Simply Magic

his left glove in his, and their bare hands were clasped warmly together.

She heard him draw a deep breath at last and release it slowly.

“I wish I had insisted upon being less protected when I was a boy,” he said. “ Could I have insisted, I wonder? Did I have that power? I wish I had at least tried to know you better. I knew your father but not you. If I had known you, if I had insisted upon knowing what was going on in my home and neighborhood even while I was away at school, perhaps I could have been there for you when your father died. Though I do not suppose I could have offered much by way of comfort.”

No, especially not him.

“All people must suffer bereavements,” she said, “even children. I managed.”

“Susanna.” He pulled off his other glove with his teeth, transferred her hand from his left hand to his right, and set his left arm about her shoulders. “I spoke with Theo Markham while I was at home. I know about your father.”

She almost broke free of him and jumped to her feet. She remained very still instead. What else had Theodore Markham told him?

“I do not believe it was a mortal sin,” she said quickly. “I do not care what the church has to say on the question or how much it forbids Christian burial to those who take their own life. It would be a very unfair and uncompassionate God who would condemn forever a man who was driven to ending his own life by people who can live on and repent and redeem themselves. If that were what God is like, I would be a determined atheist.”

“You believe that someone else drove him into doing it, then?” he asked.

She waited for him to say more, but he did not.

“Who knows?” she said. “He kept his secrets both before and after his death. It does not matter any longer, does it? He has found his peace. At least, I hope he has.”

Though there were times even now she was an adult when she knew she had still not forgiven him for choosing peace over her.

“I am so terribly sorry,” he said. “I liked him. He used to do things with me and Theo. I cannot even imagine how you must have suffered at his loss.”

He could not know, of course, the pang his words had caused her. She had always believed that her father would have preferred a son to a daughter. He had never been actively unkind to her. Indeed, he had always shown her unfailing affection whenever they were together. But he had very rarely offered to do things with her.

The thought flashed suddenly through her mind that perhaps it was an unconscious memory of his neglect that had helped her to say no last evening. She knew very well what it was like not to have the fully committed love of a man she adored-and a man upon whom she was dependent and to whom she owed allegiance and obedience.

“You do not need to imagine it,” she said as he brought her hand up to his lips and then held the back of it against his cheek. “You do not need to bear other people’s burdens. Only the person concerned can do that. I bore my own burden, and I am still here. I have survived-and rather well, I believe.”

He closed his eyes and bowed his head, their clasped hands back on her lap, his other arm still hugging her close to him.

“Why did you run away?” he asked.

“They would not let me see him,” she said, “and they were going to bury him outside the churchyard. They did not know what to do with me. I was a burden to them. I did not belong to them, after all-or to anyone else for that matter. They were going to send me away. I preferred to go without waiting. I preferred to have some control over my own fate.”

“What makes you believe,” he asked her, “that they would have turned you away, that they saw you as a burden?”

“I heard Lady Markham say so,” she said. “I did not mishear and I did not misunderstand. A burden is simply that-an unwanted load. And that is what she called me. She said I could not stay there.”

“And yet,” he said, “they searched and searched for you long after you had vanished.”

“Is that what Theodore told you?” she asked him.

“Theo was away at school,” he said, “as I was. It was Lady Markham herself who told me, and Edith. This morning.”

She stiffened and then relaxed against him again, setting her head against his shoulder and closing her eyes.

“Ah,” she said. “You did see them, then. Or they saw you. Did you tell them where I live?”

“No,” he said. “It was not my secret to divulge-if it is a secret.”

“I do not wish to see them,” she said.

“Were they not kind to you at all, then?” he asked.

“They were very kind,” she said. “Perhaps too kind. I made the mistake of believing that I belonged to them. Sometimes when Edith would climb onto her mother’s lap, I would climb up there too-and she would never turn me away no matter how strange she must have thought it. Edith was as dear to me as any sister could have been. Sometimes children do not realize by how fragile a thread their security hangs. Perhaps it is as well they do not-most of them grow up before the thread can be broken. But I don’t want to talk about this any longer. I wanted simply to enjoy the afternoon.”

“I am sorry,” he said with a sigh. “I really am sorry.”

They lapsed into silence for a while and she thought how comforting a man’s arm could be about her shoulders and his broad shoulder beneath her cheek and his hand clasping hers. She could get used to such comfort, such dependence. How lovely it would feel to be able to transfer all one’s burdens onto a man’s capable shoulders and curl into the safety of his protection.

And how easy it was to allow one’s mind to slip into fiction and to imagine that there was something desirable about giving up one’s autonomy, one’s very self.

As if there were such a thing as happily-ever-after and no more effort to make in life.

She turned her face against his shoulder and wished life were as simple as a young girl’s dreams-a young girl before the age of twelve and the suicide of her father.

His hand left hers and undid the ribbons beneath her chin. She did not lift her face as he drew her bonnet off and set it down on the seat beside her. And then his hand came beneath her chin, cupping it in the hollow between his thumb and forefinger, and lifting her face until their eyes met.

“Susanna,” he murmured. “Ah, my sweet, strong Susanna.”

She felt anything but strong. Her lips were trembling when his own covered them, warm, parted, wonderfully comforting-and strangely familiar, as if she were somehow coming home. She leaned into him, her one hand spreading over his chest, her other arm twining about his neck to draw him closer. She opened her mouth and felt all the heat and strength of him-all the essence of him-as his tongue came inside.

Passion flared between them, and she moaned at his touch as his hand came beneath her cloak to caress her breasts, to trace the hollow of her waist, the flare of a hip. She kissed him back with a sort of wild abandon, and heat seared them both.

But it was not an entirely mindless embrace. They were at the center of a maze in the middle of a probably deserted park. But it was, nevertheless, possible that they could be interrupted at any moment. And there was more than just that. They had behaved indiscreetly and unwisely at Barclay Court, and they had both suffered as a result.

When she drew back her head, touched her forehead to his, and closed her eyes, he withdrew his hand from inside her cloak and made no attempt to continue the embrace.