by Mary Balogh
Three days later all the boarders returned to school and with them several new girls, including two charity pupils who needed a great deal of care and attention. And the day after that the day girls returned and classes started.
It was a relief to be busy again.
It was even more of a relief-and that was a massive understatement-to discover two weeks later that she was not with child, that her great indiscretion had had no lasting consequences. None that would be observable to anyone else, anyway.
And yet, perversely, the discovery left her feeling freshly bereft.
Now it was all definitely and finally over.
Her heart, her very life, had never felt more frighteningly empty.
It was not finally over for Anne.
One Saturday morning late in September a sudden deluge of rain sent Susanna and a class of girls under her supervision dashing back inside the school from the open meadows beyond Daniel Street, where they always went for their games lessons. Susanna sent the girls up to their dormitories to dry off and would have taken her own wet cloak and bonnet up to her room before meeting them in the grand hall for indoor games, but Mr. Keeble informed her that she was wanted in the office, that he had already asked Miss Walton to supervise the hall.
She found Claudia and Anne waiting for her and smiled when she saw a nice warm fire crackling in the grate. It was a chilly day outside.
“We are to lose Anne, Susanna,” Claudia said sternly and without preamble. “She is to marry Mr. Sydnam Butler, son of the Earl of Redfield and steward at the Welsh estate of the Duke of Bewcastle.”
Poor Claudia could never utter that last name without some venom in her voice. Her final position as a governess, which had been with Lady Freyja Bedwyn as her pupil and the Duke of Bewcastle as her employer, had left her with a lasting antipathy toward both. She heartily despised them though she did concede that without that more-than-unpleasant experience she might never have summoned the courage to open her own school.
But Susanna did not spare much thought for Claudia. She had looked into Anne’s ashen face, and she instantly knew.
“Oh, Anne,” she said, closing the distance between them and hugging her friend tightly.
“I have told her that she need not do it,” Claudia said. “I have told her we will find some alternative. But she insists.”
“Of course I do.” Anne stepped back from Susanna’s arms and smiled with ghastly cheerfulness at both of them. “I want to marry Mr. Butler. I am fond of him. I am not marrying him just because I am with child. I am with child, Susanna.”
“We are all going to have a nice cup of tea,” Claudia said with iron calm. “And we are all going to sit down. Not necessarily in that order.”
Susanna was glad of the chair. She could guess exactly the way it was. Anne was more than fond of Mr. Butler, but Mr. Butler was the son of an earl. He had allowed Anne to return to Bath without offering her marriage. Yet now he was doing the honorable thing and marrying her after all-but only because he must.
Poor Anne! What a dreadful thing it was for her to be facing a marriage in which her feelings were engaged when she would always know that his were not.
And it could so easily have happened to her too, Susanna thought, a chill about her heart even while the fire warmed her toes and her face.
Except that she would never have let Viscount Whitleaf know if she had shared Anne’s fate. And she doubted he would have offered marriage even if she had.
Oh, but she did not know, did she, what she would have done if it really had happened. Or what he might have done if he had found out. Her knees turned weak at the thought of how close she had come to disaster.
Anne had not had her fortunate escape.
Susanna did not meet Mr. Butler until the day, two weeks later, when the wedding took place by special license in Claudia’s private sitting room. He had been badly maimed as a soldier during the Peninsular Wars-he had lost an arm and an eye and was badly burned all down the right side of his face. He was also, as Anne had told Susanna on the evening after her return from Somerset, tall, dark, and handsome. Susanna told him so with a twinkle in her eye after the brief service, when Anne was already his wife-but she said it only because it seemed to her that he was a good-humored man and she thought it altogether possible that he did care for Anne.
She hoped so. Oh, she hoped so.
And she tried very hard not to be envious-but how very foolish to even think of being envious when she had been pitying Anne so deeply for the past fortnight. Sometimes human emotions made no sense at all.
