Simply Magic (5 page)

A friend?

Now that was a strange notion. Women and friendship—deep friendship, anyway—did not usually go together in his thoughts. He had come to think of them as mutually exclusive interests.

What exactly
was
his motive, then? But did there have to be one? She was an extraordinarily pretty woman and he was a red-blooded male. Was that not motive enough? He was not usually so self-conscious about his approaches to women. But then he had never before known a lady schoolteacher from Bath—except, without realizing it, the Countess of Edgecombe.

Anyway, he would have to see what tomorrow brought. At least they would be alone together for the three-mile drive to Miss Honeydew's and back again—if Miss Osbourne did not find some way out of accepting his escort, that was.

And if it did not rain.

4

Frances's matchmaking schemes were going to be doomed to disappointment
, Susanna thought as she tied the ribbons of her straw bonnet beneath her chin the following afternoon. They were green to match her favorite day dress—not that she had many others to compete with it.

The Reverend Birney, good-looking in a fresh-faced, boyish sort of way, had been polite to her last evening. He had even conversed with her for a short while at the supper table, expressing an interest in a school that took in almost as many charity girls as paying pupils. But there had been nothing approaching ardor in his manner toward her.

Mr. Dannen, short—as Frances had warned—and slightly balding at the crown of his head, but not by any means unpleasing of countenance, had engaged her in conversation for almost an hour before supper even though he was the host and ought to have circulated more among all his guests. But she had asked him about Scotland, his mother's country of birth, and he had proved to be the sort of man who needed very little prompting to talk at great length on a subject of personal interest to him. His descriptions had been interesting and she had not minded at all having to listen to them. But she had felt not the smallest spark of romantic interest in him. Or he in her, she guessed.

Miss Calvert was indeed interested in Mr. Finn—and he in her.

“Ah, you are ready,” Frances said from the open doorway of Susanna's room. “Viscount Whitleaf is here. He is downstairs, talking with Lucius.”

Susanna grimaced and reached for her gloves. Her stomach felt suddenly queasy and her knees less than steady.

“I wish I were going to
walk
to Miss Honeydew's cottage,” she said.

“You know we would have called out a carriage for you before we allowed that to happen,” Frances said.

“But he was there when I offered to go read to Miss Honeydew,” Susanna explained, “and he felt obliged to offer to take me in his own conveyance. Poor man! I was horribly embarrassed.”

Frances laughed and moved aside to allow Susanna to step out of her room.

“I do not suppose he minded in the least,” she said. “He is nothing if not gallant to ladies. It is very sweet of you, Susanna, to be willing to give up an afternoon for Miss Honeydew. I try to call on her a few times whenever we are at home. It has never occurred to me, though, to offer to read to her, despite the fact that I remember you did it the last time you were here too.”

By that time they were downstairs and approaching the front doors. They were open, and Susanna could see the Earl of Edgecombe and Viscount Whitleaf standing just outside them at the top of the horseshoe steps. They turned at the approach of the ladies, and the viscount swept off his hat and bowed.

“It is a glorious day again,” he said, his eyes laughing at Susanna. “Today there are definitely a few clouds in the sky—I counted twelve on my way over here—but they are small and white and harmless and actually add to the beauty of the sky.”

Susanna might have laughed out loud or at least smiled if she had not just stepped outside and seen the vehicle in which she was to ride—Frances and the earl must wonder why he was making such an issue of what ought to have been a passing mention of the weather. But she
had
seen the vehicle. He had said last night that he would escort her in his curricle, but she had been too caught up in the knowledge that
he
was going to drive her to reflect upon the fact that she had never ridden in one before. And this was no ordinary curricle. It was, she guessed, a gentleman's racing curricle, light and flimsy, its wheels large, its seat looking small and fragile and very far up off the ground.

“And the occasional shade is welcome,” Frances said. “It is very warm today.”

“Miss Honeydew seems determined to ply us with tea and cakes after Miss Osbourne has read to her,” the viscount said. “We may be gone for quite a while, but you may rest assured that I will return Miss Osbourne safe and sound.”

