Simply Magic

His mother he had left to her tears-and to Sidley. He had bolted only one day after his guests.

He had not excused her. He had not even believed her lie-he had accepted that her affair with Grantham was of long standing. But he had believed that she had loved Grantham. Now he wondered if that had been so, or if it had mattered anyway. Grantham had been a married man -and the two of them had been prepared to arrange a marriage between their offspring.

She was clinging tightly to the arms of her chair now, gazing at him with wide- eyed indignation.

“But it is not about Grantham that I wish to speak,” he said. “It is about Mr. Osbourne. You did have an affair with him, did you not? But something happened to end the liaison. My guess is that he ended it. Had he told you about his past before then? Or did you find it out some other way? However it was, you threatened to go to Sir Charles with your knowledge.”

He had no proof of any of this, it struck him suddenly. It would be terrible indeed if he were wrong and had made such accusations against his own mother. And yet he longed to be proved wrong.

“Peter,” she said, “if this is what that woman has been telling you, I will do all in my power to free you from her evil clutches. You have always been-”

“Susanna did not tell me,” he said. “She told me about the contents of the letter her father had written her and the one he had written Sir Charles, but she did not name his blackmailer.”

“William wrote a letter to her?” his mother asked.

He stared bleakly at her.

“Just before he shot himself,” he said. “He felt that suicide was the only protection he could offer her. If he had lived, she would have been exposed to all the ugly consequences he would have faced from the charge of rape.”

She recoiled.

“How can you use that word in your own mother’s hearing?” she asked him. But then she sank back in her chair again, looking suddenly smaller and older. “I said only that he had harassed and molested me, not that…And it was true. I told Sir Charles so after William’s death. I would never have…Peter, you must believe me.”

He felt his shoulders slump. He had been hoping, despite everything, that perhaps he had been wrong, that perhaps it had been someone else. But he had remembered during the ride back to Sidley from Fincham that it was about the time of Osbourne’s death that the coolness had developed in the relations between his mother and the Markhams.

“I did not know he would kill himself,” she said. “How could I have known that? How could he punish me so?”

“But you would have taken away his reputation, his character, his freedom, Mama,” he said. “Whatever he had done in the past he had surely lived down. He had a child to support.”

“I condescended,” she said, her voice jerky and rather breathless. “I condescended to his level. And then, when I went to London on one occasion because he was there, he let me know that he was not pleased. And then he started avoiding me even at Fincham and finally told me it was all over between us. The presumption, Peter. The humiliation! You must understand. I loved your papa, but my life was very empty without him. I was willing to allow that man…”

Ah, just the explanation she had given five years ago when he had confronted her.

“You drove him to his death,” he said quietly. He felt physically sick.

“He was foolish!” she cried. “He must have known that I was just upset with him, that I would not really have ruined him.”

“And yet,” he said, “after he had been to Sir Charles and confessed about his past, you were very ready with new threats.”

“I would not have-” she began.

“Wouldn’t you?” he asked her. “He obviously thought you would. He staked his life on it.”

She spread her hands over her face, and he sat staring at her, appalled at what he had learned today, at what he had guessed, at what she had now confirmed. And at the knowledge that she had twice been prepared to wreak havoc with other people’s lives because of her sexual needs and her loneliness.

He hated to think of his own mother in such a way.

Was this one of the dragons he must fight? If so, the price was high indeed. Nothing would ever be the same. But the same as what? He had brushed much beneath the metaphoric carpet five years ago. He would do so no longer.

“You do not know how I have suffered, Peter,” she said, tearful now-as she had been the last time. “If he did it for revenge, he certainly had the final word. Do you think I have not felt like a murderer all these years? But it is unfair. I did not mean him any harm. I was fond of him. I have always been your mother, and I know it is hard to see your own mother as a woman. But I am a woman, and I was lonely. We were both widowed. He had loved his wife as I loved your father. He even told me at the end that he could not continue with me because his heart had broken at her death and he could not forget her. But for a time we were almost happy. We were not hurting anyone.”

He almost felt sorry for her. She had done something monstrous, but she was surely not a monster. And the worst thing about her monstrosity must always have been that she could not atone- Osbourne was dead. Would she have brought false accusations against him if he had lived? There was no way of knowing, and he did not want to know. But she had done irreparable harm anyway.

He was very tempted to get up, to take her hands in his and draw her to her feet and into his arms, to comfort and reassure her, to send her off to bed. But he had done that the last time, after Grantham. If she needed forgiveness, it was her own she must seek, not his.

Besides, there was one more thing he needed to say, and it was best to say everything now tonight and hope that tomorrow they could both start piecing their lives back together.

She spoke before he could, though.

“Peter,” she said, “you cannot marry his daughter. You must see that. It would be an impossible, horrible situation.”

He drew a slow breath.

“And yet it would have been perfectly fine for me to marry Bertha?” he asked her.

She did not reply.

With the commonsense part of his mind he agreed with her, though. The past would always be there between him and Susanna, the knowledge that his mother and her father had been lovers, that she had caused his death. It would be far better to allow Susanna to return to Bath, to go to London himself after Christmas and set his mind to choosing a suitable bride during the Season. Eventually they would forget each other, and when they did remember, they would both be glad they had not taken a chance on happiness.

But he had renounced simple common sense since leaving Bath behind him a few weeks ago. He was reaching for happiness, or if happiness proved impossible, then at least for self-respect. He would no longer avoid the darker corners of his life.

It was altogether possible-even probable-that Susanna would not have him after all, but he would not lose her just because he had chosen to tiptoe his way past his dragons. Even after she was gone he would have to live with himself. And finally he was determined to like the person who lived inside his body.

Not that he particularly liked himself at the moment.