She did dare to hope, though, that Anne had found her happily-ever-after despite everything. It appeared that Mr. Butler was even going to be kind to David, though it was not equally obvious that David was going to take kindly to the existence in his life of a new stepfather.
Susanna and Claudia stood on the pavement outside the school after the small reception they had given for the newlyweds, waving the three of them on their way back to Wales.
“Susanna,” Claudia said as the carriage turned the corner onto Sutton Street and moved out of sight, “I expected that my heart would break today. But maybe it does not have to after all. What do you think?”
“I believe,” Susanna said, “there is fondness on one side and honor on the other-and even that would offer promise for the future. But I think there is also a little bit of love on both sides.”
“Ah,” Claudia said with a sigh, “it is my thought too. Let us hope we are right and not just a couple of hopeless romantics. Ah, Anne! I suppose we will not see her again for a long time. I do object to losing my friends, not to mention my teachers. I will have to look about for her replacement, though Lila is coming along quite nicely, would you not agree?”
Lila Walton was a junior teacher, promoted at the end of the summer term from the ranks of the senior girls. Like Susanna before her, she had been a charity girl.
“She shows great promise, as I knew she would,” Susanna agreed as Claudia linked an arm through hers and they stepped back inside the school.
But they were to see Anne again far sooner than Claudia had expected. She and Mr. Butler did not go directly home to Wales, as it turned out, but instead went first to Alvesley Park in Wiltshire, family home of Mr. Butler, and then to Gloucestershire to visit Anne’s estranged family. The day after a letter arrived at the school from Anne at her father’s home, another letter came from Viscountess Ravensberg at Alvesley Park. Claudia held it open in one hand when Susanna answered a summons to her study at the end of a composition class-a subject she had taken over from Frances two years before.
“There is to be a surprise wedding breakfast for Anne and Mr. Butler at the Upper Assembly Rooms next week,” Claudia said. “The Viscountess Ravensberg and the Duchess of Bewcastle have arranged it and have devised some sort of devious plot for luring the couple back here. We are invited, as well as Mr. Huckerby and Mr. Upton.”
They stared at each other. The strange coincidence of Mr. Butler’s being a brother-in-law of Viscountess Ravensberg, cousin to Viscount Whitleaf, had not escaped Susanna’s notice at the time of Anne’s wedding. Now she would have an unexpected opportunity to meet the lady-the very cousin, she believed, who had the same color eyes as he.
Certain wounds, healed over nicely but still tender to the touch, were going to be in danger of being ripped open again, she thought. She would just have to make very certain they were not.
Claudia was tight-lipped.
“You know what this means, Susanna, do you not?” she said, folding the letter and tapping it against her leg. “If the Duchess of Bewcastle has had a hand in organizing this breakfast, then undoubtedly the duke will be in attendance. And since Lady Potford on Great Pulteney Street is a friend of Anne’s and grandmother to the Marquess of Hallmere, it is altogether possible that the marquess and that woman will come to Bath and be there too. I would rather have every fingernail on both my hands pulled out than be in company with those two people.
But some things cannot be avoided. This is for Anne. I will go. You will come too?”
She stood ramrod straight and spoke as if she were inviting Susanna to accompany her to a funeral.
“I will come and hold your hand,” Susanna promised.
Claudia snorted and then laughed.
“I do not suppose,” she said, “that either one of them will even recognize me or care if they do. Though Lady Hallmere did come here a few years ago to look down her nose at me and my school and ask if there was anything I needed. The nerve of the woman! But, Susanna, we will see our beloved Anne again after all-and our dear David. I miss them both very much indeed.”
“Yes.” Susanna smiled. “We will see them again.”
And Viscountess Ravensberg.
How absurd to think that seeing her would somehow bring Viscount Whitleaf closer. Or that it would be a desirable thing even if it did.
Yes, that healed wound was very tender to the touch.
