Simply Magic

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.

7

Susanna had thoroughly enjoyed the picnic, especially the final boat race. She realized, of course, that Viscount Whitleaf could have reached the finish line long before she had even turned at the pavilion if he had chosen, though she knew too that he had had no intention of allowing her to win. The satisfaction of actually doing so had been immense.

She had enjoyed every moment of the afternoon, but, oh, she had to admit as she walked in the direction of the bridge, her hand drawn through the viscount’s arm, that now her pleasure was complete. Finally she was to spend a short while alone with her new friend.

And she did indeed like him. There was always laughter and gaiety wherever he happened to be. And yet when he and she were together there was almost always more than just laughter and gaiety. She felt that she was getting to know him as a person and discovering that he was not nearly as shallow or self-centered as she had thought at first. And she felt that he was interested in her as a person and not just as another woman with a reasonably passable face.

There was magic, she thought, in discovering a new friendship in an utterly unexpected place.

“I suppose,” she said, “this afternoon was not the first time you have rowed a boat.”

“It was not,” he admitted.

“Though I do not suppose,” she said, “you were allowed to do it as a boy.”