Content warnings can be found here

Mrs Tooting looked up, and her daughter was gratified to notice a small touch of shame on her face. 

However, when she said, “Good morning, Mr Thornton,”  it was without a trace of embarrassment.

“Mrs Tooting.” He bowed. “Miss Tooting. I hope I do not intrude.”

Serafina longed to reassure him, but it was mother’s role to respond.

“Not at all, Mr Thornton. It is my morning to receive. If you hope to see Mr Tooting, he shall not be greatly delayed.”

“You are too kind, madame.” Mr Thornton bowed again. Then he made his usual show of wandering about the room until it seemed by chance that he came to where Serafina was sitting. She felt the sense of him behind her, his long, black coat, his hands folded behind his back. There was about him such stillness, such poise. He would not even slap one glove against the way so many gentlemen did when they believed they were standing without motion.

Serafina continued to read but could not take in any of the sense on the page.

“You are always such a studious young lady, Miss Tooting. I wish my own sisters would be more keen to follow your example.”

For heaven’s sake, it’s Serafina. But she did not dare be so bold. Besides, she did not believe that he would care for the kind of language she used sometimes, in her head. She turned and managed the kind of social pleasantry of a smile that she was accustomed to giving gentleman callers, rather than that she could bestow in a more crowded room. He was so very handsome. With his broad shoulders and narrow waist, he reminded her of the engravings in books of Greek myths. The lines of his mouth were strong, yet luscious, and his hair was darkly curled. To be close to him was to wish to touch him, and she had imagined it so very well, over so many nights – how it would be to put her arms about him, to press her body against his layers of wool and linen and feel the shift and strength of the muscles beneath.

Serafina swallowed the liquid that had filled her mouth. “You are too kind, Mr Thornton,” she said, and she knew that her mother would hear the marked partiality in her voice, just as she would have heard the low, intimate pitch of his.

“Not at all. What is it today, poetry or politics?” 

“I fear it is nothing so worthy, sir.”

He held out his hand for it in a careless gesture of command. 

Heat rushed to her face and her fingers twitched to obey him, but she recalled herself. As, after a moment, did Mr Thornton. Instead, he leaned over her to look more closely. “The signs a careful housewife looks for in a good servant? The wage one would expect to pay a maid of all work… Miss Tooting, I… are you reading this to some charitable end?”

“No, sir.”

“Then why trouble yourself with it?”

“I own, it is no Rousseau, but I recall you did not approve of that choice either.”

“No, no, I… I am sure it is a very sound book, madame. It is only… Well, it is hardly the manner of thing I would expect to find engrossing a young lady of so cheerful a nature, or so incisive a mind.” 

She felt herself blush. “Perhaps it is not the most stimulating volume, but I feel that no young gentlewoman should neglect that aspect of her education which pertains to household management.”

“Well, yes,” he said, forgetting himself again, and taking the book from her, closing it. “But surely your good mother has not overlooked such matters, with an education so comprehensive as your own.”

There was an irresistible strength to his fingers. She thought of them taking her own, pressing hard, hard enough to bruise.

Too much Byron.

“Indeed, no, sir. Yet surely it is the duty of all sensible creatures to deep their knowledge on all topics which properly concern them. And I must own, Mr Thornton,” there was her blush again, “that I have not yet been able to lay my hands on the Coleridge sermon you mentioned, when last we spoke – or I would have been reading that.”

“Oh. Had… had I known your father did not own a copy, Miss Tooting, I would have brought my own to lend you. That is to say, if it were agreeable to you, I would be honoured to …”

“That is very kind of you, Mr Thornton. Perhaps… perhaps next time you call, you would be able to…?”

“It would be my privilege.” 

“Still,” she held her hands out for her book, “One cannot live in theory all the time.”

“No, Miss Tooting. But… forgive my presumption, but surely… surely your prospects entitle you to look rather higher than such measures outlined here.”

She looked at Mr Thornton’s face to give herself strength. “Sir, I have always felt it is the height of presumption for a person to assume they will marry into a certain situation. We cannot assume that opportunity or... or preference, might not lead them into other circumstances.”

He could not have missed that one, but he was so very oblique. His face did not change, did not betray any reaction. 

She said, “It is best, is it not, to educate oneself?”

Mr Thornton, she thought, Richard. Please.

“Such… prudence is an admirable virtue, seldom found in one so young, Miss Tooting.” His voice was strained, almost trembling, and when he had finished speaking, there remained only a fragile, vulnerable silence between them.

Then, with her most commonplace voice Serafina’s mother said, “I’m afraid we really have let her run rather wild, Mr Thornton. What must you make of us?”

