A/N: This chapter took quite long to be published and I think it might be helpful if you went through the previous chapter before reading this one. Thank you so much for bearing up with me.

Chapter 6

"This is a ridiculous idea!" Charles muttered, looking up at the sky. A veil of blue and purple played against the pitch black. Stars peeped from behind the veil of darkness.

"Oh I know you are enjoying this late night walk Mr Carson. Don't you try and deny it!" Elsie rolled her eyes and smirked, swinging her free hand as she walked beside him.

"Daft," Charles added and Elsie shook her head. "Alright, I give in. It's quite nice," he admitted.

Elsie's face burst into a smile, her eyes fixed ahead at the road, faintly sparkling from light from streetlights and from houses along the road. Charles looked down at her, watching her face from the side. The way the loose tendrils of hair framed her face, captivated his vision. The flutter of her lips as she unconsciously tried to suppress her smile. The pale skin of her face against the darkness that was closing in upon them. An occasional street lamp illuminating further, the brightness that shone in her smile. The rhythm of her walk and the faint sound of her heels clicking on the pavement.

"See? Not such a bad idea," she said looking up at him and then looked down to switch the paper bag to her other hand.

Charles cleared his throat. He turned the question he was about to ask, around in his mind, hesitating to voice it. He tried to appear as if he was not staring at her face, but the play of light upon her was simply irresistible. And the words were out before he could think or stop himself, "So, how does a beautiful Scotswoman find herself in England?"

Elsie whipped her head up to face him, a startled expression in her eyes. The questioning raise of an eyebrow. Charles berated himself mentally for not thinking twice. Calling her beautiful out of the blue was perhaps not a very good start, Charles thought. But his fears were put to rest when she smiled, within a few seconds, once she got over the initial surprise.

"It's a long story," Elsie answered, her voice soft and low as he turned her gaze away from him. A shadow making its way onto her face for a moment, before a burst of light wiped it off her face. She couldn't believe that he had just called her beautiful. She prided herself in her quality of not being a vain woman and Elsie didn't usually see herself as beautiful, more presentable than beautiful. There were days of course, when she would look at herself in the mirror and realise she did look beautiful. But it wasn't a thought that she allowed to dwell in her mind for long. But his question… Her story… she wasn't sure how to begin, what to tell. She wasn't so sure if she was ready to share it… for hers was not story of glitter and glamour. More of a grim tale of working class girl, struggling to make her way in the world. Not one, she thought, that a gentleman who moved in the social circles that he did, would want to know.

For a moment Charles wondered if her voice carried a ghost of the past, haunting her mind and clouding her voice. He ruled it down to nostalgia.

"I'm all in for a long story. Very fond of Dickens, you know." Charles smiled at her hoping his tone would relax her and he felt glad when he heard her chuckle at his words.

"Are you now?" she asked, a laugh bubbling within her. The sudden glimmer of melancholy and anxiety from earlier gone. It amazed her, how at one moment he was ever the gentleman, so proud and proper and in the next he was light-hearted and free. Two glaring contrasts.

"Absolutely! Read all of them over thrice in my lifetime," Charles replied proudly, unconsciously straightening his back and shoulders. A wide grin upon his face, that Elsie thought didn't quite match his proud posture.

This time Elsie laughed, her head thrown backwards her eyes crinkled, amused by the concoction of his actions words and expressions. The sound of her laugh ringing in the still air and piercing through the distant hum of traffic from the main motorway.

"What?" Charles asked, quite taken aback by her laughter.

"Oh nothing, nothing," Elsie replied while trying to catch her breath. Seeing Charles' questioning look she added, "It's just that I expected you might say so and you did."

"I'm a stereotype then?" he raised his eyebrows.

"Not quite but close," Elsie bit her lip trying to stifle her giggles.

"What is that supposed to mean?" Charles asked, laughing softly. Elsie's sense of humour creeping up to him and loosening him up.

