Simply Magic (4 page)

But no sooner had he seated himself on the bank and taken the rod from her, looking bright and happy and friendly, than an older girl had appeared and told him in a hushed, rather shocked voice that he ought not to be playing with
that
little girl, and then another girl, even older, had come rushing up to catch him by the hand and pull him firmly away from the bank and tell him that he must never,
never
go so close to the water again. He would fall in and die, she had said, and
then
what would they all do to console themselves?

Edith had gone off with them, and later Susanna had learned that they had come from Sidley Park on an afternoon visit—Viscountess Whitleaf with the young viscount, her son, and her daughters.

Susanna had not thought of that incident for years and years. She was surprised she remembered it at all.

Were that friendly, talkative, overprotected little boy and the viscount she had met this afternoon one and the same, then? But they must be. She had liked him then and wanted him for a friend. She had hoped he would visit again, but though she believed he had, she had never seen him again.

Even then they had been worlds apart.

“We have been invited to spend the evening with Mr. Dannen and his mother tomorrow,” Frances said. “It will be something for you to look forward to. And you will have a chance to take a look at him and find out if you like what you see.”

She chuckled at the look on Susanna's face, and then they both laughed together.

         

Peter had spoken quite truthfully about neighbors in the country frequently coming together, either for impromptu walks and rides and drives and daytime calls at one another's homes or for more formal entertainments like dinners and carriage excursions and garden parties.

The evening of the day after he first met Susanna Osbourne offered one such formal gathering.

Dannen's mother had recently come from Scotland, where she lived with a widowed brother, to spend a few weeks with her son. And so he had invited his neighbors to meet her at an evening of cards and music followed by supper.

The Raycrofts were among the first to arrive, but by the time Peter looked up to observe the arrival in the drawing room of the Earl and Countess of Edgecombe with Miss Osbourne, Miss Krebbs was seated beside him on a sofa, the Misses Jane and Mary Calvert were sitting close by, one on a chair, the other on an ottoman, and Miss Raycroft was leaning on the back of the sofa, having declined his offer to allow her to sit.

They were talking—almost inevitably—about the assembly. Miss Krebbs had asked him about the waltz and whether it was embarrassing to dance a whole set face-to-face with one partner and actually
touching
that partner all the time.

There had been a flurry of self-conscious giggles from the other ladies at the question, and then they had all fallen silent in order to hear his answer.

“Embarrassing?” he had said, looking from one to the other of them in mock amazement. “To be able to look into a lovely face while my one hand is at the lady's waist and the other in hers? I cannot think of any more congenial way to spend half an hour. Can you?”

“Oh,” Mary Calvert said with a deep sigh. “But Mama
will
insist that it is too fast a dance for any of us to perform—and I am not talking about tempo.”

“The beauty of the waltz, though,” Peter said, “is that it is danced in public with every mama able to keep an eye upon her daughter—and upon her daughter's partner. No man with a grain of sense would attempt anything remotely indiscreet under such circumstances, would he—despite what he may
wish
to attempt.”

They were all in the middle of a burst of merry and slightly risqué laughter when Peter looked up and his eyes met Susanna Osbourne's across the room.

Ah.

Well.

If someone had told him that a lightning bolt had penetrated the roof and the ceiling and the top of his head to emerge through the soles of his feet on its way through the floor, he would not have contradicted that person.

Which was the strangest thing really when one came to think of it, considering the fact that in the brief moment before she looked away he saw neither stars in her eyes nor adoration in the rest of her face. Quite the contrary, indeed. Her look made him uncomfortably aware of how he must appear sitting here, surrounded by young beauties and laughing his head off with them.

Vain, shallow popinjay.

He did not catch her eye again for all of the next couple of hours or so while he conversed with almost everyone else, played a few hands of cards, and then turned pages of music at the pianoforte while several of the young ladies displayed their talent at the instrument or twittered merrily about it. All the other men, he noticed, went to extraordinary lengths to avoid such a chore, though they did applaud politely at the end of each piece.

