Simply Magic (3 page)

“Yes,” she agreed, doubling her contribution to their conversation since leaving Hareford House.

So she was not going to contradict him, was she? He could not resist continuing.

“It was my heart,” he said, patting it with his right hand, “that was warmed and brightened.”

This time she did not turn her face, but he amused himself with the fancy that the poke of her bonnet stiffened slightly.

“The heart,” she said, “is merely an organ in the bosom.”

Ah, a literalist. He smiled.

“With the function of a pump,” he agreed. “But how unromantic a view of it. You would put generations of poets out of business with such a pronouncement, Miss Osbourne. Not to mention lovers.”

“I am not a romantic,” she said.

“Indeed?” he said. “How sad! There are no such things, then, you believe, as tender sensibilities? There is no part of one's anatomy or soul that can be warmed or brightened by the sight of beauty?”

He thought she was not going to answer. They came to the fork in the lane where they had met a couple of hours ago and followed Raycroft and Lady Edgecombe onto the branch that led to Barclay Court.

“You make a mockery of tender sensibilities,” Miss Osbourne said so softly that he bent his head toward her in case she had more to say.

She did not.

“Ah,” he said, “you think me incapable of feeling the gentler emotions. Is that what you are saying?”

“I would not so presume,” she said.

“But you would. You already have so presumed,” he said. He was rather enjoying himself, he discovered, with this curiously serious, prim creature who looked so like an angel. “You told me I made a mockery of tender sensibilities.”

“I beg your pardon,” she said. “I ought not to have said such a thing.”

“No, you ought not,” he agreed. “You wounded me to the heart—to that chest organ, that mundane pump. How differently we view the world, Miss Osbourne. You listened to me pay you a lavish and foolish compliment and concluded that I know nothing about the finer human emotions. I on the other hand looked at you, serious and disapproving, and felt—ah, as if I had stepped into a moment that was simply magic.”

“And now,” she said, “you make a mockery of
me
.”

She had a low, sweet voice even when she sounded indignant. She was small in stature and very slender, though she was curved in all the right places, by Jove. He wondered how well she controlled a class of girls, most of whom undoubtedly wished themselves anywhere else on earth but at school. Did they give her a rough time? Or was there steel in her character, as there appeared to be in her spine?

He would wager there was steel—and not a great deal of tenderness. Poor girls!

“I fear,” he said, “that with a few foolish words I have forever condemned myself in your eyes, Miss Osbourne. Shall we change the subject? What have you been doing with your school holiday up until now?”

“It was not really a holiday,” she said. “Almost half of the girls at the school are charity pupils. They remain there all year long and some of us stay too to care for them and to entertain them.”

“Us?” he asked.

“There are three resident teachers,” she told him. “There used to be four until Frances married the earl two years ago. Now there are Miss Martin, Miss Jewell, and I.”

“And you all give up your holidays for the sake of
charity
girls?” he asked.

She turned to look at him again—a level, unsmiling look in which there might have been some reproof.

“I was one of them,” she said, “from the age of twelve until Miss Martin made me a junior teacher when I was eighteen.”

Ah.

Well.

Extraordinary.

He was walking and talking with an ex–charity schoolgirl turned teacher. It was no wonder they were having a difficult time of it communicating with each other. Two alien worlds had drifted onto the same country lane at the same moment, none too happily for either. Though that was not quite true—he was still enjoying himself. “There is no question of
giving up
our holidays,” she continued. “The school is our home and the girls our family. We welcome a break now and then, of course. Anne—Miss Jewell—has just returned from a month in Wales with her son, and now I am here for two weeks. Occasionally Claudia Martin will spend a few days away from the school too. But in the main I am happy—we are all happy—to be busy. A life of idleness would not suit me.”

She was a prim miss right enough. She had nothing whatsoever to say about the weather, and had only brief reproaches to offer when he would have spoken of hearts and sensibilities. But she could wax eloquent about her school and the notion of teachers and charity pupils being a family.

Lord help him.

But she was more gloriously lovely than almost any other woman he had set eyes upon—and the word
almost
might even be withdrawn from that thought without any great exaggeration resulting. He had often thought fate was something of a joker, and now he was convinced of it. But the apparently huge contrast between her looks and her character and circumstances had him more fascinated than he could remember being with any other woman for a long time—perhaps ever.

“The implication being that idleness suits
me
very well indeed?” He laughed. “Miss Osbourne, you speak softly but with a barbed tongue. I daresay your pupils fear it.”

