Chapter Ten #2
Then he took Tess’s hand in his, like her bones were made of the finest porcelain china. It was very hard not to swoon.
‘Do you wish to talk to me about history?’ he asked in that same serious tone and with an air of resignation because his only experience of women in the last couple of hundred years had probably been a few PhD students with some very dry banter.
But yeah, sure, they could talk about history if he wanted.
‘Among other things,’ Tess said in what she hoped was an alluring manner but not too flirty.
As it was, his eyes had left her face to come to rest on her ankles.
She was dressed modestly enough, in a fit and flare dress featuring a pattern of shelves upon shelves of books cavorting on black sustainable cotton, which had seemed appropriate when she was getting dressed that morning.
It was a midi, but the man probably hadn’t seen a woman’s lower leg, well, in ever. ‘Maybe over dinner?’
‘An excellent suggestion. Where shall this repast take place?’ Rochester looked around him as if he expected a feast to be waiting for him.
‘Well, I thought we could go out,’ Tess said slowly, tearing her eyes away from Rochester to rest on Gabe.
There hadn’t been anything in his rules that said she had to stay in the library like the PhD students.
Now he nodded his head. How he managed to even nod his head pompously, Tess didn’t know, but he did.
With that agreed, she turned back to Rochester, who was fairly smouldering as he looked at her ankles again, a half smile playing on his firm, sensual lips. ‘Any preferences?’
Rochester inclined his dark head. ‘I don’t comprehend. I would prefer to eat, rather than not.’
He was so polite. Even Tess’s mother wouldn’t be able to fault his manners and that was saying something. Not that Tess wanted to be thinking about her mum right then.
‘I mean, is there any particular cuisine you like? Like, Chinese or Indian?’ Another thought occurred. ‘Do you have any allergies or intolerances?’
Behind her Gabe sighed. ‘He’s from the nineteenth century, he’s not going to know whether he’s lactose intolerant, is he?’
Tess looked over her shoulder all the better to glare at him and saw that Gabe was shrugging into his shapeless tweed jacket, which was really doing him no favours.
‘Oh, if you’re leaving, then we’d better go,’ she said as Rochester held out his arm for Tess to take. Such a gentleman! This was practically princess treatment; a girl could get used to this.
‘I’m coming with you,’ Gabe insisted, falling into step with Tess and Rochester because he didn’t read novels and he didn’t know how to read the room either. ‘To make sure that nothing untoward happens, like library property going missing.’
Tess ground to a halt. ‘No! No way! You are not third wheeling!’
‘Indeed, yes. A chaperone,’ Rochester said approvingly. ‘Is Sharma your brother, because he is uncommonly swarthy whereas you’re …’
‘No!’ they both snapped in unison.
‘And I’m not swarthy,’ Gabe added.
‘We don’t use terms like that,’ Tess said gently.
Rochester nodded, as he held the library door open for Tess. ‘I had no intention of causing offence. I only meant that compared to Sharma, your fair skin reminds me of sunlight resting on the velvet petals of a lily.’
It was hands down, the nicest, most romantic, most complimentary thing anyone, man, woman, or Sunday Sentinel reader, had ever said to Tess. She couldn’t help but preen, even though she was aware of Gabe’s disapproving presence as he walked three paces behind them.
‘That’s very kind of you. I’m very conscientious about applying SPF even in winter,’ she said.
Rochester frowned. Of course he didn’t know what SPF was.
Or Netflix. Or antibiotics. She didn’t want to blow his mid-nineteenth-century mind, but also she did really fancy dumplings.
‘We’re going to an area of London called Chinatown so we can have dim sum. Have you ever had Chinese food before?’
‘Do you mean to say that whole swathes of London have been colonised by the Chinese?’ Rochester asked incredulously, his nostrils flaring.
‘We like to celebrate other cultures.’ Tess wished that she’d had a hankering for fish and chips, which wasn’t such a politically charged dish.
‘London has a diverse, multicultural community and also, if anyone has done any colonising it’s the British.
It’s a dark stain on our history, quite frankly. ’
‘I can see the headline now,’ she heard Gabe mutter. ‘Jane Eyre’s Rochester in racist rotter shock.’
‘I only ask as I am astounded and quite, quite fascinated by the ready availability of Chinese food,’ Rochester said as they crossed over Shaftesbury Avenue.
