Simply Magic

would provoke her into saying more.

“Girls have minds just as boys do,” she said firmly, “and are just as hungry for knowledge and just as capable of learning and understanding. It is true that most of them grow up to lives in which they do not need to know very much at all, but then I suspect that holds true of most men too.”

“Like me?” he asked.

“I believe there is a saying,” she said tartly, “that if the shoe fits one ought to wear it.”

He chuckled softly.

“But most men would argue,” he said, “that educating girls gives them brain fever at worst and makes them unattractive at best. Or perhaps I have got the worst and the best mixed up.”

“I daresay,” she said, “those men are insecure in their masculinity and fear that women may outshine them. How mortifying it would be if they had to ask a woman for the square root of eighty- one.”

She was a delight. He had already seen several different facets of her character, but he could always rely upon the prim schoolteacher to keep making an appearance. The square root of eighty-one, indeed!

“Ouch!” he said, wincing noticeably. “But would there ever be such an occasion? I cannot for the life of me think of one. What is the square root of eighty-one anyway?”

“Nine,” they said in unison.

He laughed, and after a brief moment so did she.

He wondered if she realized what a dazzling combination laughter was with her looks. He wondered too how often she laughed. Perhaps it was more often than he had suspected the day before yesterday. Perhaps she brought light and joy to that school in Bath.

“But that is not your cue,” he said, deliberately sobering, “to fire all sorts of obscure and tricky questions at me. My masculinity is a fragile enough commodity without being put to that sort of test.”

“I doubt that,” she said fervently, and then laughed again when he looked at her sidelong and pulled an abject face.

He chuckled once more before turning into the lane from the village that would eventually bring them to the fork into Barclay Court. “And in case you are neglecting to ask for fear of the answer, Miss Osbourne, I detect no signs of brain fever in you, and you are certainly not unattractive. Quite the contrary, in fact.”

“I would rather,” she said after a brief silence, “that you not try to flatter and flirt with me. You must speak sensibly with me if we are to be friends.”

“We are to be friends, then?” he asked her. “Very well. Let me be honest. You are quite devoid of any discernible attraction. A small, slender stature combined with shining auburn curls and sea green eyes and regular features is all quite unappealing, as I am sure you must be aware.”

When he turned his head to snatch a look at her, she was smiling broadly and looking straight ahead.

“Friends need not be unaware of each other’s attractions,” he said. “Tell me how you occupy your time when you are not teaching.”

“You do not know much about the world of employment, do you, Lord Whitleaf?” she asked. “There is not much time that is not taken up with work. When I am not in the classroom I am supervising games in the meadow beyond the school or organizing dramatic presentations or watching over the girls during study sessions or marking papers or examinations or…Well, there is almost always something to do. But when there is some leisure time, usually late in the evening, I spend it with my friends, the other resident teachers. We usually gather in Claudia Martin’s sitting room. Or sometimes if it is daytime and there is the rare luxury of a spare hour I go out walking. Bath is a lovely city. There is much to see there.”

Ah, yes, they were from different universes. But he admired her sense of purpose.

“Now it is your turn,” she said. “You must tell me something of yourself.”

“Are you sure you really wish to know about my idle, empty life?” he asked her, his eyes twinkling.

“You were the one who thought there could be a friendship between us,” she reminded him. “There can be no friendship if only one party gets to ask the questions. Tell me about your childhood.”

“Hmm.” He gave the matter some thought. “It was filled with women-a familiar pattern with me, Miss Osbourne. My father died when I was three years old. I have no memory of him, alas. I do think it unsporting of him not to have waited at least another two or three years. I was left with my mother and five elder sisters. I daresay my parents had despaired of producing an heir and were jubilant when I finally put in an appearance. By that time my sisters too must have been aware that a family without an heir was a family headed for certain disaster. And indeed I came along only just in time to avert it. I was the apple of every female eye as I grew up. I could do no wrong in their sight. I was petted and cosseted and adored. No boy was ever more fortunate than I.”

She had turned her head and was looking steadily at him.

“There was no man in your life, then?” she asked.

“Oh, several,” he said. “There were official guardians and self-appointed guardians, all of whom ruled my estate and my fortune and me and arranged everything from my education to the reading and answering of my mail. It was all done for my benefit, of course. I was very fortunate.”

“I suppose,” she said, “they did no more than your father would have done if he had lived.”

“Except that then there would have been a relationship,” he said. “Perhaps there would have been some sharing. Some love.”

He was turning at the fork in the lane as he spoke. Perhaps he would not have spoken so unguardedly if he had not been thus occupied. Good Lord, he did not usually even think such abject thoughts. He felt quite embarrassed.

“You missed your father,” she said softly.

He glanced down at her. “You cannot miss what you never had, Miss Osbourne,” he said. “I do not even remember him.”

“I missed my mother,” she told him. “Yet she died giving birth to me.”

Ah.

“It is odd, is it not,” he said, “to miss people one never knew-or knew so far back that there is no conscious memory left. I was inundated with love from my mother and sisters, and yet perversely I wanted a father’s love. Did your father love you?”

“Oh, yes,” she said, “but I ached for my mother. I used to weave dreams about her. I could always picture her arms reaching out to me, and I could always hear her voice and smell roses when she was near. But I never could see her face. Is that not strange? Sometimes even the imagination lets one down. How foolish!”

She looked away and fell silent, and it seemed to him that she was suddenly as embarrassed as he had been a couple of minutes ago at making such an admission about the child she had been.

Neither of them said any more on the subject-they were approaching Barclay Court, and Edgecombe and the countess were walking across the lawn before the house to meet them.

But something subtle had changed between them, he sensed.

Perhaps everything.

They had shared something of themselves with each other and he would never be