Carson shut the door behind him and let the duffle bags slide off his shoulders. They thumped unceremoniously on the wooden floor and he discarded them in order to inspect his new quarters. As he poked around, he decided that the room was quite grand, far more so than the hotel rooms he'd stayed at during his European wanderings.

Tucked against the wall, a four-poster bed was covered in some ornate duvet, with a garish pattern of burgundy flowers, and flanking it on either side were little end tables topped with oil lamps. It was an odd, if outdated choice, but he found he didn't hate it. As promised, a little study adjoined the bedroom, furnished with a Queen Anne-style writing desk topped with a fresh notepad and a fountain pen, and in the corner was a small collection of books of selected British authors. The little bathroom adjoining the study offered a clawfoot tub he didn't think he could fit into, with walls adorned with opulent tilework and sconces that must have been imported from somewhere where a Romance language was spoken.

In sum, Carson found this room to be adequate; perhaps, if pressed, he might even call it pleasant. His mood, however, was not improved. His clothes were still damp, so he unpacked a fresh Oxford shirt, a navy blazer, and trousers and hastily changed into them.

A scowl could still be felt across his forehead, however. He had absolutely no desire to be here, trapped like a prisoner awaiting sentencing. And yet, his brief return to Cambridge, alongside the ghosts of his former life that resided there, had been surreal. It was as if he were walking around in a dream. Nothing felt as it should and he couldn't figure out how to return to the way things were.

A heavy sigh left him and he threw his body weight on the bed. Above him hung a tapestry that draped across the four posters. Time slipped by as he stared at its pattern, his dark eyes tracing the twists and curves of the colors woven into it. As he did, Carson recalled his rather unpleasant introduction to the Executive Director. Robert had described her as "kind" and a "godsend to Downton." Surely, they must be speaking of different women. His interaction with her, however brief, had left a sour taste in his mouth. He didn't know why, but he was certain that she was going to make this Michaelmas term more tedious for him than it ought to be.

Carson vowed then and there to minimize his contact with her to every extent possible. He nodded to himself, satisfied with his plan. In a massive retreat center emptied out by the off-season, this shouldn't be a difficult task, he decided.

At around 7:00 that evening, when his stomach's rumbling could be ignored no longer, Carson moseyed downstairs, hoping to find a small dinner party assembled in the dining room, replete with the other staff members that had been mentioned. John and Anna, was it? Or, perhaps even more ideally, he'd find a dinner tray for him to take back up to the solace of his own room. To his abject horror, what he found instead were two place settings and Elsie Hughes putting the finishing touches on the dining table.

"Where are the others?" Carson asked bluntly as he entered the dining room and stood near the head of the table.

Elsie was lighting a pair of long-stemmed candles when she looked up at him, her blue eyes staring at him with a degree of annoyance. "What others?" She blew out the match and smoke wafted around her.

"The other staff," he replied.

"It's the off-season, as you well know. Most of our staff is away. John and Anna live in Ripon with their baby, so they don't have dinner at the Center. Daisy, the housekeeper, prepares the food and then goes home to her family as well. She just left a little bit ago."

"So it's just us for dinner?"

Elsie looked around at the empty room and back at him. "It looks that way," she said as she carried on finishing the place settings.

A long pause followed as Carson decided his next move. To have dinner with her was decidedly against his recent resolve to keep this woman at a distance. But the Shepherd's Pie smelled heavenly and his stomach, ever the traitor, growled and all but made the decision for him. He grumbled something unintelligible and probably rude as he sat down at the place setting across from her.

Wordlessly, she served the meal, filling their plates with Shepherd's Pie and topping their wine glasses with Syrah. Finally sitting across from him, Elsie lifted her glass in his general direction and said, "To a productive stay here."

It was curt, even professional, and for that, Carson was grateful. They ate in silence, and he was grateful for that, too. It had been a very long time since he had dined with someone he didn't know. Months of meandering through Europe alone meant many solitary meals, and the art of small talk, once a well-honed skill of his, had atrophied after months of disuse.

Instead, all that filled the great dining hall of Downton Abbey that night was the clinking and clanking of silverware against the china.

