Just a quick note before I get going: I realise that the situation described in this story is somewhat unlikely or out of character- please try to bear in mind that everyone, even reticent butlers and housekeepers have their moments of madness.

Also, with regard to my other fics, I realise I'm being a pathetic updater at the moment but I'm in the middle of my exams and when I get a moment I seem to have gone brain dead. Thus, I have written this idea down before it completely escapes me.

Please be wary of some mature-ish themes in this one.

She held his head securely to her chest. They had found that that was the best way they could both lie in her narrow bed. Her senses told her that her expression was calm- almost blank, even- a poor representation of what was happening beneath it. They were together, in her room, and had been for several hours now. Vaguely, she wondered what would happen if this day had the nerve to spring yet another crisis upon them and someone was sent to fetch either of them. There would be no explaining this away: it was exactly what it looked like.

His arms were wrapped around her lower back. Her legs wound around his. As he muttered incomprehensible syllables in his sleep and let out a few uneven breaths she shifted, shushing him and wrapping her arms a little bit tighter. The air in her room was usually cold at night, but she couldn't seem to feel it at the moment. The sheets were warm with their weight. He moved again in his sleep; nuzzling into her skin slightly. She closed her eyes at the feeling and rested her lips on top of his head. His hair was surprisingly soft; but more salt than pepper. Not that that mattered. What did matter any more?

Needless to say, it had hurt. No only physically, but emotionally too. Having never been like this with a man accounted for the former, the fact that it was this man for the latter. She had always known that intimacy would be painful for her- for them- and that is why she had never, sought it; not actively, at any rate. But she hadn't thought it would be like this. She had imagined them ploughing along and allowing work- life- to get in the way and for them to separate: agonising stinging pain. Not bitter-sweet; not this melancholy happiness that tinged her every musing or recollection.

Nor had she expected it to happen like this, if it ever did. A shy courtship conducted over cups of tea of an evening; nothing more scandalous than the odd glass of wine. Certainly not a frantically consummated affair on the day war broke out. It had happened...oh, it had happened as he watched her ascend the stairs in a doleful haze. No. It had begun the second his Lordship stopped speaking and they simply stared at each other. It was clear then what they needed: each other, but it wasn't clear how. He left the garden party early, most unlike him. She watched him moving across the lawn back to the house: the tune the musicians were playing wringing in her ears. When she finally returned to the house, she had waited for him in her sitting room. He didn't come. When she passed by the dining room and glanced through the pane in the door and saw him watching- maybe for her. It was then, as their eyes briefly met, that it became abundantly clear exactly how they needed each other. She had looked away, ever shy at even the prospect of it, and began her ascent.

She had been in her room for almost ten minutes; sitting on the bed, waiting for... she did not know. The knock at the door was quiet but crystal clear. She could have ignored it, with a great rally of self-restraint or reticence. It seemed that she couldn't quite muster either. Not without hesitation the door was opened. It was never going to be anyone but him. They didn't say a word, they didn't have to. It seemed that he was waiting for some sort of permission: she had conceded to him simply by letting him be there. Her expression told him that he had to do the leading now.

And then they were kissing. Not the chaste sitting-room-kisses she had allowed herself to imagine; but kissing with a passion and her responding more fervently than she had known herself to be capable of. His hand on the back of her head knocked part of her hair down. She tipped her head back to allow it to fall back properly and he took the opportunity to move his mouth from her lips to her neck. She gasped in spite of herself.

She tensed as his finger reached for the hooks at the neck of her dress, she could not help it. He drew back from her marginally.

"Do you want me to stop?"

His voice was lower than usual. What was she ever going to say when she could feel his rugged uneven breath on her forehead? Wordlessly, she shook her head; not looking him in the eyes.

"Elsie." Tell me the truth.

The only response she could offer was to reach for his tie and undo it- willing her fingers not to fumble. All in all, it was exactly what she had been lead to expect and yet impossibly different at the same time. How was she to know how he could be so gentle amid the urgency that seemed to have possessed them both? Nothing could have prepared her for what being with him would feel like- how could she ever have known that, no matter how much she bit her lip, at the height of it she could not prevent a protracted cry escaping not from her lips but her throat? Most surprisingly of all: how was she to know than not once before they fell asleep still wrapped together would she tell him that she loved him?

Because she did, and that, she supposed, was why she was sad, why it had hurt. To her this wasn't ever just being over-wrought and looking for comfort after the most trying day of their careers. Well, maybe she had been a little over-wrought. But this wasn't just her using him as a meaningless form of release- that, she was confident, was not within her capabilities. He was the sun in her Sunday morning. Her fingers fiddled with his hair as she thought it. Here she was entangled with the love of her life, however every chance that she was a meaningless... fling to him still entirely possible. A blush crept into her cheeks. She could say it to him now, just to know that she had done- even if he never knew it.

"I love you, Charles." she whispered.

He carried on sleeping. Peacefully. She was now almost clutching his head to her breast. Then it occurred to her that she might suffocate him and so loosened her grip. As his head left her chest she fell the lips brush her in a kiss. Looking at his face she saw he was in some sort of a groggy alertness. He had heard exactly what she had said.

He raised himself to kiss her neck.

"And you know how I feel about you," his voice was decidedly husky from sleep.

Her voice quivered her response.

"Do I?"

He kissed her again.

"Do you seduce women all the time, Charles?" she asked- hopeless bravado.

He was more alert now and raised an eyebrow in response; caught between puzzlement and caution.

"You've done this before," she pointed out, qualifying her question.

He did not deny it. Instead he brushed the hair that had fallen over her eyes aside.

"It's been a while, Elsie," he confessed.

She did not know whether she should feel reassured or disappointed. Neither, she suspected.

"I imagine I am rather clumsy at...at this."

He shook his head, firmly as he wrapped his arms back around her waist.

"Nothing near it," he told her.

Silence: his head lay buried in her neck. Breathing in unison. Badly, so badly, did she want to ask, how did he feel about her. He could not see it as she screwed her eyes tightly, trying to hold the impulse in.

They would probably never do this again. She sorely doubted that anything prompting a similar mutual lack of control would ever happen again. This could be the first and last time that they lay in each others arms. Ashamed as she had been at first at her actions, the thought of it not happening again made her feel sick and empty. Without thinking about it she kissed the top of his head. She closed her eyes: if this was their last time together, she would have to try to make the most of it.

Please don't all go too mad at me.