Content warnings can be found here

“A year,” she said.

“Would you wait for me a year?”

Silently, she nodded.

He moved his hand from beneath hers, a smooth gesture that reversed the grip, so that his thumb was in her palm, his fingers lying over the back of her hand and for a long moment, he gripped her. “I am the happiest man on earth.”

“Generally, gentlemen wait until the actual proposal to say that.”

“It is enough to know that you will wait for me.”

“Of course I shall wait, Mr Thornton. But,” and she hesitated, not wanting him to think her too improper or bold. “If you were to ask, sir, such circumspection might not be necessary. Were I your acknowledged fiancée…”

“Your father would never consent.”

Serafina looked away, aware that her father would never consent anyway. Her mother might be persuaded, and together they might soften him from absolute refusal, but he had always entertained vain dreams of the type of society she might be able to bring them in to, with her various ‘accomplishments’. 

“We could elope,” she said quietly, to the stillness of the afternoon, to the laurels.

Mr Thornton put his thumb underneath her chin and pushed up her head until she was looking at him. When she tried to turn her head away, he pressed a little harder, holding her firm, holding her in place. “And you still maintain those novels of yours are of no detriment?” His voice was hard, unfamiliar.

“I spoke seriously,” she said.

“I know you did, Miss Tooting. That is what alarms me. A secret engagement, I might consider, were there sufficient cause. But an elopement, madame? You see fit to recommend such a course? That is the child in you speaking.” 

He had still not released his grip on her chin. Serafina considered commanding him to do so, but that opened the question of what she would do if he did not. 

She felt tears prick the backs of her eyes again, and wanted to turn her face away from his, but that would only give the truth to his words, would make her a squalling girl who had no grasp of reality. “Mr Thornton,” she said, as levelly as she could.

“Tell me, could your reputation weather such a blow, Miss Tooting?”

She said nothing.

“I intend to marry you, madam. I shall marry you. But I shall do it publicly, with your father’s blessing and in fitting circumstances.”

“If I consent,” she said, the words tasting like iron in her mouth.

“What?”

She jerked her head away from his hand, “You get a little ahead of yourself, Mr Thornton. It is very well for you to intend to marry me, but you shall do no such thing without my consent.”

He stepped back, as though she had struck him, and barely kept himself from gaping.

“I am not a child, Mr Thornton. I will not be ruled by your resolutions. Perhaps my suggestion was foolhardy, but if I may not express the depths of my love for you, then, sir, perhaps we are not so suited as I had believed.”

“You would reject me over a matter of pride, Miss Tooting?”

“Since I have given away my heart, sir, pride is one of the few possessions I retain. The only other is my honour and I believe I would sacrifice the one to save the other.” She glared at him.

Mr Thornton stared, as though he did not quite understand what he saw. “Many gentlemen would take offence at such words, Serafina.” His voice was still cold. “And at the tone in which they were spoken.”

“Then I sincerely hope you are not as many gentleman, Mr Thornton.”

“No,” he said, and softened. “No, my dear, you remind me of myself. Although perhaps that is not so much of a compliment as I would have it.”

“It is all the compliment I desire from you, Mr Thornton.”

“You are not a child. I spoke in anger. But if we must speak of pride, then you understand why I may not declare until I am confident of your parents’ consent?”

And she did: his pride would not permit him to endure parental refusal, nor reluctance, nor an imposition of delay upon his ardour. No. If he were to have her, he must come like a conquering hero, secure in his future and finances. He must claim her hand as though it were his right. Like a knight in a fairytale. 

Now, that is childish.

Still, it was admirable, delightful, uncomfortable, that he would not endure having his heart’s desire granted to him as a grudging favour; that it must be bestowed freely, taken as his right. It was as though her consent were not enough to salve the wounds his current subordinate position had inflicted, as though he must triumph on his own account.

It would not happen so. 

Serafina’s father would only reluctantly give her to one such as Mr Thornton. He still asked, querulous, after that lively young man who had called only the once, when he himself had been otherwise engaged.

“First son of a baronet,” he would insist, the finest catch they had hauled into their circle in Serafina’s life.

The disinherited son of a dead baronet, her mother would counsel, a dissolute, destitute fellow, a veritable Macaroni, unwelcome at any respectable house. Still, Mr Tooting would harp on at it, First son of a baronet, and paid particular attention to her, did he?

A year. 

She understood her mother’s haste to see her wed. She felt it herself, the wild need to escape the paternal house, the unseemly pushing forward her father attempted at each gathering, the dark moods that made everything so dreadful when he was displeased. 

Mutual respect, her mother said, and a comfortable living with a good-tempered man. That is all that is necessary for happiness. Make the best match you can, and do it swiftly. 

But Mr Thornton – Richard – would have her wait for him. He would have her wait an entire year.

“Come,” she said, making herself smile in a way that she did not feel. “They will be beginning to discuss our absence, Mr Thornton. Would you be so kind as to walk me back to the house, sir?”

“Of course,” he said, and he bowed to her, but he did not take her hand, and he did not kiss it.



That evening, though, after all the guests had departed, when Serafina picked up her fan from where she had laid it down, a scrap of paper fell from it, fluttering down to the carpeted floor. She stooped to retrieve it and opened it to find it was merely a leaf torn from a pocketbook, upon which three words written in a clear, forceful hand. The third was not even a word, merely initials. 

Indeed, it said nothing more than, My heart, RT. 

Serafina looked about her and pressed it to her lips, thinking of what it would have cost his pride to sketch that out, to conceal it in the manner of a suitor from a far-fetched play. So, smiling, she took her fan and the billet-doux to her bedroom, and placed the latter it in the small, locked drawer, where she kept the dried bunch of flowers she had worn the night that she met him, the dance cards that bore his name, and the visiting-card she had stolen from the mantle in her father’s study. Together, they made a poor collection of keepsakes, but she gazed upon each as fondly as she would greet an old friend, and she left the drawer open as she undressed for bed, her fingers straying again, and again, to the place where his thumb had rested, beneath her jaw.