As promised here is the next instalment of my franchise and things are going to get pretty angsty for Mrs H, Mr Carson and Ella, well the whole family really, but mainly our fave couple and I will explore Elsie's relationship with her daughter in the early days in more detail. So please leave me a wee review and let me know what you think.

Elsie sat in the rickety old arm chair that sat beside the bay window in her room in the attics of Downton. She stared out on to the grounds below completely lost in her thoughts and her fears. She had only just returned to Downton with Ella, Charlie and the rest of the family, but Ella had insisted that her mam went straight up to her room out of the way.

'Mam I don't want to put you through this; I don't want to cause you any more pain than I already have, so please, go upstairs and rest for a while. I'll come up and speak with you once I have spoken with Papa and Mama.' Ella had instructed kindly; she really did want to do everything in her power to protect her mam.

She had wanted to return home to Downton herself and had suggested that Charlie and her mam stay in London until everything was sorted, but Elsie hadn't wanted that. She wanted to face this not only for herself, but for her daughter as well. She felt that it was time she put it all to bed once and for all, so that she could finally enjoy the relationship she now had with her daughter, instead of it being tainted all of the time by what had happened all those years ago. But Ella's need to protect her mam had driven her to insist that Elsie return to her own room.

'But do you not think the other servants will find it strange that we have returned early and that I am not back downstairs with them?' Elsie had tried to reason.

'Mam I really don't care what they think right now; my main priority is you.' Ella had replied, but not unkindly. 'I don't know whether this man is who he claims he is, but either way I want to spare you the heartache of having to deal with it. I'm certain that the other staff will have heard about Papa's brother's return and I'm certain the servants' hall will be full of talk about it. I don't want to subject you to their gossip.'

'You don't need to worry about that; Mr Carson will certainly put a stop to any gossip now that we've returned.'

'Be that as it may, it would be an extremely foolish thing for me to do to subject you to that. So please, stay up here and rest. If anyone questions your absence then refer them to me, I will soon put them in their place. You're still recovering from Spanish Flu, that much is true, so if anyone dares to ask it, they can be told that.'

'Oh Ella, I'm supposed to be the one that protects you, not the other way around.'

'Mam, you have protected me and you've made sacrifices that no mother should ever have to make, so let me do the protecting now.' Ella replied as she placed her hand to her mother's cheek and Elsie managed to give a very small smile at the thought of how grown up and strong her wee girl was.

Ella had then disappeared downstairs to speak with her parents, who were sat in the library waiting for her with the rest of her family. They had all waited for her, Robert, Cora, Mary, Edith and Sybil, and the looks of worry on their faces were clearly evident; they all wondered just how much more distress and upset Ella could take in her life.

'Darling come sit beside me.' Cora said instantly when Ella walked into the room. The mother hugged her daughter tightly before she allowed her to seat herself at her side and she kept a tight clasp of the younger woman's hands.

'Well this is quite a welcoming committee.' Ella said, completely unsure how to ease the tension in the room.

'Oh my darling I'm so sorry you had to cut your honeymoon short to come home to this; we tried to protect you from it the best we could, well for as long as we could until we knew more, but…' Cora said as she brushed a loose curl back behind Ella's ear, before she broke off from her speech and glanced at her husband.

'But we couldn't protect you from it any longer, as Murray has finally confirmed…oh my little one, I'm sorry to have to tell you that Murray has confirmed that the man is indeed Richard Crawley, my younger brother and…'

'…and my biological father.' Ella finished for him with her eyes burning with tears.

No one replied to that statement and no one could bear to look Ella in the eye; they were all so shocked by the admission and the implications of what this meant to Ella. Although they had all known about this element to Ella's parentage, it of course never got acknowledged or discussed and Richard's existence had been completely ignored for many years. His death, or rather his believed death, had drawn a line under it for Robert and Cora, but now his return brought everything back for them and resurfaced a lot of feelings they had never contemplated before.

'So where is he now?' Ella asked with a hoarse whisper.

'Well until it was confirmed that he was who he said he was, he had agreed to stay at the pub in the village, but since the confirmation, your grandmother insisted that he stay with her; so he moved into the Dower House a few days ago.' Robert explained calmly, but there was a hint of anger to his voice.

'I still don't understand how this all came about exactly; when and how did he return?' Sybil asked after a few moments of quiet contemplation.

'Shortly after Ella and Henry left for their honeymoon Mama received a letter from the war office with news of her son. It seems that the information we had received back in 1900 was correct, Richard had indeed joined the British Army and he did fight in the African War, but he was not killed as it was believed. I'm still not certain of the exact details, but it would seem that he received some sort of head trauma which caused a great deal of amnesia. He had no recollection of who he was, where he was from or anything from his past; he became lost in the crowd effectively and fashioned himself a new identity and has been living in New Zealand.' Robert explained with the little information he had.

'It must be nice for Granny to have her son back,' Ella said, which surprised everyone. Of all the comments she could have made, that was the last one they ever expected.

'Don't think harshly of your grandmother Ella, none of this is her fault and as she doesn't know the truth about what happened, she is of course delighted to have him home with her after all these years.' Robert explained.

'I don't think harshly of her Papa, it's understandable that that is how she feels; in fact I envy her ignorance of who he truly is and what he did.' She replied compassionately.

Downstairs in the servants' hall Charlie was trying to busy himself with the jobs that needed to be done and getting the house back into some level of order now that he had returned, but his mind kept drifting upstairs to his soon to be step-daughter and further up to his future wife. Try as he might he could no longer tolerate being left downstairs and in the dark and he knew he just had to go up and offer Elsie some form of comfort, so he slipped quietly away from his pantry and went up the stair case unseen by the others, which was exactly as he had wanted it.

Still sat in her room Elsie allowed her mind to drift into the depths of her memories as she stared out onto the front driveway of the house and remembered the first time she had come up it to start her new life at Downton Abbey.