Simply Magic

6

The whole neighborhood had been invited to an afternoon picnic at Barclay Court, and fortunately the good weather had returned for the occasion after a few days of clouds and winds and chill.

Peter was greatly enjoying himself despite memories of an affectionate, subtly reproachful letter that morning from his mother, whose house party was proceeding without him. If he were there at Sidley Park now, he thought, he would very possibly be attending just exactly the same type of event as he was here. Except that there he would know that one in particular of the young ladies present had been selected as a potential bride for him-Miss Rose Larchwell. And he would know that his mother’s fond, anxious eyes were following him wherever he went. There he would feel all the burden of being loved dearly by someone he had forgiven, though he had not forgotten.

Perhaps it would have been better not to have forgiven, or at least to have forgiven conditionally. Perhaps he ought to have made it crystal clear to her that he would not accept any further interference in his life, especially as a matchmaker. Perhaps he ought to have told her that Sidley could no longer be her home. But she had been so brokenhearted-for him as well as for herself. And he had been only twenty-one. Besides all of which, he had loved her and still did. She was his mother.

And so she seemed to feel it was her mission in life to atone, to find him a bride in place of the one she had lost for him.

He shook off the thought of what might be proceeding at Sidley and concentrated on what was happening at Barclay Court. Here he could relax and enjoy himself with whomever he chose-or with whoever chose him.

The picnic site was a wide, grassy bank close to the narrower end of a large lake, at some remove from the house. There was a picturesque three-arched stone bridge spanning its banks nearby. The waters from a river flowed rather swiftly beneath it into the lake. From the center of the bridge, where he stood for a while early in the afternoon with Miss Raycroft, Miss Mary Calvert, and Miss Krebbs, he could see that the swiftness of the water was caused by a waterfall farther back along the river among the trees. He gazed appreciatively at the scene while they chattered about the upcoming assembly.

Partway along the bank on the far side of the lake there was a pretty octagonal wooden pavilion. He walked there a little later with Finn, Miss Calvert, Miss Jane Calvert, and Miss Moss and her brother. They sat inside the structure for a while admiring the view, talking merrily, and laughing a great deal.

Most of the conversation there too concerned the assembly, to which they were all looking forward with eager anticipation. It was the first, apparently, since last Christmas.

After they had returned to the picnic site, Peter sat for a while on one of the blankets that had been spread for the convenience of the guests, conversing with the Countess of Edgecombe and a few of her older neighbors. In answer to their questions she told them something of her recent singing tour of Europe.

The sky was blue and cloudless, the sun warm without being oppressively hot. There was a very light breeze. It was a perfect summer day.

The boats were proving popular. There were four of them, each designed for no more than two persons, one rower and one passenger, though Peter found himself with two ladies squeezed onto the seat facing him every time he was at the oars. He made no complaint. Why should he when there was a pair of ladies to admire each time instead of one? In their flimsy summer finery and bonnets, they all looked good enough to eat. And they were all clearly enjoying the rare treat of a lovely summer day coinciding for once with an outdoor social event.

“The last time we were invited to a picnic,” Miss Mary Calvert said, trailing one hand in the water, “it rained cats and dogs all day and all night. Do you remember, Rosamond? It was for the retirement of the old vicar and we all had to be crammed into the vicarage and pretend that we were not hugely disappointed.”

Peter did not speak with Susanna Osbourne for all of the first hour or so. Each day since their visit to Miss Honeydew’s he had found himself looking forward to spending some time with her, but each day he had felt the necessity of having to keep their encounters short since he could not simply include her in the crowd of young ladies who often hung about him for long spells at a time-she would not have appreciated the frivolity of the group conversation. Having an actual lady friend was a novel venture for him, but he was very aware that his interest in her might be misconstrued by others if he was not careful. And so he was careful never to single her out immediately at any entertainment, and even when he did, to spend no more than half an hour with her.

Earlier in the afternoon he had bowed to her on the terrace when he arrived, made some deliberately bland observation about the weather just to see the light of amusement in her eyes, and turned his attention elsewhere. And then he had proceeded to enjoy himself-as had she.

The Reverend Birney, the fair-haired, fresh-faced young vicar, took her for a row on the lake and engaged her in earnest conversation the whole time-Peter watched them.

Dannen, that prize bore, took her walking along the near bank with Raycroft and the countess. And then he kept her standing close to the water for all of fifteen minutes after the other two had returned to the picnic site. Peter knew because he timed what was obviously a monologue.

Crossley, a widower in his forties, fetched her a glass of lemonade on her return and sat with her for a while, pointing out features of the view with wide arm gestures. Peter knew because he watched.

It struck him suddenly that her own assessment of her marriage prospects was quite possibly overpessimistic. Poor and dowerless as she must be, she had not failed to catch the eye of almost every eligible bachelor in the neighborhood. But she was surely far too sensible to marry Dannen and too lively to consider Birney. And Crossley was too old for her-he could be her father, for God’s sake.

In fact, the very thought of her marrying any of the present prospects made Peter quite unreasonably irritable. And he was being unreasonable. Surely any half-decent marriage was preferable to life as a spinster schoolteacher. At least, that was what he knew any of his sisters would tell him.

