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Footman in Training	By : imdirty Category: 1 through F > Downton Abbey Views: 2654 -:- Recommendations : 0 -:- Currently Reading : 0
Disclaimer: I do not own Downton Abbey and am not making money from this story. And I'm hoping I'm doing this disclaimer thing right :)

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The servants gathered for breakfast early, anticipating Lord and Lady Grantham’s arrival late morning. Molesley joined Thomas in his usual spot at the table. “How’s the shepherd working out?” Thomas asked, spooning porridge into his mouth quickly.

“Well all his digits are still intact, if that’s what you’re asking.”

Thomas looked down the table at Price. From a distance, he couldn’t even see the stitches he’d made in Price’s finger the day before. He hoped that would be the case when it came time to serve the family.

“David,” Mr. Carson called down the table. All heads turned to Mr. Carson, not just that of the second footman. “The footman who winds the clocks has a halfday today. Are you familiar with that duty?”

“Yes sir, Mr. Carson. My father is a watchmaker, so I’m quite familiar with time pieces.”

“Excellent, David. In that case, why don’t we make that your task moving forward.”

Price eagerly accepted the duty and the conversation among the servants resumed.

“You know, Mr. Barrow’s father was a clockmaker,” Baxter informed Price.

Price finished swallowing a spoonful of porridge and looked at Thomas. “Interesting. The more I get to know, the more we seem to have in common.”

Molesley raised an eyebrow. “Really, Mr. Barrow?”

Thomas pointed his spoon at Molesley. “Didn’t I warn you yesterday?”

A bell rang on the wall. Anna finished her last two bites and jumped from the table. Another bell chimed, then another, and the room was full of the sound of chairs scraping the floor.

The day was unusually warm for spring, especially at Downton where the air was almost always cool and freely moving. “Stop to drink water if you must, we don’t need any of you fainting today,” Mr. Carson had told the newer staff.

After breakfast was served to the family and the dining room cleared and cleaned, Thomas went outside for a cigarette. He found a shaded spot and leaned against the cool brick of a wall. The courtyard was busy with activity of the outdoor staff; a group Thomas didn’t mix with much, especially since he became under butler. The door to the house opened and Price came out, collecting firewood for the stove per Mrs. Patmore’s direction. Arms loaded with wood, he stopped when he noticed Thomas.

“So this is where you disappear to,” the golden puppy playfully observed.

“Not anymore now that you've found me,” Thomas replied, bringing the mostly-burned cigarette to his lips.

“I thought of taking up smoking so that I’d have an excuse for a break. I don’t have the lungs for it, though.”

“Speaking of burning things, why don’t you get that wood inside before Mrs. Patmore decides to throw you on the fire.” Thomas stamped out his cigarette and held the door for Price.

“So your father was a clockmaker?” Price asked as Thomas followed him to the kitchen. Thomas helped hand logs from Price’s arms to Daisy’s hands as she fed the oven.

“He was, and I learned a great deal from him. The clocks were my responsibility here for many years.”

“You’ve been here a long time, haven’t you?”

“Seems forever,” Daisy volunteered.

Thomas kept his grip on the next piece of wood as Daisy tried to take it. She wrinkled her nose and pulled it from his hand with force.

“Save your energy, Daisy. Don’t want you to pass out having to work over a hot oven on a day like this,” Thomas said, smirking.

Mrs. Patmore hit Thomas on the arm with a kitchen towel. “Stop distracting her, we have a lot to do today. Out of my kitchen ‘til I call you back.”

Price left with Thomas. “I can’t tell if people here like you or not,” he laughed.

“Oh, it’s ‘not’ David, be certain of that.”

“Lord and Lady Grantham are arriving!” Mr. Carson’s voice boomed across the whole downstairs. Price followed Thomas up the winding servant’s stairs, through the halls and rooms to the front door, and out onto the hot gravel drive. He followed Mr. Carson’s direction for where to stand. Head up, shoulders back, hands by your sides, he repeated to himself silently. The younger family joined the servants outside to receive the Lord and Lady. Price resisted the urge to look at the family while everyone waited for the cars to pull up. The ladies and Mr. Branson were always picture perfect, and Price felt compelled to gaze at them as though they were framed on the wall.

Car tires crunched down the driveway, circling round before stopping in front of the gathered group. Price presumed the first person out with cane in hand was Mr. Bates, who who learned earlier was married to Anna. Getting things straight in this house was proving a challenge. There had been just a few people to get to know in his old house, and the staff didn’t change much in the years he served.

