Simply Magic

21

Susanna arrived at Fincham Manor very late in the afternoon three days before Christmas, having traveled post. She had left Bath early on the morning following the Christmas concert and all the other busy activities that came with the end of term. She was tired even before she started the journey. She was exhausted by the time it ended.

The fact that she had dreaded coming did not help, of course.

She had wondered how it would feel to step into the house again after all these years. When she had left it eleven years ago, her father had just killed himself and she had just heard Lady Markham describe her as a burden. She had been running away.

But though it all looked startlingly familiar, it also seemed like a place she must have visited during another lifetime. She felt no great emotional connection with it.

This time, of course, she was staying in a guest chamber in the main part of the house rather than in the pretty little attic room next to her father’s. She was a guest of the family.

Edith and Mr. Morley had already arrived for Christmas, and a few other guests were expected. The whole family gave Susanna a warm welcome-Theodore even shook her hand warmly after she had curtsied to him, and then held it in both his own while he assured her that she had grown into a rare beauty. He had grown into a great bear of a man himself, with wild, unruly dark hair and a genial face. She had worshipped him as a child and still instinctively liked him.

“You will want to freshen up and change for dinner, Susanna,” he said. “I may still call you Susanna?”

“Only if I may still call you Theodore,” she said.

He laughed heartily.

By the time dinner was at an end and she had drunk a cup of tea in the drawing room with Lady Markham and Edith while the two gentlemen drank their port in the dining room, Susanna was finding it hard to keep her eyes open.

“Susanna is very weary,” Lady Markham said when the gentlemen arrived in the room. “I do think that any business you planned to discuss with her tonight, Theodore, must wait until the morning.”

Her letter. It was in this very house-the words her father had written to her just before he died. She had come specifically to read it. And now that she was here she was almost sick with the longing to see it, to hold it, to read it. But not tonight. She needed to be wide awake and strong.

“I was going to suggest the very same thing, Mama,” Theodore said. “Will that suit you, Susanna? Would you like to retire for the night now?”

“Yes, please,” she said, getting to her feet. “Thank you, Theodore. And thank you for inviting me here.”

“We will talk tomorrow, then,” he said. “And later tomorrow our other guests should be arriving.”

Lady Markham walked with Susanna up to her room.

“I am very happy you came,” she said. “I have always felt that the story of eleven years ago was never properly ended. I have felt it even more since seeing you in Bath. Now perhaps we can all end the story, Susanna, and remain friends after you return to your school. Good night. Do have a good sleep.”

And Susanna did-have a good sleep, that was. She remembered nothing between setting her head on her pillow and waking to the sounds of a maid lighting a fire in the small fireplace in her room. There was a cup of steaming chocolate on the table beside her bed.

What luxury!

But as she dressed a short while later, her teeth chattered, not so much from cold as from sick apprehension of what the morning held in store.

First, though, she had to sit through breakfast and smile and make light conversation and assure Edith-quite truthfully-that she would indeed like to go up to the nursery with her to see Jamie.

“But not yet, Ede,” Theodore said, getting to his feet at the end of what had seemed an interminable meal. “Susanna and I have business first. I’ll fetch your letter, Susanna, and you may read it wherever you wish-in your room or in the drawing room, which is always empty at this time of day. Or in the library if you prefer.”

But suddenly she could not wait even long enough for him to bring it to her. She got to her feet too.

“I will come with you if I may,” she said.

“Certainly,” he said, and she followed him from the room.

But he hesitated outside a certain room, his hand on the knob, and Susanna instantly knew why. It was the study that had been her father’s. It was where he had shot himself.

“I’ll go in and get it,” he said, smiling kindly at her. “It will just take a minute.”

“Please,” Susanna said, touching his arm, “may I come in too?”

He heaved an audible sigh and opened the door to allow her to precede him inside.

It was a disturbingly familiar room even though she had not come in here many times as a girl. Her father had used to leave the door ajar most days, however, and she had often stood outside, smelling leather and ink and listening to his deep, pleasant voice if there was someone in there with him. Often it had been Theodore, and she had listened to them talk about horses and racing or about fishing, Theodore’s voice eager, her father’s indulgent. She had always longed to push the door open and go in to join them. Perhaps her father would not have turned her away. Perhaps he would even have welcomed her and let her climb onto his knee. Perhaps-and this was a novel thought-he had felt as neglected by her as she had by him. Perhaps he had thought that as a girl she preferred to spend all her days with Edith.

She was standing at the desk, she realized, running her hand over the leather-edged blotter while Theodore watched her silently. She looked up at him and half smiled.

“It is strange revisiting a portion of one’s life one had thought long gone,” she said.

“It is cold in here,” Theodore said after regarding her for a few moments. “I will find the letter and you can go somewhere warm to read it.”

