Simply Magic (6 page)

She bristled.

“I would say that you know
nothing
about me or my life,” she said, trying in vain to move farther to her side of the seat.

“Precisely,” he said, a note of satisfaction in his voice. “We do not know each other at all, do we? How do you know that I am not worth knowing? How do I know that you
are
?”

She gripped the rail beside her more tightly.

“But surely,” she said, “we have no wish to know each other anyway. And so the answers to your questions do not matter.”

“But they do to me,” he said. “I certainly wish to know who Miss Susanna Osbourne is. I very much wish it, especially after discovering the surprising fact that she would love to race to Brighton in a curricle.
That
I would not have guessed about you in a thousand years.”

“I would not—” she began.

“Too late,” he said. “You have already admitted it in so many words. I have a strong suspicion that you might be interesting to know. And I feel the need to be known, to justify my existence to someone who believes me to be worthless.”

“That is not what I said!” she cried. “I would never say such a thing to anyone. But do you feel such a need with all the ladies you meet? Do you feel the need to know and make yourself known to the Misses Calvert and Miss Krebbs and Miss Raycroft?”

“Good Lord, no,” he said, and laughed.

“Why me, then?” she asked, turning her head to frown at him. “Only because I do not respond to your flatteries as other women do?”

“That is a possibility, I suppose,” he admitted. “But I hope there is another. There is a gravity about you when you are not laughing at the danger and exhilaration of riding in a curricle. I suspect that—horror of horrors—it stems from superior intelligence.
Are
you an intelligent woman, Miss Osbourne?”

“How am I to answer that?” she asked him in further exasperation.

“It is one of the things I need to discover about you,” he said. “The Countess of Edgecombe has invited you here out of friendship, not obligation—or so I have been led to believe. The countess is a woman of intelligence. I would imagine that her friends must be intelligent too. And of course you are a teacher and must have an impressive store of knowledge rattling around in your brain. But I need to discover for myself if I am right.”

She was speechless. And the reality of the situation suddenly hit her. It must
be
reality—none of her muddled and troubled dreams last night had conjured quite this scenario. Here she was talking quite freely with
Viscount Whitleaf
of all people and actually rather enjoying herself.

“Do you think, Miss Osbourne,” he asked her, “we could be friends if we tried very hard?
Shall
we try?”

She stared at his face in profile. But she could see no mockery there.

“It is not possible, even if you are serious,” she said. “We are from different worlds—almost from different universes. Besides, men and women do not become friends with each other even if they are of the same world.”

“You had better not tell Edgecombe or the countess that,” he said, raising his eyebrows. “Nevertheless, I might have agreed with you until yesterday. I am not in the habit of making friends of any of the women I have known. But you refuse to allow me to flirt with you, you see, and so you leave me with no alternative but to befriend you.”

“Or to ignore me,” she said sharply.

“That is not an option,” he told her, and he grinned.

“This is absurd,” she said. “Utterly absurd.”

“Then humor me,” he said. “Will you? Will you allow me to try to be your friend even if you will not be mine? I really do not think I can wax eloquent about the weather alone for twelve more days.”

She laughed unexpectedly. At the same moment she was aware that the curricle had slowed and looked up in some surprise to see that they had arrived at Miss Honeydew's cottage.

“Ah.” He turned his head to look intently at her. “This is better. You are laughing again. I have been leading up—again—to asking you what it is about teaching that you so love. But—yet again—our arrival at a destination has thwarted me. You will give me the answer, if you please, during the return journey.”

“Lord Whitleaf,” she said as he jumped down from his seat and looped the ribbons over the top bar of a painted white fence that surrounded the garden, “you can have no possible interest in my teaching career.”

He raised both arms and lifted her to the ground before she could think of looking for safe foot- and handholds. He made her feel as if she weighed no more than a feather. He also made her feel as if she were running a slight fever.

“And you, Miss Osbourne,” he said, keeping his hands on either side of her waist, “can have no idea what would interest me. Can you?”