It seemed unsporting of them to keep their distance even though they were probably having interesting conversations about farming and hunting and horses and such things—as he had done yesterday with Edgecombe and Raycroft in the library at Barclay Court. When one was at a mixed entertainment, though, one ought to make oneself available to the ladies.

Miss Osbourne, he was interested to observe, did not sit in a corner looking severely and disapprovingly about her at all the frivolity and vice—money was actually changing hands at the card tables, though in infinitesimal amounts, it was true. Rather, she moved about among several groups with the countess until Dannen himself appropriated her and engaged her in conversation while the countess moved on. He was doing most of the talking, Peter noticed. He had observed on other occasions that Dannen liked nothing better than a captive audience for his monologues.

She looked even lovelier tonight than she had yesterday, if that was possible. She was not wearing a bonnet tonight, of course, and he could see that her hair was cut short. It hugged her head in bright, soft curls that were less fiery than red, warmer than gold, but with elements of both. She wore a cream-colored gown that showed off her hair color to full advantage.

He deliberately stayed away from her—she had made her wishes quite clear yesterday. Perhaps he would not have spoken to her at all if he had not sat down beside Miss Honeydew after supper because he saw that she was all alone. Miss Honeydew was the elderly sister of a former vicar, now deceased. She had, he suspected, never been a beauty, since her top teeth protruded beyond her upper lip, and they and her long nose and face gave her a distinctly horsey appearance. Her hair always managed somehow to escape in untidy gray wisps from beneath the voluminous caps she wore, she squinted myopically at the world through large eyeglasses that were forever slipping down her nose and listing to the left, her head seemed to be in a constant nodding motion, whether from habit or infirmity it was not clear, and there was an air of general, smiling vagueness about her.

The neighbors, Peter had noticed during the past two weeks, were invariably kind to her and she had been included in various groups earlier in the evening. But he guessed that she lived a lonely existence with no children or grandchildren or even nieces and nephews to claim her or fuss over her.

And so he went to sit beside her and engage her in conversation.

She was asking him if he had heard of the upcoming assembly when Miss Osbourne walked by. Miss Honeydew grasped her by the wrist, shook her arm back and forth, and beamed up at her.

“Miss Osbourne,” she said, “there you are. I am delighted that you are staying at Barclay Court again. This is the first chance I have had all evening to speak with you.”

She had been talking with—or listening to—Dannen when the countess had spent some time with Miss Honeydew earlier.

Miss Osbourne smiled kindly down at Miss Honeydew without looking at Peter.

“How are you, ma'am?” she asked. “It is a pleasure to see you again.”

“This young lady,” Miss Honeydew said, looking at Peter while her hand still held Miss Osbourne's wrist, “was remarkably kind to me the last time she was here. She came to visit me one afternoon when I had hurt my foot and could not get about, and she read to me for longer than an hour. I have eyeglasses, but I still find it difficult to read. Print in books is so small these days, do you not find? Sit down, child, and talk to me. Have you met Viscount Whitleaf?”

She had no choice then but to look at him, though it was a brief glance as she sat on a stool close to Miss Honeydew's chair.

“Yes,” she said, “I have had the pleasure, ma'am.”

“Miss Osbourne,” he said, “what a pleasant day it has been. I looked up several times during the course of it, but not once did I observe a single cloud in the sky. And the evening is almost as balmy as the day, or was when I left Hareford House.”

She looked at him again, her green eyes grave. He smiled at her. He had promised to make nothing but bland conversation about the weather when they were forced into company with each other. He saw a sudden gleam of understanding in her eyes. She came very close to smiling.

“I believe,” she said, “I saw one fluffy cloud at noon, my lord, when I was returning from a drive with Frances. But it was a very little one, and I daresay it soon floated out of sight.”

He was utterly charmed as his eyes laughed back into hers. She
was
capable of humor, even wit, after all. But she colored suddenly and looked back at Miss Honeydew.

