A/N: I should get the award for same-night updates or something...Or not.

Anyways, here's Part Two, as promised.

This elicited a nervous, schoolgirl-ish laugh from the housekeeper. "You haven't called me that in years," she said, silently amazed at how he managed to pull her away from the melancholy that had taken her for the evening. "Thirty-four years, if anyone's counting."

"Thirty-five," he corrected, a small smile twitching at the corner of his lips. "You were housekeeper a year before I was butler, remember?"

"To be honest, not really."

It had been so long ago that Elsie had just about forgotten, and it made her feel old just thinking about it. Had she and Mr. Carson really been that young once? Well, of course they had, that was a silly question to ask, but it did make one wonder, didn't it?

He laughed- a surprisingly jovial rumbling noise (Elsie never thought the two words could be paired together, yet there she was, doing just that!)- and before she knew it, he'd gotten her to her feet. He stood at at least a head taller than she, and he always had, her being shorter than even a majority of women her age, shorter than some of the maids, even, but the space between their heads was enough to close if she just rose on the balls of her feet.

"Do you remember, at least, when you were Elsie Hughes, and I was Charles Carson? None of this "Mrs. Hughes" or "Mr. Carson" nonsense?"

"Now there's something I never thought I'd hear you say," she said, faintly aware of her heart beating rapidly in her chest. Dear Lord, if her heart gave out now, she didn't know what she'd do.

"Well now you have, haven't you?"

God in Heaven, he was teasing her, wasn't he? What was he getting at? That was what Elsie wanted to know.

"Go on."

"You were a lovely young woman, a bit of a firebrand-"

"Mr. Carson, I don't think-"

"Oh you were though, won't you? You and Susan stirred up all sorts of mischief, you did. Sometimes I wonder if that's why Mrs. Hardings retired, to be rid of you two terrors."

Oh Lord, he remembered that?

Why did he remember something that had slipped from Elsie's memory long ago? Where was he going with this?

"I doubt it was because of us. You weren't any better, now were you?"

Elsie didn't know the answer to her own question- the Charles she knew was at least thirty years in the past, gone the moment a chance at being butler presented itself. Perhaps he'd been "a terror" and "a firebrand" himself, though that was hard to picture.

"Guilty as charged, Mrs. Hughes," he admitted with a blush (this had to be the first time Elsie was actually close enough to see him blush, it had to be). "Do you remember when Patrick and I asked to sit with you and Susan at church Christmas Eve?"

Now that she did remember. "Susan turned Patrick down outright, didn't she? Poor lad...I hope he was able to make something of himself. Susan too, though knowing her, she's probably...well I don't know where she'd be, seeing as I'm housekeeper here now."

"But you said yes, ever the lady, and you saved me the embarrassment of being turned down."

She crinkled her nose in laugher. "Oh stop that! Any lass would've been a fool to turn you down, Charles Carson."

"So you think Alice Neal a fool?"

"Perhaps, but that was when you were young. The whole affair with Joe Burns, that was when I was young. We didn't understand things then, now did we?"

"Do we understand them now?" he asked, ducking his head towards her just a little, so he didn't seem so intimidatingly tall. "Now that we've seen the world...together, I suppose, do you think we're wiser for it?"

"I'd like to think so."

He was going to kiss her, wasn't he?

That had to be what he was planning to do, it simply had to! Why else would he be holding her as close (Elsie could feel his hand hovering just above the small of her back, and her hand had slipped from his long ago without either of them realizing, it seemed), or speaking so fondly of their shared pasts, if he wasn't going to kiss her? She wasn't sure if she dreaded it or longed for it, but either way, there was no stopping it when it happened.

And it happened like that. No preamble (well, their recollections could be excused as preamble), no "Elsie Hughes I would very much like to kiss you," and definitely no warning from him to her at all. Elsie knew she wanted to be angry, but how can one be angry when something they've kept as one keeps a shameful secret comes to be? It's impossible, it is, to do such a thing, and that's why Charles would never hear an unkind word from her on the matter.

He pulled her closer, finally daring to touch her body, and she looped an arm, and then another arm, around his neck, rising on the balls of her feet to make up for the difference in height. They kissed each other with the passion and vigor of young lovers, teasing at the other's lips in an almost childlike manner, though she could feel his restraint as he no doubt could feel hers. Oh, but at least it was happening at last! At least she wouldn't have to keep this in her dreams anymore, or on the list of things she counted as guilty charges against her soul. No longer would she lust after Charles in the bed she'd learnt to accept as only ever being her own.

But this wasn't lust.

This was love in its purest form, love tempered by years of friendship and partnership into something so strong and pure, it had endured this long. This was more pure than Lady Mary's love for Mr. Matthew, than His Lordship's for Her Ladyship, than Mr. Branson for Lady Sybil, more pure, even, than Mr. Bates's love for Anna, which had, without question, been tested by time and faith and man enough to almost prove equal to what welled up between the butler and the housekeeper now.

"I love you," Mr. Carson murmured, breaking the kiss and folding Elsie into an embrace that was completely foreign to her- the embrace of a lover. Was that what they were now? Lovers? She liked the sound of that, to be honest, though she wanted to be his wife more than anything.

One step at a time, she chided herself, closing her eyes and letting a contented smile play across her lips, which still hummed even after they had left the butler's. "I love you too," she replied.

"We'll get through this together, don't you worry." He ran a careful hand over her hair, as hesitant as a young child petting a rabbit for the first time, as if a movement that was too quick might undo the carefully-pinned curls of her rapidly-greying hair. "Come what may, I will always be here."

"Mhmm… I'd like that Charles Carson, very much."

"Then that's how it'll be, Elsie Hughes, that's how it'll be."

A/N: Aren't they just adorable together?

Anyways, thank you very much for reading this and I hope you enjoyed it! It was definitely a pleasure to write, and maybe my ship will sail...What I would give to have someone to be the Mr. Carson to my Mrs. Hughes... Please read and review, and I'll be seeing y'all soon!

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