"Well… you do seem like the sort of very English gentleman who would settle by the fire with a book by Dickens and glass of sherry or port," Elsie said trying her best to keep her laughter at bay, but the hints of suppressed laughter vaguely visible as the picture in her words formed in her mind.

"How amusing," Charles deadpanned and crossed his arms in front of him.

"Well? Am I wrong?" Elsie asked turning towards him, a distinct twinkle in her eye.

Charles tried to maintain an unamused expression but failed. The truth of her assumption actually felt funny now. "Unfortunately you aren't."

Elsie smirked in response, a clearly triumphant look about her face.

"But I don't go for the fire often," Charles added with a lopsided smile. "Sometimes I feel a bit lazy to go all the way."

Elsie smiled at his words and sighed when she remembered his question from earlier. Turning her gaze away from him and back at the road she began, "So… as a brief answer to your question. I was born and raised in a farm in Argyll. I started working early on. I was working full time by the time I was in my early twenties. Didn't get to go to university… though looking back, I would have liked to, I did quite well in school. But it wasn't an option back then."

And as she paused to take a deep breath, he observed how her eyes hinted of regret for lost chances. But it was gone in a moment as she began to speak again. "I started work, my first proper job I suppose, as a maid in one of those big manor houses. When I was in my late twenties, I shifted to London from Scotland to work in a hotel. Changed a couple of jobs and landed on the position of Head of the Housekeeping department there."

"That's impressive," Charles interjected. Somewhere in between the lines of her story, he sensed hardships that she didn't say. But in the corners of her voice, they lurked. Shadows and ghosts. And he felt, there was much more than what she said.

"Quite," Elsie said. "It was there that I picked up details about event planning and I learnt about it on the side. But it was a well-paid job and I wasn't quite in a position to leave it and take the risk of starting something new, so I stayed there for quite a long time. By the end I was quite thorough about the ins and outs of an event planning business. But you can't start something like that fresh in London. One, it's too expensive. Two, there's loads of others who are much more experienced and 'in the game' so to speak. So I shifted to Yorkshire." Elsie turned at him and smiled.

"You've carved quite a path in life, haven't you?" Charles said, clearly impressed and feeling a bit apprehensive about what he's done with his life compared to this strong-willed woman from way up in Scotland.

"You could say that," Elsie blushed and looked down at the pavement and watched their slow and almost idle footsteps. Hers a few inches ahead of his. She wasn't prepared for the tender way he looked at her. This certainly wasn't the reaction she expected from someone who moved in the circles that he did. She had expected him to be rather appalled by her working class roots. He was the manager of one of the grandest houses (better said "castles") in Yorkshire after all. The way he looked at her, the sheer admiration in his eyes stirred up something in her heart that she couldn't exactly lay a finger on. Along with a subtle feeling of trust.

A moment of silence ensued and Charles was the one to break it, "Why Downton though?"

"Pardon?" Elsie asked, startled by his sudden question and sounding as if she was shaken out of a deep thought. Her train of thoughts came to a sudden halt.

"Why Downton?" Charles repeated, looking down at her. He was surprised how suddenly she seemed very distant and quiet, he couldn't help but worry if his questions weren't what she had expected, whether in some way he had upset her.

"Oh," she responded, realisation finally kicking in. "Well I started off in York. Rented a small place and it was all by myself. That didn't work out well. In fact, it's fair to say that it didn't work out at all, I struggled so badly those days. That was where I met Beryl."

"Oh..." Charles was unprepared for the brutal honesty in her words. It certainly wasn't what he expected from her reserved nature. It was true that she was open and cheerful in conversation but he had also sensed how she became guarded and reserved when speaking of her life.

"Yeah…" Elsie trailed off and looked up at the sky and the stars peeping from behind the clouds. She sighed, a feeling of weariness in her bones and a feeling of weight upon her heart. "In fact the day I met her I was at the Bakewell's store in York. She saw me, and being the affectionate but terribly annoying red-head that she is…" Elsie paused for a moment as Charles chuckled at her description of Beryl and began again, "…got me talking, we talked for a long time which you might find easy to imagine now that you know her, and asked me out for a cup of tea. I was reluctant but she dragged me along and got me stuffed with sandwiches, bless her kind and exasperating soul."

