poor Lady Frances Grayling drew her final breath and shuffled off her mortal coil in the grasses not so far away from us."

"I prefer to see it as more of… well…as a fitting tribute to a grand old Lady of the 'Landed' gentry, Elsie."

She cannot help but laugh at his pompous and deadpanned silliness. My Cheeky Charles.

"Good God!" She cries out as she pulls to a sudden halt in the middle of their straight furrow through the field of barley.

"What is it, Love?" She looks a little green around the gills all of a sudden. "What is it, Elsie?" He is a little worried now. "Do you feel unwell?"

"Good God! I've just realised something, Charles!"

"What is it, Love?"

"If your name might have been Lascelles, and you were born in France in the middle of a Grand Tour of the continent...then… then I have just been seduced and ravished…out in an open summer field, mind, by a most swarthy and handsome looking Gaul—TWICE!" He breaks into a beauteous and proud grin to return her impish smile. "And…and that means that….I am actually married to a French man!" She stares at him, all agog, and it is Charles' turn to blanch a rather unattractive shade of Chartreuse as she continues, "AND!...Oh, golly, Charles!…It also means that 'The Old Bat' was actually my mother-in-law!"

Charles tosses his head back and breaks out with a sudden, loud and hearty bark of laughter as he hugs her closer to him. "Oh, Els! I really think that will all end up being the absolute least of our troubles in all of this mess!" he chuckles again. "Oh, my Love, how you always manage to brighten my days."

He kisses the side of her lightly braided but messy loosed hair again as their combined laughter rolls out in a light-hearted wave across the heaving barley heads as they once more wend their way towards home.

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Author Notes:

*Charles and Elsie explore this poetry in greater depth on their honeymoon. See my fiction "The Acquisition of Memories". In particular, Chapter 39- 'Poet Lovers'.

Feel free to leave reviews on any of my older fictions if it is your first time visiting them. : )

** I actually looked into whether grapes would have been readily available in England in the 1920s and this document was of use: Commerce Reports, Volume 4, Issue 43. Bureau of Foreign and Domestic Commerce, Department of Commerce, 1925 (Page 194). Found via a Google ebooks sample. England was importing large amounts of fruit from many countries by this time as domestic produce was inadequate to the needs of the populace, even for fruits more suited to growing in the climate of the British Isles, such as apples and pears. Grapes were mostly imported from Spain and Portugal, and I believe that is still the case in UK today. The UK government in the post-war years was also pushing for fruit to be a more regular part of people's diets, rather than just a treat. Even so, grapes would be seen as a luxury item and likely rare for the working class to be eating. Therefore, I will put the inclusion of this item in Charles and Elsie's picnic basket down to a clear directive from the Dowager to include them, as written in Charles' first letter from Lady Violet that insisted that he take off after the morning of the funeral to go fishing and share a picnic with his wife.

*** Henry V. Act III. Scene 1, Line 1.

I may return to my other fiction 'Conversations with the Man Upstairs" for a little while, as I have another chapter of that one almost complete.

Thank you for all of the kind reviews so far.

Kind regards,

BTF