“Thank you,” she said. She supposed it was cold in here since there was no fire in the hearth and she could hear the wind rattling the windows, beyond which the sky was a leaden gray. But even if she had not been wearing a winter dress and the soft wool shawl Claudia had given her as an early Christmas gift, she did not believe she would really have felt it this morning. “But I want to read the letter here. May I, please, Theodore?”

This was where the letter must have been written, she realized-on this very desk. Just before…

Theodore did not argue. He stooped down on his haunches to light the fire, and then he stepped up to the safe and opened it. He turned with a folded, sealed sheet of paper in his hand. Susanna could see that it was somewhat yellowed about the edges.

“I will leave you for a while, then,” he said, “and then come back to answer any questions you may have- if I can answer them, that is. I was away at school at the time, and I was not told much. But I have read my father’s letter, and I have spoken with my mother.”

“Thank you,” she said, but as he handed her the letter, she realized that in fact there were two. Her hand closed about them, and she shut her eyes until she heard the quiet click of the door as he left.

She seated herself carefully behind the desk and looked down at the papers in her hand.

Her own letter was on top. The words Miss Susanna Osbourne were written in the firm, sloping, elegant hand that she recognized instantly as her father’s. His hand had not even shaken at the end, she thought as she set the other letter down on the desk, but her own was shaking as she held it. She slid her thumb beneath the seal and broke it before opening out the sheet.

“My dearest Susanna,” she read, “you will feel that I have abandoned you, that I did not love you enough to live for you. When you are older, perhaps you will understand that this is not true. My life, if I were to live on, would suddenly change quite drastically, and therefore so would yours. Perhaps I would face that change if I were alone as I faced another when I was much younger. Who knows? But I cannot subject you to it. I have been accused of two dreadful crimes, one of which I committed, one of which I did not. But my innocence in the second case does not matter. It will not be believed in light of the first.

“I am ruined, as perhaps I deserve to be. Your mother has already paid the ultimate price. It is time I did too. And I do it-or so I tell myself, trying to give my life some touch of nobility at the end-so that you may live. You have family, Susanna-mine and your mother’s. And either one will be happy enough to take you in once I am gone. They would have taken you at your birth, but I was too selfish to give you up. You were all I had left. I have given instructions to Sir Charles, and you will be united with your family. They will be good to you-they are good people. They will love you. You will have a secure, happy girlhood with them and a bright future. I promise you this though life will probably seem very bleak to you now as you read. I will take my leave of you, then, my dearest child. Believe that I do love you and always have. Papa.”

Susanna rubbed the side of her thumb over that final word. Papa. Had she really called him that? But of course she had. It was only afterward that she had changed his name to my father.

I do it so that you may live.

Must she bear that burden too?

Perhaps I would face that change if I were alone.

There was no mention of Viscountess Whitleaf or of choosing death rather than life without the woman he loved. But would a father admit such a thing to his twelve-year-old child anyway?

He had loved the viscountess. She had seen them together one afternoon just before his death. She had been hiding under a hedgerow close to the road that led from Fincham to the village, about to come out because it had become obvious to her that Edith must have tired of the game when she could not find Susanna and had gone home to wait for her to put in an appearance. But then along had come Susanna’s father, walking beside Lady Whitleaf’s horse until they both stopped a mere stone’s throw away. Susanna had stayed where she was, too embarrassed to be seen crawling out of a hedgerow. She had even been able to see them, though she had hoped they would not see her.

“Do you think I care?” Lady Whitleaf had said, her voice filled with scorn as she tossed her head so that the pink feathered plume in her riding hat nodded against her ear. “I do not care the snap of my fingers for you and never have.”

It had struck Susanna that she was very beautiful.

“I am sorry,” her father had said, possessing himself of her hand and carrying it to his lips. “I truly am sorry.”

“You will be very sorry indeed for having set your sights so high,” she had said, snatching back her hand. “And for having molested me.”

“Molested?”He had taken a step back. “I am sorry if you see my actions that way.”

“I do.” She had looked down on him as if he were a worm beneath her feet. “That I should have deigned to take even a moment’s notice of a mere government secretary! I hope your heart is broken. It deserves to be. I hope it drives you to your death.”

And she had driven her spurs into the horse’s side and gone cantering off down the lane.

While Susanna had sat paralyzed in her hiding place, biting her knee through the cotton fabric of her dress, she had watched her father pass a hand wearily over his face before turning and trudging off back in the direction of the house.

Her mind returned to the present and the letter in her hand. She could hear the fire crackling to life in the fireplace. She could even feel a thread of warmth from its direction.

She had family -or had had eleven years ago, on both her mother’s and father’s side. They would have taken her in-but not her father. What had he done to offend them so?

I have been accused of two dreadful crimes, one of which I committed…

Her mother had paid the ultimate price, and now it was his turn.

