Mary Balogh - Simply Magic

The world was filled with happy couples, it seemed-and her very lone self.

Ridiculous, self-pitying thought!

“You are bitter,” Viscount Whitleaf said.

Was she? She had no reason to be, had she? He had not seduced her. He had given her the opportunity to stop him. He had asked her afterward to go away with him and had promised that he would look after her even when all was over between them. She had said no. They had parted as friends. Ah, that parting-that memory of him riding away across the terrace and down the lane until he was out of sight. It was a memory that had always gone deeper than pain because she had thought she would never see him again.

Now she was waltzing with him once more in the Upper Assembly Rooms in Bath. The reality of it, she felt, had still not quite hit her.

“Silence is my answer,” he said. “And I cannot blame you. It would be trite of me to say I am sorry. But I do not know what else to say.”

“You need not say anything.” She looked back into his eyes. “And you need not feel sorry-any more than I do. It happened. Our friendship had to end anyway. Why not that way?”

“ Did it end?” he asked her.

She gazed back at him and then nodded. Of course it had ended. How could they even pretend to be friends now?

“Then I really am sorry,” he said. “I liked you, Susanna-I like you. And I thought you had come to like me.”

She swallowed.

“I did.”

“Past tense?” he said, and after a short silence between them, “Ah, yes, past tense.”

They stopped dancing for a few moments while the orchestra ended one waltz tune and prepared to play the next one in the set.

Did she not even like him now, then? Because he had come here today to disturb her peace again? He had come because she was to be here. He had come to ask her if she was with child.

What would he have done if the answer had been yes? Would he have gone away again faster than he had come? She knew he would not have.

She looked up at him again as they resumed their dance.

“I do not dislike you,” she said.

“Do you not?”

He was smiling-no doubt for the benefit of those around them. She smiled too. And then, because they were still looking at each other, both their smiles became more rueful-and then more genuine.

“I have told myself,” he said, “that it would have been far better for me-and considerably better for you-if I had left Hareford House two days after your arrival at Barclay Court, as I had originally planned. I would have remembered you, if at all, as a rather straitlaced, disapproving, humorless schoolteacher.”

“Is that how I appeared to you?” she asked him.

“And as someone who made an already glorious summer day seem warmer and brighter.” He whirled her twice about a corner, startling a laugh out of her. “But then another part of myself answers with the assertion that I would hate never to have got to know you better.”

She looked about with leftover laughter on her face. Mr. Huckerby, she could see, was watching her feet-to see if she remembered the steps correctly, no doubt. She caught Claudia’s eye as she danced past and smiled at her.

“Do you wish,” Lord Whitleaf asked her, “that I had left when I intended to do so?”

Did she? She would have been saved from a great deal of heartache-and from a great deal of vividly happy living.

“No,” she said.

“Why not?” He bent his head a little closer.

“You once told me,” she said, “that in your childhood you were surrounded by women. It is what has happened to me since I was twelve. I have had almost no social contact with men. I have been shy with men, unsure how to talk or behave with them. I was terrified when I first met you because you were handsome and self-assured and titled. And then I learned that you were amiable and kind and really rather easy to talk with. And then I came to genuinely like you and look forward to seeing you each day and spending a short while in conversation with you. Knowing you brightened my life for a time and provided me with memories that will give me pleasure in future years-riding in a curricle with you, racing a boat against you, climbing to the waterfall with you, waltzing with you.”

Kissing you.

Making love with you.

“I am not sorry you stayed,” she said.

“Are we friends again, then?” he asked her.

She smiled back at him and then laughed softly.

“Oh, yes, I suppose so,” she said, “for what remains of this afternoon, anyway.”

Though it struck her that the celebration would probably not go on much longer and that then she would go back to school and he would go away somewhere with the Ravensbergs and that that would be the end of it-the real end this time.

And there would be pain all over again.

But pain was something that life inevitably brought with it. If there was no pain, there was no real living and therefore no possibility of happiness. She had been happy-truly, exhilaratingly happy-on a few occasions in her life, almost all of them with Viscount Whitleaf. She must remember that. She must. There were two particularly perfect incidents that had drawn her so completely into happiness that no un happiness had been able to intrude. One had occurred at the assembly rooms when she had waltzed with him. The other had occurred on the hill above the river and the little bridge when they had made love.

It was so easy to remember that lovemaking as the worst thing that had ever happened to her-because it had brought her a far deeper unhappiness than she would have felt otherwise in saying good-bye to him. But actually it was the most wonderful thing that had ever happened too.

It was. That had been easily the happiest half hour or so of her life.

Now she was waltzing again-with the man who had waltzed with her then, and with the man who had been her lover on that hill. And if she was not perfectly happy now, the reason was that she was allowing past pain and future unhappiness to encroach upon the magic of the moment.

It was magical.

“Let’s just waltz,” she said to him.

The smile deepened in his eyes.

“Yes,” he said. “Let’s.”

And for what remained of the set they did not speak at all but just danced and smiled into each other’s eyes.

She was glad he had come, Susanna thought. Ah, she was glad. There was surely something healing in his being here-he had not just carelessly dismissed both her and their lovemaking from his mind. She thought she would be less unhappy after today. Or perhaps she was just fooling herself. Tomorrow her life would be without him again.

