Mary Balogh - Simply Magic

“I cannot know if I would change the course of my life or not,” Susanna said, smiling at all of them and understanding already that her grandfathers did not always see eye-to-eye upon every issue. “I wish I had known you all sooner, and I do look back upon the couple of weeks I spent in London with some horror. But I spent six happy years at Miss Martin’s school, and I have loved my teaching job there during the past five years. I am proud of what I have made of my life.”

Her grandmother patted her hand.

“Teaching is all very well,” Grandfather Osbourne said, “for a lady with no family or for a lady whose family has only slender means. I am not an enormously wealthy man, Susanna, but I am certainly not poor either, and you are all we have. It is time you came home with us. It is time we found you a good husband to look after you when we are gone.”

Her grandmother smoothed a hand over hers, and Susanna could feel her bent arthritic fingers against the back of her hand.

“I think, Clarence,” she said, “Susanna may have already found him for herself. Viscount Whitleaf is a very handsome and charming young man, and it seemed to me yesterday that he thinks the world of our granddaughter. He has invited us all to attend the ball at Sidley Park tomorrow evening, but I had the feeling that it is Susanna with whom he wants to dance more than anyone else.”

“I daresay it would not be me, Sadie,” Grandfather Osbourne said with a bark of laughter. “But a viscount. That is aiming high, though not impossibly high. We have a perfectly respectable lineage. And so does Ambrose.”

“And you were a colonel,” Grandmother Osbourne reminded him.

“Hmm,” her grandfather said. “I shall have to find out what that young man’s intentions are.”

Susanna pulled her hand away from her grandmother’s in order to clap both hands to her cheeks.

“Oh, Grandfather,” she said, “please do not say anything to him.”

She was blushing, she realized. She was also laughing. Her grandfather had known her for less than twenty-four hours, and already he was trying to take charge of her life.

Could it possibly be less than twenty-four hours? She already loved them, all three of them. How absurd!

How indescribably wonderful!

She had just realized something, though. They must not know about Viscountess Whitleaf’s part in the death of her father. They had not reacted in any way to his name.

They were not alone together all day, the four of them. Lady Markham, Theodore, Edith, and Mr. Morley were all tactful enough to remain in the background most of the time, but they all came together at mealtimes, and after luncheon Susanna and her grandmother went up to the nursery at Edith’s invitation to see Jamie since this was apparently the most wakeful, alert, and cheerful part of his day.

“And of course,” Edith said, “I want you to see him at his very best.”

They stayed up there talking for longer than an hour after admiring the baby and handing him from one to the other and coaxing smiles from him. Susanna’s grandmother held him in the crook of one arm while they sat and talked, and cooed down at him when he demanded attention.

It was during that hour and a bit, Susanna discovered later, that Viscount Whitleaf had called with two of his brothers-in-law and young Mr. Flynn-Posy.

She also discovered that during the visit her two grandfathers had gone off to the library with Viscount Whitleaf while the others had visited in the drawing room. Neither of them volunteered any further information-about who had initiated the private meeting or what the topic of conversation had been. And Susanna did not ask lest her grandparents think that she really was interested in him.

He was gone by the time she came downstairs.

But she would see him at the ball, she thought, with a heart that tried to sink and soar at the same time, leaving her feeling horribly confused and not a little upset.

She must not begin thinking that an impossibility might after all be possible.

It was Peter who had asked to speak privately with the two elderly gentlemen who were staying at Fincham. While he was disappointed to learn on his arrival that Susanna was up in the nursery with Edith, he was also glad to find his plan easier to implement than he had expected it to be. He had merely asked Theo if he might use the library for a few minutes in order to have a word or two with Colonel Osbourne and the Reverend Clapton, and Theo had agreed-with a smirk.

Peter had come to the point after a few preliminary conversational niceties. Or, to be more accurate, it was the colonel, frowning ferociously and harrumphing through his large mustache, who brought him to the point.

“I understand, Whitleaf,” he said, “that you had my granddaughter out in a curricle yesterday afternoon, without even so much as a groom up behind.”

Peter felt very much as if a shotgun had been pressed to his spine.

The other old gentleman gazed genially at him-with perhaps a thread of steel behind the mild eyes.

“I did,” he confessed-no point in lying and pretending to have had six eagle-eyed grooms all clinging to the back of his curricle to play chaperone. “I hope, sirs, to ask your granddaughter during tomorrow night’s ball to honor me with her hand in marriage. I would like the blessing of both of you before I do so.”

It had occurred to him last night that this was perhaps something he ought to do. Less laudably, it had also occurred to him that she might look more kindly upon his suit if he had their blessing.

A third thing that had occurred to him, of course, was that they might be very familiar indeed with the name of Whitleaf, and that he might be dooming his hopes to a horrible dashing if he approached them thus.

The Reverend Clapton beamed at him from his chair by the fire.

The colonel frowned fiercely at him from his stance by the desk.

“Why?” he barked. “Why do you wish to marry our granddaughter?”

“I have conceived a deep affection for her, sir, “Peter said.

“Even though she was a dowerless nobody when you did it?” the colonel asked him, and Peter felt sorry for all the soldiers who had served under this man-theirs must not have been a comfortable life.

“Yes, sir,” he said.