“Her frankness really is most charming,” he said, but he said it with such gravity that his meaning could have been quite the opposite, “Besides, I do not believe that you, Mrs Tooting, could raise a girl capable of any impropriety in either her speech or sentiments.”

Briefly, just briefly, Serafina thought of the idiot who had kept her entertained at the Lady N--‘s. He had been louche and vain and utterly without seriousness, able to read flirtation in to the merest commonplace - but for a treacherous moment, she wished that Mr Thornton could have some of that ease in social situations, some of that careless charm. 

Into her mind, like a beloved confidante, came Beatrice saying, “He were an excellent man that were made just in the midway between him and Benedick. The one is too like an image and says nothing, and the other too like my lady’s eldest son, evermore tattling.”

Shakespeare, she felt sometimes, truly understood her plight.

 But, no. No, she would not change her Mr Thornton, even if he was not hers. It was his gravity that drew her, his propriety, his sound good sense. She would not want an idle chatterer, just as she did not want him to tyrannise over her. Not really. Mr Thornton’s almost tentative respect for her was sign of his virtue, and his momentary lapses were merely the lingering mark of the rough behaviour he had been forced to endure in the humiliating circumstances thrust upon him at his father’s death. She would soon soften them away, if he would permit her to soften.

They certainly should not thrill her as they did.

“Serafina,” her mother said, “perhaps you could play for us. Really, Mr Thornton, she is a most gifted musician. Upon the flute and the pianoforte she was the bewilderment of her teachers, who seemed almost to disbelieve her facility.”

“Mama,” said Serafina.

“I’m afraid I am an indifferent judge of music.” Then, as if realising how abrupt that sounded, he bowed his head respectfully, “Although it would be a great pleasure to hear you play, Miss Tooting. If it does not distract you from your study.”

Honestly, she was relieved to get away from the deathly book, but she made a little show of reluctance, “I fear my mother’s praise is somewhat excessive, Mr Thornton. I would not wish to disappoint you.”

At that was the point that any other gallant she knew would have interposed some offhand remark about how anything her fingers produced upon the keys would sound like the music of the spheres.

“As I have admitted, Miss Tooting, I really am not the man to judge such things.”

“It appears it is not just me, Mr Thornton, who is capable of frankness.”

He stiffened, and she sensed, rather than saw, that he had restrained a movement to grab her arm.

No, that could not be right. She really must control her fancies.

Yet his fist was clenched as though she had angered him somehow. It was not that she had been reading too much Byron - there really was an intense river of emotion that seethed just beneath Mr Thornton’s skin, and in that moment it crackled in the space between them, like the threat of lightning. Something about it drew her, with the same dangerous transgression she and Mary Dunning had felt the night they had slipped the kitchen and drunk tumblers from the punch bowl that had been mixed there. The temptation, always, with such things, was to probe them, to demand that they unveil themselves before her.
 
But it was not proper.

She seated herself before the piano. The music was already on the stand, a showy, jaunty tune of the kind that went down well in society, but offered her little interest or enjoyment. “If you would be so good as to turn the pages for me, Mr Thornton.”

He said nothing, but she took his consent for granted, because otherwise the middle of the movement would stutter in an irritating fashion. She began to play, to slip into the place where her fingers knew their business and she need not pretend that social mores were more important than her feelings. 

“Even though I am no judge of music,” he said, in that rough, sincere voice that he only used when he was sure that he could not be overheard, “it is always a pleasure to hear you play. The curve of your neck, the concentration in your hands... such... such application is always admirable.”

“Even to a thing so frivolous as the pianoforte?”

“Please, I meant no offence when I-”

“I know what you meant,” she said, and remembered to add, “Mr Thornton.”

“I-”

Poor soul. “What you meant, sir, was that it is shameful that a woman’s traditional accomplishments are limited to things of such little practical use. I seem to recall that I agree with you.”

“Yes. Yes, of course.”

“Still, music can give great pleasure and solace, and it seems to me that such things are not without their worth.”

He gave another short agreement.

“It is unfortunate,” she said, “that it they are a pleasure reserved only for those blessed with leisure and comfort.”

“Indeed,” he said. 

Her neck was bare, and she could feel him watching it. Or perhaps she was imagining it, it was only that he had mentioned it. She tried to keep her back straight, to concentrate on her chords. So difficult with him standing so close.

“Mr Thornton,” she said, “please, make conversation. I believe it is your duty.”

“I’m afraid I am a man of few words, Miss Tooting.”

“You forget, I know that to be a nonsense.”

He leaned down to turn the page and his breath passed over her shoulder, brushed her cheek. Long and alone at night, she had imagined kissing him. He would come close to her, just like that, were he to do so. 

Her face half turned towards him, but he flinched away.