Simply Magic (23 page)

It would be altogether better, he thought—for both of them—if she said no. But he willed her not to refuse him. He did not want this to be good-bye. He wanted the chance to laugh with her once again before they went their separate ways forever.

She had drawn her hand free of his arm. She took him completely by surprise now when she drew off one of her gloves and set her fingertips gently against his cheek.

“Yes,” she said. “I would like that.”

He swallowed and turned his head to brush his lips against her palm. But only for a moment. That porter had not moved back out of sight. Peter half expected that he would growl at any moment—or open his mouth and spew out a stream of fire.

“I shall see you tomorrow, then,” he said, stepping back. “Good night.”

“Good night. And thank you for walking back with me,” she said, before turning and hurrying inside.

The door closed with a click behind her.

…you must give special thanks for the narrow escape you have just had.

He ought to agree with her. He tried to imagine his mother's reaction and his sisters' if he had proceeded to present Susanna Osbourne to them as his chosen bride. They would
not
be happy.

But dash it all, he could
not
agree.

And devil take it, if this was what being in love felt like, he had been wise to guard his heart for the past several years.

With a deep sigh he turned to begin the long walk back to his hotel.

17

“I am glad you are not too late home,” Mr. Keeble said, just as if
he were her father. “I worry when one of you ladies is out after dark. Miss Martin wants you to join her in her sitting room.”

“Thank you,” Susanna said as he passed her in the hallway in order to lead the way upstairs.

She would give anything in the world, she thought as she followed him up, to be able to go straight to her room, to dive beneath the covers of her bed, to hide from the world and herself there forever and ever. And yet contrarily she could not wait to reach the calming comfort of Claudia's presence.

Oh, how she missed her mother! Ridiculous thought, but really,
how
she missed her.

“Miss Osbourne, ma'am,” Mr. Keeble said after knocking at the door of Claudia's sitting room and then opening it, announcing Susanna formally as he always did when given the chance.

It was an enormous relief as she entered the room to see that Lila was not there, fond as she was of her fellow teacher. Claudia was sitting beside a cozy fire, a book in her lap, looking rather weary. But she looked sharply enough at her friend and cast the book aside in order to get to her feet as Mr. Keeble shut the door.

And then quite inexplicably Susanna was in her arms, her head on Claudia's shoulder. Nothing like it had ever happened before. She relaxed into the sheer comfort of the embrace for several silent moments before stepping back, biting her lip, embarrassed.

“I am so sorry,” she said.

“Sit down,” Claudia said, drawing the other armchair a little closer to the fire, “and I will pour you a cup of tea. It is fresh.”

It had always been Susanna's self-appointed job to pour the tea, but on this occasion she did not argue. She sank into the offered chair after setting aside her cloak and gloves with the shawl laid carefully on top of them. She welcomed the warmth of the fire against her chilled body.

“Now,” Claudia said after Susanna had taken her first sip of the blessedly hot tea, “what do you wish to tell me, if anything?”

They had never intruded into each other's lives. It was remarkable that they had been such good friends for years without knowing very much about each other's past—though, of course, Susanna had been only twelve when she came to the school.

“I saw someone in the Abbey,” she said. “Two people, actually, though I was not sure of the identity of the other person.”

“Two people you knew?” Claudia asked.

“A long time ago.” Susanna took a long drink from her cup and then set it in the saucer and put both on the table beside her. “I grew up in their home until the age of twelve, until my father died. He was secretary there.”

Claudia said nothing.

“He took his own life,” Susanna blurted. “He killed himself, Claudia. He shot himself in the head.”

“Ah, you poor dear,” Claudia said softly. “I did not know that.”

“I suppose my existence was not enough to make him want to live,” Susanna said. “He did not even make any provision for me.”

She was grateful that Claudia said nothing for a while. She had not even fully realized how much she had pitied herself all these years, how much she had resented the fact that her father had chosen death rather than her, even though she thought she understood at least part of his reason for doing what he had done. He had always been an affectionate father, though he had been content to let her grow up in the nursery with Edith and not see her for more than a few minutes in a day and sometimes not at all.

“And the person you saw this evening, the owner of the house, would make no provision for you either?” Claudia asked at last. “That is why you ran away, Susanna?”

