A/N Another short chapter. More to follow soon. As always, your reviews are appreciated - more than you know. I hope you're all enjoying reading this as much as I'm enjoying writing it!
Oh, I forgot to mention before the last chapter why they had to go outside in order for Charles to put his arm around Elsie. I know that many of my favorite stories from other authors refer to a settee in Elsie's sitting room, but even after re-watching all the scenes occurring in and around her room, I still could not spot one. So my obstinacy and refusal to deviate from canon, even in such small matters as furniture, wouldn't allow me to introduce one into my story. Hence, the bench. Silly, I know, but I think I made it work reasonably.
Chapter 6
Elsie was floating on air. She had controlled her excitement until she was out of Mr. Carson's sight, but then she had practically bounded up the rest of the stairs and had to restrain herself to keep from skipping down the women's corridor like a schoolgirl. Now inside her room, she leaned back against her door, and her body sagged with the release of the night's tension.
She could hardly think straight. Mr. Carson, in the twenty years she had known him, had never been anything more than kind and friendly. He had never made her think that he felt for her any part of what she felt for him. Their only previous physical contact (before the recent hand-holding) had consisted of brief, comforting touches. But tonight, the sensation of being so near him and having so much of their bodies touching, had been nearly more than Elsie could bear. She had never been so close to Mr. Carson - his arm around her shoulders, her body leaning gently into his side, their legs touching, her hand on his knee, his hand caressing hers ... She had felt his chest move with his breathing and had smelled his aftershave. And how she had longed to rest her head on his shoulder! It would have been so easy. If she had just leaned in a few more inches...
But she couldn't. Not yet. It would have been too much for him. Elsie knew better than anyone that the two things Mr. Carson found most trying were adapting to change and expressing emotion. Any display of affection on her part would challenge him on both counts.
She wasn't even sure her feelings were reciprocated. It was true that he had been more intimate lately, physically, but he hadn't said one word that indicated he felt anything romantic. His holding her hand and putting his arm around her, while thoroughly pleasing to her, hardly came close to the confessions of love and subsequent amorous demonstrations Elsie would have liked. No matter how badly she wanted things to progress more quickly, she could do nothing to speed the process along. Any advances on her part - even if he did return her affections - would only frighten him and ruin everything. No, Mr. Carson would have to set the pace, and if proclamations of fidelity and passionate embraces were to be, they would happen in his own sweet time. She would be patient with him until he could give her more. And, oh, how she wanted more! So much more! All his love. And, oh, how she ached to give him her love in return!
Someday, she hoped, she would tell him she loved him with the passion of a woman half her age and the quiet devotion of a woman much older. Someday, she would happily wrap her arms about him and kiss him silly, and then, when they both could breathe and see straight again, she would just as happily fix his tea the way he liked it and mend his socks. But tonight … Tonight, for one blissful hour, the finest, most attractive man in the entire world had held her close, and he had said he'd like to do it again! Tonight, that was enough. Enough to make Elsie Hughes the happiest woman in all of England.