“Whitleaf is a notable whip, Susanna,” the earl said with a laugh as they all descended the steps to the terrace. “You need not fear for your safety.”

“I am not afraid,” she said. “It is just that I have never ridden in a curricle before.”

And the seat looked even higher and the whole thing flimsier from down here—and marvelously elegant. The horses, which were being held by one of the grooms from the stable, looked alarmingly frisky. But even before she need start worrying about the journey itself…how on earth was she going to get
up
there?

Fortunately it proved easier than it looked. She climbed up to the seat with no dreadful loss of dignity, though she clung to the viscount's hand as she did so. She moved over on the seat as far as she could go, but even so…

But even so, when he joined her there and gathered the ribbons into his hands, his outer thigh and hip were touching hers—and there was nothing she could do about it. And she had thought two days ago when they were walking back to Barclay Court from Hareford House that she had never felt more uncomfortable in her life! She had known nothing then about discomfort.

He gave the horses the signal to start, the curricle swung into motion, and her hand took a death grip on the rail beside it. For a few moments she could think of nothing but her own safety—or lack thereof.

“I will not let you fall,” he said as they moved from the terrace onto the lane. “And I will not spring the horses—unless you ask me to do so, that is.”

Ask him to…

She laughed and turned her head toward him. He looked back, and she felt all the shock of discovering that their faces were only inches apart.

“Laughter, Miss Osbourne?” he said, raising his eyebrows. “You are not
enjoying
the ride by any chance, are you?”

She was
terrified
. Her toes were curled up inside her shoes, her hand was still gripping the rail hard enough—or so it seemed—to put five dents in the metal, and every muscle in her body was clenched. The hedgerows rushed past them somewhere below her line of vision, the little clouds dashed by overhead, the horses trotted eagerly down the lane, their chestnut coats gleaming in the sunshine, the seat swung effortlessly on its springs. She was…

She laughed again.

“This is
wonderful
!” she cried.

Then, of course, she felt terribly foolish. How gauche of her! She was behaving like a child being given a rare treat. And yet she did not
feel
like a child as she became aware again of his thigh and shoulder brushing against hers.

His laughter mingled with her own.

He had caused her a largely sleepless night, she recalled. She had dreaded this afternoon and the thought of being alone with him again. What would she talk about? She had no wish to talk with Viscount Whitleaf of all people. Even apart from the name he bore she had decided on her first acquaintance with him—on her first
sight
of him—that he was shallow and frivolous. And yet she had not been able to forget that he had been sitting with Miss Honeydew when most of the other young people had avoided her all evening whenever they could do so without appearing ill-mannered. And that he had made her laugh with that foolish but surely kindly-meant flattery about an old lady. And he had voluntarily doomed himself to the tedium of an afternoon at Miss Honeydew's cottage. He had not—as Susanna had led Frances to believe—been trapped into offering her a ride in his curricle. He might easily have avoided doing so.

“You certainly enjoyed yourself with all the young ladies last evening” she said. “They would have been perfectly happy if there had been no other gentlemen present.”

“I did,” he admitted, turning the curricle onto the fork of the lane that led directly to the village with hands that looked very skilled indeed on the ribbons. “Enjoy myself, that is. It is a pleasure, you know, to listen to young ladies chatter and to turn the pages of their music when one knows that doing so makes them happy. But your barbed tongue was at work again, was it not?
Would
they have been happy with only me? I doubt it. Miss Calvert would not have been happy if Finn had not been there. Perhaps you did not notice that she spent some time in his company? And Miss Krebbs was very happy indeed when Moss asked her to reserve a set for him at the assembly—so happy that she allowed him to fill a plate for her at supper and sit beside her. Miss Jane Calvert would have spent a less enjoyable evening if she had not had the Reverend Birney in her sights for most of the time. And you would have sat all alone for an hour if Dannen had not been there.”

“Mr. Dannen was the
host,
” she protested. “Besides, I was not talking of myself.”

“And as a final word in my defense,” he said, “it might be pointed out that all the gentlemen had an equal opportunity to gather at the pianoforte and turn pages of music.”

She could not think of an answer to that one.

