Simply Magic

15

“And so that is that,” Claudia said with a sigh as she stepped inside the school with Susanna and the door closed behind them. “Too many good-byes. It does nothing to buoy the spirits, does it?”

They had just said good-bye to Frances and the Earl of Edgecombe, who had insisted upon giving them a ride back from the Upper Rooms in their own carriage despite Claudia’s protestation that she and Susanna were perfectly capable of walking. The Edgecombes were leaving Bath for London early in the morning. And before they all left the Upper Rooms, they had said good-bye to Anne and David, who were also setting out in the morning with Mr. Butler for their new home in Wales.

“But it was very good,” Susanna said, “to see Anne so happy-and David too. Mr. Butler must have been kind to him.”

“Well, now it is back to business,” Claudia said briskly, taking off her cloak and looping it over her arm. “We have a school to run, Susanna. I happened to mention to Miss Thompson after tea that I was looking for another teacher and was quite taken aback when she expressed an interest in the position for herself.”

“Did she really?” Susanna asked.

“The duchess has persuaded Mrs. Thompson to take up residence in a cottage close to Lindsey Hall,” Claudia said. “Miss Thompson is expected to move there with her, of course, but she says she feels she will be losing some independence when she leaves their own cottage and village behind. She will feel like a poor relation of the Duke of Bewcastle, she says. I can well understand that that would be a ghastly fate indeed. But it is interesting, Susanna, that she may prefer to teach here. I have asked her to drop by tomorrow or the next day. I really took to her. She has interesting conversation and has read widely. She also has good sense and a dry wit.”

“Has she taught before?” Susanna asked, looking back as she proceeded up the stairs on the way to her room.

But Claudia was prevented from replying by Mr. Keeble, who was clearing his throat in such a pronounced manner that it was obvious he had something of import to say to them.

Agnes Ryde, one of the new charity girls, had had an almighty tantrum, it seemed, and reduced Lila Walton to tears and consequently aroused the wrath of Matron, who had sent the girl to bed in the middle of the afternoon and promised dire consequences as soon as Miss Martin returned.

Claudia sighed.

“Thank you, Mr. Keeble,” she said. “This is returning to reality with a crash, is it not? Where is Anne when I most need her? She did have a special gift with difficult girls.”

“She did,” Susanna agreed as she removed her bonnet. “But I have an understanding of what it feels like to be a charity girl here, Claudia. I have seen something of my old self in poor Agnes, I must confess. Let me go up and talk to her.”

“Poor Agnes indeed!” Claudia said, tossing her glance at the ceiling. “But go if you wish, Susanna. Matron does seem to have tied my hands. If I go up, I shall be obliged to do something horribly dire like confining the girl to her bed and to dry bread and water for at least the next week.”

Susanna chuckled at the unlikely image, squared her shoulders, and continued on her way upstairs, prepared to do battle. Lila, as junior teacher, had the unenviable task, once Susanna’s own, of teaching elocution to those girls who needed it. And Agnes Ryde needed it more than anyone else. She had arrived at the school at the end of August with such a thick Cockney accent that no one understood a good half of what she said. And since she was resistant to changing her accent in order to talk as if she had two plums in her cheeks like a real nob-her words-Lila was not exactly her favorite teacher.

Susanna did not find the minor crisis at the school unwelcome. It pushed everything else from her mind for the next hour, while she sat in one of the dormitories beside Agnes’s bed, at first talking to an uncommunicative ball of hostile girlhood turned toward the wall and then gradually moving into something resembling a conversation after Agnes had rolled over to face her and eye her with open suspicion.

“ You was a charity girl, miss?” she asked.

“I was indeed,” Susanna said, wisely ignoring the girl’s grammar. “So was Miss Walton, as she would be very ready to admit. We have both been where you are now. It is not the most comfortable place to be, is it? I can remember believing at one point that I must have been brought here only so that everyone else could laugh at me.”

“Everybody does laugh at me, ” Agnes said fiercely. “Next time I’ll pop ’em a good one, I will…miss.”

“Everybody?” Susanna raised her eyebrows. “Are you quite sure it is everybody? It is not just two or three girls who do not know any better than to want to bring misery upon a fellow pupil? I remember Miss Martin once giving me a piece of advice. The next time one of the paying pupils taunted me by telling me it must be nice to have my fees paid for me by strangers, I should smile back as if I had not noticed the sarcasm and agree warmly that yes, it was very nice indeed. Where would they take the taunting from there? she asked me. And she was perfectly right. It worked like a charm. Much better than hitting out would have done. That was what they expected me to do. That was what they hoped I would do so that they could run crying to one of the teachers and get me into trouble.”