The ultimate price for what? What dreadful crime had called for the deaths of two people?

Her father had killed himself for her sake. Without her he might have struggled on. He had kept her after her birth even though he might have sent her to live with his family or her mother’s. He had been too selfish to give her up.

Susanna lowered her forehead to the desk to rest on the open letter.

So many thoughts and emotions to churn around in one body and mind!

But only one thought came at her with any real clarity-or rather the memory of three words written on the paper beneath her.

…my dearest child.

Theodore was going to come back, she thought suddenly, and sat up again. Her father’s letter had raised as many questions as it had answered. Perhaps there were some answers…

She reached her hand toward the other letter, whose seal, she could see, was already broken. But did she want to know the secrets of the man who had been her father? How could she not want to know, though, after reading her own letter? Was it really not as she had thought all these years? Was one of the impediments to her marrying Peter-though there were a thousand others-to be removed?

She drew Sir Charles’s letter toward her and opened it. Her eyes went straight to the body of the letter, closely written and in just as steady a hand as her own letter.

“You listened kindly to me a few days ago,” she read, “when I told you my sordid, long-held secrets before the Viscountess Whitleaf could do it for me. I have never had a high opinion of blackmailers or of those who allow themselves to become their victims. You were even gracious enough to refuse to accept my resignation-at least until we saw how much the lady talked and what the gravity of the resulting scandal would be.

“The situation has become far graver, however. Now that her original threat to come to you with my story has been thwarted, she plans to go to the world with another story of how I have molested and even ravished her. It would be a silly lie, perhaps, if not for two facts that will surely make her story generally believed. One is the truth of the other story she will now undoubtedly share with the world. The other is the mild gossip that arose around the lady and myself in London last year-and the truth of the fact that yes, for a while we were lovers. My mistake-one of too many to count in my life-was to try ending our liaison myself instead of waiting until such time as she chose to end it herself.

“It distresses me to have brought so much potential scandal to you and your family and this home. You will not be able to continue to champion me. I am ruined and may even be facing criminal prosecution. I see no way out but to do what will already be done by the time you read this. Perhaps my death will silence the lady and so prevent all scandal except what will be the inevitable result of my suicide.

“But I cannot wait until after I have left Fincham. There is Susanna, you see. She has long been all that is truly precious in my life. Lady Markham and Miss Markham have always been remarkably kind to her, for which I cannot possibly express the full extent of my gratitude. Be kind to her in one more thing, I beg you. Send her to my father with the enclosed letter. He is an honorable and good man. He will give her a home and kindness and even love.

“I thank you, Sir Charles, for allowing me the privilege of serving you…”

Susanna did not read the last few sentences. She set the letter down on top of the other one.

She had been right, then, though not in the way she had thought. Lady Whitleaf had driven him to his death. That little snippet of conversation she had overheard between them had meant something a little different from what she had thought, but the outcome had been the same.

Except that he had died not because he loved the viscountess, but at least partly because he had loved her.

She has long been all that is truly precious in my life.

… my dearest child.

She must have been dilly-dallying a great deal over the letters, she realized, when after a brief knock the door opened and Theodore came back into the room. He had been gone for a whole hour, she saw when she glanced at the clock on the mantel.

“I have brought you a cup of tea,” he said, coming to set it down on the desk before going to poke the fire into renewed life.

“Theodore,” she said, “what had my father done in his past that was so very bad?”

He straightened up and turned to look at her.

“Are you sure-” he began.

“Yes.” She grasped the edges of her shawl with both hands and drew it closer about her shoulders, even though the room was no longer as chilly as it had been. “I need to know.”

“My father had told my mother,” he said. “Your mother was once married to your father’s elder brother, Susanna, but she and your father…loved each other. It seems that his brother confronted him about it and there was a fight in which his brother died. The whole thing was explained away as a tragic accident-and I daresay there was truth in the claim-but your father was sent away. Your mother followed him, though, and they married. Marrying one’s brother’s widow is not expressly forbidden, but it is certainly frowned upon. And this was only a month or so after her bereavement. Both families renounced them.”

He was talking of her parents, Susanna thought, her hands balling into fists on the desktop as she stared down at her whitened knuckles.

“And one year later she died,” Theodore said. “My father knew her. He told my mother that they were devoted to each other, Susanna. He also said that you looked like her.”

Her mother had died having her. Susanna bit down hard on her upper lip. She had risked all, even scandal and ostracism, only to die in childbed.

And her father had died by his own hand twelve years later when his past finally caught up to him and a malicious woman was out to destroy him. Susanna could only imagine the enormity of the guilt with which he must have lived all the years she had known him. Yet he had always been quietly courteous, gentle, and affectionate.

She looked like her mother.