Thankfully, he wasn’t having any major freakouts about traffic, although he froze in the middle of the road as a 19 bus bore down on him and Tess and Gabe had to take an arm each and steer him to safety. ‘Such monstrous beasts.’
‘He’s coping much better than Heathcliff,’ Tess said to Gabe as Rochester strode on ahead, down the little street that led to the start of Chinatown where enticing smells from the many restaurants and cafés wafted in the air while red paper lanterns strung up from the lampposts bobbed in the slight breeze.
‘The night’s still young,’ Gabe said, guiding Tess around a little cluster of foreign language students, their brightly coloured backpacks creating even more of an obstacle. ‘Let’s not take him to the place with the really rude waiters. Just to be on the safe side. He’s quite hot on etiquette.’
Rochester had stopped and was waiting for them to catch up.
‘I fear that I have spoken out of turn and you have condemned me for doing so,’ he said, his voice and expression both what Charlotte Bronte would probably call chastened.
‘I like to think of myself as a man of the world. I have travelled extensively, but the London that lies before me, well …’
‘Oh no, it’s fine. The past is a foreign country and all that,’ Tess said because he couldn’t help his Victorian sensibilities and education. Also, he was making a huge effort, which was more than could be said of most of the men she dated.
Tess had a good feeling about this, about him, about Rochester.
He’d loved Jane Eyre, hadn’t he? And, God bless her, she wasn’t the easiest person to love.
OK, yes, she was an orphan and hadn’t had a great childhood, but she was very whiny.
Very emo. Tess liked to think that she was much better date material than Jane Eyre and from the still appreciative gaze from Rochester when he looked at her, he seemed to agree.
‘There’s a really nice dim sum place just round the corner that I always go to. I think you’d enjoy it.’
‘I’m sure I shall if it already meets with your approval.
’ Rochester held out his arm for Tess to take again.
‘Please, lead the way. It may interest you to know that I have extensive investments with the East India Company. Of course, they no longer wield the power that they once did but they still have a monopoly on trade with China. Tea. Do people still drink tea?’
‘They do,’ Tess was happy to tell him. She actually preferred coffee with almond milk, but that was really more information than he needed or would be able to understand.
Likewise, if she told him that the East India Company had been cursed colonialists who’d utterly subjugated the Indian sub-continent.
‘It may also interest you to know that I have a tea plantation in India,’ Rochester continued. And again, Tess wanted to tell him that that was nothing to be proud about.
‘Oh, I’ve always wanted to go to India,’ was what she did say, which was a white lie.
She had wanted to go to India, as part of the gap year experience, which her parents had absolutely forbidden, but then friends that did go came back with tales of hostels with rudimentary bathroom facilities and getting off their tits on dodgy drugs at Goan beach raves and being airlifted to the nearest hospital and she’d revised her travel wish list. A week all-in at a nice Mediterranean beach resort was more her style.
Judging from Gabe’s incredulous snort and the hint of an eye roll, he suspected that Tess wasn’t cut out for those kinds of free-spirited adventures and that she was just telling Rochester what she thought he wanted to hear. Which of course she was. Hello! That was what you did on dates.
As it was, Rochester looked quite alarmed at Tess’s confession. ‘My dear Miss Hardy, India is no place for a well-brought-up young lady.’
They’d now reached the restaurant, which was briskly busy. Rochester held the door open for Tess, but she still had to squeeze past him, her body brushing against his, which felt a little unseemly given the circumstances and his Victorian-ness.
‘Then again, I wish you could see the flowering buds of the Hedychium densiflorum, or Orange Assam as it’s known.
It resembles living flame, a sight almost as beautiful as your eyes, if I may be so bold,’ Rochester said throatily so that Tess could feel her cheeks also resembling living flame as she blushed.
‘Um, yes, you may be so bold,’ she mumbled, keenly aware of Gabe standing behind them, his face impassive but jaw clenched. ‘You must have seen many incredible sights on your travels.’
‘I have, but nothing compares to the delights afforded me much nearer to home,’ Rochester said, smouldering so hard at Tess, it was a wonder he didn’t have smoke coming out of his ears.
‘I may curtail my travels in favour of the grey streets of London where one can still find beautiful blooms.’ He clicked his fingers at a passing server. ‘Here, boy! Kindly seat us at once.’