Burnt Norton by Caroline Sandon

and helplessness. Though they stood feet apart, their looks and gestures revealed mutual attraction. Sir William slumped into the chair, and with his head cradled in his arms he wept.
    Sometime later Dorothy heard shouting in the hall.
    ‘I will not go! You can’t make me!’
    ‘You’ll do as you are bloody well told! I won’t have you moping around here any longer. It’s time you went to school. You should have gone at thirteen like every normal boy. I said so to your mother at the time, but she wouldn’t have it. Now, you are definitely going.’
    ‘Perhaps you have your own motives for getting rid of me.’
    ‘How dare you, Thomas! You have no respect, and no manners. Perhaps Eton can make something of you, for it seems you have learnt nothing here. You will leave on the tenth of the month, so you had better start packing!’
    She heard the door slam and waited for her brother at the top of the stairs.
    ‘He’s sending me to Eton,’ he said. ‘I’ll be a target for every bully in the school.’
    ‘Why do you say that? Of course you won’t be.’
    ‘Look at me, Dotty. I hate shooting, I hate sport, and Father says I act like a girl.’
    She put her arms around her precious brother. She remembered the entry in her father’s diary and realized that this was no idle threat. ‘It will be all right. He can’t have meant it. If you don’t want to go, he won’t make you. Even Father can’t be that vile.’
    Thomas held her at arm’s length and looked into her eyes. ‘Believe me, Dorothy. If he thinks I’m a threat, he will send me away for ever.’
    Dorothy didn’t understand the implication of his words, but she knew that her father would be responsible for yet another loved one leaving her.
    It was not long before the gossip had reached the servants’ quarters.
    ‘He’s been sent away to school, poor boy.’ Annie’s face was long and disapproving.
    ‘Perhaps it’s better for him. Too many girls in the house,’ Ruth said.
    Molly folded the petticoats away in the cupboard for the third time. She rearranged the vests and the camisoles, the stockings and the bodices. Keeping busy was the only way to get through the morning.
    As Thomas’s departure drew near, Molly’s anxiety increased. She had been hanging a dress in Lady Keyt’s wardrobe when he walked through the bedroom door.
    ‘I have come to say goodbye.’
    ‘It’s true, you are going, then?’
    ‘Father’s packed me off to school.’ He picked up a hairbrush distractedly and put it down in the wrong place. He walked towards her, then turned back to the dressing table.
    ‘Stand still, sir, or you’ll wear out the carpet.’
    He smiled. ‘Molly Johnson, you are quite unique. I have never met anyone like you before.’
    ‘You can’t have met many people, then. I believe I’m quite ordinary.’
    He laughed and took her hand. ‘I’ll write if you would like me to.’
    She nodded, too flustered by his touch to tell him she couldn’t read.
    ‘Goodbye, Molly. I must go.’
    ‘Goodbye, Master Thomas, and good luck.’
    ‘Molly, may I kiss you?’ She looked at him in assent, and he lowered his head to hers. It was a fleeting, feather-light kiss, but it bound her to him.
    ‘This is a poem especially for you.’ He tucked a folded piece of paper into her fingers and pressed them to his lips. No one had written her a poem before. No one had made her heart pound in her chest. When the time came for him to leave, it took all her will not to run down from her attic bedroom and throw her arms around him. Instead she watched helplessly as the footmen carried the trunks to the awaiting coach.
    ‘Cheer up, Miss Dorothy,’ Lorenzo said kindly. ‘He’ll be back before you know it.’
    ‘He won’t,’ she wailed. ‘I know he’ll be gone for ever.’
    When the family assembled for the last time, she ran to Thomas and hugged him, burying her face in his shoulder.
    ‘These are for you.’ She pressed a small bunch of violets into his