He waited for her answer.

“No,” she admitted.

He grinned at her and released her.

They both turned to greet Miss Honeydew, who had come to the front door to hail them. She was dressed in what was very obviously her Sunday best, and she was glowing with happiness.

Susanna was terribly afraid that Frances might be wrong after all. She was terribly afraid that Viscount Whitleaf might be very dangerous indeed.

5

After the first flurry of greetings was over—they must have lasted
a good fifteen minutes, by Peter's estimation—he went back outside to tend his curricle and his horses. Then, having discovered several loose boards in the fence but no handyman on the premises, he went in search of a hammer and nails, found them in the stable that doubled as a garden shed, left his coat there, and made the repairs himself despite the fact that the housekeeper gawked at him as if he were the unfortunate possessor of two heads when she came to the door to see what was creating the noise.

And then, because a scruffy little terrier dog had barked incessantly at him since his arrival and danced about him and even attempted to nip his wrists and ankles until informed that it would do so at its own peril, he decided that the animal needed more exercise than a prowl about the garden provided. He found an old leather leash in the shed, brushed it free of cobwebs, attached it to the dog, and took it for a brisk walk along some narrow country lanes until, on the way back to the cottage, he removed the leash so that it could dash about in all directions, beside itself with exuberant glee at discovering such wide open spaces and the freedom to explore them.

The stable, which had been built to accommodate three horses and a small carriage, would only just take his two horses. The curricle had to remain outside. Peter set about tidying the area and creating more space. And then, because the new space looked as if it had not seen either a broom or a pail of water in some time, he gave it both before spreading some fresh, clean-smelling straw, which he had found piled up behind the building.

By the time he entered the house by the kitchen door, he was feeling grubby and sweaty and really rather pleased with life. This was turning into the most pleasant afternoon he had spent since coming to Hareford House.

He washed his hands and his arms up to the elbows in water the flustered housekeeper poured for him, rolled down his shirtsleeves, and shrugged back into his coat—not an easy task without the assistance of his valet—and stepped into the sitting room, where Miss Osbourne was reading aloud but quietly while Miss Honeydew sat in a chair nearby, her head resting against the cushioned back, her eyes closed, her cap askew, her mouth wide open, snoring softly.

His eyes met Miss Osbourne's.

He stepped back out into the corridor, cleared his throat, scuffed his boots on the wood floor, called out a second, more effusive thank-you to the housekeeper for the water, and reappeared in the doorway.

Miss Osbourne was closing the book and Miss Honeydew was sitting erect and wide awake. She was straightening her cap and beaming with happiness.

“What a wonderful reading voice you have for sure, Miss Osbourne,” she said. “I could listen to you all day long. And how splendid to have
two
young persons come to tea. I do hope the afternoon has not been a tedious one for you, Lord Whitleaf, though I daresay it has. I cannot tell you how much your kindness and Miss Osbourne's has meant to me. You must both be ready for your tea.”

“It has not been a tedious afternoon by any means, ma'am,” he said, seating himself. “I was thinking to myself only a few moments ago that I have enjoyed this afternoon more than any other since I came into Somerset.”

“Oh, what a rascal you are!” Miss Honeydew clapped her hands with glee and laughed heartily.

Susanna Osbourne looked back at him reproachfully.

“You will surely fry for your sins,” she told him an hour later after they had waved good-bye to Miss Honeydew in the doorway of her cottage and were on their way back to Barclay Court. “The most enjoyable afternoon of your stay here indeed! I
heard
you hammering at the fence, and the housekeeper came and whispered to me that you were cleaning out the stable and wanted to know what she ought to do about it.”

“I took the mutt for a run too,” he said with a chuckle. “I thought its yapping might well drive you insane.”

“Why did you
do
it all?” she asked, sounding rather cross.

“Because I cannot stand being idle?” he said. “But no, you would not believe that, would you? You believe me to be nothing
but
idle. Perhaps I wished to impress you.”