Mr. Bates opened the car door for Lady Grantham. Price couldn’t resist smiling broadly when her eyes met his as she passed the line of servants. She stopped in front of Baxter. “Baxter, how I missed you.” Price was surprised by her Ladyship’s American accent.

“How was the lady’s maid they arranged for you, your Ladyship?” Baxter asked.

“Practically a train wreck. I don’t care who insists I use their woman next time, I’m bringing you.”

“And these must be our new men.” His Lordship’s entire person seemed to smile, not just his mouth, Price thought. Mr. Carson introduced Price and the other new footman, Sean Moore, to the Lord and Lady. “Welcome!” Lord Grantham said simply, but with more warmth than Price had felt from his former employer in all the time he worked there.

The staff followed into the house after the family. Moore (The Shepherd, Price had heard Thomas call him more than once) whispered to Price, “Didn’t expect his Lordship to be so kind with a daughter like Ice Queen Mary.”

Price shushed him. “Don’t say things like that.”

Moore was young, tall, and slender, with deep set dark blue eyes and silvery blonde hair. His cousin had known Mr. Carson’s cousin and begged a favor to give Moore a chance at Downton. Moore hadn’t done extremely well at any of his former employers, and his cousin told Carson he thought it was due to a lack of good leadership. “He needs direction,” the cousin pleaded. Softer of heart than he would ever care to admit, Mr. Carson agreed to take on the lad, who had most recently worked on a farm. Mr. Carson expected a humble young man, but Moore seemed anything but. Upon meeting, Moore bared every one of his teeth while smiling and even tried to joke. “Well I’m not pairing him with Thomas,” Mr. Carson had told Mrs. Hughes. “Those two giant heads together wouldn’t be able to fit through a doorway.”

Price felt like he bonded with Moore during their first week at Downton, and was beginning to consider Moore a friend, but sometimes Moore’s obvious lapses in judgement made Price uncomfortable.

Thomas watched Price and Moore whispering. Moore was on the edge of handsome, Thomas thought, but wreaked of immaturity and unearned self confidence, and little was as unattractive as that to him.

Also whispering were, per usual, the maids downstairs. Perhaps the heat was getting to Thomas, but he wanted to know what the maids were chattering on about today. He stopped one of the newer maids, an especially young, short girl who seemed to shrink even smaller when Thomas stood in her way.

“I shouldn’t say,” the maid frowned, trying to scoot around Thomas with her basket full of laundry.

“You’d walk away from the under butler at your last employer? Because I promise, this will truly be your last employer if you keep walking.”

The maid looked down the empty hallway in hope of rescue, and then up at Thomas, his cool gray eyes narrowed while her brown eyes were wide as saucers.

“Well?”

“I heard that - and I don’t know for sure, but - well, some of the male staff were going to go to the pond after lights out tonight.”

“For what?”

The maid’s basket felt extremely heavy. “Oh, well, to swim. It’s so hot, you know?”

“Which male staff?”

“That I don’t know. I’m sorry, I don’t.”

Thomas looked away from her, thinking.

“Anything else, sir?”

Thomas waved the maid away. He thought of Price and Moore laughing as they snuck out to the pond, wading in the water, carefree young friends at a new house on a new adventure. His mood was stormy until mail was delivered in the afternoon.

“One for you,” Mr. Carson said, handing Thomas a small envelope the color of a robin’s egg. The staff was seated throughout the servant’s hall enjoying a short reprieve before dinner preparation began. The return address was from someone named “Erin,” and Thomas realized quickly upon opening the letter that this was Eric’s penname. He must have mailed the letter before he left the village, Thomas thought. Maybe he even wrote it while still at Downton.

Thomas pushed his chair against the wall so no one could walk behind him and unfolded the small piece of lined paper.

Thomas,

You have left me wanting, though I’m sure you know that. I will have to shower exclusively from now on because the bath will make me think of you. I already invented a dozen excuses to come back, but would you have me? Was your hope to lure me back, or push me away? I pray it wasn’t the latter. I’m traveling for a month, but then I may find myself at Downton again, one way or another. Though a brief encounter (embarrassingly brief? I hope not) I’ve become quite taken by you. Are your lips as expert as your hands? What does that ivory skin of yours taste like? What would that raven hair feel like running through my fingers?

Please write to me.

Hopelessly yours,

E.