"You two have a peculiar friendship, you know that?" Charles chuckled. "One would even think that you are enemies."

Elsie snorted at his words. "The lines are blurry I can tell you," she said eliciting a loud laugh from him. "No she's actually a really good friend. Only annoys you half the time," she deadpanned but then chuckled unable to contain her own laughter. When the laughter had subsided she began again, her voice softer and her eyes fixed on the road that stretched ahead of them, "She helped me set up in Downton. I started very small and it's fair to say she kept me well fed almost always till I had some business coming. Even after that, she didn't relent for some time. The business did well. I got Anna to help me out as my assistant. Moved office space for a bigger place. Got a small staff for the place, a flat for myself and the rest is history." She looked up at him after she had finished, and she was more than surprised by the look of pure admiration on his face.

"What?" she asked, unable to resist.

"I'm just…" Charles took a deep breath, "Wow!"

"The Life of Elsie Hughes, abridged version with author's note," she laughed, a painful note hidden in it. "Sorry to keep it that long."

"No please Elsie! I'm… I'm impressed and surprised is an understatement," Charles exclaimed and Elsie blushed. She quickly looked away.

"Sorry I've not got glamorous roots, like most other event planners," she said, a note of melancholy returning to her voice. A hint of self-deprecation.

"Elsie believe me when I say that I am in wonder and admire your spirit whole heartedly," Charles reasoned and finally Elsie looked at him and smiled. That smile that enchanted Charles in the first place. Only her eyes held a softer shadow in them and her lips did not reach as wide as usual.

"Thanks," she said, her voice barely a whisper.

"I mean… making a new life for yourself in a new country –"

"Scotland is hardly another country Charles," Elsie shook her head and cut him short.

"But still! The way I see it, it's quite an achievement!"

"I'm sorry I just blabbered on," Elsie apologised, looking away from. Accepting compliments was definitely not one of her traits. If Elsie Hughes was anything, that was private and reserved. She smirked at the darkness. That, was only a sliver of the hurricane that Elsie's life was and is. Everything that went on in her life, went on beneath the surface. Outside she was always the stoic and confident Elsie Hughes.

"And what about you Mr Carson?" she asked, shifting her paper bag to the other hand.

Charles observed her movement and offered, "I could carry that for you if you like. It does look quite heavy."

"Oh I can manage Charles," she smiled. "Beryl is not known for packing small meals but I can manage, truly." Elsie couldn't deny that she was impressed by his gentlemanly behaviour.

"Elsie I insist!" he persisted, his eyebrows knitted in an insisting expression.

But Elsie was determined to have it her own way too. One thing that Elsie prided about herself was her ability to stay independent. She rarely, almost never relied on anyone. A solitary ship making its way on a stormy sea. "Charles, seriously! I can manage," she said, her voice strong and determined.

"Let me help you, please," Charles insisted.

"Why? Did you take me for some frail, young thing who'd faint at even at the sight of something heavy?" she smirked and playfully raised an eyebrow.

Charles sighed, quite exasperated by her stubbornness yet impressed all the same, and shook his head, "Are you always this stubborn?"

"Mmm, yes. At least, I suppose so, for I've been told that I am, rather often," Elsie replied with her head held high. She couldn't deny that the paper bag was a tad bit heavy but it wasn't a weight that Elsie hadn't or couldn't carry. She's had her fair share of manual labour both as a girl and a woman.

"Long live women's rights and all but it wouldn't kill you if you just handed that bag over to me," Charles said rather sternly this time.

Elsie was surprised by his persistence. It felt nice though, a gentleman offering to carry her bag for her. For a woman who had been independent all her life, she had always thought that she wouldn't fall for such actions and very often, too often in fact, she hadn't cared about such things. But he was clever at pulling at her heartstrings in a way that was entirely novel to her and she gave in but being Elsie Hughes she covered it up with a sharp comment, "Oh alright! If it makes you that happy to at the prospect of being a beast of burden."

