This is what happens when you stare at the only Carson-Hughes Series 5 BTS photo all day. If you haven't, please check the official Downton Abbey FB or Instagram page. Or, find my tumblr page (just look for my username that's shared with FFN). This is unedited and completely on the fly.

She was at it again - proposing a course of action to steer the downstairs ship that required Charles Carson to adapt.

It was her delivery that always irked him. Elsie Hughes was a stubborn, beautiful woman. She had the uncanny ability to introduce mayhem into his ordered world with an offhand comment said in the most casual of tones. More than that, it was her expression on some instances that simply did him in as he tried to process the latest change to their world. It was that imploring, wide-eyed look that set his world spinning.

It would speed up when she closed the distance between them. Since spending part of their enjoyable day holding hands in the surf, the proximity they shared was closer. True, they nearly rubbed shoulders while passing from the Servant's Hall on to the next task in their busy days. They would stand companionably inside the threshold of a pantry door, catching up after spending the Season exchanging letters. Even more so, he had found her distance dizzying when she quietly pressed him to let the wounds from his past begin to heal. Only staring at the window panes of the small window in his pantry kept him from doing something he thought they would regret.

But now his world was whirring around him as he processed the meaning conveyed with her Scottish brogue. Head slightly bent with an incredulous look on his face, he couldn't ignore the heat of her right hand as his left moved perilously close to it while processing her request. They had reached out to each other in moments of bliss and despair in the past – the ending of a war, the death of the sweetest soul in the house. But their beach interlude had opened up the possibility of reaching out to steady each other for the sake of steadying. Or for no reason at all.

But his hand wasn't wanting to touch her there. No, the stubborn woman was too close, much too close for him not to want to bend his left arm to reach her waist. He would move it and her towards his body while the thumb of his right hand would trace her cheek bone. Her expression would be shocked as her eyes dilated, growing darker as she surveyed his face, his lips. He would bend and she would reach and it would be bliss in an ordinary afternoon.

If only the door were securely shut.