She was not entirely wrong, though, was she? His life
was
idle—or had been for all of five years anyway. It was true that he intended to reform his ways and put idleness behind him in the very near future, but he had not really done so yet, had he? Thinking and planning were one thing; doing was another.

Yes, as he was now, today, Miss Osbourne was quite right about him. He had no defense to offer.

He wondered what it must be like to
have
to work for a living.

“I spoke of myself, sir—my lord,” she said, “in answer to your question. I made no implication about you.”

She had small, dainty feet, he could see—which was just as well considering her small stature. He had noticed during tea that her hands were small and delicate.

Miss Susanna Osbourne disapproved of him—probably disliked him too. In her world people worked. What had it been like, he wondered, to be a charity girl at the school where she now taught?

“Do you
like
teaching?” he asked.

“Very much,” she said. “It is what I would choose to do with my life even if I had myriad choices.”

“Indeed?” He wondered if she spoke the truth or only said what she had convinced herself was the truth. “You would choose teaching even above marriage and motherhood?”

There was a rather lengthy silence before she replied, and he regretted the question. It was unmannerly and might have touched her on the raw. But there was no recalling it.

“I suppose that even if I could imagine myriad choices,” she said, “they would still have to be within the realm of the realistic.”

Good Lord!

“And marriage would not fit within such a realm?” he asked, surprised.

He did not realize until he found himself gazing at the tender flesh at the arch of her neck that she had dipped her head so far downward that she must have been able to see nothing more than her own feet. He
had
embarrassed her, dash it all. He was not usually so insensitive.

“No,” she said. “It would not.”

And of course he might have known it if he had stopped to consider. How often did one hear of a governess marrying? Yet a schoolteacher must have even fewer opportunities to meet eligible men. He wondered suddenly how the countess had met Edgecombe. He had not even known before today that she had been a schoolteacher at the time. There must be an interesting story behind that courtship.

In his world women had nothing to hope for or think about
but
marriage. His sisters had not considered their lives complete until they had all followed one another to the altar with eligible mates in order from the eldest to the youngest, at gratifyingly young ages—gratifying to them and even more so to his mother.

“Well,” he said, “one never knows what the future holds, does one? But you must tell me sometime what it is about teaching that you enjoy so much. Not today, though—I see we are approaching Barclay Court. We will talk more when we meet again during the next two weeks.”

She stole another quick glance at him and he laughed.

“I can see the wheels of your mind turning upon the hope that such a fate can be avoided,” he said. “I assure you it cannot. Neighbors in the country invariably live in one another's pockets. How else are they to avoid expiring of boredom? And I am to be at Hareford House for the next two weeks just as you are to be at Barclay Court. I am glad now that I decided not to return to my own home tomorrow as I had originally planned.”

He spoke the truth and was surprised by it. Why on earth would he wish to extend an acquaintance with a woman from an alien world who disliked and disapproved of him? Just because she was dazzlingly beautiful? Or because he could not resist the unusual challenge of coaxing a smile and a kind word from her? Or because with her there might be a chance of actually conversing sensibly—about her life as a teacher? His conversation—and his life—had been far too trivial for far too long.

“I daresay,” she said, “you will be busy with Miss Raycroft and the Misses Calvert.”

“But of course.” He chuckled. “They are delightful young ladies, and who can resist cultivating delight?”

“I do not believe,” she said, “you expect me to answer that.”

“Indeed not,” he agreed. “It was a rhetorical question. But I will not be busy with them
all
the time, Miss Osbourne. Someone might misconstrue my interest in them if I were. Besides, with them I have felt no moment of magic.”

He smiled down at her bonnet.

“I would ask you,” she said as their feet crunched over the gravel of the terrace before the house, her voice as cold as the Arctic ice, “not to speak to me with such levity, my lord. I do not know how to respond. And moreover I do not
wish
to respond. I do not wish to have you single me out on any future occasion. I wish you would not.”

Dash it all. Had he offended her more than he realized?

“Am I to look your way whenever we are in company together during the coming weeks, then, and pretend that I see only empty air?” he asked her. “I fear Edgecombe and his lady would consider me unpardonably ill-mannered. I shall bow to you each time instead and remark upon the fineness or inclemency of the weather—without drawing any comparisons with your person. Shall I? Will you tolerate that much attention from me?”

She hesitated.

“Yes,” she said, ending their conversation as monosyllabically as she had begun it.

Edgecombe must have observed their approach and was coming out through the front doors and down the horseshoe steps to greet them, a smile of welcome on his face.

