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Chapter Ten

The afternoon was one of sweltering heat, and the half-handful of respectable bachelors Serafina’s mother had rounded up for the occasion were a sorry bunch. They shuffled their heels and tried to make themselves charming to every one of the young ladies present to prevent themselves being roundly abused by the majority should one of the girls happened to take their fancy. The young women were in just as bad a position, walking the dreadful rope of fascination and propriety in order to keep their reputation glowing among the plain and the tiresome without ever showing the kind of partiality that would drive away the attention of a gentleman they actually admired. 

Serafina fanned herself and tried to stifle a yawn.

“Would you care to accompany me along the laurel walk, Miss Tooting?” asked some sadly dull fellow with a sweat patch building at the back of his collar. He was making calf eyes at Mary Dunning, but Miss Dunning was far too busy with the solitary militia officer present to pay any attention to a gentleman who dared to present himself without epaulettes. In the absence of his preferred object of affection, the fellow had sought out Serafina and his languorous manner in doing so was hardly a compliment to her charms. 

“That would be delightful, Mr...”

“Pipwhistle, madam. Dr Dunning introduced us last -”

“Oh, of course. Mr Pipwhistle of the Gloucestershire Pipwhistles.”

He appeared not to catch the slightly mocking tone and appeared delighted that she had remembered. “You are acquainted with us, Miss Tooting?”

Oh dear. 

“Merely in passing, I am afraid. Although your reputation is justly famous.”

“For what?”

Whoops. 

“Your probity,” she said, without pause. “And, of course, the courteous nature of your young men.” She gave him a winning smile and realised a moment too late that she was indulging in the kind of gallantry people believed better suited the stronger sex.

Mr Pipwhistle appeared not to notice. “You speak very prettily, Miss Tooting,” he said, and offered her his arm. “That is always admirable in a young lady of breeding.”

Serafina thought languishingly of the cool room on the ground floor that was technically termed the small parlour, but which she mentally catalogued as her private study. In it, there was novel she had been forced to abandon. She had hoped, in recompense from dragging her away from it, her mother would have the tact to invite Mr Thornton to such a gathering, but he did not appear to be in evidence. She had seen all too little of him lately. A snatched dance at public balls, and only one visit. Each time they met, of course, he showed her the same disinterestedness and propriety which she had come to expect, talked only of sensible things, but his partiality had been noticeable. 

If you looked very hard.

She and Mr Pipwhistle walked through the stifling shade of the laurels, he prattling, she making muted replies. Halfway along, a little ashamed of herself, and remembering her resolution to avoid disappointing her mother in these matters, she stirred herself to press the conversation a little more.

“I’m afraid on an afternoon such as this, the walk offers very little, Mr Pipwhistle.”

“Not at all,” he said, blandly. “It is charming, really, most charming.”

“You are very kind, sir. I would sooner have shown it to you later in the year. In autumn, or winter, it takes on a most melancholy aspect. It puts me in mind the poet’s words, 'But, ah, that dark romantic chasm that down the green hill slanted, athwart a cedern cover...'” 

He said nothing.

“But perhaps you will think that the fancy of young girl,” she said, trying not to annihilate him with her eyes. 

“No, no. Most delightful verse. Shakespeare, isn’t it? Although these, of course, are laurels.”

“Yes,” said Serafina, “I suppose they are. And there’s no hill either, and the only river is the Thames.” He looked baffled, so she took pity, “Yet I always thought the purpose of poetry was to make one look at the mundane in a more agreeable light. To bring a little enchantment to the ordinary, a strain of music to speech.”

Mr Pipwhistle said that he supposed he had always been something of a dunce at verse, and that in any case, the walk was most charming.

Serafina wondered if it would be considered improper to start screaming, and reluctantly concluded that she could not even make a case for mannerly hysteria. So they continued to walk, slowly, arduously, down a stretch of badly kept path that could probably be cleared in half a minute’s brisk stroll, but which could be dragged out for forty minutes by a young gentleman who believed he had found a sympathetic maiden to listen to him jawing.

In a novel, the kind of novel that Serafina admitted to reading, such walks were useful for plot resolution: they would be taken by the heroine and her confidante, or one of her suitors - reputable or otherwise - and matters would be thrashed out wittily and to the mutual satisfaction of both parties. 