“Lady Markham,” Susanna said, spreading her hands in her lap and looking down at them. “And I believe it was Edith with her. I shared a childhood with her though she was more than a year younger than I and the daughter of the house. We were very close even though I was really only a servant's daughter. But my father
was
a gentleman.”

She had become defensive on that issue lately.

“Of course he was,” Claudia said. “I knew from the moment of your arrival in Bath that you were a lady, Susanna. You needed no elocution or deportment lessons, and you could already read. I have always thought that was why Mr. Hatchard noticed you and wrote to ask if I would take you here.”

“I was on my way from my bedchamber to the nursery,” Susanna said, pressing her palms harder into her lap and stiffening her fingers as she recounted the memories that had rushed at her earlier in the Abbey. “I was desperately seeking for some comfort, I suppose, even though there is no real comfort to be found when one's papa has just blown his head off and one has not been allowed to see him despite one's tears and screams. I wanted Edith. But I never got inside the nursery. I could hear Lady Markham speaking in there, though I have never known whom she was addressing. It could not have been Edith, who was barely eleven.”

She paused and drew a deep breath, which she expelled on a sigh.

“I believe I can still remember her exact words,” she said. “They are burned into my memory.
The church has washed its hands of him, of course,
she said.
He committed a mortal sin when he took his own life. He will have to be buried in unconsecrated ground. And whatever are we to do with Susanna? This is such a burden for us to bear. She can hardly remain here.
”

She had fled—from the nursery and from the house.

“My father was not buried in the churchyard,” she said, “and I did not even stay to see what they actually did with him. I left him as he had left me and somehow found my way to London.”

“And now Lady Markham is in Bath,” Claudia said.

“Yes.” Susanna curled her fingers into her palms and lifted her head to stare into the fire. “And I am almost sure the young lady beside her was Edith. It is foolish to have been so discomposed. I was just looking around between pieces close to the end of the program, as I had been doing all evening. A large man a few rows behind me had moved out of my line of vision, and there they were. I suppose they had been there all the time. But I am fine now.” She smiled. “How was your evening with the senior girls?”

But Claudia ignored her question. She also was gazing into the fire.

“There is nothing worse, is there,” she said, “than a past that has never been fully dealt with. One can convince oneself that it is all safely in the past and forgotten about, but the very fact that we can tell ourselves that it is forgotten proves that it is not.”

Susanna swallowed. “But remembering is pointless,” she said, “when nothing can be done to change the past. I am fine, Claudia. Tomorrow I shall be my usual cheerful self, I promise.”

But she did wonder about Claudia. Was there something unresolved in
her
past? Was there something unresolved in everyone's past? Was memory always as much of a burden as it could sometimes be a blessing?

Claudia looked up and smiled.

“When I saw your face as you stepped into the room,” she said, “I was convinced that Viscount Whitleaf must have put that look there. I was quite prepared to march down to the kitchen, avail myself of Cook's rolling pin, and stride off in pursuit of him.”

“Oh, Claudia,” Susanna said before she could stop herself, “he asked me to
marry
him.”

Claudia went very still.

“And?…” she said.

“I said no, of course,” Susanna said.

“Did you?” Claudia asked. “Why?”

“He is the sort of man…oh, I do not know quite how to describe him,” Susanna said. “He often takes gallantry to an extreme. He wants to shoulder the burdens of all women of his acquaintance. He wants to make them comfortable. He wants to make them feel good about themselves. He will go to great lengths not to hurt them or deprive them of what seems important to them. And even that description does not quite express what I am trying to say. He is kind and open and…And he is quite muddleheaded. He could see that I was upset when he walked home with me, and he wanted to comfort me. And he thought perhaps that he had raised expectations in me during the summer and so felt that he owed me an offer of marriage. I suppose that he believes being a spinster schoolteacher is an undesirable fate for any woman.”

“And did he?” Claudia asked, looking at her with disconcertingly keen eyes. “Raise expectations in you?”

“No,” Susanna said. “No, he did not.”

“Do you love him?” Claudia asked.

Susanna opened her mouth to say no but shut it again. She drew a deep breath and released it slowly.