“You
did
persuade him to come, then, Frances,” he said, setting one hand at the small of the countess's back and smiling briefly and warmly down at her. “Raycroft—good to see you again. And Whitleaf is staying with you? This
is
a pleasure. Do come inside. Did you enjoy the walk, Susanna? And did you find Mrs. and Miss Raycroft at home?”

He smiled kindly at the schoolteacher and offered her his arm, which she took without hesitation.

“We met Miss Raycroft at the fork in the road,” she said. “She was out walking with her brother and the Calvert sisters. We walked back to the village together and then on to Hareford House, where we took tea with Mrs. Raycroft. It was indeed a pleasant outing. There can be nowhere lovelier than the Somerset countryside.”

Her voice was light and happy. Peter smiled ruefully to himself as he followed them up the steps and into the house, the countess between him and Raycroft.

By the time he stepped over the threshold, Miss Osbourne was already moving off in the direction of the staircase without a backward glance.

“You will wish to entertain Mr. Raycroft and Lord Whitleaf in the library, Lucius,” the countess said. “We will not disturb you.”

“Thank you,” he said, setting a hand at her back again. “The vicar called. I daresay by now you know all about the village assembly the week after next?”

“Of course,” she said.

“I said we would attend,” he told her, “on condition that there be at least one waltz. The vicar has promised to see to it.”

He grinned at her and she smiled back, her face alight with amusement, before turning to follow Miss Osbourne up the stairs.

“Right.” Edgecombe turned his attention back to his visitors, rubbing his hands together as he did so. “Shall we step into the library? We will have some refreshments, and you can both tell me everything I missed in London during the Season. I
have
heard that you are finally betrothed to Miss Hickmore, Raycroft. My felicitations. A fine choice, if you were to ask me.”

3

“I disliked him intensely,” Susanna replied bluntly when Frances
asked her what she thought of Viscount Whitleaf.

“Did you?” Frances looked surprised. “But he is rather good-looking, is he not? And very charming, I have always thought.”

Susanna did not comment on his looks, though it seemed to her that he was considerably more than just “rather good-looking.”

“
Calculatedly
charming,” she said as she removed her bonnet and fluffed up her curls with the visual aid of the mirror in her bedchamber while Frances stood in the doorway, twirling her own bonnet by its ribbons. “He does not utter a sincere word. I doubt he has a sincere thought.”

“Oh, dear.” Frances laughed. “He
did
make a poor impression on you. I suppose he tried to flirt with you?”

“You heard what he said when we first met,” Susanna said, turning from the mirror and gesturing to the chair beside the dressing table.

Frances stepped into the room though she did not sit down.

“I thought his words rather amusing,” she admitted. “He did not mean to offend, you know. I daresay most ladies enjoy such flatteries from him.”

“He is shallow and vain,” Susanna said.

Frances set her head to one side and regarded her friend more closely.

“It might be a mistake to jump too hastily to that conclusion,” she said. “I have never heard of any vice in him. I have never heard him called a rake or a gambler or a ne'er-do-well or any other of the unsavory things one half expects to hear of a young, unattached gentleman about town. Lucius likes him. And so do I, I must confess, though I have never been an object of his gallantry, it is true.”

“I do not understand,” Susanna said, “how those girls can be so taken in by him.”

“Miss Raycroft and the Calverts?” Frances said. “Oh, but they are not really, you know. He is
Viscount Whitleaf,
high-born, enormously wealthy, and quite out of their orbit. They understand that very well. But they enjoy his attentions—and who can blame them? Life in the country can be exceedingly dull, especially when one rarely travels farther from home than five miles in any direction. And he is very skilled at flirting without ever favoring one particular lady above all others and therefore inspiring hope in her that can only lead to disappointment. Women understand him very well, I daresay, and look for husbands elsewhere. Society often works in such ways.”

“I am very glad, then,” Susanna said tartly, “that I do not belong to society. It all sounds very artificial to me.”

But as she caught her friend's eye, she first smiled and then dissolved into unexpected laughter.

“And just
listen
to me,” she said when she caught her breath, “sounding like a dried-up prune of a spinster schoolteacher.”

“And looking like anything but,” Frances said, joining in the laughter. “I suppose he flirted on the way back to Barclay Court too, the rogue, and you responded with a sober face and a severe tongue? The poor man! He must have been utterly confounded. I wish I could have listened.”

