Mary Balogh - Simply Magic

And so everything came down to the final race and everyone without exception gathered on the bank even though the countess laughingly protested that they must all be half starved and would flatly refuse any further invitation to one of her entertainments. They would have tea, she promised, the moment a winner was determined.

“I daresay it will not be Miss Osbourne,” Raycroft remarked cheerfully, but with a lamentable lack of either tact or gallantry.

Miss Raycroft punched him on the arm and the other ladies’ voices were raised in collective indignation. Both Peter and Susanna Osbourne laughed. He grinned at her, and she looked back, bright-eyed and determined.

She looked absurdly small and fragile to be taking on such a challenge. And quite irresistibly attractive too, by Jove. There was something attractive about an athletic woman, he thought in some surprise.

The young ladies seemed uncertain whom they should champion. They solved the problem by clapping and jumping up and down and calling their encouragement indiscriminately to both contestants. Most of the older people were intent upon offering advice to Miss Osbourne, who was climbing into one of the boats with Edgecombe’s assistance. Most of the other men were unashamedly partial.

“I say,” Moss called, “you had better win, Whitleaf. It would be a ghastly humiliation to us all if you did not.”

“You have the honor of our sex on your shoulders, Whitleaf,” Crossley agreed.

“I think you had better not win, my lord,” the Reverend Birney advised. “Gentlemanly gallantry and all that.”

But his suggestion was met by a burst of derision from the men and a chorus of indignant protest from the ladies.

Susanna Osbourne took the oars and flexed her fingers about them.

Everyone stood back, Edgecombe told them to take their marks, there were some urgent shushing noises, and then they were off.

Peter grinned across at the other boat as soon as they had cleared the shore, but Miss Osbourne was concentrating upon setting her stroke. She had learned much during the past hour, he noticed. She had learned not to dip her oars too deeply into the water and thus impede her progress rather than help it. Now she was skimming along quite neatly with the minimum of effort. It was actually amazing what strength was in those small, fair-skinned arms. The brim of her straw bonnet fluttered in the breeze.

He had not told anyone-and Raycroft had not divulged his secret-that he had been a member of the rowing team at Oxford. Even against the men he had not put out his finest effort. Now he kept his boat just ahead of Miss Osbourne’s as they approached the pavilion, the halfway mark. She maneuvered with only slight clumsiness as she turned her boat.

There was a great deal of noise proceeding from the opposite bank, he could hear.

Susanna Osbourne was laughing. She glanced across at him as she straightened out her boat for the return journey and he grinned back at her, pausing for a moment.

“If you dare to patronize me,” she called to him, “by allowing me to win, I shall never forgive you.”

“Allow you to win?” He raised his eyebrows and waggled them at her. “How would I ever live with the shame of losing to a woman?”

He settled in to rowing just ahead of her again while the screams from the bank became fevered. He turned his head to grin at her again when the race was almost over, intending to put on a spurt and leave her at least a boat length behind. But he turned at just the wrong moment. A sudden gust of a breeze caught his hat and tipped it crazily over one eye. He lifted a hand hastily to save it from the ignominious fate of being blown into the water and lost his oar instead.

Oh, it did not exactly slip all the way into the lake, but it did get caught at an awkward angle in the rowlock and had to be wrestled into place again. In the meanwhile his boat had veered slightly off course.

Susanna Osbourne had also planned a final burst of speed, he soon discovered, and they were close enough to the bank that he had insufficient time to catch up.

She won by a hair’s breadth.

They were both laughing helplessly as she turned to look at him in triumph-and she looked so dazzlingly vital that he would have conceded a thousand victories to her if she had asked it of him. Though he had not actually conceded that one, had he? It had been an honest win, though he might have made it impossible, of course, by doing less dawdling and grinning along the way.

The female vote, he discovered, had deserted him utterly in favor of their own champion. The ladies bore her off in triumph to the blankets, where the picnic baskets awaited them.

“Shall I die of mortification now?” Peter asked, grinning at Edgecombe, who held the boat while he stepped out. “Or shall I eat first?”

“I think you had better die now, Whitleaf,” Raycroft said. “Our sex will never live down the disgrace in this neighborhood, old chap. I would not be surprised if it makes the London papers and you will never be able to show your face there again.”

“But you have made the ladies happy,” Edgecombe said, slapping him on the shoulder, “and that is the best any man can ever hope for in this life. You had better come and eat or Frances will be offended.”

“I must say,” Crossley said, “that for such a small lady Miss Osbourne put on a jolly good show at the oars.”

The young ladies had taken pity on Peter by the time he sat down for tea. A group of them sat with him and assured him that he would certainly have won the race if his hat had not almost blown off. But the mention of that inglorious moment sent them off into peals of merry laughter as they all tried to outdo one another in a description of just how he had looked when it happened.

He laughed with them.

Susanna Osbourne was seated on one of the other blankets. He could not hear her talking, but he was aware of her at every moment. And finally he could wait no longer. The boat race did not count as time alone together. And soon after tea the guests might begin to take their leave. He would be quite out of sorts if he missed his chance and had to go a whole day without a private conversation with her.