In her years as the executive director of the Retreat Center, Elsie Hughes had had her fair share of egos to contend with. Of course, there were the professors and researchers who were bookish, if not a little mousy, quietly keeping to themselves and their articles, only piping up if they needed a cup of tea or help with the printers. Then, there were the demigods, the ones who were smart as hell and knew it, too. They had esteemed positions at the world's best universities, sitting on endowed seats, in demand as scholars and lecturers. They gave her the most grief. They were seldom content to keep to the library or the archives; their presence must be felt and heard and seen. Most of her energy during the retreat season was spent keeping those egos in check, fanning them back with a chair and a whip if need be.

Upon their first meeting, Elsie wondered if Charles Carson was of the latter variety. He certainly seemed pompous enough, snarking comments at her about their "egalitarian" naming conventions at the retreat center. But as they sat and ate in silence, his dark eyes only occasionally glancing at her, a sad expression on his face, she wondered if he was more like the former variety. Then again, he didn't seem mousy, of course; not by any stretch. Perhaps, she thought, he had an ego on him, but it was a little bruised, a little battered.

"Are you enjoying dinner?" she piped up after the silence became too much.

His dark eyes shot up to hers at the sudden shift from quiet to conversation. "Hmm?" he asked distractedly. "Oh, um, yes. It's lovely."

"And your rooms? Are they satisfactory?"

Carson nodded his head. His glass of wine caught his attention and he took a long gulp. Silence reigned once more.

This one will be a challenge, Elsie thought to herself. "What are you researching during your sabbatical?"

"English class dynamics during the interwar period. As I'm sure you know, there was quite a bit of social upheaval during that time."

Elsie was grateful for a sentence from him that consisted of more than a few words and some unintelligible grunts. "Indeed there was," she replied. "And aren't we the better for it?"

He placed his hands on the edge of the table, as if steeling himself. "I often wonder if we are," he said. "People have lost all structure and sense of identity nowadays. Everyone's lost and without purpose. The whole world's gone mad."

"Well, I don't recall seeing a title before your name," she countered. "And yet, here you are, hob-nobbing with earls and holding university ranks that used to belong to the upper class."

Elsie was surprised to see a small, almost sad smile form on his face. It almost made her regret the clip of her tone.

"No, you're right. I'm just the son of a working class family," Carson lamented, taking another sip of wine, looking into the glass as if the answers to all his questions resided in its contents.

There was something about the darkness of his eyes and the apparent sadness they reflected that tugged at her. The air felt very heavy as his mournful tone permeated the room and, without any understanding as to why, Elsie found herself wishing to console this man. He seemed adrift.

"But I stand by my statement: the world's gone mad," he finished in a half-hearted attempt at a joke. It had the fortunate effect of lightening the atmosphere of the dining room.

At this, she cleared her throat, flashed him a smile, and shook off any desire to comfort this man she had only just met. "I think I can agree to that," she said instead.

Dinner finished in a more amiable silence than the one that had preceded it. Elsie reflected on the fact that it was quite uncommon for her to dine alone with one of their scholars. In fact, during the retreat season, this entire room would be filled with learned minds chatting away; occasionally, she'd join them and partake in their banter. But most nights, she'd eat in the solitude of her office what Daisy had prepared, hunched over her computer, grateful for a moment's peace and quiet. The off-season was her time to enjoy having the estate almost entirely to herself. Without dozens of scholars to bother her, she would always take her meals in the dining room, usually with a book as her companion, and would retire with the same book to the sitting room, where she'd often get a fire going and enjoy a bottle of wine. Perhaps it was a little indulgent, but who was around to care? Tonight, she saw no reason to break with tradition and decided to let this weary stranger in on her secret indulgence.

"I typically retire to the sitting room after dinner to enjoy a book and a bottle of wine. You're welcome to join me if you'd like," she told him. That sad smile appeared again and Elsie knew the words that would follow before they were spoken.

"Thank you, but I think I'll turn in tonight," Carson replied. "Busy day tomorrow. Lots to acquaint myself with."

"Of course," she nodded. "Well, in that case, goodnight."

