Simply Magic

“I should like it of all things,” Miss Honeydew cried, nodding her head more forcefully than usual. “But you ca

“Then I shall ask-” Miss Osbourne began.

But Peter, totally forgetting his resolve to stay away from her and talk only about the weather when they did come face-to-face, yielded to a more impulsive instinct.

“For your pleasure, ma’am,” he said to Miss Honeydew, “I would be prepared to go to considerable lengths. It is your pleasure to have Miss Osbourne come to your cottage to read to you, and you will not be disappointed. You will allow me, if you please, to bring her there myself in my curricle.”

As if it were Miss Honeydew’s permission that was needed.

“Oh-” Miss Osbourne said, perhaps indignantly.

“Oh,” Miss Honeydew said, enraptured, her thin, arthritic hands clasped to her bosom. “How exceedingly kind you are to an old lady, my lord.”

“Old lady?” He looked about the room in some surprise. “ Is there an old lady present? Point her out to me, if you would be so good, ma’am, and I shall go and be kind to her.”

She laughed heartily at his sorry joke, drawing several glances their way. Peter guessed that she did not often laugh with genuine amusement.

“How you tease!” she said. “You are a rogue, my lord, I do declare. But it is exceedingly kind of you to offer to bring Miss Osbourne to me. You will both stay to tea when you come? I shall have my housekeeper make some of her special cakes.”

“Your company and a cup of tea will be quite sufficient to reward me, ma’am,” he said. “Ah, and Miss Osbourne’s company too.”

As if that were an afterthought.

Miss Honeydew beamed happily at him.

“It is settled, then.” He looked at the younger woman. “Which afternoon shall we decide upon, Miss Osbourne?”

She was looking back at him, the color high in her cheeks, an expression in her eyes he could not interpret-or perhaps he simply did not want to. And her eyes were not actually looking directly into his own, he noticed, but somewhere on a level with his chin.

It struck him then that, even apart from the fact that she did not like him, she might also be a little intimidated by him-or at least by his title. Perhaps the way he had greeted her when they were introduced was so far beyond her experience that he had made her uncomfortable. Worse, perhaps he had humiliated her. What was it she had said before they parted- I would ask you not to speak to me with such levity, my lord. I do not know how to respond.

It was a disturbing thought that perhaps he had been less than the gentleman with her.

“ Will you allow me to drive you to Miss Honeydew’s in my curricle?” he asked. “It will give me great pleasure.”

“Thank you, then,” she said.

“Tomorrow?” Miss Honeydew asked eagerly.

Miss Osbourne looked at her, and her expression softened. She even smiled.

“If that will suit Lord Whitleaf, ma’am,” she said.

“It will,” he said. “Ah, I see that Miss Moss must have found the music she was looking for earlier. She is beckoning me to come and turn the pages for her. You will excuse me?”

Miss Honeydew assured him that she would. Miss Osbourne said nothing.

“You looked,” Miss Moss said, giggling with a group of other young ladies as he came up to the pianoforte, “as if you needed rescuing.”

“Actually,” he said, “I was enjoying a comfortable coze with Miss Honeydew. But how could I resist the chance of being surrounded by music again-and by beauty?”

“Miss Osbourne will keep her company,” Miss Krebbs said. “She does not need you too, Lord Whitleaf.”

He humored the young ladies and flirted good-naturedly with them for the rest of the evening while wondering if Miss Osbourne would find some excuse not to ride in his curricle with him tomorrow.

Somehow, he realized, he had been aware of her all evening-even, oddly enough, when they were in different rooms or when both his eyes had been focused upon the sheets of music so that he could turn a page at the right moment.

He had not been similarly aware of any other woman.

Dash it all, one day of the fourteen they would both spend in this neighborhood had already passed. Was he going to be content to allow the remaining thirteen to slip by too without at least making an effort to overcome her aversion to him and make a friend of her?

A friend?

Now that was a strange notion. Women and friendship-deep friendship, anyway-did not usually go together in his thoughts. He had come to think of them as mutually exclusive interests.

What exactly was his motive, then? But did there have to be one? She was an extraordinarily pretty woman and he was a red-blooded male. Was that not motive enough? He was not usually so self-conscious about his approaches to women. But then he had never before known a lady schoolteacher from Bath-except, without realizing it, the Countess of Edgecombe.

Anyway, he would have to see what tomorrow brought. At least they would be alone together for the three-mile drive to Miss Honeydew’s and back again-if Miss Osbourne did not find some way out of accepting his escort, that was.

And if it did not rain.

4

Frances’s matchmaking schemes were going to be doomed to disappointment, Susa

The Reverend Birney, good-looking in a fresh-faced, boyish sort of way, had been polite to her last evening. He had even conversed with her for a short while at the supper table, expressing an interest in a school that took in almost as many charity girls as paying pupils. But there had been nothing approaching ardor in his ma

Mr. Da

Miss Calvert was indeed interested in Mr. Fi

“Ah, you are ready,” Frances said from the open doorway of Susa

Susa

“I wish I were going to walk to Miss Honeydew’s cottage,” she said.

“You know we would have called out a carriage for you before we allowed that to happen,” Frances said.

“But he was there when I offered to go read to Miss Honeydew,” Susa

Frances laughed and moved aside to allow Susa

“I do not suppose he minded in the least,” she said. “He is nothing if not gallant to ladies. It is very sweet of you, Susa