They laughed together again. Perhaps she
had
overreacted, Susanna thought. Perhaps she would not have judged him quite so severely if he had been introduced to her as Viscount Jones or Viscount Smith or anything but Viscount
Whitleaf
.

“Anyway,” she said, “I have always said that I will hold out for a duke or nobody. I believe a mere viscount must count as nobody.”

They both chuckled at the absurdity of her words. A
mere
viscount, indeed!

“Come along to my sitting room with me,” Frances said, “and we will order up some tea and have a comfortable coze until the visitors have gone away. It was rather a long walk on such a warm day, was it not? I am thirsty again. But it felt
so
good to stretch my legs. I have done enough sitting in a carriage during the last few months to last me for the next year at the very least.”

Susanna followed her to the small sitting room of the private apartments she shared with the earl and sank into a comfortable brocaded easy chair while Frances pulled on the bell rope to summon a servant.

But Frances had not finished with the topic of the viscount.

“Of course,” she said, “you are quite right to be wary of Viscount Whitleaf, who is well known for having an eye for beauty but who may not have realized at first that you are far too intelligent to respond gladly to empty flirtation and dalliance. You are certainly wise not to be dazzled by him. But, Susanna, there has to be someone out there who is just perfect for you. I firmly believe it. And I
so
want to see you contentedly settled in life. Mr. Birney, our vicar, was new here just before we left for Europe and so I do not know him well. But he is pleasing to look at and has refined manners and is unattached—at least he was six months ago. And he cannot be a day over thirty, if he is that. Then there is Mr. Finn, a gentleman farmer, Lucius's tenant. He is earnest and thrifty and worthy and quite personable in appearance. But I believe you met him last time you were here.”

“I did,” Susanna said, her eyes twinkling. “I believe he is sweet on the eldest Miss Calvert.”

“You may be right,” Frances admitted. “But I am not yet convinced she is sweet on him. Well, let us dismiss him just in case she is—or just in case he is not heart-free. There is also Mr. Dannen. He owns his own property and is in possession of a modest fortune, I believe. Certainly he appears to be comfortably well off. You have not met him. He was away the last time you were here—in Scotland, I believe. He is short in stature—but then so are you. Otherwise he is well enough favored. Of course, he is—”

“Frances!” Susanna interrupted her, laughing. “You do not have to matchmake for me.”

“Oh, but I do.” Frances sat on a love seat facing her friend's chair after giving her order to the housekeeper, and gazed earnestly at her. “You and Claudia and Anne are still my dearest female friends, Susanna, and I fervently wish for you all to be as well settled and contented as I am. Surely there must be enough unattached gentlemen in this neighborhood for all of you.”

Susanna laughed again, even more merrily, and after a moment Frances joined in.

“Well, for
one
of you anyway,” she said. “I cannot seriously imagine Claudia ever marrying, can you? And Anne is so attached to David that I daresay she would be unwilling to risk subjecting him to a stepfather who might mistreat him.”

David Jewell was an illegitimate child, Anne never having been married.

“So I am the one?” Susanna said.

“And so you are the one,” Frances said, reaching for both her hands and squeezing them tightly. “You are so
very
pretty, Susanna, and so sweet-natured. It seems unfair that fate landed you in a girls' school at the age of twelve and has kept you there ever since, far from the world of men and potential courtships.”

“It is
not
unfair,” Susanna said firmly, pulling her hands free. “Except perhaps to the hundreds and thousands of other girls who were not so privileged. And you know how much I love the school and all the girls and Claudia and Anne and even Mr. Keeble and the other teachers.”

Mr. Keeble was the elderly school porter.

“I do know it,” Frances said with a sigh. “Just as I loved teaching until Lucius forced me to admit how much more I wanted to sing—and how very much more I wanted him. Well, I will say nothing else on the subject. And here comes the tea.”

They were quiet while the tray was brought in and set down and while Frances poured the tea and handed Susanna her cup.

“And so there is to be an assembly in the village the week after next,” Frances said. “We arrived home at the perfect time.”

“An assembly will be wonderfully exciting,” Susanna said. “Even a little frightening. I have never been to any such thing.”

“Oh.” Frances looked at her with sudden realization. “Of course you have not. But you have danced at the school forever, Susanna, demonstrating steps for the girls. Now at last you will be able to put your skills to work at a real dance. And you need not be afraid that you will make a cake of yourself and everyone will notice. This is a country assembly with country people who will go to enjoy themselves, not to observe one another critically. And if that suddenly wary look has anything to do with the fact that Viscount Whitleaf will be there too, you silly goose, I will be wishing that he were to take himself off back home to Sidley Park before the fateful night. You must not allow yourself to be intimidated by him.”