“And you flattered Miss Honeydew without ceasing for almost an hour,” she said. “She was delighted even though she did not believe a word you said. She will doubtless live on the memory for days or weeks to come.”

“Is there anything wrong with that?” he asked her. “She is lonely, is she not?”

“There is
nothing
wrong with it,” she said, still sounding cross. “You are kind. You are
very
kind.”

Ah, she was cross because she had been proved at least partly wrong about him, was she?

“But frivolous and idle too,” he said, realizing suddenly that the elusive perfume he had tried to identify all the way to the cottage was not perfume at all but soap. It was very enticing nevertheless. So were the soft warmth of her thigh and her arm.

She did not reply and he chuckled.

“It is quite unsporting of you not to contradict me, Miss Osbourne,” he said. “Shall we use the return journey to discover if there is anything about each other that might make it possible for us to be friends?”

“Or impossible,” she said.

“I perceive,” he said, “that you are of the half-empty-glass school of thought, Miss Osbourne, while I am of the half-full school.”

“Then we are quite incompatible,” she said.

“Not necessarily so,” he said. “Some differences of opinion will provide us with topics upon which to hold a lively debate. There is nothing more dull than two people who are so totally in agreement with each other upon every subject under the sun that there really is nothing left worth saying.”

But why the devil it had popped into his head earlier and even last evening that he wanted her as a
friend,
he had no idea. Except that he knew he could not make her into a flirt, perhaps. She would not allow it—and neither would he. He would flirt with his social equals, with those who knew the rules of the game. He would not flirt with an indigent schoolteacher—she had been a charity pupil at the school where she now taught, for the love of God—whom he might inadvertently hurt.

But he could not simply ignore her. Good Lord, what was it he had thought two days ago when he first set eyes on her?

There she is.

The words still puzzled him and made him strangely uneasy.

It would be a novel challenge to try again to make a friend of a young woman—one who did not particularly like him and one who claimed that they were closer to being universes apart than worlds.

Well, challenges were meant to brighten the dull routine of life.

Not that routine was always dull. Sometimes he longed for it. It was what he had grown up with and expected of the rest of his life—a quiet routine, a fulfillment of duty that was self-imposed rather than enforced from above as it had been all through his boyhood. He had expected very little of his life really—only a sort of heaven of home and hearth and domestic contentment. Most of his current friends would cringe if they knew that of him. Even Raycroft, his closest friend, would be astonished.

“Tell me what you like so much about teaching,” he said.

He felt rather than saw her smile.

“It is something I am capable of doing well,” she said, “and something I can constantly work upon to improve. It is something useful and worthwhile.”

“Educating girls is worthwhile?” he asked only because he guessed the question would provoke her into saying more.

“Girls have minds just as boys do,” she said firmly, “and are just as hungry for knowledge and just as capable of learning and understanding. It is true that most of them grow up to lives in which they do not need to know very much at all, but then I suspect that holds true of most men too.”

“Like me?” he asked.

“I believe there is a saying,” she said tartly, “that if the shoe fits one ought to wear it.”

He chuckled softly.

“But most men would argue,” he said, “that educating girls gives them brain fever at worst and makes them unattractive at best. Or perhaps I have got the worst and the best mixed up.”

“I daresay,” she said, “those men are insecure in their masculinity and fear that women may outshine them. How mortifying it would be if they had to ask a woman for the square root of eighty-one.”

She was a delight. He had already seen several different facets of her character, but he could always rely upon the prim schoolteacher to keep making an appearance. The square root of eighty-one, indeed!

“Ouch!” he said, wincing noticeably. “But would there ever be such an occasion? I cannot for the life of me think of one. What
is
the square root of eighty-one anyway?”

“Nine,” they said in unison.

He laughed, and after a brief moment so did she.