By the time she went back downstairs Susanna was feeling exhausted but satisfied that yet another problem had been sorted out. But then she had to assure a tearful Lila Walton in Claudia’s private sitting room that of course she was not a failure, that teaching was always three parts instruction and one part dealing with the various crises that inevitably arose when so many diverse humans lived in close proximity to one another. And of course a teacher could not always be popular.

“It is just what I have been telling her,” Claudia said. “Now, we will have a cup of tea together and you can have an early night, Lila. And I will take your study hall for you tomorrow evening so that you may have some relaxation time. I daresay I ought to have brought Cecile Pierre in to give you a hand today even though I had declared it a holiday from classes, since Susanna and I were both going to the reception and Mr. Huckerby and Mr. Upton were to attend too. Call it learning to swim by being tossed into the deep part of a lake, if you will. You did remarkably well aside from the unfortunate incident with Agnes. The school is still standing, is it not? It is not burned down to the ground or reduced to rubble by cannon shot. All the girls are still living and breathing-at least, I have not heard anything to the contrary.”

Lila laughed and took a cup of tea from Claudia. Fifteen minutes later she was on the way up to her own room, clearly relieved that the day was finally over.

“Academically Lila does very well indeed,” Claudia said after she had left. “In other areas she is still fragile. She may discover that teaching really does not suit her at all, though I still have hopes that she will settle. I have high hopes that Miss Thompson will come here. She is older and more mature. Did you like her, Susanna?”

“Yes,” Susanna said, getting to her feet to pour them each another cup of tea. “Though I did not talk a great deal with her. She has a twinkling eye, though. I always trust people with twinkling eyes.”

Claudia laughed.

“Her sense of humor will be put to the test if she comes here,” she said, “though it would be a decided asset. Would it be possible to teach successfully if one did not have a healthy sense of the ridiculous? I very much doubt it.”

They sipped their tea and lapsed into silence-and Susanna’s thoughts inevitably drifted to the afternoon and to Viscount Whitleaf and the waltz they had danced together. And to the cheerful way in which they had taken their leave of each other afterward. She had refused to feel tragic at the time, and she refused to feel it now.

It had after all been good to see him again and to know that it was concern for her-and his possible responsibility toward her-that had brought him.

But now there was an inevitable ache of emptiness inside that was very difficult to ignore.

“I am very sensitive to undercurrents,” Claudia said. “It is another asset for a teacher, I firmly believe. I can sometimes sense things that are brewing long before they bubble to the surface and cause trouble or even disaster.”

Susanna sipped her tea. She did not know quite where this observation was leading.

“You met Viscount Whitleaf when you were staying at Barclay Court this summer,” Claudia said.

“Yes,” Susanna said warily. “He was staying at Hareford House. The younger Mr. Raycroft is his friend. You have met him and his family, I believe.”

Claudia nodded. She had spent a few days at Barclay Court earlier in the year, before Frances left for Europe.

“My first impression of the viscount,” Claudia said, “was that he was conceited-as well as wondrously handsome, of course. Both the Earl of Edgecombe and Miss Thompson assured me that I was mistaken. Neither you nor Frances expressed any opinion, however. And then you proceeded to eat half a cucumber sandwich and perhaps a third of a currant cake and maintain an uncharacteristic near-silence throughout tea. And Frances did not do much better. She was watching you almost the whole time, a look of troubled concern in her eyes. Indeed, I am not even sure it was undercurrents I felt. It was something altogether more overt than that.”

It would be pointless, Susanna decided, to pretend she did not know what Claudia was talking about. They had known each other a long time. They had been friends for a number of years since she grew up. They had been even closer since Anne left.

“It is not quite what you think,” she said.

“And what is it that I think?” Claudia asked, her look keen.

“Viscount Whitleaf and I became friends,” Susanna explained. “I had no illusions that we were more than that, and absolutely no wish that we be more. He is amiable, Claudia, and very kind-he showed his kindness in all sorts of ways. It was sad to have to say good-bye to him at the end of the holiday. Frances feared I had fallen in love with him. Perhaps she still fears it. But she is wrong. It was lovely to see him again today and dance with him again, but…Well, but nothing. I will never see him again, and I am content that it be so. I will not lose any sleep over him.”

She smiled-and sloshed her tea into her saucer. She set the cup down in haste until such time as her hands had stopped shaking.

Good heavens! Oh, gracious heavens. She would be weeping next-as she had the night after the assembly when Frances came to her room. How utterly mortifying.

