“I did not buy it for Caroline,” he repeated. “It is true I bought it as a wedding gift – but for two dear friends who were to have been married. I bought it for her because he was given a living in Northumberland, and she was a slight creature and always felt the cold so terribly. It was to have been my wedding gift to her.”
“She w-was…?” stuttered Griselda. “She died?”
“Yes, before they were married. Poor Foster, I never saw a man so in love – and she was so in love with him. Her name was Marianne. She was…” he broke off.
The shawl still lay folded on the centre of the well polished table and he reached out and fingered the stuff. Griselda who had put down the book now sat with her hands folded on her lap. She watched the thoughtless sensuality with which he carressed it.
“I did not mean anything by it,” he continued. “I thought it only might be useful to you. I suppose I should have given it away long ago to some poor creature who had real of need of it. That would have been what Marianne would have wanted. She always knew what was right.”
“Perhaps then there is someone – some dependant of the family who you still might send it too. Perhaps one of her sisters… as a memorial?”
“As you wish,” he said, indifferently letting the shawl drop from his fingers. “Since you do not care for it.”
“I do not feel the cold,” said Griselda carefully, but her heart felt frozen.
At this moment Manton announced the arrival of Mr and Mrs Austin. There was no time to remove the shawl. It lay on the table in a glorious heap, looking like a recently opened present. Mr Austin was the first to remark on it.
“Ah, but we have intruded upon something,” he said. “You must forgive us.”
“Indeed sir, you have not,” said Griselda, getting up and giving him the best smile she could muster.
“Such a gift,” said Mr Austin, picking up the shawl. “I must congratulate you, Sir Thomas. So much better than jewellery – which no really modest woman can rejoice in. There is true beauty in this, true devotion. And what a match for my lady’s complexion. I never saw anything so handsome!”
And with a priestly air, he held out the shawl to Griselda, so that she could not avoid putting it on.
“Very pretty, my dear,” said Mrs Austin. “And very useful. This is a cold part of the country.”
“And with that gown,” said Mr Austin, who clearly had as much an eye for these things as his wife. “Ah, Sir Thomas, what have you brought into the neighbourhood!”
***
To Tom, the Rector’s compliment seemed to indicate a gallant gesture would be in order, and he wanted very much to take her hand and kiss it. Griselda looked incomparable in her black velvet dress, the shawl draped gracefully over her forearms. He had known it would look well on her.
He realised now that it had been a mistake, but it did not stop him briefly taking her hand and kissing it. She did not flinch, of course, but the smile which crossed her lips was uneasy. Her fingertips were as cool as marble and she made no attempt to grasp his fingers. She was play-acting perfectly but she would do nothing more for the role than was required.
Now she walked away to the window with Mrs Austin, and the two women stood discussing the prospect while Tom poured the wine. Standing there with her back to him, the shawl hung down in all its magnificence taunting him with its beauty. He bitterly regretted sending it. He wished he could have predicted she might take it amiss but he had not been thinking of it in that way. He had sent it as a substitute embrace. If he was not allowed to touch her, then it could. And now, just as he realised this, she pulled it around her a little more closely, chilled perhaps by a sudden draft at the window. He had meant the shawl as a gesture of goodwill, a first step in his courtship. He had not expected it to be so spectacularly rejected.
But here she was, wearing it in spite of herself and looking as beautiful in it as he had imagined.
After the servants were clearing away the second remove and bringing in the dessert, Manton stopped at Sir Thomas’s elbow and said, “Sir Thomas, there’s a party from the village school outside. They would like to pay their compliments to you and my lady.”
“How delightful,” said Mr Austin, with a smile at his wife.
“Do we have you to thank for this, Mrs Austin?” said Thorpe, amused.
“It is traditional, Sir Thomas,” said Mrs Austin. “And the children were very anxious to see Lady Thorpe.”
“I hope I do not disappoint them,” said Griselda.
“How could you?” said Mr Austin.
“Show them in, Manton.”
“In here, sir?” Manton queried.
“Why not,” said Thorpe, “when we’ve a table covered with sweetmeats?” And he got to his feet and went out of the room, with Manton a step or two after him.
“The school is a great project of Sir Thomas’s,” said Mrs Austin.
“There are not many landlords I know who insist that all the children in the district go to school until the age of twelve – and provides the wherewithal to do it,” Mr Austin added.
“Yes, he has built a proper school. It was one of the first things he did when he came of age,” said Mrs Austin. “But I daresay you know that.”
Griselda gave an evasive smile. How could she tell them how little she knew about Tom Thorpe?
He came back into the room now looking distinctly amused, a state which struck Griselda as most becoming.
“It’s quite a deputation,” he said, coming to stand by Griselda’s chair. He glanced at the table, now laden with a glistening profusion of jellies, creams and fruit. “I hope we have enough to go round. Mr and Mrs Austin, I hope you won’t see this as a breach of hospitality, but I may have to ask you to restrain yourself in the matter of dessert.”
They laughed at that, and then Mr Austin signalled to Tom, as the lead of the deputation, a girl of about twelve, had just glanced curiously around the edge of the dining room door. Clearly they were all lined up outside.
Griselda got up from her chair and went to the door, saying, “Please come in, won’t you?”
The leading girl looked a bit startled, then remembered herself, trotted forward a few paces, made her curtsey and presented Griselda with a bunch of flowers.
“Thank you. How beautiful!” And that was the signal for a flood of children to rush in, thrusting their flowers at her in rapid succession, not all of them remembering to bow or curtsey.