“My father confronted Lady Whitleaf after the funeral,” Theodore said. “She denied that she had ever intended to act with such malicious intent as described in that letter by your hand. He had been presumptuous and familiar with her, she claimed, and she had been about to make a private complaint about him to my father-that was all. The matter was dropped, but there was a coolness between my parents and her ever after. My parents believed Osbourne’s version.”

Susanna spread her hands, palm up, and examined them closely.

“The third letter was sent on to your grandfather,” Theodore said, “even though you could not be sent with it. I believe he implemented his own search for you, but you were lost beyond a trace until Whitleaf found you this past summer.”

“I was not lost,” she said quietly as she drank her tea, thankful for the hot liquid, “and he did not find me.”

“In a manner of speaking,” he said, smiling. “May I take you to my mother and Edith in the morning room?”

“Yes,” she said with a sigh. “Theodore, perhaps I should leave tomorrow and return to Bath so that you may have a quiet family Christmas without feeling obliged to entertain me.”

“That would break Edith’s heart,” he said, “and hurt my mother. And I would not be happy about it either. We have other guests coming later today, remember.”

“All the more reason for me to leave,” she said, frowning.

“Not so.” He stood in front of the fire, lifted onto the balls of his feet, and then rocked back on his heels again. “I am expecting Colonel and Mrs. Osbourne and the Reverend Clapton from Gloucestershire-your two grandfathers and your paternal grandmother.”

Susanna stared mutely at him.

“My mother suggested it,” he said, “as soon as you wrote back to say you would come. I wrote to them the same day and they did not hesitate. They are coming to meet you.”

She swallowed and heard a gurgle in her throat. She pushed her cup and saucer aside and curled her fingers into her palms to find them clammy.

“My grandparents?” she half whispered.

“Lord,” he said, lifting onto the balls of his feet again, “I don’t know if I have done the right thing, Susanna. But I know my father would have done all he could for you, and my mother always loved you almost as if you were her own. I thought it only right to do more or less what your father wanted mine to do-except that I am bringing your grandparents to you rather than sending you to them.”

She was not all alone in the world. She had three grandparents and perhaps other relatives. She had read it in both her father’s letters, yet somehow the knowledge had not fully lodged itself in her brain until now.

She had relatives, and they were coming here to Fincham Manor.

Today.

Susanna lurched to her feet, pushing her chair away with the backs of her knees as she did so.

“I have to get out,” she said.

“Out?” Theodore’s rather bushy eyebrows drew together until they almost met over the bridge of his nose.

“Out of doors,” she said, feeling as if she were about to suffocate.

“You don’t mean home to Bath?” he said. “You are not going to leave, Susanna? Run away again?”

What did she mean? She scarcely knew. Her mind felt as if it were close to bursting with all it had been forced to take in during the past hour or so.

She drew a deep breath and released it slowly.

“I just need to walk outside for a while, Theodore,” she said. “I need fresh air. Will you mind? Will it seem terribly rude? I do not mean to run away.”

“I’ll come with you,” he said, still frowning. “Or perhaps Edith or my mother-”

But she held up a hand.

“No,” she said. “I would rather be alone. I need to sort out my thoughts.”

“Ah,” he said. “Take all the time you need, then, Susanna. And then come back and get warm and enjoy Christmas with us. We will do all in our power to see that you do.”

“Thank you.”

She hurried upstairs to fetch her cloak and bonnet and gloves and don her warm half-boots, vastly relieved when she did not pass anyone on the way to her room. If only she could get back downstairs and outside…

But she was not so fortunate this time.

Theodore was standing in the hall as she came downstairs, probably waiting to see her on her way. A newly arrived visitor was talking with him there. For only a fraction of a second did Susanna think that perhaps this was one of the expected houseguests. But then, almost simultaneously, she realized that the visitor, broad-shouldered in his many-caped greatcoat, was a young man and that he was Viscount Whitleaf.

He looked up at the same moment and their eyes met.

She was flooded with such a powerful and unexpected longing that she only just found the strength not to dash down the remaining stairs and hurl herself into his arms.

“Miss Osbourne,” he said.

“Lord Whitleaf.”

She came slowly downward. She wondered if he had known she was coming to Fincham Manor.

“Susanna is going out for a walk,” Theodore said. “I have offered to accompany her, but she needs to be alone. She has just been reading the letter her father wrote her on the last day of his life. Do go without further ado if you wish, Susanna. I’ll take Whitleaf in to see my mother. He has an invitation to extend.”

“Later, Theo, if it is all the same to you,” the viscount said without taking his eyes off Susanna. “I will go back outside with Miss Osbourne-if she will accept my company.”

The thought of his mother-of what his mother had done-flashed through her mind, but he was not his mother. And suddenly she could not bear the thought of going out alone, of leaving him behind.

“Thank you,” she said, and turned to leave the house without looking back.