“I like you too, Tommy,” she said, his chest puffing out a bit at that response, “but we hardly know one another, and you do not seem the type to be desperate for marriage. What made you ask me?”
“Well,” he said carefully, trying to come up with a plausible explanation that wouldn’t make her suspect her father. “I had… heard that you had a need to be married. I figured, why not to me? We know one another, we get on well, and if I’m not mistaken, we have some attraction to each other. I am happy to let you live how you’d like. I’m not a controlling man.”
“My parents have wanted to see me married for years, so why now? Where did you hear that I needed to be married?”
“Well, I just assumed, as you’re a young lady of some means, coming to an age…” he said, fumbling his words. “I know both Emmaline and Lily faced the same concerns.”
“This is not exactly a romantic proposition,” she finally said, and Tommy swallowed hard, realizing where he had gone wrong. He had been so intent on saving her that he hadn’t considered that perhaps he should have put some effort into this. He knew from his mother and sister that, regardless of the circumstances, women enjoyed feeling appreciated.
They had reached the end of the Manchester street, which sloped down gently toward the bank of the River Irwell. The gentle rush of water calmed Tommy’s usually restless soul, while the moon reflected off the surface, casting shimmering reflections. It was in stark contrast to the factory buildings that loomed in the distance and the street of shops and taverns that led to it.
“Hold on for one moment,” Tommy said, lifting a finger between them before he hurried forward to the riverbank. He knew what grew along the banks of the river, and he quickly scoured the edges for what he was looking for.
He returned up the riverbank, holding what he knew was likely pitiful, but the best he could do in the moment.
“For you,” he said, holding out his makeshift bouquet of hastily picked wildflowers. It wasn’t until he held them out before him that he noted the different lengths of the stems, that the purple wildflower was tipping over to the side, and if he wasn’t wrong, that was a beetle crawling over the top of the yellow one next to it.
“Thank you, Tommy,” she said graciously, accepting the bouquet and holding it before her.
“Let me try this again,” he said, bending to a knee in front of her. He had one talent that he knew, from past experience, could turn simple adoration into blatant sexual attraction, and if there was ever a time for it, it was now.
He took one of her hands in his, holding her fingers softly, before he opened his mouth and began to sing.
“Believe me, if all those endearing young charms,
Which I gaze on so fondly today,
Were to change by tomorrow and fleet in my arms,
Like fairy-gifts fading away…”
When he was finished, he waited expectantly, but she was still unmoving, resembling a statue except that she blinked now and again.
Finally, her lips parted. “Tommy,” she said, her voice just above a whisper, “where did you learn to sing like that?”
He shrugged. “Just born with the voice of an angel,” he said. “If I had planned this better, I would have brought my guitar.”
“Your voice is…”
“Surprising? I sang in the church choir for a while, until Ibegan apprenticing with the blacksmith, and football took most of my extra time. Now I sing for fun. Mostly in the bathhouse with the fellows or while working. But we’re getting off-topic. Have I convinced you?”
“Tommy,” she said with a sigh. “I appreciate the gestures, I do. And while I can understand that you might be acting on impulse, there must be a reason why. So, confess.”
“No reason,” he said, holding his hands out. “It just seemed like good timing.”
She stepped closer, narrowing her eyes as she studied him. “You know, don’t you?”
“Know what?”
“That my father plans to marry me off to pay off his debts.”
She would have knocked him over with her words had he not been so solidly planted on the ground.
“You know that he plans to marry you off?”
“Yes. I found evidence of it in his study last night. But how couldyoupossibly know any of this?”
Tommy sighed before taking her hand and leading her over to a relatively flat piece of ground. He paused, shrugging off his coat before laying it on the ground and helping her sit down upon it.