Thomas folded the letter delicately and tucked it into his inner jacket pocket. He took it out a few more times that afternoon, and knew he’d certainly take it out again when alone in his bed. The little note distracted him from envying the budding friendship between Price and Moore, until supper when the two were talking at the end of the table. The friendship stung for a few reasons, not least of which was the moment Thomas and Price had over Price’s injury, or what Thomas had perhaps mistaken as a moment.

Thomas reasoned with himself that if Price was his responsibility, he should know his whereabouts in the evening, and so if Price snuck out to take a dip in the pond, Thomas would follow. There was a hill overlooking the water and Thomas would perch there.

After lights out, Thomas sat with his back against his dormitory door, listening for opening and closing of other doors. Eventually, quite late, he heard the soft click of knobs turning and latches catching, then murmuring, and finally soft steps down the hall towards the stairs. He waited for fifteen minutes, then left, dressed in his darkest suit to avoid attracting attention.

It wasn’t explicitly against the rules for Thomas to leave at night given his status above the other servants, but it wasn’t encouraged, especially given his reputation among those same servants. The other men, though, were breaking house rules. Thomas felt empowered, even energized, that he could so easily get Price or Moore or whoever else was out gallivanting in trouble. But that wasn’t his goal - not exactly. Just the confirmation of what they were doing and the ability to play the card if required (or desired), that was all.

Thomas found a spot on the hill with a clear view of the pond. The spring moon was so bright and low that he could easily tell who was who in the water. Along with Price and Moore were six other members of staff; another footman, two hallboys, two men from the grounds, and a man from the stables. Clothing was folded on the grass and the group was all submerged to their waists or higher. Thomas stepped closer to a tree and sat down. He removed his hat and rested his arms on his knees.

Being an outsider was nothing new for Thomas, but watching the group of men laugh, wrestle and tease made his chest burn. There was never a point in his life that he would have been invited to this secret outing, and as an older, senior member of staff with his history, there never would be. Price might have been old enough to serve in the war, but he wasn’t so old that it was awkward for him to play in the pond with the others.

Price took a break from paddling to wade closer to the pond’s edge. The water was just below his hip bones, and he watched with his hands on his hips while the others frolicked. His cream-colored skin looked an iridescent blue from moonlight reflecting on water. He brushed his wet hair from his forehead and laughed at something one of the other men said.

Thomas hadn’t expected Price’s body to be as muscled as Eric’s, though Price’s forearms had hinted at a toned body beneath the layers of livery. Despite the muscle there was still something soft about Price, perhaps his tapered waist and long neck. Thomas’s chest began to burn for other reasons, and then so did other areas of his body. His lips parted and he breathed a little harder as Price, deciding to head back early, and walked onto the grass to fetch his clothes. Price rubbed his hair with a towel, his back to his friends in the water, and full front to Thomas. Feelings of guilt may have crept into Thomas’s thoughts if he wasn’t trying so hard to commit the view to memory. Price bent down to gather his clothes and Thomas climbed to his feet, disappearing from the hill before he could be noticed.

Thomas sprinted back to the house and to his room, undressing to his undershirt and underwear quickly. He lit his lamp and soaked a washcloth with water from his pitcher to wipe his face, breathing steadily to calm his rapid heartbeat. He wondered, why would a man so concerned with keeping his job and moving up in rank so blatantly break the rules? He then caught his reflection in the mirror and thought of how he behaved years ago as a footman who wanted to be valet. Maybe they were something alike, as Price said earlier that day.

A soft rap on the door brought his heart back to pounding. He paused for a beat, then turned the knob.

“I’m sorry to bother you,” Price whispered, his hair still damp.

Thomas rubbed his eye as though he’d been sleeping. “Is something the matter?”

“I snuck out to swim. I shouldn’t have, but I did, and I feel awful about it. I’d rather you hear from me. I don’t think we were quiet enough and I worried someone would snitch before I could snitch on myself.”

“So you’re not sorry you did it, just sorry you might get caught?”

Price chewed his bottom lip and looked into Thomas’s eyes. “I am sorry. How do I fix this?”

“Nothing’s broke, David,” Thomas sighed. “Far as I’m concerned, you were in your room the entire night. But don’t make me cover for you again.”

“Or what?” Price joked, smiling timidly.

Thomas pictured Price emerging from the water. “Well I’d have to come up with some sort of punishment.”

Price’s smile faded. “I don’t mean to be cheeky.”

“Yes you do. Off with you before I change my mind,” Thomas ordered, closing the door. He put out his lamp and got into bed, annoyed only that he was too exhausted to put thoughts of Price or Eric to good use.
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Footman in Training