She handed her bag to him and he accepted, his face erupting into a Cheshire cat grin. Elsie eyed his silly expression and smiled.

"Happy now?" she asked, trying her best to contain her mirth.

"Much!" he replied playfully. "Glad to be of service My Lady." He bowed slightly but graciously in her direction.

"I'm not sure I deserve that," Elsie scoffed, her hands making their way into her pockets.

"I think you do," Charles replied, his voice low serious. Far from the playful tone that Elsie had predicted it might take.

At his words, instinctively her hands came out of her pockets and clasped in front of her. She blushed, turned her head down for a few seconds and blinked rapidly. The corners of her lips twitched upwards as she tried to suppress a wide smile.

But quickly, she regained her usual demeanour and asked, "You avoided my question Mr Carson. What about you?"

"What about me?" he asked quite confused, unable to recall her question.

"What is your story Mr Carson?"

"Oh," he cleared his throat and swallowed. Where can he start? What should he say? What if his past disgusts this lovely woman?

Elsie tilted her head and looked at him with a questioning look. Charles' free hand clenched and unclenched away from her sight.

"Well," he cleared his throat again. "There's not much to say."

"I'm sure that's not true," she said, a lopsided smile on her face.

"I grew up on the estate," he began after a sigh.

"You mean on the Downton estate?" Elsie interrupted him, quite surprised.

"Yes," he answered, eyebrows raised in confusion.

"Go on," she urged.

"So, yes. I grew up on the estate. My father managed the stables. He was Head Groom back then, when Downton had many price winning horses. Ever since I could remember I've helped out at the Abbey. Robert and I were very close growing up. The Dowager Countess, well, she was the Countess then, took a shine to me and helped fund my studies."

"Well, I must say, that puts her in quite a different light," Elsie commented, her expression showing that she was not amused.

"Not fond of her, are you?" Charles inquired, amused by her sudden change of expression.

"Let's say safely that I don't warm to her type," Elsie replied maintaining her firm expression.

Charles chuckled at her word. Normally, he wouldn't have reacted in that manner to anyone uttering a word against Violet Crawley, the Dowager Countess of Grantham. They would certainly have another thing coming. But he had to concede, Elsie looked rather adorable in her unamused look. Her lips pursed, eyebrows in a tight line and warm embers glowing in the depths of her blue eyes, visible even beneath the faint street lights.

Charles kicked a stray stone that had made its way on to the pavement, "Well. She may appear to be rather self-centred and such but deep down she's much different. Compassionate, one would even call her kind but that is in her own way. Not everyone can see it."

"Safe to say the magic spell hasn't worked on me from what I've seen and heard of her," Elsie scoffed but when she met his eyes her mocking smile faded. In his dark eyes were a very serious light. One that seemed to plead her to understand and at the same time assert the fact that he strongly disagreed with her. One that managed to make her feel bad about her words.

"Well, you are free to have your own opinions of course. But I've known her all my life and…" he paused to clear his throat and looked ahead at the road that stretched out in front of them for a moment before continuing. "I've seen who she is beneath. And I'd even go as far as to say I wouldn't be here, where I am now, if wasn't for her."

Elsie remained quiet. She couldn't find any words. The low but clear tone of his voice, its depth, its severity, all spoke of how much they meant to him. There were unspoken words hiding behind the spaces in his sentences. But Elsie herself was no stranger to them. Much of who she was, laid invisible in those minute spaces that ran deep. Unknown to others, untouched by her for so long. And Charles Carson, she assumed, must be no different. But it intrigued her. Oh yes it did, those invisible spaces that would complete who Charles Carson was, they intrigued her. And with that intrigue came a strong desire to uncover those spaces, to learn what they hid. And as much as the alien thought terrified her… to know Charles Carson.

Charles looked at the woman by his side, from the corner of his eye. He was left impatient by the sudden silence that suddenly settled upon them. He wondered what she might be thinking. He was never really good at reading people but her… he wasn't really sure. She was better than mysterious. His mind searched for a word apt to describe her. Mystique. And of course she was delightfully exotic and beautiful as the word.

