Chapter 7 - Pretty Pennies

A/N: Thank you, thank you, thank you, all, for your enthusiastic response to this story. I am, once again, behind on responding to each reviewer, but I enjoy doing it and will continue to, though I am a bit of a slog (slug?) about it right now. I submitted an entry a fiction contest and had to stop writing this to get my story in before the deadline last week. I specifically also want to thank all of my guest reviewers for this story, because I CAN'T respond to you directly, and many of you have left really lovely, specific, detailed and insightful comments and reviews. They mean a lot to me, and I take your reactions to what I've written to heart (and incorporate them into future chapters).

So, these next few chapters might feel a bit…angst-y? Fraught, perhaps? I have SO MANY ideas for married Chelsie, including chapters that will be dedicated to some of my fave fandom peeps, but I don't want to skip over this particular part of their story.

~CeeCee

Fall 1924

She felt ashamed.

She tried to shake the feeling, push it aside, but it dogged her, worried at the back of her mind. This¸ this was why she never should have taken him up on his offer of an "investment property". And the plain truth of the matter was, she had no one to blame but herself. Nae, the entire, messy pile of it was right at her feet, despite the fact that it was he who stated he was ashamed.

She hadn't expected it to sting so much, to feel so embarrassing: the revelation of her true self. No, he'd never caught her in a lie, and she appreciated him saying so. But the topography of who she was, the valleys and peaks that made up Elsie Hughes' life and mind and heart, wasn't as familiar terrain as he'd thought before this afternoon.

It had been lovely, though, spending time with him away from Downton, discussing everything and nothing, people-watching, lunching on the hampers of food Beryl Patmore had packed for them. Their time had developed a different rhythm than the frenetic pace it beat whilst they were working; it was slower and more languorous, and wholly enjoyable to her.

During those sporadic hours and afternoons they had spent house-hunting, some of his innate and deeply ingrained formality had started to rub away, revealing a man hinted at but never on display at Downton; it was like taking polish and a buffing rag to copper coated in verdigris: you knew before you began your work, there was something shimmering underneath, yet the beauty of it still managed to startle and delight you.

Aye, they both had been revealed, had revealed themselves, knowingly and unknowingly, over the past few weeks, working together on what she stiffly referred to as "the project." What a gray, uninspiring way to name what, essentially, was their future, or what she'd hope it was going to be. She simply wished she'd known, that night she cajoled herself in the mirror, how bare, how naked, she would feel on this side of the full truth. And there hadn't been time, not before Mr. Bates' harried interruption, to gauge, exactly, what her news had done to shift Charles Carson's understanding of who, exactly, Elsie Hughes was. And what, if any, his intentions were towards this newly revealed woman.

There was a knock on her office door, making her jump a little at her desk. She glanced up at the clock on the shelf. Half-past twelve; she'd been woolgathering far too long. Her heart sped up as she called for whomever it was to enter.

It was Beryl Patmore, and she had a tray of tea with her. And biscuits. At past midnight.

"Mrs. Patmore! What's all this?" She stood helping the cook set everything at the small table.

"Something told me yeh could use it, somehow," her friend replied, sitting without fanfare, pouring them each a cuppa. "If not you, I certainly could." She took a cookie, bit into it. "Mr. Carson's been in high dudgeon since at least dinnertime, scared the wits out of the new scullery maid. I just saw him in the hall, asked him to join us, if he was of the mind to. He glowered for a moment, then told me he was off to bed."

Elsie fell into rather than sat in the chair opposite her, sipped her tea. Felt herself grow hot, then cold. Worse, she felt tears tingling, miniscule pinpricks, at the back of her eyes. Beryl Patmore put her teacup down. Something in her face shifted, ever so slightly. She sighed.

"Might be that I'm exaggerating a touch, Mrs. Hughes," she said after a moment. "And it might be that Mr. Carson seemed, well, disappointed, perhaps, rather than simply in a sour mood. Maybe he wasn't really glowering, but looking rather melancholy."

"Aye, Mrs. Patmore?" She finally spoke, the three words all she could push pass the lump in her throat. She took a sip of tea, hot and strong.

"Yes, Mrs. Hughes, now that I've had a moment to muse on it, he seemed like someone nursing a large disappointment," she replied, then leaned forward, gently placed her hand on Elsie's. "He looked awfully like you do, at this moment, actually."