But she would not think of tomorrow.

She danced, aware of their splendid surroundings and of the company and the music, all her senses sharpened. And she was aware too that the man in whose arms she danced was the man who had kissed her and caressed her and been deep inside her body.

She could never ever regret that she had had that experience once in her life.

Once was enough.

It would have to be.

He laughed aloud as he took her into a swooping turn before the orchestra dais, and she laughed back at him.

“And so that is that,” Claudia said with a sigh as she stepped inside the school with Susanna and the door closed behind them. “Too many good-byes. It does nothing to buoy the spirits, does it?”

They had just said good-bye to Frances and the Earl of Edgecombe, who had insisted upon giving them a ride back from the Upper Rooms in their own carriage despite Claudia’s protestation that she and Susanna were perfectly capable of walking. The Edgecombes were leaving Bath for London early in the morning. And before they all left the Upper Rooms, they had said good-bye to Anne and David, who were also setting out in the morning with Mr. Butler for their new home in Wales.

“But it was very good,” Susanna said, “to see Anne so happy-and David too. Mr. Butler must have been kind to him.”

“Well, now it is back to business,” Claudia said briskly, taking off her cloak and looping it over her arm. “We have a school to run, Susanna. I happened to mention to Miss Thompson after tea that I was looking for another teacher and was quite taken aback when she expressed an interest in the position for herself.”

“Did she really?” Susanna asked.

“The duchess has persuaded Mrs. Thompson to take up residence in a cottage close to Lindsey Hall,” Claudia said. “Miss Thompson is expected to move there with her, of course, but she says she feels she will be losing some independence when she leaves their own cottage and village behind. She will feel like a poor relation of the Duke of Bewcastle, she says. I can well understand that that would be a ghastly fate indeed. But it is interesting, Susanna, that she may prefer to teach here. I have asked her to drop by tomorrow or the next day. I really took to her. She has interesting conversation and has read widely. She also has good sense and a dry wit.”

“Has she taught before?” Susanna asked, looking back as she proceeded up the stairs on the way to her room.

But Claudia was prevented from replying by Mr. Keeble, who was clearing his throat in such a pronounced manner that it was obvious he had something of import to say to them.

Agnes Ryde, one of the new charity girls, had had an almighty tantrum, it seemed, and reduced Lila Walton to tears and consequently aroused the wrath of Matron, who had sent the girl to bed in the middle of the afternoon and promised dire consequences as soon as Miss Martin returned.

Claudia sighed.

“Thank you, Mr. Keeble,” she said. “This is returning to reality with a crash, is it not? Where is Anne when I most need her? She did have a special gift with difficult girls.”

“She did,” Susanna agreed as she removed her bonnet. “But I have an understanding of what it feels like to be a charity girl here, Claudia. I have seen something of my old self in poor Agnes, I must confess. Let me go up and talk to her.”

“Poor Agnes indeed!” Claudia said, tossing her glance at the ceiling. “But go if you wish, Susanna. Matron does seem to have tied my hands. If I go up, I shall be obliged to do something horribly dire like confining the girl to her bed and to dry bread and water for at least the next week.”

Susanna chuckled at the unlikely image, squared her shoulders, and continued on her way upstairs, prepared to do battle. Lila, as junior teacher, had the unenviable task, once Susanna’s own, of teaching elocution to those girls who needed it. And Agnes Ryde needed it more than anyone else. She had arrived at the school at the end of August with such a thick Cockney accent that no one understood a good half of what she said. And since she was resistant to changing her accent in order to talk as if she had two plums in her cheeks like a real nob-her words-Lila was not exactly her favorite teacher.

Susanna did not find the minor crisis at the school unwelcome. It pushed everything else from her mind for the next hour, while she sat in one of the dormitories beside Agnes’s bed, at first talking to an uncommunicative ball of hostile girlhood turned toward the wall and then gradually moving into something resembling a conversation after Agnes had rolled over to face her and eye her with open suspicion.

“ You was a charity girl, miss?” she asked.

“I was indeed,” Susanna said, wisely ignoring the girl’s grammar. “So was Miss Walton, as she would be very ready to admit. We have both been where you are now. It is not the most comfortable place to be, is it? I can remember believing at one point that I must have been brought here only so that everyone else could laugh at me.”

“Everybody does laugh at me, ” Agnes said fiercely. “Next time I’ll pop ’em a good one, I will…miss.”

“Everybody?” Susanna raised her eyebrows. “Are you quite sure it is everybody? It is not just two or three girls who do not know any better than to want to bring misery upon a fellow pupil? I remember Miss Martin once giving me a piece of advice. The next time one of the paying pupils taunted me by telling me it must be nice to have my fees paid for me by strangers, I should smile back as if I had not noticed the sarcasm and agree warmly that yes, it was very nice indeed. Where would they take the taunting from there? she asked me. And she was perfectly right. It worked like a charm. Much better than hitting out would have done. That was what they expected me to do. That was what they hoped I would do so that they could run crying to one of the teachers and get me into trouble.”