Simply Magic

3

“I disliked him intensely,” Susanna replied bluntly when Frances asked her what she thought of Viscount Whitleaf.

“Did you?” Frances looked surprised. “But he is rather good-looking, is he not? And very charming, I have always thought.”

Susanna did not comment on his looks, though it seemed to her that he was considerably more than just “rather good-looking.”

“ Calculatedly charming,” she said as she removed her bonnet and fluffed up her curls with the visual aid of the mirror in her bedchamber while Frances stood in the doorway, twirling her own bonnet by its ribbons. “He does not utter a sincere word. I doubt he has a sincere thought.”

“Oh, dear.” Frances laughed. “He did make a poor impression on you. I suppose he tried to flirt with you?”

“You heard what he said when we first met,” Susanna said, turning from the mirror and gesturing to the chair beside the dressing table.

Frances stepped into the room though she did not sit down.

“I thought his words rather amusing,” she admitted. “He did not mean to offend, you know. I daresay most ladies enjoy such flatteries from him.”

“He is shallow and vain,” Susanna said.

Frances set her head to one side and regarded her friend more closely.

“It might be a mistake to jump too hastily to that conclusion,” she said. “I have never heard of any vice in him. I have never heard him called a rake or a gambler or a ne’er-do-well or any other of the unsavory things one half expects to hear of a young, unattached gentleman about town. Lucius likes him. And so do I, I must confess, though I have never been an object of his gallantry, it is true.”

“I do not understand,” Susanna said, “how those girls can be so taken in by him.”

“Miss Raycroft and the Calverts?” Frances said. “Oh, but they are not really, you know. He is Viscount Whitleaf, high-born, enormously wealthy, and quite out of their orbit. They understand that very well. But they enjoy his attentions-and who can blame them? Life in the country can be exceedingly dull, especially when one rarely travels farther from home than five miles in any direction. And he is very skilled at flirting without ever favoring one particular lady above all others and therefore inspiring hope in her that can only lead to disappointment. Women understand him very well, I daresay, and look for husbands elsewhere. Society often works in such ways.”

“I am very glad, then,” Susanna said tartly, “that I do not belong to society. It all sounds very artificial to me.”

But as she caught her friend’s eye, she first smiled and then dissolved into unexpected laughter.

“And just listen to me,” she said when she caught her breath, “sounding like a dried-up prune of a spinster schoolteacher.”

“And looking like anything but,” Frances said, joining in the laughter. “I suppose he flirted on the way back to Barclay Court too, the rogue, and you responded with a sober face and a severe tongue? The poor man! He must have been utterly confounded. I wish I could have listened.”

They laughed together again. Perhaps she had overreacted, Susanna thought. Perhaps she would not have judged him quite so severely if he had been introduced to her as Viscount Jones or Viscount Smith or anything but Viscount Whitleaf.

“Anyway,” she said, “I have always said that I will hold out for a duke or nobody. I believe a mere viscount must count as nobody.”

They both chuckled at the absurdity of her words. A mere viscount, indeed!

“Come along to my sitting room with me,” Frances said, “and we will order up some tea and have a comfortable coze until the visitors have gone away. It was rather a long walk on such a warm day, was it not? I am thirsty again. But it felt so good to stretch my legs. I have done enough sitting in a carriage during the last few months to last me for the next year at the very least.”

Susanna followed her to the small sitting room of the private apartments she shared with the earl and sank into a comfortable brocaded easy chair while Frances pulled on the bell rope to summon a servant.

But Frances had not finished with the topic of the viscount.