He wondered if she realized what a dazzling combination laughter was with her looks. He wondered too how often she laughed. Perhaps it was more often than he had suspected the day before yesterday. Perhaps she brought light and joy to that school in Bath.

“But that is
not
your cue,” he said, deliberately sobering, “to fire all sorts of obscure and tricky questions at me. My masculinity is a fragile enough commodity without being put to that sort of test.”

“I doubt that,” she said fervently, and then laughed again when he looked at her sidelong and pulled an abject face.

He chuckled once more before turning into the lane from the village that would eventually bring them to the fork into Barclay Court. “And in case you are neglecting to ask for fear of the answer, Miss Osbourne, I detect no signs of brain fever in you, and you are certainly not unattractive. Quite the contrary, in fact.”

“I would rather,” she said after a brief silence, “that you not try to flatter and flirt with me. You must speak sensibly with me if we are to be friends.”

“We
are
to be friends, then?” he asked her. “Very well. Let me be honest. You are quite devoid of any discernible attraction. A small, slender stature combined with shining auburn curls and sea green eyes and regular features is all quite unappealing, as I am sure you must be aware.”

When he turned his head to snatch a look at her, she was smiling broadly and looking straight ahead.

“Friends need not be unaware of each other's attractions,” he said. “Tell me how you occupy your time when you are not teaching.”

“You do not know much about the world of employment, do you, Lord Whitleaf?” she asked. “There is not much time that is
not
taken up with work. When I am not in the classroom I am supervising games in the meadow beyond the school or organizing dramatic presentations or watching over the girls during study sessions or marking papers or examinations or…Well, there is almost always something to do. But when there
is
some leisure time, usually late in the evening, I spend it with my friends, the other resident teachers. We usually gather in Claudia Martin's sitting room. Or sometimes if it is daytime and there is the rare luxury of a spare hour I go out walking. Bath is a lovely city. There is much to see there.”

Ah, yes, they were from different universes. But he admired her sense of purpose.

“Now it is your turn,” she said. “You must tell me something of yourself.”

“Are you sure you really wish to know about my idle, empty life?” he asked her, his eyes twinkling.

“You were the one who thought there could be a friendship between us,” she reminded him. “There can be no friendship if only one party gets to ask the questions. Tell me about your childhood.”

“Hmm.” He gave the matter some thought. “It was filled with women—a familiar pattern with me, Miss Osbourne. My father died when I was three years old. I have no memory of him, alas. I do think it unsporting of him not to have waited at least another two or three years. I was left with my mother and five elder sisters. I daresay my parents had despaired of producing an heir and were jubilant when I finally put in an appearance. By that time my sisters too must have been aware that a family without an heir was a family headed for certain disaster. And indeed I came along only just in time to avert it. I was the apple of every female eye as I grew up. I could do no wrong in their sight. I was petted and cosseted and adored. No boy was ever more fortunate than I.”

She had turned her head and was looking steadily at him.

“There was no man in your life, then?” she asked.

“Oh, several,” he said. “There were official guardians and self-appointed guardians, all of whom ruled my estate and my fortune and me and arranged everything from my education to the reading and answering of my mail. It was all done for my benefit, of course. I was very fortunate.”

“I suppose,” she said, “they did no more than your father would have done if he had lived.”

“Except that then there would have been a relationship,” he said. “Perhaps there would have been some sharing. Some love.”

He was turning at the fork in the lane as he spoke. Perhaps he would not have spoken so unguardedly if he had not been thus occupied. Good Lord, he did not usually even
think
such abject thoughts. He felt quite embarrassed.

“You missed your father,” she said softly.

He glanced down at her. “You cannot miss what you never had, Miss Osbourne,” he said. “I do not even remember him.”

“I missed my mother,” she told him. “Yet she died giving birth to me.”

Ah.

“It is odd, is it not,” he said, “to miss people one never knew—or knew so far back that there is no conscious memory left. I was inundated with love from my mother and sisters, and yet perversely I wanted a father's love. Did your father love you?”