Sidley Park.
Susanna's heart sank again at the name.
Why
did Viscount Whitleaf have to be a friend of Mr. Raycroft? And
why
did he have to be staying with him at Hareford House now of all times? For so many years—eleven, in fact—there had been no real reminders of her childhood and its abrupt, ghastly ending. She had been able to convince herself that she had forgotten.

“Oh,” Frances continued, “and Lucius has bullied the vicar into seeing to it that there will be at least one waltz at the assembly. Have I ever told you about our first waltz together—in a dusty assembly room above a deserted inn with no one else present, no heat though it was the dead of winter, and no music?”

“No music?” Susanna laughed.

“I hummed it,” Frances said. “It was the most glorious waltz ever waltzed, Susanna. Believe me it was.”

They lapsed into a companionable silence while Frances's dreamy expression and slightly flushed cheeks indicated that she was reliving that waltz and Susanna wondered if anyone would dance with her at the assembly. Oh, how she
hoped
so! She would not even think about the waltz. Just one set—
any
set.

She knew the steps of the waltz, though. It was a dance Mr. Huckerby, the dancing master, always taught the girls at school. He was not, however, allowed to dance it with any of them, but only with any teacher who was willing to oblige for demonstration purposes. That had used to be Frances. Now Susanna and Anne and sometimes Mademoiselle Étienne, the French teacher, took turns.

Susanna loved the waltz more than any other dance. Not that there was anything even faintly romantic about performing the steps with Mr. Huckerby, it was true, especially when an audience of girls, many of them stifling giggles, looked on. But she had always dreamed of waltzing in a glittering, candlelit ballroom in the arms of a tall, handsome gentleman who smiled down into her eyes as if no one else existed in the world but the two of them.

I am not a romantic,
she had said earlier to Viscount Whitleaf. What an absolute bouncer of a fib! She lived a busy, disciplined life as a schoolteacher, and she did indeed love her job—she had spoken the truth about that. But her dreams were rich with romance—with love and marriage and motherhood.

All those things she would never experience in the real world.

As if I had stepped into a moment that was simply magic.

She had wanted to weep when he spoke those words, so meaningless to him, so achingly evocative to her. How she longed for the magic of someone to love more than anyone or anything else in life. Of someone to love her in the same way.

For an unguarded moment she pictured herself waltzing with Viscount Whitleaf, those laughing violet eyes softened by tenderness as they gazed into her own.

But she shuddered slightly as she shook off the image and reached for a ginger biscuit. She must certainly not begin sullying the splendor of her dreams by imposing
his
image on them.

And then she thought of something else he had said.

You wounded me to the heart—to that chest organ, that mundane pump.

She almost ruined her aversion to him by chuckling aloud with amusement.

Frances would think she had taken leave of her senses.

And then she thought again of Sidley Park. She had lived until the age of twelve only a few miles away from it, though she had never actually been there. She had known it as the home of
Viscountess Whitleaf,
though she had always known too that the young viscount lived there as well as his five sisters, who bore the name of Edgeworth. She recalled that when she had first heard Frances speak of the Earl of Edgecombe she had had a nasty turn, wondering if he was of the same family—until she had realized that the names were not identical.

But apart from that, she had done a good job of holding the memories at bay. They were just too excruciatingly painful. She had heard that some people blocked painful memories so effectively that they completely forgot them. She sometimes wished that could have happened to her.

A specific memory came back to her then. She must have been five or six years old at the time and was playing close to the lake with Edith Markham when they had been joined by a young boy a few years older than they. He had asked them with great good humor and open interest what they were doing and had squatted next to Susanna on the bank to see if there was a fish on the end of her makeshift fishing line.

“Oh, hard luck!” he had said when he had seen that there was not. “I daresay the fish are not biting today. Sometimes they do not—or so I have heard. My mama will not let me go fishing. She is afraid I will fall in or catch a chill—instead of a fish, ha-ha. Did you get it? Catching a chill instead of a fish? Does your mama fuss you all the time? Oh, I say! You have the greenest eyes, don't you? I have never seen eyes of just that color before. They are very fine, and they look very well with your red hair. I daresay you will be pretty when you grow up. Not that you are not pretty now. I do beg your pardon—I forgot my manners for a moment. A gentleman
never
lets a lady believe that perhaps she is not pretty. May I hold the rod? Perhaps I will have better luck than you though I daresay you have had more practice.”