Content warnings can be found here

The first thing she knew was the bitter smell of ammonia, and chill air gusting in to the room around her. Her mother’s hand was on her cheek, her face stricken.

“Mama,” Serafina said, sitting upright, clutching at the lace of her mother’s sleeve, wanting nothing more than to sink into her arms, to weep. But Mrs Tooting shook her head. 

Mr Tooting stood by the window, his back turned. 

“Serafina was naturally distressed,” her mother said, touching Serafina’s hair with nervous, desperate pats. “Really, this news is too shocking, Mr Tooting. And after the excitement of last night, the poor child is exhausted.”

“She took the news itself rather calmly, madam,” said her father, not turning.

Serafina did not trust herself to speak. She tried to read some reassurance in her mother’s eyes.

“Sometimes these things take time to affect us.” Mrs Tooting still knelt by Serafina, upon the floor. “And to learn that another gentleman -”

“Not exactly a gentleman, though,” Mr Tooting said savagely, as he wheeled about. Serafina watched her mother’s face tighten. “Little better than a clerk, and his father… no. No, not the manner man we should be permitting access to your salon, madame, not at all.”

“Mr Thornton is...”

There was something white in her father’s hands.

“I mean to say, sir, that those who work Treasury can in no way be considered disreputable. His grandfather was a very respectable man. I had no reason to suspect that -”

“Explain why this,” and he thrust out a square of fine, white linen, his face distorted, creased with rage, “fell from your daughter’s sleeve?” 

The monogram was clear, the initials picked out in blue and grey.

Serafina, foolish, felt her hand go to her sleeve.

“A man who is scarcely a gentleman, the son of a suicide, leaves tokens with your child?” Her father’s face was close against her mother’s, his rage sending flecks of spittle on to her skin, but he was in control – the rage always as much sham as real.

But people listened when Mr Tooting shouted.

Serafina, still weak, still nauseated, felt as though she might faint again. 

“Yesterday…” She stumbled over the word. “Yesterday was uncommonly hot, papa. And when... when Mr Thornton called...” But her father turned and was hauling her to her feet, twisting her arm. 

She was dimly aware that it hurt.

“Husband, please...” 

Serafina stumbled as her father dragged her from the room. Had he not been pulling her, she would have fallen. She still could not breathe. Her hair fell into her eyes, her skin aflame with shame and disbelief. Behind them ran her mother, crying out distant platitudes. 

The only thing that mattered to her was Richard; Richard in the cold mist of the morning; Richard fleeing the law and the fury of Lord Forthenby. Tears fell unimpeded across her face, on to the carpets as she was pulled to her room, as she was thrown to one side, as, in fury, her father rummaged through the drawers of her bureau, breaking the locks and splintering the wood. 

It was not long before he found them - the dance cards, the bunch of flowers that now seemed little more than a dry collection of stems. Such innocent, little things.

And the letters. 

Serafina leaned back against the wall, weeping.

Mr Tooting brandished the pitiful bundle of papers in her face, tearing them open. 

“Secret correspondence, eh? Love tokens?”

“Please, papa. It is nothing. Nothing improper.” 

He was across the room, ugly with wrath, his fist raised as though to strike her. He would not, had not since she was a child, but there was so much fury in every line of him that she still felt herself cringe backwards.

Mr Tooting ripped the bundle of papers in two. “No-one will hear of this. No-one shall ever hear of this.”

Without meaning too, she went down on her knees, scrabbling after the slips and tatters of paper, but her father kicked them aside.

“You will never say his name again. I will not have it spoken in my house.”

Crouched on the floor, Serafina tried to draw together her strength, to say something about love, about honour, but she could find no words.  The wreck of her room, her father’s anger, none of it meant anything when she thought of Richard bending over her hand, the sudden closed expression of his face.

So proud. She had always known him to be so very proud. 

“Yes?” Her father grabbed her arm, began to drag her to standing again. “You will answer me, girl.”

The thought that her father would have her speak, the thought that he would have her betray her heart gave her strength. She stared up, her eyes bright with tears, her fingers still clutched around some sad, paper fragments, and said, “Mr Thornton has my love, sir. And he always shall.”

“Oh, Serafina,” came her mother’s voice, soft and from the doorway.

“You knew, madame?” Mr Tooting rounded upon her. “You knew of this?”

“Peace, husband,” said Mrs Tooting, edging into the room, her calmness as insubstantial as muslin curtain held up to conceal a horror. “I knew she had a partiality for the man, but it was a foolish, girlish thing. She is still young.”

“She is old enough to disgrace us.”

“She is nothing but a silly child with a trifling fancy for a handsome man. Nothing more. No harm is done, and she will come to see the error of her ways.”

For all she knew that her mother was trying to help, Serafina could not help the words that sprung from within her. “I am no child.”

Her father, still snarling, turned back to her. 

She would not falter, she must not falter. “I will never welcome the address,” she said drawing herself upright, and shaking with every movement, but stepping forward. “Of the Lord Forthenby. He is a villain, a coward and a -”

But with a shout of rage, Mr Tooting’s hand flew and slammed - not into Serafina’s own face, but her mother’s. A great gout of blood fell from Mrs Tooting’s nose, rushing down on to the pale cloth of her morning dress. 

For a moment, the room stood in silence. 

Her father clenched his fists around handfuls of torn paper. 

Serafina realised that her hands were over her mouth, her mother’s eyes wide as she raised a lace ‘kercheif to stem the flow of blood. 

“Remember your place,” her father said, to which them, she knew not. He stalked from the room, shoving Mrs Tooting out before him. There was the sound of a key turning in the lock.

Serafina stood, unable to move, unable to think, her hands still clamped tight across her mouth. Outside the windows, the day was bright, warm and clear. She had planned to ride to Town with Mary Dunning and her brother, to see the fashions of the West End. 

How very distant all that seemed.

After a long pause in which the worst of her shaking stopped, Serafina searched across the floor for the fragments of the letters, but there was nothing but a few torn characters in his hand, and some crushed stems - brittle and long since dried.