And so it begins: the Carson/Hughes.
4. One-sided Love
Elsie feels glum. By and large she's happy here, she's good at being a housemaid, certainly, and most of the people are nice enough, but this evening, she's glum. Perhaps that the people here are nice is part of the problem. The family are away for the evening and most of the staff have taken the chance to go down to the Grantham Arms, but she wasn't in the mood for it. Alone at the servants' hall table, she sits quietly with half a cup of tea, listening to the tick-tock of the clock.
She ought to perk up a bit, she ought not to dwell on it, she ought to forget all about it, but it's easier said than done. It's not like he'd ever notice her anyway.
In fact, she knows he hasn't. Mr Carson is a good, decent man and surely knows how unwise it would be to have a relationship with a housemaid. And, even before they came to that, she doubted that he'd want to. She doesn't usually lament her lack traditional beauty- she doesn't quite carry her looks as gracefully as young Lady Grantham, similar though they are- but she really could endure looking like that if only it would make him look at her.
It's ludicrous, she's spent a large proportion of her life trying to disentangle herself from various young men, and now she couldn't possibly wish to be more... entangled.
But that's what she likes; the difference. He doesn't presume, like other men did, that she'd want him. Perhaps the thought hasn't even entered his head. He's quiet, he keeps to himself, and it makes her want all the more to be allowed in. Reticence is beautiful in him. She smiles weakly at her cup. Her mother always said it would end in tears; the poetic nonsense she tried to talk.
She knows the most sensible option would be to find a footman- plenty would surely take her- and dash around, behind Mr Carson's own back, having a frantic affair until she'd worked it off. She can't. For a start, she doubts very much that it would work.
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