Simply Love

that are forever curling about the handle of his quizzing glass. He is quite terrifying. And yet he was unfailingly courteous to me. The duchess is a delight and not at all high in the instep, and it is quite clear that he adores her though he is never ever demonstrative in public. He also adores their son, who is a cross, demanding little baby- except when his father is holding him. And he holds him rather often. He is a strange, mysterious, fascinating man.”

Susanna rested her chin on her knees.

“All this talk of married dukes is depressing me,” she said, her eyes nevertheless twinkling. “Was there no one who was unmarried?”

“No dukes.” Anne smiled too, but she had a sudden, unbidden memory of sitting on the stile at Ty Gwyn, smiling down at Sydnam Butler and setting her hand in his before descending. And of the perfect summer day that had surrounded them.

Susanna was looking very directly at her.

“Oh, Anne,” she said. “Who?”

“No one really,” Anne said quickly, shifting position on the chair. But she felt instantly contrite. “Oh, what a dreadful thing to say of another human being. He very definitely is someone. He is the duke’s steward at Glandwr. He was alone and I was alone, and so it was natural enough that occasionally we walked out together or sat together on evenings when he was invited to dine. That is all.”

She willed herself not to blush.

“All,” Susanna repeated, still gazing steadily at her. “And was he tall, dark, and handsome, Anne?”

“Yes,” Anne said. “All three.”

Susanna continued to gaze.

“We were merely friends,” Anne said.

“Were you?” Susanna spoke softly.

“We were.” Anne could not quite bring herself to smile. And she could no longer sit still. She got to her feet and crossed to the window. She pulled back one curtain and looked out onto the blackness of the meadow. “We were very…dear friends.”

“But he did not make an offer,” Susanna said. “Anne, I am so sorry.”

There was a lengthy silence, during which Anne did not contradict her friend.

“Do you think,” Susanna asked as last, “life would be easier, Anne, if one had parents and family to take one about, to make sure one met suitable people, to arrange for one to meet eligible suitors? Would it be easier than living at a girls’ school as one of the teachers?”

“I am not sure,” Anne said, closing the curtains again, “that life is ever easy. Very often girls and women make disastrous marriages even while surrounded by family to help guide their choice or make it for them. I think given the choice between a bad marriage and life here, I would choose being here. In fact, I am certain I would.”

She set her forehead against the curtain for a moment before turning back into the room.

“It was so ungrateful of me,” Susanna said, “even to ask that question. Good fortune was smiling on me when I was sent here to school, and I was blessed beyond belief when Claudia offered me a position on the staff. And I have such very good friends here. What more could I ask of life?”

“Ah, but we are women as well as teachers, Susanna,” Anne said, sitting down again. “We have needs that nature has given us for the very preservation of our species.”

Needs that could sometimes be horribly damaged but not destroyed.

Susanna stared at her for several silent moments.

“And sometimes,” she said, “they are very hard to ignore. I was very tempted this summer, Anne. To be a man’s mistress. Part of me is still not convinced that I made the right choice. And will I be able to make the same choice next time? And the next?”

“I don’t know.” Anne smiled ruefully at her.

“What poor, sad spinsters we are,” Susanna said, laughing and pulling herself off the bed. She brushed out the creases from her skirt. “I am for my lonely bed. The journey has tired me out. Good night, Anne.”

Three days later all the boarders returned to school from their holiday and greeted one another-and their teachers-with boisterous good cheer and noisy chatter, and all the new girls arrived with stiff apprehension on their faces, especially the two charity girls who came alone, without even the comfort of parents, sent by Mr. Hatchard, Miss Martin’s London agent. The fees of one of them were being paid by Lady Hallmere-though Claudia did not know her identity, of course.

Anne took the two under her wing and noted almost immediately that one of them was going to need extra lessons in elocution, since her Cockney accent made the English language on her lips virtually unintelligible and that the other was going to have to be coaxed firmly and patiently-and with large doses of love-out of her unfortunate manner of belligerent bravado.

The following morning, the day pupils arrived and classes began.

For the next month life was busy. Anne fulfilled all her teaching duties and gave special care to the new charity girls. She spent most of her free time with David-who was excited at the promise Mr. Upton had made to introduce oil paints to his art classes after Christmas. She wrote and received several letters from the Bedwyn ladies and Joshua. She helped David reply to the letters Davy and Becky and Joshua had written to him.

Indeed, life seemed remarkably normal considering the fact that it was becoming increasingly obvious to Anne that there was nothing normal about hers at all. She had missed her courses before school started and had desperately tried to convince herself that it was merely because of the upsets in her life during the previous month. She had continued to hope even when she started to feel slightly nauseated after rising in the mornings-as she had done ten years ago.

But of course-had she expected a miracle?-she missed her courses for a second time at the end of September and thought about what Sydnam Butler had once said about choices. She had chosen a month and a half ago to lie with him because she had wanted him and he had wanted her and it was their last day together. And that choice had forever changed her life.

It was a terrifying thought.

But there was nothing she could do now to change that choice or avoid its repercussions. She could only move onward with her life.

She waited for a chilly Saturday morning after Susanna had taken most of the girls outside for games in the meadow and David had gone with them. Then she knocked on the door of Claudia Martin’s office and let herself in when she was summoned.

“May I disturb you?” she asked. She and Susanna and Lila had sat in Claudia’s private sitting room just the evening before, drinking tea and chatting on a wide variety of topics, and Anne might have remained when the other two retired for the night. But she had known that she needed a more formal setting for what she had to say.

Claudia looked up from her desk.

“The last of the stragglers has just paid the school fees,” she said. “I do believe we are going to do well financially again this year, Anne. Within two or three years I hope to be able to inform Mr. Hatchard that we no longer need the assistance of our benefactor.”

She set down her quill pen and gestured to a chair on the other side of her desk for Anne to sit down.

“You handled Agnes Ryde’s tantrum very well at breakfast, Anne,” she said. “You calmed a potentially explosive situation. You have a great gift with difficult girls.”

“She is still a little bewildered by her new environment, that is all,” Anne said. “When she is afraid, her experience of life has taught her that she must fight, with her tongue even if not with her fists. But she has an affectionate heart and a sharp mind, Claudia. I hope both will be nurtured while she is here. But I am quite sure they will be. This is a very good school. Any girl who is privileged to attend can only leave the better for having been here.”

Claudia cocked her head to one side and leaned back in her chair. She was silent for a moment.

“What is it, Anne?” she asked. “There is something I have been unable to put my finger on for quite a while now. You are as diligent and cheerful and patient as you have ever been. But there is some…hmm. There is some loss of serenity, if that is the right word. It has been of concern to me. Are you unwell? Shall I summon Mr. Blake?”

Mr. Blake was the physician who came to the school whenever one of the boarders was indisposed.

“I am going to be leaving here, Claudia,” Anne said abruptly, and somehow it seemed as if she were standing