He got to his feet and smiled down at the young ladies before any of them could get up too.

“I had better go and eat humble pie before Miss Osbourne,” he said.

She looked up as he approached her group, and smiled.

“Miss Osbourne,” he said, “you must come and walk with me, if you will, and allow me to congratulate you on your victory. I was soundly defeated.”

He held out a hand for hers and helped her up.

“Thank you,” she said, brushing the creases from her dress. “Yes, indeed you were.”

She laughed as she took his offered arm.

And suddenly, it seemed to him, the pleasure of the afternoon was complete. The sky seemed bluer, the sun brighter, the air warmer.

It was too bad-it really was-that a friendship between a man and a woman could not be conducted at long distance. They would not be able to correspond with each other after they both left here-it would not be at all the thing. And there were only five days of the two weeks left. It was very unlikely they would ever see each other again after that.

Dash it, but he would be sorry to say good-bye to her.

However, five days were still five days and not four-had he not described himself to her as a man with a half-full-glass attitude to life? And there was the rest of this afternoon too. He did not believe anyone would remark too pointedly upon his spending half an hour alone with the woman who had beaten him at the boat race.

Yes, he would allow himself the luxury of half an hour today.

He led her off in the direction of the bridge.

Susanna had thoroughly enjoyed the picnic, especially the final boat race. She realized, of course, that Viscount Whitleaf could have reached the finish line long before she had even turned at the pavilion if he had chosen, though she knew too that he had had no intention of allowing her to win. The satisfaction of actually doing so had been immense.

She had enjoyed every moment of the afternoon, but, oh, she had to admit as she walked in the direction of the bridge, her hand drawn through the viscount’s arm, that now her pleasure was complete. Finally she was to spend a short while alone with her new friend.

And she did indeed like him. There was always laughter and gaiety wherever he happened to be. And yet when he and she were together there was almost always more than just laughter and gaiety. She felt that she was getting to know him as a person and discovering that he was not nearly as shallow or self-centered as she had thought at first. And she felt that he was interested in her as a person and not just as another woman with a reasonably passable face.

There was magic, she thought, in discovering a new friendship in an utterly unexpected place.

“I suppose,” she said, “this afternoon was not the first time you have rowed a boat.”

“It was not,” he admitted.

“Though I do not suppose,” she said, “you were allowed to do it as a boy.”

“How did you guess?” He grinned down at her. “Not when I was at home, at least. I did all sorts of things at school and university that had never been allowed at home, on the theory that what my mother and sisters did not see would not cause them grief.”

She remembered how one of his sisters had pulled him away from the bank of the lake where he had been trying to fish with her line, horrified that he might fall in and die. An eager, active little boy had not even been allowed to sit at the water’s edge with a fishing line in his hand.

“I cannot remember the last time I was vanquished in a boat race,” he said as they stepped onto the bridge. “Accept my most heartfelt congratulations!”

She laughed. “Someone has to keep you humble.”

“Unkind,” he said. “I did admit to having lost a curricle race, if you will remember.”

“By a long nose,” she said. “I wonder how long. An elephant’s trunk stretched on the rack, perhaps?”

“Sometimes,” he said, “I believe that your tongue must be sharp enough to slice through a slab of tough beef.”

She laughed again.

“And had you rowed before this afternoon?” he asked her. “Please say yes. My humiliation will be complete if the answer is no.”

“A few times long ago, when I was a child,” she said. “But I have not tried it since.”

“And where was that?” he asked.

“Oh, where I grew up,” she said vaguely.

They stopped by unspoken consent when they reached the middle of the bridge. She had crossed it before, on her last visit to Barclay Court, but there had been no opportunity this afternoon until now. The sun beamed down upon them from a cloudless blue sky. A slight breeze cooled her face. She could hear the river rushing beneath the bridge. If she turned her head she would see the sunlight sparkling on the lake water behind them.

All her senses were sharpened. She could feel his body heat. She could smell his cologne. It was an intensely pleasurable feeling. She felt awash in contentment.

“I noticed,” he said, “when I sat inside the pavilion earlier that the reflection of the house is perfectly framed in the lake water. That particular spot was obviously chosen with great care by the landscape artist. He must have been a master of his art.”

“Oh, yes,” she agreed. “I am sure he was.”

“Do you suppose that waterfall has been as artfully positioned as the pavilion?” he asked. “Is it there in that exact spot for maximum visual effect from here?”

“Perhaps it was the bridge that was deliberately placed,” she suggested.

“Or both,” he said. “My money is upon its being both.”

“But can nature be so ordered?” she asked him.

“Assuredly so,” he told her. “Do we not often plant flowers and vegetables in ruthlessly regimented rows and beds for our own convenience and pleasure? And can we not create a waterfall if we wish? We manipulate nature all the time. In fact, we often make the mistake of believing that we are its masters. And then a storm blows in from nowhere and lifts the roofs off our houses and floods them and reminds us of how little control we have and how helpless we are in reality. Have you noticed that once-mighty structures that have been abandoned are soon taken over by nature again? Wildflowers grow in the crevices of once-impregnable castle walls, and grass grows on palace floors where kings once entertained the elite of an empire.”