He bade her a goodnight in return, and within a few moments, Elsie was left in the dining room alone. His footsteps receded up the great hall staircase until she heard them no more. Shrugging, she went about her evening, clearing the table, blowing out the candles, and finally, once all had been cleaned up, she hunkered down in the sitting room with the aforementioned book and the aforementioned bottle of wine. She tucked her feet underneath a throw blanket and sighed, truly relaxed for the first time today. It wasn't long before the warmth from the fire and the darkness of the room lulled her into an ill-timed slumber, a novel draped across her chest, a faint smile on her lips.

The sound of the radiator clanking and hissing roused Carson from his slumber. He blinked the sleep from his eyes as they adjusted to the dark blue hue of the room. The furnishings were foreign to him and he felt that kind of disorientation one feels when waking in an unfamiliar place. It faded as he got his bearings down and sat up. The wood floor beneath his feet was frigid and he was half-tempted to return to the warmth of his bedsheets. But the sun had already begun the day, and he decided that he ought to, too.

He shuffled to the window that overlooked the south lawn, rubbing the stubble on his cheeks and smoothing down the errant curls that had become wild overnight. As promised, the view was particularly lovely. Even in the dark hue of twilight, Carson could make out rolling hills, an expansive greenhouse, and trees upon trees upon trees. Nearer to the east was some sort of temple structure he couldn't quite decipher; that could be left for a daytime stroll, perhaps.

He moseyed to the bathroom and eyed the comically small tub. It was from an era where people were much smaller than he, and he wondered how contorted his imposing frame would have to become to fit into it. Indeed, as he got ready that morning, poor Carson became quite contorted, his knees and elbows bumping against the sides of the tub, most of his body exposed out of the water, chilly and covered in goosebumps, and on no fewer than two occasions did the bar of soap slip from his hands and slide across the tiled floor, necessitating his slippery trek across the room to retrieve it. The bathroom was left in a terrible state afterwards, puddles all around it, every spare towel pulled out of the linen closet as reinforcements to dry it all up.

What was left of his mildly pleasant mood upon waking, one could hardly say. Part of him wondered if this room and its tortuous tub were retribution for his rude tone yesterday. Still, he managed to dress in his usual uniform of a white Oxford shirt and a blazer without further incident, and head downstairs in time for breakfast.

To his great relief, he found that breakfast was a buffet, with scrambled eggs and sausage filling antique chafing dishes. He walked over to them and began filling a plate when he heard chatter coming from the next room. Turning around, he saw Elsie standing next to a dark-haired man walking with a cane in his right hand.

"Good morning, Charles," Elsie said. Her use of his Christian name was not lost on him, and he found that her insistence on using it caused him a degree of annoyance. But she seemed oblivious to his sour mood and continued, "This is John Bates, our resident archivist. He's up here this morning working on a cataloging project."

Carson set down his plate and turned to greet him. "Pleasure to meet you, Mr. Bates."

"Likewise. And please, call me John."

He was certain that his eyes began to roll. It had only been twelve hours and already had had his fill with the laidback, hippie, Kumbaya sentiment around here. This was a scholarly retreat center, for heaven's sake. Without further comment, he fixed himself a cup of tea and began to tuck into his breakfast.

Elsie and John glanced at one another. "Perhaps you'll be able to meet John's wife, Anna, later this week," she said.

John nodded and smiled at the mention of his wife. "She's at home with the little one this morning. He's rather colicky right now."

Carson looked up from his tea. "Yes, perhaps later this week," he managed to grumble before returning to his breakfast.

The other two joined him, but his sour mood was palpable and both John and Elsie were hesitant to poke the proverbial bear. They chatted amongst themselves about John's cataloging project, and when that had been exhausted, they moved onto John's favorite topic of discussion: his little Henry. The young lad was teething now and in quite a state about it.

"Let me see the latest picture of your little bairn," Elsie said to John, who gladly fished his phone out from his jacket and showed her a photo of Anna holding Henry. It was taken recently, perhaps even last night, for the little boy was dressed in footie pajamas and looked positively milk drunk. Elsie, for her part, brightened at once. A smile took up her entire face; it was hard not to notice, and even in his foul mood, Carson noticed it, too. "Isn't he the charmer?"

"He takes after his darling mother in that way," John insisted. He turned to Carson and asked, "Would you care to see?"