"Mrs. Patmore, I –" she cut herself off, sighed. "I have a sister."

"Beg pardon?"

She hadn't intended to reveal Becky like this, twice in one day, but her sister was certainly at the heart of all of it, wasn't she? Elsie could see that now. The good thing was, the tears that had been hovering, waiting to spill, had retreated. In their place was a vast hollow feeling inside the center of her, shaped like her future. Wondering what would fill it.

"I have a sister, Beryl – Mrs. Patmore," she corrected herself, immediately, but the cook waved it away. "She's…she's not mentally…mature. Becky's mind, it's still that of a small child's. She needs special care, and she always will, until she dies. After our Mam died, I found a place for her, by sea," she paused, and smiled a little. Becky did love the sea, the sand, and terrorizing the birds with her delighted shrieks, as she chased them up and down the shoreline. "She lives in a place for people like herself, in Lytham St. Annes, with doctors and nurses who understand how her mind works."

"Sounds lovely, this place for your sister," Beryl's smile was both gentle and sad. "And something that would cost a pretty penny."

"The pretty ones, and nearly all of the rest of my pennies, Mrs. Patmore." she threw her hands up in the air, then sipped her tea again. Bit into one of Daisy's ginger biscuits, her favorite. She was still feeling shaken, but more like herself. She hadn't realized how heavily the secret of Becky had weighed on her, until the weight had been lifted, even if only in a limited capacity.

"Which doesn't leave many left for investment properties," her friend replied, softly.

"Indeed, it does not," she sighed in response.

"And Mr. Carson…?" Beryl asked, trailing off. There were so many ways her question could be answered, and Elsie knew she left it dangling there, in the air, like a hook. Letting her decide what she was going to hang upon it as answer.

"I told Mr. Carson about Becky this afternoon," she replied, her voice barely above a whisper. "Because…because we'd…he'd settled on a place he – we – liked the look of…that had some…some…potential." She stopped. There wasn't any more to say, not really, between the revelation of her sister and what her friend already knew, already understood, and already had noticed.

She sat back, settling in with the emptiness she felt the minute her confession had left her lips half a day ago. She wasn't sure it would stay that way; but the uncertainty would drive her to distraction, certainly. Beryl Patmore sat back as well, and neither of them spoke for a few minutes. Her friend seemed deep in thought, and Elsie saw a certain amount of the disappointment she felt reflected in the cook's face.

"Potential," she finally said. "Yes, I understand that there was…potential in your business arrangement, the pair of you." She paused, cleared her throat. "And, well, Mrs. Hughes, I'm certainly speaking out of turn, and I know it, and yeh certainly don't owe me a response. But yeh know, that property, no matter the potential it had, well, that's not the potential I was thinkin' on, meself, when I was packin' up those lunches for the two of you, not really. I am not sure, Mrs. Hughes, whether or not the number of pennies you have matter in this situation, is what I'm a'sayin'."

Elsie sat there silently, mulling over her potential responses. Then realized something with a start: she didn't feel ashamed, not anymore. She never should have agreed to the investment property scheme, no, she saw that now. She should have been honest with him, that day he'd come with his offer; that would have been the right thing. But now, she could only move forward. She wasn't perfect, not by a long shot; he knew many of her weaknesses, and now he knew a few more of them.

He loved her, she was certain of that. She loved him. They had run to the end of the rules and the games and the blessed structure and formalities that governed their lives. This wasn't a game of chess, where she could capture her king. No; he would have to move off the board, break the rules, follow an unsubscribed path to her.

She finally spoke, reaching out to squeeze Beryl Patmore's hand, who looked a little startled, then squeezed back. She was deeply grateful that life had given her this woman's friendship, tonight, especially.

"I thank you for those lunches, Mrs. Patmore, because I do believe they were enjoyed in the same spirit they were prepared," she grinned. "And…and, I suppose, I agree with you: I hope, I think, you may be right. This has nothing to do with pennies, and everything to do with potential."

"It's a bit…exciting, then, no?" The red-haired woman giggled a little.

"Yes…and a bit terrifying, I think, Mrs. Patmore," she responded, and then laughed herself.

They each took another cookie, and began speaking of other things. But the air was thick with it: potential.