Simply Magic

“Susanna,” he said after a few moments, “I wish you would reconsider-”

But she set two fingers against his lips and lifted her forehead away from his to look into his eyes. They gazed back into her own, darkly violet in the sunlight. He did not attempt to finish what he had begun to say.

“Don’t look at me like that,” she whispered.

“Like what?” He took her by the wrist and moved her hand away from his mouth.

“With pity and compassion in your eyes.” She was suddenly and inexplicably angry as she drew free of him and jumped to her feet. “You are forever wanting to give, to comfort, to protect. Do you never want to take, to demand, to assert your own wishes? I do not need your pity.”

And what on earth was she talking about? She turned her back on him, took a few steps away to the other side of the clearing at the center of the maze.

His silence was as accusing as words. She knew she had hurt him, but she was powerless now to unsay the words.

“Should I take you again here, then, to slake my desire-but by force this time?” he asked her, his voice horribly quiet-why did he not rage at her? “Should I demand that you marry me so that my honor can be restored? Should I assert myself as a man and a wealthy, titled man at that and take whatever my heart desires from all who stand in my way? Especially women? Is that what you want of me, Susanna? I did not understand. I am sorry-I cannot be such a man.”

“Oh, Peter.” She turned to look at him. He was still sitting on the seat, his shoulders slightly slumped, his forearms resting on his thighs, his hands dangling between his knees. “I did not mean it that way.”

“What did you mean, then?” he asked.

She opened her mouth and drew breath and then could not think of anything to say. She did not know quite what she had meant. She had told him last night that he needed to learn to like himself. That had not been quite it either. And she had once told him that he needed a dragon to slay. She was not even sure what she had meant by that.

She wanted him to…

To move heaven and earth.

For her. For himself.

She wanted him to love her.

How foolish! As if that would make any difference to anything.

“You cannot answer, can you?” he said. “Because you did mean what you said. I think perhaps I do like myself well enough. It is you who do not.”

But he held up a staying hand and smiled crookedly as she opened her mouth and drew breath to speak again.

“Enough!” he said. “I think you must be a very good teacher indeed, Susanna Osbourne. I have never done as much soul-searching as I have since I met you. I used to think I was a pretty cheerful, uncomplicated fellow. Now I feel rather as if I had been taken apart at the seams and stitched together again with some of my stuffing left out.”

Despite herself her mouth quirked at the corners and drew up into a smile.

“Then I am definitely not a good teacher,” she said. “But you are a good man, Peter. You are. It is just that…”

He raised his eyebrows.

“I am not only a woman,” she said. “I am a person. All women are persons. If we are weak and dependent upon men, it is because we have allowed men to mold us into those images. Perhaps it makes men feel good and strong to see us that way. And perhaps most women are happy to be seen thus. Perhaps society works reasonably well because both men and women are happy with the roles our society has given them to play. But I was thrown out on my own early in life. I will never say it was a good thing that happened to me, but I am grateful that circumstances have forced me to live outside the mold. I would rather be a complete person than just a woman even if I must be alone as a result.”

“You do not need to be alone,” he said.

“No.” She smiled at him. “You would marry me and support and protect me for the rest of my life. And so we move full circle. I am sorry, Peter. I did not mean to deliver such a pompous speech. I did not even know I believed those things until I heard them come out of my mouth. But I do believe them.”

“It is as I thought, then,” he said, getting to his feet and handing her her bonnet. “You are happier without me. It is a humbling reality.”

And she could not now contradict him, could she?

She took her bonnet and busied herself with putting it back on and tying the ribbons beneath her chin.

“Will you do one thing for me?” she asked him.

“What?” he asked her.

She looked into his eyes.

“When you go home to Sidley Park for Christmas,” she said, “will you stay there? Make it your home and your life?” She was appalled suddenly by her presumption.

“And marry Miss Flynn-Posy too?” His smile was crooked.

“If you decide that you wish to marry her, yes,” she said. “Will you talk to your mother, Peter? Really talk?”

“Throw my weight around? Lay down the law?” he said. “Leave misery in my wake?”

“Tell her who you are,” she said. “Perhaps she has been so intent upon loving you all your life that really she does not know you at all. Perhaps- probably -she does not know your dreams.”

She felt horribly embarrassed when he did not immediately reply. How dared she interfere in his life this way? Even when guiding and advising the girls at school about their various problems and about their futures, she was careful never to be as dogmatic as she had just been.

“I am sorry,” she said, “I have no right-”

“And will you do one last thing for me?” he asked her.

Reality smote her like a fist to the stomach. One last thing. This time tomorrow he would be long gone. He would be only a memory and not even the purely happy one she had persuaded herself earlier in the afternoon he would be. The last several minutes had destroyed that possibility. She looked at him in inquiry.

“Will you allow me to take you to meet Lady Markham and Edith?” he asked her.

“Now?”she said.

“Why not?” he asked her. “Lawrence Morley, Edith’s husband, has taken lodgings on Laura Place, only a stone’s throw away. I promised to call there before leaving Bath. And I promised Edith that I would ask you if she may call on you or if you will call on her.”

She shook her head.

“Do consider,” he said. “I do not know if it is my place to tell you this, but there really were letters, you know-to Lord Markham and to you.”

There was a coldness about her head and in her nostrils.