You clap your hands together and try to sound authoritative.
“I wanted to clean out the classroom today, but unfortunately a certain Scottish someone doesn’t seem to think that possible. It’s almost as if he thinks you don’t have the strength to clean out a schoolroom by yourselves.” The children stop punching one another for a moment and goggle at you. “ ‘Weaker than kittens, and just as easy to scare’ was the phrase, I believe is what he said.” You do not feel guilty for the lie.
The children erupt into howls of outrage and darkly mutter “bloody stupid haggis-eating so-and-so” and “finks he can tell us wot to do…” You feel mildly bad for throwing Mac under the horse-drawn omnibus, but only just…and now you have more than twenty scrappy young cockneys to maneuver.
“I know!” you say, feigning outrage. “I told him that you were more than capable of cleaning out a schoolroom on your own, but he didn’t believe me!”
The howls grow louder, and within minutes the classroom is filled with a horde of children rearranging furniture, sweeping, and scrubbing the walls. The room is already starting to look shockingly presentable.
Colonel Abercrombie chooses this moment to walk in, and immediately starts chuckling.
“Och, ye must have cast a spell upon the wee bairns, just like how you have bewitched young MacTaggart!”
“I-I’m not sure what you mean…,” you splutter, blushing furiously.
“He means Captain Mac wants to feel you up, miss,” explains Sallie politely. “That is what my mum, God rest her soul, used to say about her gentleman visitors, and they liked her ever so much.”
Before you can think of an answer, Colonel Abercrombie rescues you.
“Help me move these boxes, will ye, Sallie? There’s a good girl.” He smiles at you with fatherly tenderness. “Don’t mind me. I’ll just be moving a chest and a few boxes of some old papers of mine, no more, and then I’ll be out of your way.”
“It is no mind at all, Colonel Abercr—” The words dry up in your throat as you notice a certain strapping red-haired figure watching you in fascination from the doorway.
Mac cocks his head, grins, and walks in, nodding to the departing Abercrombie, who is lugging the heavy chest with shockingly little effort for a man of his age. Your heart flutters uncontrollably as Mac makes his way to you. What would it be like to have such a man “feel you up”? Every particle of your body aches with longing to know, and you hate yourself for it.
“What have we here?” says Mac, wincing as None-of-Your-Business deliberately knocks into him, grumbling about “bloody Scots swanning in here like they own the place.” Mac doesn’t notice, or chooses not to. Instead he resets the boy’s course, saying, “Easy there, Bert,” so kindly that it only serves to further darken the boy’s mood. As the child stomps off, Mac turns to you, admiration and amusement sparkling like diamonds in those hazel eyes.
“I have nae idea how you managed this, lass, but it seems there is more to you than meets the eye.” He reaches out and wipes a smudge from your cheek with a firm, calloused thumb. You tremble at his touch. “I feel I owe you an apology. Truly, you must have bewitched us all.”
While you feel the very breath leaving your body as you stare into the soulful depths of his eyes, Sallie elbows another girl hard in the ribcage.
“See! I toldja, didn’t I?” she hisses.
“Cor!” says her friend. “You reckon he’s going to start feeling her up soon?”
You and Mac break apart instantly, but there is little time for awkwardness. The acrid smell of smoke begins to fill your nostrils, and you hear one of the children scream. Abercrombie rushes back into the room.
“We have to get out! The orphanage!” he says. “The orphanage is on fire!”
Mac immediately takes charge. “Lads! Lasses! Take one other person’s hand and follow me!” The children immediately respond and file out behind him, even angry little None-of-Your-Business.
You are relieved by how swiftly you escape, for the blaze wastes no time in consuming the crumbling building in its hot, angry flames. Mac stands in the pouring rain, his wet shirt clinging to his powerful shoulders in a highly distracting way, watching his life’s work consumed by the inferno. His jaw is taut, but his eyes betray the depths of his emotions.
Instinctively, you grab his hand. He turns to you, looking as though his soul, too, has been swallowed by the conflagration. You share a moment, a sweet yet bitter moment, where it seems as though only the two of you are here, on this wet London street, the past burning away before your eyes like so much kindling. Unfortunately for you both, this is not the case.
“Oi! Dodger! No! Bad dog!”
You are broken from your reverie just in time to see Dodger racing back into the building—and little Timmy chasing after him.
Bloody Dodger. Turn to .