“Is this a
racing
curricle?” she asked.

“The thing is, you see,” he said, “that no self-respecting gentleman below the age of thirty would want to purchase for himself a curricle that could
not
race.”

“And I suppose,” she said, “you
do
race in it?”

“Now what would be the point,” he asked her, “in owning a racing curricle if all one did with it was crawl about country lanes as I am doing now?”

“Is this
crawling
?” she asked. She had been finding the speed exhilarating and had been feeling very daring indeed.

“My poor chestnuts,” he said, “will never forgive me for the indignity of this journey.”

She laughed.

He turned his head again to smile down at her.

“What?” he said. “I am not about to find myself at the receiving end of a lecture about the danger of risking my neck and those of my horses by dashing fruitlessly along the king's highway merely for the sake of winning a race? The last one, by the way, was from London to Brighton, and honesty forces me to confess that I lost it by a longish nose.”

“Why should it concern me,” she asked him, “if you risk your neck?”

“Now that, Miss Osbourne,” he said, “was unkind.”

“I suppose,” she said wistfully, “it is the most glorious feeling in the world to fly along as fast as your horses can gallop.”

Or simply to fly. She had a recurring dream in which she was a bird, free to soar into the blue and ride the wind.

“I have a curious suspicion,” he said, “that my first impressions of you were quite, quite inaccurate, Miss Osbourne.”

His words jolted her into a realization that she had actually been
talking
with him—and even rather enjoying herself. And already they were passing through the village. They were halfway to Miss Honeydew's cottage.

“Your silence speaks loudly and accusingly,” he said as he touched his whip to the brim of his hat and she raised her free hand to wave to Mr. Calvert, who was walking along the village street in the direction of his home. “Obviously you believe that your first impressions of me
were
accurate.”

Did
she? He enjoyed spending his time flirting with young ladies. He owned a racing curricle and had raced it all the way from London to Brighton. She had seen nothing that suggested there was any substance to his character—though he
had
sat with Miss Honeydew last evening and been kind to her.

“You still dislike me,” he said with a sigh, though it seemed to her that he was amused rather than upset in any way.

“I do not—” she began.

“Ah, but I believe you do,” he said. “Do you not teach your pupils that it is wicked to lie? Is it something about my looks?”

“You know very well,” she said sharply, “that your looks are perfect.”

It was only after the words were out that she wished, wished,
wished
that she could recall them. Goodness, she must sound like a besotted schoolgirl.

“Oh, I say,” he said, laughing, “is that true? My eye color is not effeminate?”

“You know very well it is not,” she said indignantly. How had the conversation suddenly taken this uncomfortably personal turn?

“I have a cousin,” he told her, “who has the same color eyes. I have always thought they look so much more appropriate on her.”

“I would not know,” she said, “since I do not know the lady.”

“It is not my looks, then,” he said, “unless you happen to have a bias against perfection. There would be little logic in that, though. It must be my character, then.”

“I do not dislike you,” she protested. “There is nothing I find objectionable about your character—except that you do not take anything seriously.”

“That,” he said, “is very akin to those annoying pronouncements with which certain people preface nasty remarks: ‘I do not wish to be critical, old chap, but…' Ah, the condemnation in that
but
. And in your
except that
. You think me a shallow man, then.”

The words had not been phrased as a question, but he was waiting for an answer. Well, she was not going to deny it merely because good manners suggested that she ought. He
had
asked.

“Yes, my lord,” she said, gazing along the road and wondering when Miss Honeydew's cottage would come into view. “I do.”

“I suppose,” he said, “you would not believe me if I told you I sometimes entertain a serious thought or two and that I am not entirely shallow?”

She hesitated.

“It would be presumptuous of me to call you a liar,” she said.

“Why?” He had dipped his head even closer to hers so that for a moment before he returned his attention to the road she could feel his breath on her cheek.

“Because I do not know you,” she said.

“Ah,” he said. “What would you say, Miss Osbourne, if I told you that despite my admission of a moment ago, I still think you beautiful beyond belief but also harsh in your judgments and without feelings, incapable of deep affection or love?”