14
The Duchess of Bewcastle had reserved the ballroom as well as the tearoom at the Upper Assembly Rooms in Bath in order to give the children somewhere to run and be noisy while the adults conversed in civilized fashion over tea and listened to a few speeches. But she had engaged the services of an orchestra too, Peter discovered when he arrived early on the appointed afternoon with Lauren and Kit. After all, she explained with a laugh while the duke looked on with a supercilious air and incongruously fond silver eyes resting upon his lady, it would be a tragic thing indeed if the presence of the ballroom aroused in anyone a desire to dance but there was no music to make dancing possible.
“What you mean, Christine,” Bewcastle said, his long fingers curling about the handle of his quizzing glass and raising it halfway to his eye, “is that you are quite determined to dance if only Sydnam and Mrs. Butler can be persuaded to lead the way.”
“You know me all too well, Wulfric,” the duchess said with a laugh.
Peter was looking forward to the social gathering with uncharacteristic unease. He probably ought not to have come. If he suddenly, after several months of inaction, felt it necessary to check on Susanna’s health-marvelous euphemism-then he ought to have done it by writing to her or calling at the school. He ought at the very least to have somehow let her know that he was going to be here today. He was almost certain that she was. Lauren had told him that four teachers were coming from the school as well as the former teacher who was now married to the Earl of Edgecombe.
And yet it struck Peter even as he entertained these troubled thoughts that the chance to meet Susanna again this afternoon ought to have been a cause of pleasure to both of them. They really had been friends-until the very end. How he kicked himself now for not having stayed in the drawing room with her that last afternoon-or for not taking Edgecombe up on his suggestion that he and the countess accompany them on their walk. Then they would have been meeting today with shared pleasure as friends who had not expected to see each other again so soon.
Other guests began to arrive. Peter was introduced to Mrs. Butler’s parents and siblings and their spouses from Gloucestershire and to Lord and Lady Aidan Bedwyn, whom he had not met before. He hailed Lord and Lady Alleyne Bedwyn and a number of Kit and Sydnam’s cousins, whom he had met on various occasions at Alvesley.
Normally he would have been in his element.
But his uneasiness was growing by the minute, and he found himself glancing at the door every few seconds instead of concentrating upon making himself agreeable to those with whom he conversed. A dozen or more times he thought about making his escape before it was too late, but escape might well be impossible, he realized as time went on. Even if he dashed out now, he had a long hall to traverse and a largish courtyard outside to cross before he could hope to slink out of sight of someone who would surely be arriving at any moment.
He wandered in the direction of the ballroom and forgot his woes for a while after Andrew and Sophia, two of Lauren’s children, grabbed a hand each, dragged him triumphantly inside the large room, and demanded that he play with them. A whole host of other children gathered hopefully about him, and he proceeded to play Blind Man’s Buff with them with a great deal of noise and energy and good humor.
It was only when he heard a loud burst of applause and even cheering coming from the tearoom that he realized the guests of honor must have arrived and that therefore all the other guests must now be gathered there too.
Even then he was tempted to slip out and hope no one would notice his absence.
But he would not add arrant cowardice to his other shortcomings, which were legion. He extricated himself from the children’s game and went to stand in the shadowed half of the doorway into the tearoom so that he could peer cautiously about him.
Like a thief in the night, he thought with some disgust.
Sydnam Butler and a lady dressed in rose pink, who was presumably his bride, stood in a pool of red rose petals inside the door at the far side of the room, looking startled and bewildered. The Duchess of Bewcastle was clapping her hands for silence.
“Well, Mr. and Mrs. Butler,” she said, her voice warm and cheerful, “you may have thought yourselves very clever indeed when you married in great secrecy a few weeks ago. But your relatives and friends have caught up with you after all. Welcome to your wedding breakfast.”
The children, without the distraction of an adult to play with them in the ballroom, had left it and were streaming past Peter to see what all the fuss was about. They were soon adding to the cheerful mayhem that ensued for a few minutes while everyone attempted to get close to the bride and groom and pump the hand of the one and kiss the cheek of the other.