Elsie was the one of break the silence in an attempt to revive their comfortable atmosphere from before, "You must have been close to Lord Grantham from a long time back."

"Oh yes, I've known Robert since almost forever. And before you ask, yes, we are on first name terms though I wouldn't even dare to go that far with his mother," he chuckled at his own joke and Elsie smiled lightly. "We played together and I saved Robert from many scrapes he got himself into. He went to Eaton. I went to public school in York, Robert's mother helped of course. To get in and occasionally financially as well. I doubt anyone in my family had ever gone anywhere beyond Ripon Grammar."

"It certainly was a different world, wasn't it?" Elsie sighed and crossed her hands in front of her. She could understand it. Her family had been farmers for centuries. Probably since forever. She broke out of it all, from the life of being yet another farmer's wife. The life her mother lived, the life that Elsie swore she'd escape.

"I suppose so… I got a scholarship to attend university, business management was what I studied. Robert went to Cambridge. He studied political science. His mother was quite serious about him being a prominent figure in the House of Lords."

"I wonder how the Dowager took it, now that Lord Grantham is more a business figure than a political figure."

"Not too well, I can tell you. But I suppose she came to terms with it. After all it came with its own set of advantages and she warmed up to them."

"And?"

"And what?" he looked at her, confused.

"And the rest of your story Charles," Elsie rolled her eyes.

"Oh, well, after that the Dowager offered me a position. I accepted, got a bit of training and started work at Downton Abbey and here I am after twenty five or so years," he smiled rather self-consciously. There were many things left unsaid. Many secrets and old wounds he hadn't opened. Wasted years and a lost love. An apologetic, penniless boy returning home to face his father's wrath and his mother's disappointed glare.

Elsie was quick to notice the vaguely melancholic air about his little speech. She could feel the secrets stirring within him, though what, she didn't know and couldn't say. It was fair, she thought. After all she had held tight to her secrets and so why shouldn't he?

"You've come a long way in life too and I think that's brilliant," she said in admiration of his achievements.

"I suppose so… Thank you" he answered but not with any great enthusiasm. The melancholy pouring out of his eyes and his words that made Elsie feel somewhere between sorry and a tenderness for him. But his immediate silence settled thickly around them.

Elsie tugged at the lapels of her coat and pulled it tight around her. She turned her head to look at the familiar streets now entrenched in a dark veil. The silence around them, interrupted occasionally by the dull hum of people getting on with their lives, grew thicker. She didn't want it to, but how to break it she didn't know.

Charles looked up at the sky. From within the darkness, tiny stars smiled at them. Their light not strong enough to shatter the darkness but not weak enough to not make themselves known. He didn't want this silence to settle around them. Most often in life, he would try to wish such things away instead of actively trying and when that doesn't happen he would accept with a heavy heart, consoling himself that it was meant to happen. But not tonight. It was magical, what was around them. It had been a long time, a very long time since he had felt so. And he was not quite ready to let that magic die.

"It's beautiful isn't it," he whispered as best he could, his gaze still fixed upon the stars.

Elsie looked up as well. A wide smile grew upon her lips, "Yes, very."

"I've always loved stars as a boy. When I was young I studied the constellations as best as I could from a book from the library at the Abbey."

"That's nice. I can almost picture it. You, pouring over a big, leather bound book. Though I can't imagine you as a boy," she chuckled mischievously.

"Hey!" he whipped his head down to face and admonished.

"Just kidding," she raised her hands, a very evident glint in her eyes. And when he frowned at her, she added in a softer voice, "No, truly."

He pursed his lips as he studied her face. Eyes that held a silent apology and her bottom lip drawn between her teeth, quite attractively, he thought. His expressions softened and she smiled, a peace offering, relieved that her silent apology was accepted.

"When I was a young girl I used to spin tales about the stars," she said as she looked up to the stars again. "I used to imagine all sorts of silly stories."

