Simply Magic

few tears, and an insistence that he eat half a dozen of her housekeeper’s special cakes, which this time were suspiciously black at the bottom and nearly rock-hard in the center. He took the dog for a run before driving his curricle back to Hareford House.

The morning had been cloudy-one of those days that could not make up its mind whether to dissolve into rain or open out into sunshine. If it had rained, he might have persuaded himself to remain at the house to play chess with Raycroft’s father, who was always eager for a game with someone who could at least come close to beating him.

But the sky cleared off instead and the sun shone. The outdoors beckoned.

Peter rode over to Barclay Court. He left his horse in a groom’s care at the stable and strode across the terrace and up one branch of the horseshoe steps. The butler was already in the open doorway and informed him that his lordship and the ladies had just finished luncheon and would surely be delighted to receive him in the drawing room.

He would, Peter decided as he followed the butler up the stairs, stay for fifteen or twenty minutes and then leave. He would wish Susanna Osbourne a pleasant journey and a happy autumn term at school. Perhaps he would kiss the back of her hand-or perhaps he would merely bow over it.

Good Lord, such self-conscious planning was quite uncharacteristic of him, he thought ruefully. The appropriate good manners normally came so naturally to him that he did not have to think them out in advance.

The butler opened the double doors of the drawing room with a flourish, as if he were about to announce the Prince of Wales himself-and then paused.

Susanna Osbourne was rising from a window seat. The large room was otherwise empty.

“Oh, Mr. Smothers,” she said, “the earl and countess went downstairs to the library. Did you not see them?”

The butler turned an almost comically mortified face to the guest, but Peter spoke up before him.

“But it was Miss Osbourne I came particularly to see, Smothers,” he said. “If she will receive me, that is.”

The butler looked back to the lone occupant of the room.

“But of course,” she said, walking halfway across the room before stopping. “It is quite all right, Mr. Smothers. How do you do, my lord?”

He was not doing very well at all actually. He had been assaulted again by the rather foolish panic he had felt when he awoke. This was the last time he would see her. Tomorrow morning she would be gone. The day after so would he. It was no comfort at the moment to try telling himself that by this time next week he would probably have forgotten her.

He smiled and advanced into the room, and the butler closed the door behind him.

“Frances received an invitation this morning to sing at a series of concerts in London later in the autumn,” she explained. “She and the earl have gone down to the library to check on dates and make some plans. But they will not be long.”

They would not be long. Suddenly their absence seemed to him like a gift he had avoided but longed for.

She was looking rather pale, he thought, until he looked more closely and realized that actually her face was slightly bronzed from exposure to the sun. But there was something…It was in her eyes even though they smiled. No, the rest of her face smiled. Her eyes surely did not. Like him, he thought, she was not unaware that this was the last time they would be alone together, the last time they would see each other.

Of course she was not unaware of it. Over the course of ten days or so they had developed a friendship that was rare in its warmth. How foolish of him to have deprived them both of two days.

“I came to say good-bye,” he said.

“Yes.” She spoke softly.

“It has been a pleasure knowing you,” he said, though it struck him that there was so much knowing yet to do-if only they had more time.

“Yes,” she said. “It has. Been a pleasure.”

“Yesterday’s excursion was enjoyable,” he said.

“Yes,” she agreed. “I have never been to Taunton before.”

“Nor I,” he said.

He saw her swallow, and she turned her head away for a moment before looking back at him.

“I hope you have a pleasant journey the day after tomorrow,” she said.

“Yes. Thank you.” He clasped his hands at his back.

“Shall I-”

“Will you-”

They spoke together and stopped together, and she gestured for him to proceed.

“Will you come out for a stroll with me?” he asked her, abandoning without a thought his careful plan for a fifteen-minute formal call. “It has turned into a beautiful day out there.”

“I will fetch my bonnet,” she said.

She left him on the landing while she ran up to the next floor, and panic returned. What if they could not get out of the house and out of sight before Edgecombe and his lady emerged from the library? There was this one afternoon left. This was it-his last chance. This time tomorrow…

His last chance for what, for God’s sake?

As they stepped through the stairway arch into the hall, Edgecombe and the countess were coming out of the library, all hospitable smiles when they saw him.

“Ah, there you are, Whitleaf,” Edgecombe said. “Smothers came and told us you were here-sorry about the misunderstanding, old chap. We were on our way up to join you. You are not leaving already, are you?”

“Please do not,” the countess said.

“Miss Osbourne and I are going to take a stroll outside,” Peter explained. “This sunshine is too lovely to miss.”

“You should go and see this end of the wilderness walk,” Edgecombe suggested. “It is all very picturesque-deliberately so, of course. In fact, we will come with you, will we not, Frances?”

Her hand came to rest on his sleeve.

“You were concerned yesterday,” she said, “that I had had too much exposure to the sun during the picnic. Remember?”

“Eh?” He looked down at her with a frown.

“I think I had better do the wise thing and stay indoors today,” she said.

Peter saw comprehension dawn in Edgecombe’s eyes at the same time as it dawned in his own mind.

“Oh, absolutely, my love,” Edgecombe said. “I’ll stay here with you. Will you mind, Susanna?”

“No, of course not,” she said.

“Sunstroke can be a dangerous thing,” Peter added.

And so they stepped out of the house alone together, he and Susanna Osbourne- with the blessing of the Countess of Edgecombe, it would seem.

But blessing for what?

She had not misunderstood, had she? She did not expect?…

But he would not torture his mind further or waste another moment of this