He had no particular desire to see the son of a person he had only just met, but he acquiesced for some unknown reason. The picture of the chubby, dark-haired baby boy was, as previously described, quite charming. Carson inexplicably found himself with a small smile on his lips.

"Bit of a soft spot for a cute bairn, have you?" Elsie asked in a teasing tone as she noticed his reaction, her brogue thicker than he'd heard it yet. His dark eyes shot up to hers and he found her staring back at him with a smirk. She looked rather smug about the whole thing, and he would not stand for it.

Without wasting a second, Carson cleared his throat and shook his head. "Hardly," he countered. "At any rate, I'd best be off. Lots of research to do yet today."

With that, he grabbed his teacup and departed in search of the library. Its relative solitude and stillness were a comfort to him. The room, itself, was massive, flanked on all sides by bookshelves that stretched from the floor to the ceiling and were accompanied by a sliding ladder. It smelled musty, that distinct scent that comes from books, that one he adored so much. When he was a boy, he would spend hours in his local library, lost amongst its shelves, making friends with Huck Finn and the hobbits from the Shire and the Three Musketeers. As an adult, the library was a similar place of comfort, a sanctuary to where he could retreat when all else felt unfamiliar or tedious to him. He knew that he would never tire of books or their musty scent, not ever.

Carson spent most of that morning in peace, sipping on his Earl Grey until it went cold, perusing the shelves as he got familiar with the lay of the land, pulling a book or two from its place and digging into it. Around eleven or so, however, his solitude was interrupted by the sound of footsteps and the gentle rapping of a cane on the library door. Before he could answer, John Bates walked in.

"Sorry to be a bother, Charles," he said. "I have a few things in here that I've been looking for. Don't mind me."

Carson muttered something, but was too distracted by the presence of another person to return his focus to his book about the Suffragette movement among Britain's upper class. He watched, instead, as John gathered books from the shelves and stacked them on a long table, making notes on a clipboard, and going back to the shelves for more.

"How long have you been here at the retreat center?" Carson heard himself asking. He didn't feel particularly curious about this, but getting any work done was out of the question now, and he couldn't just watch another man work while he sat idle. At least a conversation would occupy him until John left.

"About seven years," he replied, halting his task and resting his forearms casually on the stack of books that had formed. "I was the librarian at the University of York before that, but after going through a rather nasty divorce, I ended up here in search of a fresh start. It's been a godsend, really. It's where I met Anna." He checked his clipboard once again and said off-handedly, "Actually, Downton has been home to a lot of us runaways. Almost all of us here ran away from something and found somewhere good to land in this old place."

"'All of us?'" Carson repeated curiously.

John nodded. "Very much so. Anna, too. Even Elsie."

Carson's dark eyes looked up. "Really? And what's her story?"

He smiled and shook his head. "That's for her to tell, I'm afraid," he replied. Finally, John set the clipboard down and looked knowingly at him. In a kind voice, he asked, "And what are you running away from, Charles?"

Carson stirred in his seat and felt rather exposed. Eager to regain control of the situation, he puffed up his chest and said in a low voice, "I have done no such thing. I haven't run from anything."

A long moment followed and his words lingered in the air. Eventually, John smiled and said, "Of course not. How silly of me to presume." The sudden lightness in his tone told Carson that he didn't believe his response, not one bit, but was too kind to press him on it. He was relieved for that, at least.

"Say, it's nearly lunchtime. Care for some fish and chips?" John asked. "There's a good spot in the village, Beryl's Bistro. They always put on a decent lunch."

He hesitated. This man, knowing him for under twenty minutes, had already sussed out the true nature of his sabbatical. What more could he glean from an hour at lunch? Still, he needed to eat and that was reason enough to agree, however reluctantly.

As they hopped into his Triumph and John gave directions to Beryl's Bistro, Carson's thoughts were preoccupied with what John had said about Downton being a haven for lost souls running away from something. Certainly, he fit that bill. But he wondered what on earth that Scottish woman, with her snarky brogue and her very blue eyes, could possibly be running away from.

Those thoughts consumed him as morning turned slowly into afternoon.

A/N: Thank you all so much for the support for the last chapter! I'm glad you're enjoying it. It's been such fun to write so far.

If you can spare a moment or two, I'd love to hear your thoughts about this installment :)