"It must have been lovely. Spinning tales sitting by a barn widow as the farm breathed silently around you," he commented as he observed the serene look on her face as she watched the stars. Her smile, serene and relaxed. But it changed at his words. The relaxation gave way to a suppressed, pained look.

"You are quite the poet aren't you?" she joked, in an effort to lift away the feelings mingled with memories that settled upon her.

"One of the dying breed," he answered in a playful tone but he couldn't get his mind off the sudden change in her expression.

She smiled, silently, yet with the melancholic aura still around her as she replied in a soft voice, "It wasn't quite as romantic as that."

For Charles, farm life, despite the fact that he lived in an area surrounded by farms, always meant a free life, the master of one's own destiny. To work as one pleased, hard work of course but satisfying nonetheless, compared to taking orders and living a life as dictated by others. But the eyes of the once farm girl beside him spoke of a vision, a life, much different than the one that had taken root in his imagination.

Elsie understood or at least she thought she did. Charles had lived all his life surrounded by the splendour of the Abbey. A world she hadn't ever known in the faraway Scottish village that only amounted to a tiny dot on the map of the United Kingdom, slightly larger on the one of Scotland. The manor house, she once worked in while in Scotland was devoid of the luxuries and glory she had heard of about Downton Abbey. They were an aristocratic family too but struggling to hold on to a way of life that was slipping through their fingers, their colourful world of wealth and beauty crumbling around them. Elsie had seen them at their worst, on the verge of ruin and ultimate poverty. She wondered if Charles knew the family, the MacClares. The Marquess and Marchioness of Flintshire. They were once the owners of a magnificent castle, their ancestors were the Lairds of Duneagle. But the castle was sold lock, stock and barrel in the late 1920s. And the manor house in the adjoining smaller estate held a few glories of a lost history, when the heads of their families were the Lairds of a sprawling estate and before that, the Chiefs of clan McClare.

She tried to understand. Charles probably never knew of cold air biting through thread bare clothes. Trekking to barns in knee deep snow to work early before school. Days of hunger when bad weather ruined the crops. Whiffs of whiskey on her father's breath and her mother rummaging the kitchen and the larder to fix something for supper while ignoring the liquor fuelled curses coming from the living room. The centuries old farmhouse with the leaking roof and cracked stone walls that let in draughts of cold air. Yes, there was beauty to it, sometimes. A much simpler way of life that held its own complexities.

She shook her head slightly, almost unnoticeably. She noticed Charles looking at her cautiously. She took a sharp intake of breath, "But yes. It was simple… in a way."

Everything about her, from the furrowed brow to her lips that were in a thin line, from the icy stare in her eyes that was directed onto an uncertain focus point on the street to the clenched fist by her side (that she presumed that he might not have noticed) signalled to him not to push her, to thread gently, carefully, cautiously. Women were not creatures he understood, but this one… even more so.

"Look," she said softly calling his attention to something that he couldn't recognise.

"What? Where?" he inquired as he frantically looked around them.

"There, in the sky," she unclenched her fist and pointed at the mosaic of stars that stretched far beyond them into the unknown corners of the universe.

He followed her gaze and whispered when realisation dawned upon him, his lips curled up into a smile, "Shooting stars."

"Are you going to make a wish?" she asked, her voice low yet eyes twinkling as she faced him.

"I already did," he smiled at her. A smile of pure joy and contentment, so filled with something that Elsie couldn't place but wished she knew. Something so tender yet intoxicating. Illusive even, she thought as she returned a smile. And in a deep, untouched corner of her heart, she made her own wish.

TO BE CONTINUED…

Thank you so very much for all your lovely reviews throughout this story. They have been a real encouragement for me to continue this story. Apologies for not being able to update sooner, real life took over. Thank you for being patient with me and sticking with this story. I'll try to update the next chapter as soon as possible. I'd be very grateful if you could let me know in the reviews your thoughts about this chapter and this story. Hope you enjoyed! See you soon with the next chapter!