But even as he was wool-gathering with such thoughts and neglecting the ladies who chattered about him, someone suggested a game before tea, and a chorus of enthusiastic voices was raised with a dizzying variety of suggestions, which ranged from cricket to hide-and-seek. Cricket could not be played, however, unless someone dashed back to the house for all the necessary-and bulky-equipment. Besides, Miss Moss complained with the obvious support of most of the other ladies, cricket was really a man’s game. And hide-and-seek was not practical, as the trees did not grow thickly on this side of the lake and there were very few other hiding places. All of the other suggestions were rejected too for one reason or another.

It seemed they were to proceed gameless to tea after all-until Miss Osbourne spoke up.

“How about boat races?” she suggested.

There was a swell of excited approval-and then the inevitable dissenting voice.

“But there are too few gentlemen to row all of us,” Miss Jane Calvert pointed out. “Some of us would have to stand and watch.”

The other ladies looked at her in dismay, all of them, it seemed, with mental visions of being among the excluded.

“But who is to say,” Miss Osbourne asked, “that the men have to have all the fun? I was thinking of races in which all of us would row and none of us would be passengers.”

“Oh, I say,” Moss said, and laughed.

“That is the best idea I have heard yet, Susanna,” the countess said.

Peter folded his arms and pursed his lips.

“But I have never rowed a boat,” Miss Raycroft protested.

“Neither have I,” Miss Krebbs wailed. “I could not possibly…”

“We must think of something else, then,” Miss Mary Calvert said.

But Miss Osbourne raised her voice again, more firmly than before.

“What?” She looked about at the circle of those who had gathered to choose a game, and it was immediately apparent to Peter’s amused eye that she had forgotten herself and had slipped into an accustomed role of teacher rallying unenthusiastic pupils. “We are going to miss the chance of taking the oars ourselves and demonstrating that we are not just decorative ornaments who must always be passengers? We are not going to strive to beat the men?”

“Oh, I say,” Moss said again, while Peter grinned and caught an identical expression on Edgecombe’s face.

“ Beat the men?” Miss Krebbs half shrieked again. She looked as if she were close to swooning.

A few of the other young ladies were giggling, but they looked definitely interested.

“There are only four boats,” Miss Osbourne pointed out. “We will have to have elimination heats-across the lake to the pavilion and back again ought to be far enough. The ladies will compete against one another and the men against one another. At the end there will be a race between the winning man and the winning woman. Then we will see what sort of competition the lady will offer the gentleman.”

She was flushed and bright-eyed and full of energy and enthusiasm-a born leader, Peter guessed, gazing at her, intrigued and not a little dazzled. And she was going to get her way too, by Jove. Despite the misgivings with which almost all the young ladies had greeted the initial suggestion-especially when they had known that they were not to be mere passengers in the boats-they were now fairly bouncing with eagerness to get the races under way.

“This is going to be the best picnic ever,” Miss Mary Calvert declared with youthful hyperbole as she flashed Peter a bright smile.

Had Miss Osbourne told him she was the games teacher at school? He seemed to recall her saying something to that effect though he had not taken much notice at the time. A games teacher? Was there such a thing as a games teacher at a girls’ school?

For the next hour there was far more bouncing up and down and cheering and squealing and laughing-and some good-natured derision-on the bank than there was great expertise shown in the water. A few of the races were close-Miss Calvert narrowly beat the countess, though Miss Moss and Miss Mary Calvert were left far behind, an outcome brought about by the twin facts that each of them moved in circles as much as they moved in a straight line and that neither of them could stop giggling. Raycroft beat Dannen by a nose, a come-from-behind victory that resulted from a final, impressive burst of speed while Finn and Moss were only a boat length or so back. A few of the races were runaways by the winner-Miss Osbourne in her heat, for example, Peter in his. She beat Miss Calvert in the runoff ladies’ heat too, and he beat Edgecombe in the men’s, though only by half a boat length.

And so everything came down to the final race and everyone without exception gathered on the bank even though the countess laughingly protested that they must all be half starved and would flatly refuse any further invitation to one of her entertainments. They would have tea, she promised, the moment a winner was determined.

“I daresay it will not be Miss Osbourne,” Raycroft remarked cheerfully, but with a lamentable lack of either tact or gallantry.

Miss Raycroft punched him on the arm and the other ladies’ voices were raised in collective indignation. Both Peter and Susanna Osbourne laughed. He grinned at her, and she looked back, bright-eyed and determined.

She looked absurdly small and fragile to be taking on such a challenge. And quite irresistibly attractive too, by Jove. There was something attractive about an athletic woman, he thought in some surprise.

The young ladies seemed uncertain whom they should champion. They solved the problem by clapping and jumping up and down and calling their encouragement indiscriminately to both contestants. Most of the older people were intent upon offering advice to Miss Osbourne, who was climbing into one of the boats with Edgecombe’s assistance. Most of the other men were unashamedly partial.

“I say,” Moss called, “you had better win, Whitleaf. It would be a ghastly humiliation to us all if you did not.”

“You have the honor of our sex on your shoulders, Whitleaf,” Crossley agreed.