“Of course,” she said, “you are quite right to be wary of Viscount Whitleaf, who is well known for having an eye for beauty but who may not have realized at first that you are far too intelligent to respond gladly to empty flirtation and dalliance. You are certainly wise not to be dazzled by him. But, Susanna, there has to be someone out there who is just perfect for you. I firmly believe it. And I so want to see you contentedly settled in life. Mr. Birney, our vicar, was new here just before we left for Europe and so I do not know him well. But he is pleasing to look at and has refined manners and is unattached-at least he was six months ago. And he cannot be a day over thirty, if he is that. Then there is Mr. Finn, a gentleman farmer, Lucius’s tenant. He is earnest and thrifty and worthy and quite personable in appearance. But I believe you met him last time you were here.”

“I did,” Susanna said, her eyes twinkling. “I believe he is sweet on the eldest Miss Calvert.”

“You may be right,” Frances admitted. “But I am not yet convinced she is sweet on him. Well, let us dismiss him just in case she is-or just in case he is not heart-free. There is also Mr. Dannen. He owns his own property and is in possession of a modest fortune, I believe. Certainly he appears to be comfortably well off. You have not met him. He was away the last time you were here-in Scotland, I believe. He is short in stature-but then so are you. Otherwise he is well enough favored. Of course, he is-”

“Frances!” Susanna interrupted her, laughing. “You do not have to matchmake for me.”

“Oh, but I do.” Frances sat on a love seat facing her friend’s chair after giving her order to the housekeeper, and gazed earnestly at her. “You and Claudia and Anne are still my dearest female friends, Susanna, and I fervently wish for you all to be as well settled and contented as I am. Surely there must be enough unattached gentlemen in this neighborhood for all of you.”

Susanna laughed again, even more merrily, and after a moment Frances joined in.

“Well, for one of you anyway,” she said. “I cannot seriously imagine Claudia ever marrying, can you? And Anne is so attached to David that I daresay she would be unwilling to risk subjecting him to a stepfather who might mistreat him.”

David Jewell was an illegitimate child, Anne never having been married.

“So I am the one?” Susanna said.

“And so you are the one,” Frances said, reaching for both her hands and squeezing them tightly. “You are so very pretty, Susanna, and so sweet-natured. It seems unfair that fate landed you in a girls’ school at the age of twelve and has kept you there ever since, far from the world of men and potential courtships.”

“It is not unfair,” Susanna said firmly, pulling her hands free. “Except perhaps to the hundreds and thousands of other girls who were not so privileged. And you know how much I love the school and all the girls and Claudia and Anne and even Mr. Keeble and the other teachers.”

Mr. Keeble was the elderly school porter.

“I do know it,” Frances said with a sigh. “Just as I loved teaching until Lucius forced me to admit how much more I wanted to sing-and how very much more I wanted him. Well, I will say nothing else on the subject. And here comes the tea.”

They were quiet while the tray was brought in and set down and while Frances poured the tea and handed Susanna her cup.

“And so there is to be an assembly in the village the week after next,” Frances said. “We arrived home at the perfect time.”

“An assembly will be wonderfully exciting,” Susanna said. “Even a little frightening. I have never been to any such thing.”

“Oh.” Frances looked at her with sudden realization. “Of course you have not. But you have danced at the school forever, Susanna, demonstrating steps for the girls. Now at last you will be able to put your skills to work at a real dance. And you need not be afraid that you will make a cake of yourself and everyone will notice. This is a country assembly with country people who will go to enjoy themselves, not to observe one another critically. And if that suddenly wary look has anything to do with the fact that Viscount Whitleaf will be there too, you silly goose, I will be wishing that he were to take himself off back home to Sidley Park before the fateful night. You must not allow yourself to be intimidated by him.”

Sidley Park. Susanna’s heart sank again at the name. Why did Viscount Whitleaf have to be a friend of Mr. Raycroft? And why did he have to be staying with him at Hareford House now of all times? For so many years-eleven, in fact-there had been no real reminders of her childhood and its abrupt, ghastly ending. She had been able to convince herself that she had forgotten.

“Oh,” Frances continued, “and Lucius has bullied the vicar into seeing to it that there will be at least one waltz at the assembly. Have I ever told you about our first waltz together-in a dusty assembly room above a deserted inn with no one else present, no heat though it was the dead of winter, and no music?”

