Mary Balogh - Simply Magic

“The situation has become far graver, however. Now that her original threat to come to you with my story has been thwarted, she plans to go to the world with another story of how I have molested and even ravished her. It would be a silly lie, perhaps, if not for two facts that will surely make her story generally believed. One is the truth of the other story she will now undoubtedly share with the world. The other is the mild gossip that arose around the lady and myself in London last year-and the truth of the fact that yes, for a while we were lovers. My mistake-one of too many to count in my life-was to try ending our liaison myself instead of waiting until such time as she chose to end it herself.

“It distresses me to have brought so much potential scandal to you and your family and this home. You will not be able to continue to champion me. I am ruined and may even be facing criminal prosecution. I see no way out but to do what will already be done by the time you read this. Perhaps my death will silence the lady and so prevent all scandal except what will be the inevitable result of my suicide.

“But I cannot wait until after I have left Fincham. There is Susanna, you see. She has long been all that is truly precious in my life. Lady Markham and Miss Markham have always been remarkably kind to her, for which I cannot possibly express the full extent of my gratitude. Be kind to her in one more thing, I beg you. Send her to my father with the enclosed letter. He is an honorable and good man. He will give her a home and kindness and even love.

“I thank you, Sir Charles, for allowing me the privilege of serving you…”

Susanna did not read the last few sentences. She set the letter down on top of the other one.

She had been right, then, though not in the way she had thought. Lady Whitleaf had driven him to his death. That little snippet of conversation she had overheard between them had meant something a little different from what she had thought, but the outcome had been the same.

Except that he had died not because he loved the viscountess, but at least partly because he had loved her.

She has long been all that is truly precious in my life.

… my dearest child.

She must have been dilly-dallying a great deal over the letters, she realized, when after a brief knock the door opened and Theodore came back into the room. He had been gone for a whole hour, she saw when she glanced at the clock on the mantel.

“I have brought you a cup of tea,” he said, coming to set it down on the desk before going to poke the fire into renewed life.

“Theodore,” she said, “what had my father done in his past that was so very bad?”

He straightened up and turned to look at her.

“Are you sure-” he began.

“Yes.” She grasped the edges of her shawl with both hands and drew it closer about her shoulders, even though the room was no longer as chilly as it had been. “I need to know.”

“My father had told my mother,” he said. “Your mother was once married to your father’s elder brother, Susanna, but she and your father…loved each other. It seems that his brother confronted him about it and there was a fight in which his brother died. The whole thing was explained away as a tragic accident-and I daresay there was truth in the claim-but your father was sent away. Your mother followed him, though, and they married. Marrying one’s brother’s widow is not expressly forbidden, but it is certainly frowned upon. And this was only a month or so after her bereavement. Both families renounced them.”

He was talking of her parents, Susanna thought, her hands balling into fists on the desktop as she stared down at her whitened knuckles.

“And one year later she died,” Theodore said. “My father knew her. He told my mother that they were devoted to each other, Susanna. He also said that you looked like her.”

Her mother had died having her. Susanna bit down hard on her upper lip. She had risked all, even scandal and ostracism, only to die in childbed.

And her father had died by his own hand twelve years later when his past finally caught up to him and a malicious woman was out to destroy him. Susanna could only imagine the enormity of the guilt with which he must have lived all the years she had known him. Yet he had always been quietly courteous, gentle, and affectionate.

She looked like her mother.

“My father confronted Lady Whitleaf after the funeral,” Theodore said. “She denied that she had ever intended to act with such malicious intent as described in that letter by your hand. He had been presumptuous and familiar with her, she claimed, and she had been about to make a private complaint about him to my father-that was all. The matter was dropped, but there was a coolness between my parents and her ever after. My parents believed Osbourne’s version.”

Susanna spread her hands, palm up, and examined them closely.

“The third letter was sent on to your grandfather,” Theodore said, “even though you could not be sent with it. I believe he implemented his own search for you, but you were lost beyond a trace until Whitleaf found you this past summer.”

“I was not lost,” she said quietly as she drank her tea, thankful for the hot liquid, “and he did not find me.”

“In a manner of speaking,” he said, smiling. “May I take you to my mother and Edith in the morning room?”

“Yes,” she said with a sigh. “Theodore, perhaps I should leave tomorrow and return to Bath so that you may have a quiet family Christmas without feeling obliged to entertain me.”

“That would break Edith’s heart,” he said, “and hurt my mother. And I would not be happy about it either. We have other guests coming later today, remember.”

“All the more reason for me to leave,” she said, frowning.

“Not so.” He stood in front of the fire, lifted onto the balls of his feet, and then rocked back on his heels again. “I am expecting Colonel and Mrs. Osbourne and the Reverend Clapton from Gloucestershire-your two grandfathers and your paternal grandmother.”

Susanna stared mutely at him.

“My mother suggested it,” he said, “as soon as you wrote back to say you would come. I wrote to them the same day and they did not hesitate. They are coming to meet you.”

She swallowed and heard a gurgle in her throat. She pushed her cup and saucer aside and curled her fingers into her palms to find them clammy.