“I think you had better not win, my lord,” the Reverend Birney advised. “Gentlemanly gallantry and all that.”

But his suggestion was met by a burst of derision from the men and a chorus of indignant protest from the ladies.

Susanna Osbourne took the oars and flexed her fingers about them.

Everyone stood back, Edgecombe told them to take their marks, there were some urgent shushing noises, and then they were off.

Peter grinned across at the other boat as soon as they had cleared the shore, but Miss Osbourne was concentrating upon setting her stroke. She had learned much during the past hour, he noticed. She had learned not to dip her oars too deeply into the water and thus impede her progress rather than help it. Now she was skimming along quite neatly with the minimum of effort. It was actually amazing what strength was in those small, fair-skinned arms. The brim of her straw bonnet fluttered in the breeze.

He had not told anyone-and Raycroft had not divulged his secret-that he had been a member of the rowing team at Oxford. Even against the men he had not put out his finest effort. Now he kept his boat just ahead of Miss Osbourne’s as they approached the pavilion, the halfway mark. She maneuvered with only slight clumsiness as she turned her boat.

There was a great deal of noise proceeding from the opposite bank, he could hear.

Susanna Osbourne was laughing. She glanced across at him as she straightened out her boat for the return journey and he grinned back at her, pausing for a moment.

“If you dare to patronize me,” she called to him, “by allowing me to win, I shall never forgive you.”

“Allow you to win?” He raised his eyebrows and waggled them at her. “How would I ever live with the shame of losing to a woman?”

He settled in to rowing just ahead of her again while the screams from the bank became fevered. He turned his head to grin at her again when the race was almost over, intending to put on a spurt and leave her at least a boat length behind. But he turned at just the wrong moment. A sudden gust of a breeze caught his hat and tipped it crazily over one eye. He lifted a hand hastily to save it from the ignominious fate of being blown into the water and lost his oar instead.

Oh, it did not exactly slip all the way into the lake, but it did get caught at an awkward angle in the rowlock and had to be wrestled into place again. In the meanwhile his boat had veered slightly off course.

Susanna Osbourne had also planned a final burst of speed, he soon discovered, and they were close enough to the bank that he had insufficient time to catch up.

She won by a hair’s breadth.

They were both laughing helplessly as she turned to look at him in triumph-and she looked so dazzlingly vital that he would have conceded a thousand victories to her if she had asked it of him. Though he had not actually conceded that one, had he? It had been an honest win, though he might have made it impossible, of course, by doing less dawdling and grinning along the way.

The female vote, he discovered, had deserted him utterly in favor of their own champion. The ladies bore her off in triumph to the blankets, where the picnic baskets awaited them.

“Shall I die of mortification now?” Peter asked, grinning at Edgecombe, who held the boat while he stepped out. “Or shall I eat first?”

“I think you had better die now, Whitleaf,” Raycroft said. “Our sex will never live down the disgrace in this neighborhood, old chap. I would not be surprised if it makes the London papers and you will never be able to show your face there again.”

“But you have made the ladies happy,” Edgecombe said, slapping him on the shoulder, “and that is the best any man can ever hope for in this life. You had better come and eat or Frances will be offended.”

“I must say,” Crossley said, “that for such a small lady Miss Osbourne put on a jolly good show at the oars.”

The young ladies had taken pity on Peter by the time he sat down for tea. A group of them sat with him and assured him that he would certainly have won the race if his hat had not almost blown off. But the mention of that inglorious moment sent them off into peals of merry laughter as they all tried to outdo one another in a description of just how he had looked when it happened.

He laughed with them.

Susanna Osbourne was seated on one of the other blankets. He could not hear her talking, but he was aware of her at every moment. And finally he could wait no longer. The boat race did not count as time alone together. And soon after tea the guests might begin to take their leave. He would be quite out of sorts if he missed his chance and had to go a whole day without a private conversation with her.

He got to his feet and smiled down at the young ladies before any of them could get up too.

“I had better go and eat humble pie before Miss Osbourne,” he said.

She looked up as he approached her group, and smiled.

“Miss Osbourne,” he said, “you must come and walk with me, if you will, and allow me to congratulate you on your victory. I was soundly defeated.”

He held out a hand for hers and helped her up.

“Thank you,” she said, brushing the creases from her dress. “Yes, indeed you were.”

She laughed as she took his offered arm.

And suddenly, it seemed to him, the pleasure of the afternoon was complete. The sky seemed bluer, the sun brighter, the air warmer.

It was too bad-it really was-that a friendship between a man and a woman could not be conducted at long distance. They would not be able to correspond with each other after they both left here-it would not be at all the thing. And there were only five days of the two weeks left. It was very unlikely they would ever see each other again after that.

Dash it, but he would be sorry to say good-bye to her.

However, five days were still five days and not four-had he not described himself to her as a man with a half-full-glass attitude to life? And there was the rest of this afternoon too. He did not believe anyone would remark too pointedly upon his spending half an hour alone with the woman who had beaten him at the boat race.

Yes, he would allow himself the luxury of half an hour today.

He led her off in the direction of the bridge.