“No music?” Susanna laughed.

“I hummed it,” Frances said. “It was the most glorious waltz ever waltzed, Susanna. Believe me it was.”

They lapsed into a companionable silence while Frances’s dreamy expression and slightly flushed cheeks indicated that she was reliving that waltz and Susanna wondered if anyone would dance with her at the assembly. Oh, how she hoped so! She would not even think about the waltz. Just one set- any set.

She knew the steps of the waltz, though. It was a dance Mr. Huckerby, the dancing master, always taught the girls at school. He was not, however, allowed to dance it with any of them, but only with any teacher who was willing to oblige for demonstration purposes. That had used to be Frances. Now Susanna and Anne and sometimes Mademoiselle Étienne, the French teacher, took turns.

Susanna loved the waltz more than any other dance. Not that there was anything even faintly romantic about performing the steps with Mr. Huckerby, it was true, especially when an audience of girls, many of them stifling giggles, looked on. But she had always dreamed of waltzing in a glittering, candlelit ballroom in the arms of a tall, handsome gentleman who smiled down into her eyes as if no one else existed in the world but the two of them.

I am not a romantic,she had said earlier to Viscount Whitleaf. What an absolute bouncer of a fib! She lived a busy, disciplined life as a schoolteacher, and she did indeed love her job-she had spoken the truth about that. But her dreams were rich with romance-with love and marriage and motherhood.

All those things she would never experience in the real world.

As if I had stepped into a moment that was simply magic.

She had wanted to weep when he spoke those words, so meaningless to him, so achingly evocative to her. How she longed for the magic of someone to love more than anyone or anything else in life. Of someone to love her in the same way.

For an unguarded moment she pictured herself waltzing with Viscount Whitleaf, those laughing violet eyes softened by tenderness as they gazed into her own.

But she shuddered slightly as she shook off the image and reached for a ginger biscuit. She must certainly not begin sullying the splendor of her dreams by imposing his image on them.

And then she thought of something else he had said.

You wounded me to the heart-to that chest organ, that mundane pump.

She almost ruined her aversion to him by chuckling aloud with amusement.

Frances would think she had taken leave of her senses.

And then she thought again of Sidley Park. She had lived until the age of twelve only a few miles away from it, though she had never actually been there. She had known it as the home of Viscountess Whitleaf, though she had always known too that the young viscount lived there as well as his five sisters, who bore the name of Edgeworth. She recalled that when she had first heard Frances speak of the Earl of Edgecombe she had had a nasty turn, wondering if he was of the same family-until she had realized that the names were not identical.

But apart from that, she had done a good job of holding the memories at bay. They were just too excruciatingly painful. She had heard that some people blocked painful memories so effectively that they completely forgot them. She sometimes wished that could have happened to her.

A specific memory came back to her then. She must have been five or six years old at the time and was playing close to the lake with Edith Markham when they had been joined by a young boy a few years older than they. He had asked them with great good humor and open interest what they were doing and had squatted next to Susanna on the bank to see if there was a fish on the end of her makeshift fishing line.

“Oh, hard luck!” he had said when he had seen that there was not. “I daresay the fish are not biting today. Sometimes they do not-or so I have heard. My mama will not let me go fishing. She is afraid I will fall in or catch a chill-instead of a fish, ha-ha. Did you get it? Catching a chill instead of a fish? Does your mama fuss you all the time? Oh, I say! You have the greenest eyes, don’t you? I have never seen eyes of just that color before. They are very fine, and they look very well with your red hair. I daresay you will be pretty when you grow up. Not that you are not pretty now. I do beg your pardon-I forgot my manners for a moment. A gentleman never lets a lady believe that perhaps she is not pretty. May I hold the rod? Perhaps I will have better luck than you though I daresay you have had more practice.”

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?

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.