Simply Magic

Susanna followed her to the small sitting room of the private apartments she shared with the earl and sank into a comfortable brocaded easy chair while Frances pulled on the bell rope to summon a servant.

But Frances had not finished with the topic of the viscount.

“Of course,” she said, “you are quite right to be wary of Viscount Whitleaf, who is well known for having an eye for beauty but who may not have realized at first that you are far too intelligent to respond gladly to empty flirtation and dalliance. You are certainly wise not to be dazzled by him. But, Susanna, there has to be someone out there who is just perfect for you. I firmly believe it. And I so want to see you contentedly settled in life. Mr. Birney, our vicar, was new here just before we left for Europe and so I do not know him well. But he is pleasing to look at and has refined manners and is unattached-at least he was six months ago. And he cannot be a day over thirty, if he is that. Then there is Mr. Finn, a gentleman farmer, Lucius’s tenant. He is earnest and thrifty and worthy and quite personable in appearance. But I believe you met him last time you were here.”

“I did,” Susanna said, her eyes twinkling. “I believe he is sweet on the eldest Miss Calvert.”

“You may be right,” Frances admitted. “But I am not yet convinced she is sweet on him. Well, let us dismiss him just in case she is-or just in case he is not heart-free. There is also Mr. Dannen. He owns his own property and is in possession of a modest fortune, I believe. Certainly he appears to be comfortably well off. You have not met him. He was away the last time you were here-in Scotland, I believe. He is short in stature-but then so are you. Otherwise he is well enough favored. Of course, he is-”

“Frances!” Susanna interrupted her, laughing. “You do not have to matchmake for me.”

“Oh, but I do.” Frances sat on a love seat facing her friend’s chair after giving her order to the housekeeper, and gazed earnestly at her. “You and Claudia and Anne are still my dearest female friends, Susanna, and I fervently wish for you all to be as well settled and contented as I am. Surely there must be enough unattached gentlemen in this neighborhood for all of you.”

Susanna laughed again, even more merrily, and after a moment Frances joined in.

“Well, for one of you anyway,” she said. “I cannot seriously imagine Claudia ever marrying, can you? And Anne is so attached to David that I daresay she would be unwilling to risk subjecting him to a stepfather who might mistreat him.”

David Jewell was an illegitimate child, Anne never having been married.

“So I am the one?” Susanna said.

“And so you are the one,” Frances said, reaching for both her hands and squeezing them tightly. “You are so very pretty, Susanna, and so sweet-natured. It seems unfair that fate landed you in a girls’ school at the age of twelve and has kept you there ever since, far from the world of men and potential courtships.”

“It is not unfair,” Susanna said firmly, pulling her hands free. “Except perhaps to the hundreds and thousands of other girls who were not so privileged. And you know how much I love the school and all the girls and Claudia and Anne and even Mr. Keeble and the other teachers.”

Mr. Keeble was the elderly school porter.

“I do know it,” Frances said with a sigh. “Just as I loved teaching until Lucius forced me to admit how much more I wanted to sing-and how very much more I wanted him. Well, I will say nothing else on the subject. And here comes the tea.”

They were quiet while the tray was brought in and set down and while Frances poured the tea and handed Susanna her cup.

“And so there is to be an assembly in the village the week after next,” Frances said. “We arrived home at the perfect time.”

“An assembly will be wonderfully exciting,” Susanna said. “Even a little frightening. I have never been to any such thing.”

“Oh.” Frances looked at her with sudden realization. “Of course you have not. But you have danced at the school forever, Susanna, demonstrating steps for the girls. Now at last you will be able to put your skills to work at a real dance. And you need not be afraid that you will make a cake of yourself and everyone will notice. This is a country assembly with country people who will go to enjoy themselves, not to observe one another critically. And if that suddenly wary look has anything to do with the fact that Viscount Whitleaf will be there too, you silly goose, I will be wishing that he were to take himself off back home to Sidley Park before the fateful night. You must not allow yourself to be intimidated by him.”

Sidley Park. Susanna’s heart sank again at the name. Why did Viscount Whitleaf have to be a friend of Mr. Raycroft? And why did he have to be staying with him at Hareford House now of all times? For so many years-eleven, in fact-there had been no real reminders of her childhood and its abrupt, ghastly ending. She had been able to convince herself that she had forgotten.

“Oh,” Frances continued, “and Lucius has bullied the vicar into seeing to it that there will be at least one waltz at the assembly. Have I ever told you about our first waltz together-in a dusty assembly room above a deserted inn with no one else present, no heat though it was the dead of winter, and no music?”

“No music?” Susanna laughed.

“I hummed it,” Frances said. “It was the most glorious waltz ever waltzed, Susanna. Believe me it was.”

They lapsed into a companionable silence while Frances’s dreamy expression and slightly flushed cheeks indicated that she was reliving that waltz and Susanna wondered if anyone would dance with her at the assembly. Oh, how she hoped so! She would not even think about the waltz. Just one set- any set.

She knew the steps of the waltz, though. It was a dance Mr. Huckerby, the dancing master, always taught the girls at school. He was not, however, allowed to dance it with any of them, but only with any teacher who was willing to oblige for demonstration purposes. That had used to be Frances. Now Susanna and Anne and sometimes Mademoiselle Etienne, the French teacher, took turns.

Susanna loved the waltz more than any other dance. Not that there was anything even faintly romantic about performing the steps with Mr. Huckerby, it was true, especially when an audience of girls, many of them stifling giggles, looked on. But she had always dreamed of waltzing in a glittering, candlelit ballroom in the arms of a tall, handsome gentleman who smiled down into her eyes as if no one else existed in the world but the two of them.

I am not a romantic,she had said earlier to Viscount Whitleaf. What an absolute bouncer of a fib! She lived a busy, disciplined life as a schoolteacher, and she did indeed love her job-she had spoken the truth about that. But her dreams were rich with romance-with love and marriage and motherhood.

All those things she would never experience in the real world.

As if I had stepped into a moment that was simply magic.

She had wanted to weep when he spoke those words, so meaningless to him, so achingly evocative to her. How she longed for the magic of someone to love more than anyone or anything else in life. Of someone to love her in the same way.

For an unguarded moment she pictured herself waltzing with Viscount Whitleaf, those laughing violet eyes softened by tenderness as they gazed into her own.

But she shuddered slightly as she shook off the image and reached for a ginger biscuit. She must certainly not begin sullying the splendor of her dreams by imposing his image on them.

And then she thought of something else he had said.

You wounded me to the heart-to that chest organ, that mundane