“My grandparents?” she half whispered.

“Lord,” he said, lifting onto the balls of his feet again, “I don’t know if I have done the right thing, Susanna. But I know my father would have done all he could for you, and my mother always loved you almost as if you were her own. I thought it only right to do more or less what your father wanted mine to do-except that I am bringing your grandparents to you rather than sending you to them.”

She was not all alone in the world. She had three grandparents and perhaps other relatives. She had read it in both her father’s letters, yet somehow the knowledge had not fully lodged itself in her brain until now.

She had relatives, and they were coming here to Fincham Manor.

Today.

Susanna lurched to her feet, pushing her chair away with the backs of her knees as she did so.

“I have to get out,” she said.

“Out?” Theodore’s rather bushy eyebrows drew together until they almost met over the bridge of his nose.

“Out of doors,” she said, feeling as if she were about to suffocate.

“You don’t mean home to Bath?” he said. “You are not going to leave, Susanna? Run away again?”

What did she mean? She scarcely knew. Her mind felt as if it were close to bursting with all it had been forced to take in during the past hour or so.

She drew a deep breath and released it slowly.

“I just need to walk outside for a while, Theodore,” she said. “I need fresh air. Will you mind? Will it seem terribly rude? I do not mean to run away.”

“I’ll come with you,” he said, still frowning. “Or perhaps Edith or my mother-”

But she held up a hand.

“No,” she said. “I would rather be alone. I need to sort out my thoughts.”

“Ah,” he said. “Take all the time you need, then, Susanna. And then come back and get warm and enjoy Christmas with us. We will do all in our power to see that you do.”

“Thank you.”

She hurried upstairs to fetch her cloak and bonnet and gloves and don her warm half-boots, vastly relieved when she did not pass anyone on the way to her room. If only she could get back downstairs and outside…

But she was not so fortunate this time.

Theodore was standing in the hall as she came downstairs, probably waiting to see her on her way. A newly arrived visitor was talking with him there. For only a fraction of a second did Susanna think that perhaps this was one of the expected houseguests. But then, almost simultaneously, she realized that the visitor, broad-shouldered in his many-caped greatcoat, was a young man and that he was Viscount Whitleaf.

He looked up at the same moment and their eyes met.

She was flooded with such a powerful and unexpected longing that she only just found the strength not to dash down the remaining stairs and hurl herself into his arms.

“Miss Osbourne,” he said.

“Lord Whitleaf.”

She came slowly downward. She wondered if he had known she was coming to Fincham Manor.

“Susanna is going out for a walk,” Theodore said. “I have offered to accompany her, but she needs to be alone. She has just been reading the letter her father wrote her on the last day of his life. Do go without further ado if you wish, Susanna. I’ll take Whitleaf in to see my mother. He has an invitation to extend.”

“Later, Theo, if it is all the same to you,” the viscount said without taking his eyes off Susanna. “I will go back outside with Miss Osbourne-if she will accept my company.”

The thought of his mother-of what his mother had done-flashed through her mind, but he was not his mother. And suddenly she could not bear the thought of going out alone, of leaving him behind.

“Thank you,” she said, and turned to leave the house without looking back.

“One could say without too much exaggeration,” Peter had remarked just last evening to Bertie Lamb, his favorite brother-in-law, Amy’s husband, “that the house is packed to the rafters and bulging at the seams.”

The crowd was made up mostly of relatives and relatives of relatives-and of course the Flynn-Posys, who were not related to anyone else there but who obviously had hopes of rectifying that situation at some time in the foreseeable future. Arabella Flynn-Posy was seventeen years old and dark-haired and dark-eyed and remarkably pretty despite a mouth that had a tendency to turn sulky at the slightest provocation. His mother adored her-and her mother adored him. An imbecile with a pea for a brain would have understood their intentions.

“But your mother is ecstatic,” Bertie had said. “So are your sisters. And I am partial to a crowd myself, I must admit. Jolly good show about the ball, old chap-it will brighten things up around here.”

His mother was, of course, not ecstatic about that one thing, Peter knew. But he had impulsively decided that he wanted to invite all his neighbors to a grand Christmas celebration at Sidley Park, and he had gone ahead and invited them all to a ball on the evening of Christmas Day without consulting anyone except his cook and his butler and his housekeeper, who would be directly involved in the preparations-and who were now dashing about in transports of delight at the prospect of a Sidley ball.

His mother had been the last to be told.

Well, no, not quite the last.

He still had not been to Fincham Manor when he told her. It really would be too bad if the Markhams were unable or unwilling to attend the ball since he would quite readily admit in the privacy of his own mind that the whole thing had been arranged for them. Well, not them precisely.

The ball was for Susanna.

Love did not die very quickly, he had discovered during the intervening weeks. It did not even fade quickly-or at all. And it was a deuced depressing thing if the truth were known. His only hope, he had tried to tell himself since learning that she was indeed to come to Fincham, was to stay away from her and trust they did not inadvertently run into each other over the holiday.