But Peter, still and silent in the doorway, took no part in the collective merriment.
He had seen her.
She was dressed neatly in pale blue, her short curls vibrantly auburn in contrast. She was bending down to hug a little boy who, he guessed, must be Mrs. Butler’s son, and then she was reaching for Mrs. Butler herself and holding her in a close embrace for several seconds. She was laughing and tearful and bright-eyed and dazzling.
For several moments he simply gazed at her, his reluctance to see her again vanished without a trace. By Jove, he had missed her. He drank in the sight of her, more lovely and more vibrant than any other lady he had ever met.
She stepped aside so that the ladies with her-the Countess of Edgecombe and a brown-haired, severe-looking though not unhandsome woman who was probably Miss Martin-could take their turns greeting the bride. Susanna was waiting to pay her respects to Butler and was looking around at the other guests as she did so with bright, happy eyes.
And then those same eyes met his across the room-and her smile froze and then died altogether.
Peter was instantly conscious of himself again-and of the dashed uncomfortable fact that he had ruined her, made her a dishonorable offer, and left her without a backward glance, all within the space of one afternoon. And that now he was reappearing in her life without any warning and at just the time when she was celebrating the marriage of her friend.
He really ought not to have come, he thought again.
But dash it all, it was too late now to go away.
He strode purposefully across the room, intending to speak with her. But Lauren, flushed and animated, caught his arm as he approached, linking her own through it, led him up to the newlyweds, and proceeded to introduce him to Mrs. Butler, who was, he discovered, very lovely indeed. He bowed over her hand and raised it to his lips. He shook Sydnam’s left hand with his left and wished him well. Then he shook the boy’s hand-he was David Jewell-and winked and grinned at him.
“If you want to make your escape anytime soon,” he said, “you will doubtless find hordes of other young people in the ballroom-once they have found their way back there.”
The boy smiled back.
“Do come and sit at our table, Peter,” Lauren said as order began to replace the cheerful chaos of the past several minutes and the ch
ildren made their way back to the ballroom rather than be caught up in the tedium of an adult tea party.
“I will, thank you, Lauren,” he said, “but there is someone to whom I must pay my respects first.”
Before he could delay too long and set up a greater awkwardness than he already felt, he strode over to the table where Susanna sat with Edgecombe and the countess, Lord and Lady Aidan Bedwyn, the unknown severe-looking lady, and the duchess’s sister, Miss Thompson.
“Whitleaf,” Edgecombe said, standing to shake hands with him. “Good to see you again.”
“But of course,” the countess said, smiling at him, “you are related to Lady Ravensberg, are you not? It is a pleasure to see you again, Lord Whitleaf.”
And yet there was a hint of something in her tone that suggested she was not entirely pleased. Or perhaps his conscience was just playing tricks on him.
He bowed to her and to Miss Thompson, who must have arrived with her mother after he went into the ballroom, and turned his eyes on Susanna.
“Miss Osbourne?” he said. “I trust you are well?”
“Yes, thank you,” she said with perfect composure and a polite smile on her face-as if they had never lain together on a secluded hill above the river at Barclay Court. “And you, my lord?”
“Quite well,” he said, “thank you.”
Good Lord, where was his arsenal of small talk when he most needed it? But perhaps it was as well it had deserted him utterly, or he might have found himself saying something totally asinine like great beauty having to be a prerequisite for a teaching position at Miss Martin’s School for Girls. He had the feeling that present company would not be at all amused by such a compliment.
“My lord,” Susanna said before he could make his escape to his own table, “may I present Miss Martin, owner of the school where I teach? This is Viscount Whitleaf, Claudia. He was staying not far from Barclay Court while I was a guest there.”
The severe-looking stranger whose identity he had guessed earlier inclined her head while he bowed and favored her with his most charming smile.