“Then you are a fool, Whitleaf,” the old man said.

Peter raised his eyebrows.

“If loving Miss Osbourne for herself makes me a fool, sir,” he said, “then I can only plead guilty.”

“Which you must confess, Clarence,” the clergyman said in a mild voice, “is an excellent answer. I would be inclined to give my blessing without further ado.”

“Hmm,” the colonel said, and it suddenly occurred to Peter that the man was enjoying himself. “Well, she isn’t a dowerless nobody, Whitleaf. She is a not inconsiderable heiress. What do you have to say to that?”

“That it is very pleasant for Miss Osbourne, sir,” Peter said, “but that it has no effect whatsoever on my feelings for her.”

“And what do you have to offer her, young man, apart from your affections, which may come cheap for all I know?” the colonel asked.

And Peter understood that they had entered the marriage negotiation phase of the conversation. His suit, he guessed, had been granted.

So he had won the approval of two elderly gentlemen.

That, he supposed, though, was going to be the easy part.

No one could remember the time when the last grand entertainment had been held at Sidley. For days the neighborhood had been buzzing with the news that there was finally to be a ball there, and on Christmas Day of all days. It seemed like a special gift from the young viscount.

He had always been liked and admired from afar. It had always been said that he was warmer, more human, than the viscountess, his mother. And now they were convinced of it. He had delivered the invitations personally and had begged everyone to come, to join his family and friends in a great celebration of the season-as if they were the ones doing him a favor.

No one would have missed the ball for any consideration whatsoever. Anticipation of the moment when they might decently leave for Sidley overshadowed all other observances of Christmas, even the morning church service and the dinnertime goose.

It was much the same at Sidley itself, though there was an afternoon party for the children in the drawing room hosted by the viscount and attended by many of their parents while most other adults rested in their rooms in preparation for the evening’s revels.

The house was lavishly decorated with holly and pine boughs and ribbons and bells and a Yule log in the drawing room. There was also a large and intricately woven kissing bough there-the creation of three of the viscount’s sisters-suspended from the center of the ceiling and the focus of much interested attention and stifled giggles after its appearance there late on Christmas Eve.

The house was filled too with enticing Christmas smells, even late in the day, long after the goose and the plum pudding had been cleared away from the dining room table. The smell of mince pies was the most dominant, but there was too the spicy aroma of the wassail, which was to fill the huge bowl in the refreshment room as soon as the ball began.

Peter enjoyed the day even though he had rarely spent a busier one. He was genuinely fond of all his sisters and brothers-in-law and nieces and nephews, and he found all the other guests congenial company. He was particularly delighted by the romance that appeared to be developing between one of Barbara’s young brothers-in-law and Miss Flynn-Posy. Whether the lady’s mother was equally delighted was unclear, but that was not his concern.

His own mother proved remarkably resilient. She showed no traces of the upset she had suffered two evenings ago. She spoke of the ball to everyone with an enthusiasm that suggested it had always had her full approval. She had even begun to speak out during the past two days about setting up a home for herself in London before the spring Season began so that she might enjoy more social life.

“It is high time,” she told Lady Flynn-Posy and Barbara and Belinda. “Peter is quite old enough now to fend for himself.”

Peter enjoyed the day, but it was the evening for which he waited with mingled eagerness and anxiety.

The eagerness was for the fact that this felt like his coming-of-age party. Tonight he would finally be the master of Sidley Park, entertaining his guests and neighbors as he planned to do for the rest of his life-regardless of the outcome of his other plan for the evening. It was the uncertainty of that outcome that caused his anxiety, of course. He was not at all certain that Susanna would have him even if he and her three grandparents all went down on their knees before her and begged.

Susanna Osbourne had a sometimes-annoying tendency to think for herself and decide for herself.

Not that he would have her any other way, of course.

But his newfound confidence in himself and determination to live his own life and take on the duties and responsibilities of his position would not be dependent upon Susanna’s answer. They would not be worth a great deal if they were.

He did have her to thank. He would possibly have drifted on in much the same way as ever if he had not met her. But he was not dependent upon her-just as she was not on him. It was an exhilarating thought, but it did nothing to soothe his growing anxiety as he dressed for the ball.

The fact that he was titled and wealthy meant nothing to her-a humbling thought. If he was to win her, he must do it as himself-and for the first time in five years he felt that there was some self worth offering. But his name went along with that self. He was Whitleaf, and there, he knew, was the stumbling block.

“That will do,” he told his valet, who had already discarded three perfectly decently tied neckcloths as unworthy of his artistry before tying this fourth.

His valet-another individual who had a mind of his own, dash it all-tipped his head to one side and considered his handiwork with frowning concentration.

“It will, m’ lord,” he agreed. “It only needs the diamond pin-just so-just… there. Perfection, m’ lord.”

It was still a little early, but Peter went downstairs anyway and wandered into the ballroom, which looked festive with all the decorations and smelled of greenery. Candles burned in the chandeliers overhead and in wall sconces. Two great fires burned in the fireplaces at either end of the room. They failed to warm the large, high-ceilinged room quite adequately, but they did take the chill off the air. And once the ballroom was filled with people, and once those people began to engage in the exertions of a few country dances, there would be more than enough warmth in the room.