In the other kind of novel, the ones she read by candlelight when her mother could not stare at her reprovingly, they were frequented at night by star-crossed lovers, the wailing shades of young women wronged in love, and innocent maidens lured to shadowy assignations where unconscionable villains would clasp their slender, resisting forms in coarse arms and attempt to press unwelcome kisses to their mouths.

In fact, whe she was walking here alone, she thought about that kind of thing far more often than she thought about Coleridge. She wondered, sometimes, how it would feel to have a pair of arms seize her so hard that it bruised, to grasp her wrists and push her back into the hard, scratchiness of the leaves. How it would feel to have ardent, desperate lips snatching up her mouth in a breathless kiss as she struggled in vain. Sometimes, she would even close her eyes and wrap her hands about her own wrists, twisting until it hurt, pushing herself back into the hedge and imagining the suffocating touch of a mouth against her own, a hard, strong body pushing her back, the heat of it burning through her nightgown in the cold...

In those moments, of course, she did not think of all the endless villains of such sensational literature, but of Mr Thornton, of the cold, aloof look that his mouth would sometimes wear, and the way the skin of his neck was almost whiter than his shirt. He would whisper the kind of things that villains would say, though, cruel taunts, little slights, and he would push her head back so that she was forced to look up into his eyes, and would feel her face hot with tears and unwilling longing.

Whenever she came back from such walks, her mother would look with disapproval at the twigs in her hair and the mud at the hem of her gown and say, “What have you been doing, my dear? You look positively wild.”

Ridiculous. 

Mr Thornton was a respectable, respectful man. His propriety and reverence were commented upon to such an extent within their circle that it was almost seen as a flaw. The expression servile had once, at least, been linked with his name. Generous natures admitted that, while it might seem so, it at least showed a fitting respect for the quality. 

Serafina supposed that she did not have a generous nature. While Mr Thornton’s gravity appealed to her, he wore his humility ill, and often she could catch some trace of resentment beneath it. Since their conversation at the pianoforte last autumn, he had certainly cast it off in her presence, taking on an air that was little more possessive, even presumptuous. It seemed as though he had put his mark upon her, that he had admitted theirs were two hearts which beat as one.

But perhaps she was romancing him, again. 

From what she knew of his life, however, and what Dr Dunning had told her, there was plenty of scope for that kind imagining. A young man, born to a respectable house, finding himself cast into penury - or near enough - upon the cusp of adulthood. A breath of scandal around his father’s death, that no one would explain to her. A gentleman forced to become subordinate to those who should have been his equals, open to their scorn, their condescension, their...

Serafina blushed to remember the only time that she had dared express anything approaching such sentiments in Mr Thornton’s earshot. He had looked at first icy, and then, as though remembering himself, a little aghast. He had said, “I would hardly call employment in the Treasury a subordinate role, Miss Tooting.”

She had not placed her hand upon his, although she had longed to do so, and had made herself smile, speaking low enough that they would not be heard over the dance, saying, “Sir, it is in the nature of a reader to make a romantic hero of the man she loves.”

He had looked at mollified at that, but still seen fit to lecture her on the exact reasons why she must not place him on such a pedestal, nor, indeed, expect any such remarkable reversals of fortune as one often found in novels. 

Thus, it stood to reason that Mr Thornton must never be permitted to discover the place he supplied in her most private fantasies. Imagining his reaction, indeed, Serafina blushed so violently that Mr Pipwhistle stopped and turned, and apologised if the rigours of exercise had left her out of breath. He quickly inquired, too, if anything that he had said might have caused her offence.

“But no means, sir. It is simply this heat. Please, forgive me, I will join you shortly.”

“If you would not rather I waited, Miss Tooting....”

“I believe Captain Wren is leaving before we are called up for tea, and Miss Dunning will have no-one to accompany her.” She was playing her hand a little more obviously than she would usually choose. “As the daughter of the house, I am afraid I must insist you do not...” 

But Mr Pipwhistle was already scurrying away, his courtesy left in the dust at her feet.

She drew a deep, relieved breath.

“Miss Tooting,” said a voice from the walk behind her.

And there, as though she had conjured him, stood Mr Richard Thornton, his skin taking on the faintest tinge of pink in the abominable heat, his hair as black and curled as ever, his throat rising from his shirt like a column of Grecian marble.