“Is it not a shame,” Claudia said with a sigh after a short silence, “that we cannot just turn off our woman’s need to love and nurture and be loved in return, or at least draw enough satisfaction from lavishing those instincts upon our pupils and fellow teachers and women friends? One ought not to have to feel the need for a man and all he can offer by way of physical as well as emotional satisfaction when the chances of finding a suitable mate and making a satisfactory marriage are slim to none.”

Susanna had never before heard Claudia talk about her need for a man-her physical need. It was all too easy to assume that she did not feel such needs. She was over thirty years old. She had been an adult when Susanna first came to the school. And all that time she had been without a man.

“I was able to offer you the relative security of a teaching position when you grew up,” Claudia said. “I was not, alas, able to find you a husband despite your beauty and vitality and intelligence.”

“Oh, Claudia,” Susanna said, setting her cup and saucer down on the table beside her, “you have done so very much for me. And I am not in love with Viscount Whitleaf-or anyone else.”

Claudia sighed again.

“Of course you are not,” she said briskly. “Come, it is time we went to bed even though it is still not very late, is it? It has been a long and busy and emotional day, though, and I feel like a limp rag. And I have promised to take study hall tomorrow evening on top of everything else.”

“I will be conducting a rehearsal for the Christmas play,” Susanna said, “or I would do it for you.”

Life would go on, she told herself a few minutes later as she shut her bedroom door behind her. She had survived the end of August. She would survive today.

At least there would be much to occupy her mind tomorrow and in the coming days.

And at least there were pleasant memories of today to add to the ones from the summer. She was glad he had come to ask her if she was with child. He would not have abandoned her to her fate if she had been. She knew that as clearly as if he had said so.

He was still a man she could like and even…

Well, yes, of course she still loved him too.

It would be foolish to deny it.

She would survive the admission. She had survived it in August, and she would survive it now. But she did wonder wistfully when an unfed love died. It did not last forever, surely? She fervently hoped not.

She looked forward to the day when she could bring out the memories and derive only a sort of nostalgic pleasure from them.

That day had not yet come.

Not by a long way.

Peter did not go with Lauren and Kit when they left for Alvesley Park the following morning even though both of them assured him that he would be very welcome and their children begged him to come. He was going to set out for London a little later in the day, he told them-he had some business to attend to there. The business consisted of keeping his eye out for a new team of horses to buy, though, truth to tell, there was nothing wrong with his chestnuts. He also needed to visit his clubs, notably White’s, to discover who was still in town and who was new in town and what the latest news and gossip might be-though those particular pursuits could hardly be described as business.

Really, of course, he had no pressing reason for going anywhere in the world, except home. But there was still a while before Christmas, and he had decided not to go before then.

His mother was going to transform his dining room into a lavender monstrosity-she had mentioned the color in her last letter-as a complement to the drawing room. But she was going to leave it until after Christmas since they were expecting guests-she had used the plural pronoun. Christmas would be soon enough, then, to stop such a disaster from happening. A lavender dining room, for God’s sake!

Would she start on the library next?

She had invited the Flynn-Posys for Christmas, Lady Flynn-Posy being one of her dearest friends from their come-out year. Peter might recall the name, she had written. He did not. They were going to bring with them their son, a delightful young man who was up at Oxford, and-inevitably-their daughter, an accomplished young lady of considerable beauty, who was to make her official come-out in the spring.

Miss Flynn-Posy and her arsenal would have to be faced, he had decided. He would hide from his mother’s loving interference in his life no longer.

He would not go home yet, though.

But what was he to do with himself in the meanwhile? He waved Lauren and Kit and the children on their way from the Royal York Hotel and then, ten minutes later, the Earl and Countess of Redfield and returned aimlessly to his room to stare gloomily at his bags, all neatly packed by his valet.

An hour after that he wandered downstairs and was in time to wave the Duke and Duchess of Bewcastle and Mrs. Thompson, the duchess’s mother, on their way home. Miss Thompson was to remain in Bath for a few days, but not at the hotel, it seemed.

“My mother thought it really not quite the thing even though I bade farewell to my twenties a few years ago,” she explained to Peter as they both looked toward the corner around which the carriage had just disappeared. “And Christine agreed with her. So did the duke, though he did not say a word. He did not have to. I have never known anyone whose silence is so eloquent. He is a formidable brother-in-law, Lord Whitleaf.” Her eyes twinkled with merriment.

“And so you are to stay with Lady Potford?” Peter asked.

“Yes,” she said. “I must still be hedged about by chaperones, it seems. It is most provoking.”

“May I convey you and your baggage to her house?” Peter asked.

