loveistoburn

To Love is to Burn

Lady Agatha’s red hair licked around her face like crackling fire light. Her complexion pale as blown almond blossom and fresh spring showers, her lithe figure and tiny waist were accentuated by a heavily brocaded green velvet gown that swirled and glittered with gold and copper thread as she danced; her head tossed back and laughter on her lips. She exuded gaiety.

She was dancing with a local landlord’s son, Thackeray Swales, about her age but far beneath her station yet six feet tall with a mop of golden hair and ruddy cheeks; an open-air god. He twirled her until they both laughed with exhilaration and dizziness in just the way they had so few years back, when Farmer Wheaton had swung them round and round at the edge of the hayfield and they’d played hide ‘n’ seek among the ricks. Later she’d burn a candle in her window and so would he. It was a childhood game. They could see each others’ candles in the night across the parkland that separated his father’s tithe cottage from her father’s vast estate.

Now her father approached somewhat sternly to introduce Sir Ronald Rotheringale of Elingdon-Stoke who bowed in courtly manner and offered her the next dance.

“Much obliged, Sir,” she said coyly, still out of breath from the last. She saw him leering at the heaving of her bosom and tried to tame its movement.

Sir Ronald had a bulbous nose and mousey hair. He smelt of lavender and camphor. His movements were stiff and clumsy. He apparently cared little for perspiration. “I have to inform you that it is my avowed intention to seek your father’s consent to matrimony,” he said, “if, as I am assured, there is no other,” he paused and looked towards Thackeray, “suitable candidate?”

“Indeed not,” she replied, as she was obligated to do and she cast a glance at Thackeray who did not meet her gaze but quietly retreated into the shadows of the hall.

Agatha was thoroughly marriageable and running out of excuses. Sir Ronald was not the first such suitor to be introduced. She doubted she could continue much longer to persuade her father to let her have her way and so she decided to indulge his wishes and encourage Sir Ronald’s attentions. As they danced, she casually let it be known that she slept always with a candle alight in her window, being of a nervous disposition.

Sir Ronald Rotheringale of Elingdon-Stoke was much taken and watched through the casement window of his room the lights go out in all other sections of the house, until only a single candle remained alight in the South Wing. He left his room and made his way silently through dark labyrinthine corridors to her door and there as instructed, he rapped sharply three times and was admitted.

Lady Agatha stood before him in a nightgown of linen so fine; almost one could descry the beauty of her youthful loveliness beneath. Sir Ronald thought that were that the last sight a man’s eyes beheld he should think himself happy – and so he was, for a moment.

Then Lady Agatha screamed, such a scream as aroused the estate dogs and brought much of the household including her father running, sword in hand to her rescue. Sir Ronald was cast out into the night without ceremony or breeches, his reputation in shreds. Being a gentleman worthy of the name, he would not impugn the lady’s honour by disclosing the nature of their assignation and thus hiding the truth, he enabled Agatha to dispose of at least two more potential mates in similar manner within a few months.

Alas Thackeray Swales had never dared knock on that door. On the night of his marriage to a girl to whom he was promised, at last his candle did not answer Agatha’s across the vastness that divided them. And on that same night the great house burned - and everyone in it. It is said Agatha can still be seen dancing in the ruins as flames lick around her red hair.