“Love has nothing to do with anything,” she said. “I said no and I meant no. It would not have been a happy marriage, Claudia, for either of us. Love on one side would only have made it worse—for me and perhaps for him too.”

“I know you are feeling weak and vulnerable tonight,” Claudia said after a few silent moments, “but in reality you are a very strong person, Susanna. And you were a strong girl. I always knew, of course, that your father had died and left you all alone in the world—you told me so when you came here. But I had no idea of the terrible truth until tonight. You were always the sunniest-natured of girls nevertheless—even if you
were
rather wild and rebellious for the first few months. And you are the sunniest-natured of my teachers and very much loved by all the girls—almost without exception, I believe. I will not question your decision to reject Viscount Whitleaf's offer. Such a match would have offered you security and wealth and comfort for the rest of your life, of course, but you know that without my having to tell you so. I am very glad that you had the strength to put happiness and integrity before material security. And of course I am selfishly glad for myself.”

Susanna smiled rather wanly.

“He is coming here tomorrow afternoon,” she said. “He wants me to go walking with him. Perhaps I ought to have said no to that invitation too after being away from school this evening.”

“Ah, Susanna,” Claudia said, “we must live too when given the chance. Teaching is a
job,
my dear, not a life.”

Susanna looked at her in some surprise. She would have expected Claudia to be disapproving of the continued relationship.

“It will be the last time,” she promised, getting to her feet. “He will be leaving Bath soon.”

“Good night, Susanna,” Claudia said. “But I have not even asked you about the concert.”

“It was wonderful beyond words,” Susanna told her.

A few moments later she was on her way up to her room, feeling considerably calmer than she had felt when she first arrived home. But there was still a heavy ache of grief somewhere low in her abdomen.

He had asked her to marry him.

And she had said no.

Ah, she had said no.

And then she had set about comforting him because she knew she had made him unhappy.

But still she had said no. She could not marry him just because he felt guilty about having lain with her.

He did not love her.

As if
that
were a good reason for rejecting a dazzlingly eligible marriage offer.

But she
did
love him, and that made all the difference.

As she let herself into her bedchamber and closed the door behind her, she wished she felt even half as strong as Claudia had assured her she was.

         

Bath had long ceased to be a fashionable watering spot. It had become a retirement center for the elderly and the infirm and the shabby genteel and the upwardly mobile middle classes. But it still had its charm, and it had its rituals, one of the most enduring of which was the early morning promenade in the Pump Room to the accompaniment of the soft music provided by the chamber orchestra in the alcove at one end of the room.

Some people went to drink the waters in the hope of improving their health. A few went for the exercise or told themselves that they did. Most went in order to watch for new faces and listen to new gossip and pass on any news they thought someone else might not yet have heard.

Peter put in an appearance there the morning after the concert just as he had the day before. He had always enjoyed mingling with other people even when, as now, there was almost no one of his own age group and no one he knew apart from the acquaintances he had made the day before. That last fact was soon to change, though.

He was conversing with a group of ladies that included Lady Holt-Barron, who, upon hearing that he had attended the wedding breakfast at the Upper Rooms a few days earlier, informed him that she had an acquaintance with the Bedwyns, that the Duke of Bewcastle had actually called at her house on the Circus one afternoon when the present Marchioness of Hallmere had been staying with her daughter—the marchioness had still been Lady Freyja Bedwyn at the time though she had become betrothed to the marquess before leaving Bath. Peter was listening to the lady's convoluted story with smiling indulgence when he spotted two very familiar faces across the room.

Lady Markham and Edith.

He excused himself as soon as he could politely do so and went to meet them, a delighted smile on his face. They watched him come with answering smiles.

“This
is
a surprise,” he said after greeting them and bowing to them both, “though I suppose it ought not to be since I discovered from Theo quite recently that Edith lives not far away and that you were spending some time with her, Lady Markham.”

“But it is not a surprise to us, Whitleaf, beyond the fact that you are here in Bath at all,” Lady Markham said. “We saw you last evening in Bath Abbey and fully intended to speak with you after the concert. But you vanished and left us wondering whether you had been simply a mirage.”

“Ah, yes,” he said. “One of the ladies in my party was unable to stay longer and so I left as soon as the concert had finished to escort her home.”