“Oh, that is remarkably good of you,” she said, “but my bags have already gone. The duke arranged to have them sent over. He would have sent me with them, I daresay, if I had not told Christine quite firmly that I intend to walk.”

“She lives not far away?” he asked.

“On Great Pulteney Street,” she said. “It is a fair distance, but I shall enjoy stretching my legs, especially in this lovely sunshine. The house is quite close to Miss Martin’s school on Daniel Street. I promised to call there today or tomorrow. Miss Martin needs a new teacher, and I am thinking of applying for the position.”

“Indeed?” Peter said. “May I escort you to Great Pulteney Street, ma’am?”

“And delay your own departure?” she said. “You are too kind, Lord Whitleaf. I really do not need an escort or a chaperone on the streets of Bath.”

“But perhaps,” he said, bowing to her and grinning, “I would be delighted to postpone my departure until tomorrow, ma’am, rather than forgo the pleasure of your company and Lady Potford’s. And I would like to see the school where Miss Osbourne teaches-we struck up an acquaintance during the summer when we were staying with friends in the same neighborhood.”

“Ah, Miss Osbourne, yes,” she said, laughing. “I did not fail to notice how remarkably lovely she is. Very well, then, Lord Whitleaf. Since you feel such a burning desire for my company, I shall not deprive you of it. Shall we meet downstairs here in half an hour’s time?”

“We shall,” he said, bowing to her.

And so, instead of setting out for London within the hour, as he had intended, Peter found himself walking through Bath with Miss Thompson on his arm. They walked past the Pump Room and Bath Abbey and along by the river in the direction of the Pulteney Bridge. They crossed the bridge and made their way past Laura Place and along Great Pulteney Street until they came to Lady Potford’s. They conversed every step of the way, and Peter found himself genuinely enjoying her company and laughing with her over several absurdities she pointed out.

At the same time he wondered about the wisdom of what he was doing-or rather, the wisdom of what he planned to do after calling at Lady Potford’s. Was he really going to accompany Miss Thompson to the school? For what purpose, pray? He had learned what he needed to know from Susanna yesterday. He had enjoyed a pleasant half hour dancing and talking with her, and they had said good-bye.

There was really nothing whatsoever left to say, was there?

But dash it all, he still liked her. He still wanted a friendship with her. And, if the bald truth were told, he probably felt a little more than just liking for her. Which uncomfortable-and only barely admitted-fact was all the more reason for bowing to Miss Thompson at the doorway of the house on Great Pulteney Street, returning to his hotel with alacrity, and putting as much distance between himself and Miss Martin’s School for Girls in Bath as daylight and the speed of his traveling carriage would allow.

But when Lady Potford’s butler opened the door to their knock, he found himself stepping over the threshold.

And a little more than half an hour later, after taking coffee in the drawing room and making himself agreeable to Lady Potford, who was feeling rather down after having waved her houseguests on their way earlier, he found himself escorting Miss Thompson again on the short walk to the end of the street and around the corner onto Sydney Place and almost immediately around onto Sutton Street. The turn onto Daniel Street was not far away.

And so here he was, he thought as he stepped up to the school and rapped the knocker against the door, unable even to change his mind at the last moment and hurry away. Miss Thompson was standing solidly just behind him and would think it odd in the extreme if he suddenly bolted.

What the devil was she going to think? She being Susanna Osbourne, of course.

An elderly, pinch-faced porter opened the door and glared at Peter with unconcealed suspicion. His black coat, shiny with age, looked almost as elderly as he.

The dragon guarding the maidens, perhaps?

“Miss Thompson and Viscount Whitleaf to call upon Miss Martin,” he said.

The man looked beyond Peter’s shoulder, and his demeanor grew marginally less hostile.

“Miss Martin is expecting you, ma’am,” he said, ignoring Peter, “though she is in the middle of a class at the moment.”

“Do not disturb her, then,” Miss Thompson said. “I shall wait until she is free.”

Ah, reprieve! Peter thought. He had the perfect excuse for bowing her over the threshold and going on his way- I shall wait,she had said. Not we.

Instead, he stood back to allow her to precede him inside and then stepped in after her.

If ever he came fully to understand himself, he thought ruefully, the world would surely stop spinning on its axis and then they would all be in trouble.

He was standing in a dark, narrow hallway. Instantly he could hear the distant hum of girls’ voices chanting something in unison. He had stepped into the world of Susanna Osbourne, he realized, breathing in the mingled odors of furniture polish and ink and cabbage and an indefinable something that would have told him he was in a school even if he had not already known it.