The smallest children, five or six years old, were the last in line and Griselda, who had been stooping to address the others face to face, now sank down onto her knees, charmed by them. They were beautiful children, full of a mixture of awkward grace and sheer terror at being allowed into the dining room of the great house. The last little boy gave his flowers to Griselda and then burst into tears, as if it were all too much for him. Griselda, who felt near to tears herself, could not help taking him into her arms and holding him. She was quite surprised that the boy was willing to accept the embrace and even more surprised that she was willing to give it. She was usually ill at ease with children, but this child’s simple confusion echoed something in her own heart.
“Now, Dick….” The schoolmistress was looming over them, fussing, but Dick buried his face against Griselda’s bodice.
“He knows a good thing when he’s found it, Miss Finch,” said Thorpe. Griselda felt her throat constrict at that. “Here, Dick, do you want a piece of candied ginger?”
The child was interested. He looked up at Thorpe and sniffed away his tears, and reached out for the piece of ginger that Thorpe dangled towards him. He nibbled it and, liking the taste, smiled up at Griselda.
“Here, do you want to go for a ride on my shoulders?” said Thorpe.
A delighted nod and a broad grin was the response. Thorpe opened his arms to take the boy from Griselda, but Dick was determined to have the last word. He gave Griselda a smacking kiss on the lips before Thorpe hoisted him away.
“I kissed the bride!” he crowed, as Thorpe took him on a circuit around the dining room.
Still kneeling on the floor surrounded by posies of flowers, Griselda could not help laughing at the spectacle. Thorpe seemed to have the children in his thrall, and when he told them to follow, they followed him around the table, their pockets and their mouths stuffed full with the best sweet nonsense the cook at Priorscote could provide.
Thorpe led them past Griselda, out of the dining room doors, in a snaking, jogging procession, with each child holding on to the coat tails or apron strings of the one in front. Forgetting about her ankle, Griselda could not resist jumping up and joining in, much to the surprise of the solid little lad who formed the rear of the cavalcade.
Thorpe lead the procession round and round the double row of marble pillars in the hall, and Griselda began to wonder if he was going to take the children up the great staircase that lay in the next room. But instead he took them through the double doors into the saloon and brought them to a shuddering halt in which half of them fell over and rolled about on the floor, all laughing hysterically, particularly the little girls, Griselda noticed.
It was a splendid, ridiculous sight and Griselda stood, her hand over her mouth, trying not to give way to same delicious affliction of helpless laughter that had smitten the little girls. And then she saw Thorpe looking at her. He had just deposited Dick on the top of the closed fortepiano, and was standing with his arms folded across himself, looking very pleased with the chaos. And he looked at her and raised an eyebrow as if to say, “So you like this nonsense, do you?” and she found herself smiling back at him, because there was really nothing else to be done.
“Children, children, if you please, remember where you are,” Miss Finch the schoolmistress was looking worried, if not shocked.
Thorpe turned to her.
“Would it trouble you to play some airs for us, ma’am?” he said. “I think dancing is required, yes?” he added to the children. “Will you dance?” They enthusiastically assented. “Then we will dance. Miss Sally Perry, is that you on the floor there? Will you do me the honour of opening the set?” and he dragged her to feet in a kindly but rather boisterous way which made her giggle all the more helplessly.
“Sir Thomas,” said Mr Austin, “isn’t it usual for the groom to open the dancing with the bride?”
“Oh, but I have a partner here,” said Griselda grabbing the hand of the little boy whom had been last in the line. “If you will do me the honour?”
“Master Jones will be glad to, I am sure,” said Sir Tom. “Yes, Sam?”
“Oh yes sir, of course sir,” said Sam Jones.
“Then we two couples will open the ball,” said Tom with an inclusive grin at Griselda that made her light-headed.
As they all took their places for the dancing, with Thorpe pairing off the couples and showing them where to stand, Griselda could not be more sure what impressed her more – the fact that Thorpe had taken the trouble to learn all these children’s names, or the readiness with which he obliged them with all the graces of his household. It was true generosity: warm and genuine, not motivated by duty but out of pleasure in the act of hospitality itself. He was no ordinary man, that was certain.
“What are we dancing, Miss Finch?”
They started with a very boisterous versions of ‘Lilly Bulero’, and then went onto such delights as ‘Gathering Peasecods’ and ‘The Hole in the Wall’. In the fourth set, ‘Jenny Pluck Pears’, Griselda found herself standing at the bottom of the room opposite Sir Thomas, watching the couples at the top of the line move delicately through the figures.
“They dance very well,” Griselda remarked.
“I send a dancing master from Stamford to them once a week,” said Tom. “I am sure he thinks I am a fool trying to teach country children town graces, but he takes his guineas from me just the same.”
“No, he is the fool – and impertinent,” Griselda said. “I never saw anything more delightful in my life.”
“I am glad it pleases you,” he said.
“It does, very much,” she said.
The measure changed and he began to clap, as the others were doing, while the lines moved up. Griselda joined in herself.
Then it was their turn to danced again. She took Thorpe’s hand and they walked through the necessary steps together until it was time for them to separate again. As they did, Griselda felt a sudden slicing pain in her lower leg and her ankle gave way, sending her to the floor in an ungainly heap.
Thorpe was instantly crouching at her side, his face tender with concern.
“If you could just help me to a chair,” she murmured, trying to get up.
“You are not even going to try and stand on that,” he said firmly and scooped her up into his arms, as if she were one of the children.
Griselda thought he would deposit her on the nearest couch and felt herself flushing crimson as he took her out of the saloon and up towards the stairs.
“This is isn’t really necessary…” she began.
“I’m taking you upstairs where you can’t do yourself any more damage,” he said and began to climb the stairs. “I shouldn’t have let you dance in the first place, if I’d thought about it for a moment. But when it comes to you, I never think – that’s the problem.” He said it so matter of bluntly that Griselda was for a moment lost for words.