“I will walk over to your cottage and read to you again one day, ma'am, if you wish,” she said. “I will enjoy it.”

“I should like it of all things,” Miss Honeydew cried, nodding her head more forcefully than usual. “But you cannot walk all that way, child. It must be all of three miles from Barclay Court.”

“Then I shall ask—” Miss Osbourne began.

But Peter, totally forgetting his resolve to stay away from her and talk only about the weather when they
did
come face-to-face, yielded to a more impulsive instinct.

“For your pleasure, ma'am,” he said to Miss Honeydew, “I would be prepared to go to considerable lengths. It is your pleasure to have Miss Osbourne come to your cottage to read to you, and you will not be disappointed. You will allow me, if you please, to bring her there myself in my curricle.”

As if it were Miss Honeydew's permission that was needed.

“Oh—” Miss Osbourne said, perhaps indignantly.

“Oh,” Miss Honeydew said, enraptured, her thin, arthritic hands clasped to her bosom. “How exceedingly kind you are to an old lady, my lord.”

“Old lady?” He looked about the room in some surprise. “
Is
there an old lady present? Point her out to me, if you would be so good, ma'am, and I shall go and be kind to her.”

She laughed heartily at his sorry joke, drawing several glances their way. Peter guessed that she did not often laugh with genuine amusement.

“How you tease!” she said. “You are a rogue, my lord, I do declare. But it is exceedingly kind of you to offer to bring Miss Osbourne to me. You will both stay to tea when you come? I shall have my housekeeper make some of her special cakes.”

“Your company and a cup of tea will be quite sufficient to reward me, ma'am,” he said. “Ah, and Miss Osbourne's company too.”

As if that were an afterthought.

Miss Honeydew beamed happily at him.

“It is settled, then.” He looked at the younger woman. “Which afternoon shall we decide upon, Miss Osbourne?”

She was looking back at him, the color high in her cheeks, an expression in her eyes he could not interpret—or perhaps he simply did not want to. And her eyes were not actually looking directly into his own, he noticed, but somewhere on a level with his chin.

It struck him then that, even apart from the fact that she did not like him, she might also be a little intimidated by him—or at least by his title. Perhaps the way he had greeted her when they were introduced was so far beyond her experience that he had made her uncomfortable. Worse, perhaps he had humiliated her. What was it she had said before they parted—
I would ask you not to speak to me with such levity, my lord. I do not know how to respond.

It was a disturbing thought that perhaps he had been less than the gentleman with her.

“
Will
you allow me to drive you to Miss Honeydew's in my curricle?” he asked. “It will give me great pleasure.”

“Thank you, then,” she said.

“Tomorrow?” Miss Honeydew asked eagerly.

Miss Osbourne looked at her, and her expression softened. She even smiled.

“If that will suit Lord Whitleaf, ma'am,” she said.

“It will,” he said. “Ah, I see that Miss Moss must have found the music she was looking for earlier. She is beckoning me to come and turn the pages for her. You will excuse me?”

Miss Honeydew assured him that she would. Miss Osbourne said nothing.

“You looked,” Miss Moss said, giggling with a group of other young ladies as he came up to the pianoforte, “as if you needed rescuing.”

“Actually,” he said, “I was enjoying a comfortable coze with Miss Honeydew. But how could I resist the chance of being surrounded by music again—and by beauty?”

“Miss Osbourne will keep her company,” Miss Krebbs said. “She does not need you too, Lord Whitleaf.”

He humored the young ladies and flirted good-naturedly with them for the rest of the evening while wondering if Miss Osbourne would find some excuse not to ride in his curricle with him tomorrow.

Somehow, he realized, he had been aware of her all evening—even, oddly enough, when they were in different rooms or when both his eyes had been focused upon the sheets of music so that he could turn a page at the right moment.

He had not been similarly aware of any other woman.

Dash it all, one day of the fourteen they would both spend in this neighborhood had already passed. Was he going to be content to allow the remaining thirteen to slip by too without at least making an effort to overcome her aversion to him and make a friend of her?