Another Regency Romance Ch 03

3. George's second tale

The morning following that first little episode, when Miss Amelia caressed my thigh, she was due to come for her lesson alone. My emotions were hopelessly tangled; an admixture of dread that she should carry this behaviour forward, and a longing for her to do something more. Having spent so much time with her, and even more in thinking about her, she was coming to seem less like some creature from faerie, or a princess from an Arthurian romance, and more like a person of flesh and bone and volatile emotions.

Like any teacher had I started out thinking in a narrowly focussed way about her strengths and weaknesses, and how to build on the strengths that became more manifest every morning. But soon I was thinking about her glossy nutbrown hair, her shy smile, her shining eyes, her joy at every compliment, her pride in small successes and her dejection at setbacks. I could feel that she liked me, and I was certain that I liked her, but the huge difference in rank between us, meant that these feelings had to be kept within the strict boundaries of a tutorial relationship. Then came that moment when our relationship changed utterly.

The next day was Sunday, and, as usual, I went to church for Matins, in the coach along with the family, rather than along with the upper servants, as I had expected when I arrived. This courtesy, extended to me as a "gentleman", was probably in recognition of my education rather than my birth.

I found myself sitting alongside Miss Fox, and had the thrill of sharing my prayer-book with her. I sang out lustily, especially when my favourite Advent hymn

O Come, O come Emanuel

made an appearance in the morning service, rather than, as is more usual, at Evensong.

I took Communion, and privately asked my Creator for forgiveness for my impure deeds and thoughts. I felt gratitude that this was the Church of England, and not the Church of Rome, and that I would not have to confess my sins to the pasty-looking, pop-eyed young curate who was casting admiring glances at my companion.

I spent the remainder of the day at rest, as befits the Sabbath. I found a broken run of the

Journal of Agriculture

in the library, and flitted from article to article. I was totally enthralled by a weather diary that gave such remarkable details as the time of the dawn chorus on each day of the year (1797 I seem to recall), including which species of bird was the first to sing. What a wonderful piece of unpretentious but devoted scholarship - and the article was not even signed!

I love Evensong, and chanting the

Nunc Dimittis

and the

Magnificat

as our ancestors have done since the Reformation, never fails to move me. The family did not attend evening service, so I walked the two miles to the little Thirteenth century church, and got a lift back from a passing farmer and his sweet smiling wife in their gig.

Monday morning and Miss Amelia came alone for her lesson. We worked quietly, estimating square roots by successive approximation, and then employing the formula for exactness. She now has a clear appreciation of the value of approximation:

"It is perfectly true, as you day Mr. M'Crimmond, the more one knows, the better ones guesses become. How off that I'd never thought of that before." She laughed merrily and I smiled with her. Then, blushing prettily, she took up my left hand from the table, and kissed it in the centre of the palm, and replaced it on the table.

I was flattered and frightened at the same time. I had to remonstrate with her:

"Miss Amelia, you must be more careful. If your Mama were to come in now, she could not but see that something was going on."

To my shame, I was asking her to be discreet and, a little mendacious. I was not asking her not to take such liberties, because I simply could not bear to do so. By now I was as intoxicated by her as she evidently was by me.

It is surprising how quickly our physical contact intensified, and how soon we became too insulated in our own self-conceit to worry about proprieties. We would kiss and fondle each other whilst alone, and even when her sisters were present, Miss Amelia's hand would sometimes steal towards my virile member and trace its outline through my clothing, or take my hand and place it under her petticoats so that I could feel the moist heat of her body.

In retrospect it is painfully clear that it was only a matter of time, before something catastrophic occurred. If her sisters noticed anything, they were too wary to reveal anything, partly for love of their sister, and, I suspect, partly for fear of being accused of colluding. Miss Fox's maidservant, a very respectable girl, the daughter of one of the tenant farmers, whose concerns reached the point at which she took advantage of a Sunday afternoon with her family, to ask her mother's advice.

The first I knew of it was on Monday morning. We were having a lesson in the library, and a footman came in and delivered a message that her Mama wished to see Miss Fox. She rose to her feet and tripped off, suspecting nothing. An hour later I had the most painful interview of my life with her father.

He reproached me bitterly for my behaviour, and told me to go to my room and pack:

"You have betrayed our trust in the most despicable way. The damage you could have done is incalculable, my daughter's chastity is her most precious possession, and, from what have heard, it was only a matter of time before she was irrevocably spoiled. I don't think I have ever experienced so total a betrayal of trust.

"You will leave here today, and you must realise that I could never give you any recommendation for a post in a gentleman's house. You have proved yourself quite unworthy. Now get out of my sight."

*****

They had the generosity to send for a dogcart to take me to Loughborough and the following morning I took the stage to Norwich, and, by further stages, home. In a state of the most abject humiliation, guilt and misery, I returned to my family home. My state was pitiable enough; all my successes brought to nought. But I could spare little pity for myself. I was harrowed almost being bearing by my anxiety about what had happened to my darling Amelia. Worst of all, I realised that I had no right at all to know.

I spent months of humiliation and private grief. My parents felt my position deeply. They had been so proud of me, and now they were so ashamed.

What little I could do to protect Miss Fox, I did even if it made ma a laughing-stock. The story I told them, and anyone who cared to ask, was that I had so far forgotten myself as to fall desperately in love with Miss Fox and followed her about like a newly-weaned calf, bleating piteously and embarrassing her and her family until they had to show me the door. This story I stuck to, however ridiculous it made me.

I found some work teaching the seniors at my old Grammar School, and within a few months I found some contentment, as some of the brighter boys found pleasure in the music of numbers. My old patron Major Dutton came to see me when he was visiting his connections at Holkham. He laughed until tears ran down he cheeks, but such was his goodwill and generosity of spirit that I found myself laughing too, and, somehow things did not seem so bad.

He made no promises, but he moved quietly behind the scenes, and in the early Summer of '17, I was offered a junior fellowship at Christ's. I accepted with alacrity, feeling that, however little I deserved it, I was thrust back among the living.

The first time I sat at the Fellow's table and heard again the wonderful, life-affirming words of the Grace at Meals, tears of mingled joy and sorrow coursed down my cheeks. I was home again, but at what a cost.

Exhiliarator omnium Christe

Sine quo nihil suave, nihil jucundum est:

Benedic, quaesumus,

cibo et potui servorum tuorum,

Quae jam ad alimoniam corporis apparavisti;

et concede ut istis muneribus tuis ad laudem tuam utamur

gratisque animis fruamur;

utque quemadmodum corpus nostrum

cibis corporalibus fovetur,

ita mens nostra spirituali verbi tui

nutrimento pascatur

Per te Dominum nostrum,

Amen.

part 4 follows shortly.