A/N: Thank you for your reviews!
Chapter 2
1914
After her marriage and consequently her resignation, Anna had taken over her duties as housekeeper. Often he felt it was the one thing that kept him from snapping completely. Anna had been trained by Elsie and trained well. Her respect and affection for the older woman had ensured that once she had taken over her position, she had managed do so very much in the spirit of Elsie Hughes. Nevertheless this change turned his life into it being a far cry from the way it had been. Elsie Hughes was gone. Elsie Hughes did not even exist anymore but had morphed into Mrs Burns, a farmer´s wife, leaving him behind.
When she first told him that she was renewing her acquaintance with her former flame, he hadn´t thought much of it, assumed it was a caused by a wave of nostalgia on her part. He truly believed she would never consider leaving Downton. That first night of the fair when she had gone to meet Joe Burns he had grumbled to himself that the house was already falling apart if she was away for a few brief hours. She couldn´t possibly leave. When she had returned and had excused herself quietly to her sitting room, Thomas had remarked she looked ´sparkly-eyed.´ The phrase had upset him and a faint tingle of jealousy had filled his heart, but he had squashed it down at once. Surely Thomas was just a vindictive spirit, aiming to speak venomous falsehoods. There could be no truth in his words.
But as the days had progressed, he had noticed she had become withdrawn, preferring solitary to their evening chats in his pantry. Not that her performance was in any shape or form lacking, she was simply holding back from him as a friend.
But then one evening, about a week after she had gone to the fair, she had come to his pantry. Her demeanour had been hesitant, almost a little bit shy. She had told him about the relationship that there had once been between Joe Burns and herself. She told him about his proposal all these years ago and his renewal of it a week ago. And she had told him that she had decided to accept him. She would stay at Downton for the remainder of the month, but then she would leavewith Mr Burns, purchase a license and wed the farmer.
Looking back, he remembered only disjointed details from that evening. He remembered most of her words, he remembered the soft clinging noise the keys made, dangling from her skirt. He remembered the black dress she wore, adorned with lace at her neck. But he couldn´t remember his own reply at her announcement, he couldn´t remember the emotions that had swept through him at that moment. All he knew was the deep, impenetrable grey fog that seemed to enfold him as she had delivered the news. The fog that hadn´t lifted as the weeks before her departure passed in a blur of activity. There were so many little things that required their attention that he found he hardly had a moment alone together with her.
At that time he still experienced little emotion at the thought of her leaving. Even when her last evening at Downton came and she joined him for a final glass of wine in his pantry. He had watched her sitting across from him in the dim light of his private quarters. She had been filled with a nervous energy, expectant… Expectant of the new life she would enter the following morning he had no doubt. He watched her and intellectually he knew that it was their last evening. He knew that the chances of them ever meeting again were slim to say the least. And yet, although his mind understood, his heart was unable to grasp this bit of knowledge.
After all, it was unfathomable to him that she wouldn´t be here tomorrow night. She was so intertwined with his life, with Downton, that he simply couldn´t wrap his mind about to fact that this had come to an end. As long as her presence was near him, as long as she filled his sight, the thought of her not being here was incomprehensible to him.
She had left the following morning together with Joe Burns. And even as the car drove away his heart refused to accept the truth. She would return in a few hours. She would walk in, hang her coat on the hook near the kitchen door, refuse to give Mrs Patmore the key to the store cabinet, give him that tiny smile that she appeared to save just for him and go on about her duties.
But that evening, as he sat in his pantry, sipping his wine alone, gazing at the empty chair across from him, she had not returned.
The next morning she wasn´t there when he came down for breakfast and as the day went on he began to realize that the house was quiet. Despite the noise and bustle of the many people that lived and worked there, to his ears it had acquired an eerie silence, because he couldn´t hear her voice or her footsteps anymore.
And with each passing day his heart had come to understand just a little bit more that she was truly gone. It took weeks before that knowledge was already there in his head when he woke up, instead of him realizing it a few minutes after awakening, his heart sinking and twisting painfully as the realisation hit him. And for months after her departure he thought of things to say to her, only to realize with bitter disappointment that she wasn´t there to hear them anymore.
But it hadn´t been until her first letter had arrived, about two months after her marriage, that his heart had truly and completely shattered. Reading the lines, he could almost hear her voice as if the words were spoken aloud and he was seized by such a nauseating wave of regret and sadness that for long moments he couldn´t breathe. She was gone and he had let her leave without even as much as arguing with her, giving her a reason to stay. Suddenly he felt himself overwhelmed with emotions as the stinging ache of having lost her consumed him.
After that he went through an almost mournful phase. He mourned her loss as if he truly had had to surrender her to her grave. He mourned his lost chances, he mourned his indifference in taking her presence for granted and he missed her. He missed her fiercely and wholeheartedly. He missed her voice, her scent, her presence, her smile. He missed her handwritten notes, the flowers she brought to brighten up his pantry and the soup she saved for him on the evenings of long dinner parties.
Her letter had lain unanswered on his desk for weeks. Every evening he sat himself down and attempted to forge a reply. But the words had failed him utterly and completely. His numerous attempts ended unceremoniously in the trash bin as he bit his pen and contemplated every word.
When her second letter came writing a reply had become even more difficult. Because now, apart from writing the things to her he hadn´t manage to convey the first time he had tried, he also had to give her a reason, an excuse for his inattentiveness. And the longer he took to write a reply, the more difficult it became.
She wrote him a third time and a fourth. But the periods between the letters grew longer and the tales she told in them more aloof, more polite. After the fifth letter she stopped writing all together. He saved her letters as if they were his most treasured possessions, which in essence, they were.
And so the years wore on, the dull, stinging feeling of missing her never dismissing in the slightest.
If you´ve got the time, please let me know what you think!