Simply Magic

lengths not to hurt them or deprive them of what seems important to them. And even that description does not quite express what I am trying to say. He is kind and open and…And he is quite muddleheaded. He could see that I was upset when he walked home with me, and he wanted to comfort me. And he thought perhaps that he had raised expectations in me during the summer and so felt that he owed me an offer of marriage. I suppose that he believes being a spinster schoolteacher is an undesirable fate for any woman.”

“And did he?” Claudia asked, looking at her with disconcertingly keen eyes. “Raise expectations in you?”

“No,” Susanna said. “No, he did not.”

“Do you love him?” Claudia asked.

Susanna opened her mouth to say no but shut it again. She drew a deep breath and released it slowly.

“Love has nothing to do with anything,” she said. “I said no and I meant no. It would not have been a happy marriage, Claudia, for either of us. Love on one side would only have made it worse- for me and perhaps for him too.”

“I know you are feeling weak and vulnerable tonight,” Claudia said after a few silent moments, “but in reality you are a very strong person, Susanna. And you were a strong girl. I always knew, of course, that your father had died and left you all alone in the world-you told me so when you came here. But I had no idea of the terrible truth until tonight. You were always the sunniest-natured of girls nevertheless-even if you were rather wild and rebellious for the first few months. And you are the sunniest- natured of my teachers and very much loved by all the girls-almost without exception, I believe. I will not question your decision to reject Viscount Whitleaf’s offer. Such a match would have offered you security and wealth and comfort for the rest of your life, of course, but you know that without my having to tell you so. I am very glad that you had the strength to put happiness and integrity before material security. And of course I am selfishly glad for myself.”

Susanna smiled rather wanly.

“He is coming here tomorrow afternoon,” she said. “He wants me to go walking with him. Perhaps I ought to have said no to that invitation too after being away from school this evening.”

“Ah, Susanna,” Claudia said, “we must live too when given the chance. Teaching is a job, my dear, not a life.”

Susanna looked at her in some surprise. She would have expected Claudia to be disapproving of the continued relationship.

“It will be the last time,” she promised, getting to her feet. “He will be leaving Bath soon.”

“Good night, Susanna,” Claudia said. “But I have not even asked you about the concert.”

“It was wonderful beyond words,” Susanna told her.

A few moments later she was on her way up to her room, feeling considerably calmer than she had felt when she first arrived home. But there was still a heavy ache of grief somewhere low in her abdomen.

He had asked her to marry him.

And she had said no.

Ah, she had said no.

And then she had set about comforting him because she knew she had made him unhappy.

But still she had said no. She could not marry him just because he felt guilty about having lain with her.

He did not love her.

As if that were a good reason for rejecting a dazzlingly eligible marriage offer.

But she did love him, and that made all the difference.

As she let herself into her bedchamber and closed the door behind her, she wished she felt even half as strong as Claudia had assured her she was.

Bath had long ceased to be a fashionable watering spot. It had become a retirement center for the elderly and the infirm and the shabby genteel and the upwardly mobile middle classes. But it still had its charm, and it had its rituals, one of the most enduring of which was the early morning promenade in the Pump Room to the accompaniment of the soft music provided by the chamber orchestra in the alcove at one end of the room.

Some people went to drink the waters in the hope of improving their health. A few went for the exercise or told themselves that they did. Most went in order to watch for new faces and listen to new gossip and pass on any news they thought someone else might not yet have heard.

Peter put in an appearance there the morning after the concert just as he had the day before. He had always enjoyed mingling with other people even when, as now, there was almost no one of his own age group and no one he knew apart from the acquaintances he had made the day before. That last fact was soon to change, though.

He was conversing with a group of ladies that included Lady Holt-Barron, who, upon hearing that he had attended the wedding breakfast at the Upper Rooms a few days earlier, informed him that she had an acquaintance with the Bedwyns, that the Duke of Bewcastle had actually called at her house on the Circus one afternoon when the present Marchioness of Hallmere had been staying with her daughter-the marchioness had still been Lady Freyja Bedwyn at the time though she had become betrothed to the marquess before leaving Bath. Peter was listening to the lady’s convoluted story with smiling indulgence when he spotted two very familiar faces across the room.

Lady Markham and Edith.

He excused himself as soon as he could politely do so and went to meet them, a delighted smile on his face. They watched him come with answering smiles.

“This is a surprise,” he said after greeting them and bowing to them both, “though I suppose it ought not to be since I discovered from Theo quite recently that Edith lives not far away and that you were spending some time with her, Lady Markham.”

“But it is not a surprise to us, Whitleaf, beyond the fact that you are here in Bath at all,” Lady Markham said. “We saw you last evening in Bath Abbey and fully intended to speak with you after the concert. But you vanished and left us wondering whether you had been simply a mirage.”

“Ah, yes,” he said. “One of the ladies in my party was unable to stay longer and so I left as soon as the concert had finished to escort her home.”

He remembered even as he spoke that Susanna had spent her childhood at Fincham Manor. He would not mention her name to them, though. It was altogether possible that she would not wish it.

Actually, he had been trying ever since he woke up from a broken, troubled sleep not to think too much of Susanna at all. Good Lord, he had offered her marriage last night- and she had refused him.

You need to look deeper into your own heart. You need to learn to like yourself too.

Ah, yes, and then there was that. Best not to think of it.

“I understand that congratulations are in order,” he said to Edith. “I trust you have recovered your health after your confinement? And that the child is well?”

“Both,” she said, smiling. “But Lawrence thought a change of air would do us good, and so he has taken lodgings on Laura Place for a month. It is good to see you again, Peter, and looking surely more handsome than ever. All the ladies here look as if they would gobble you up if given half a chance.”