Страница 37 из 78
But surely if it were so she would have let him know. She would have written to him.
Would she?
He knew very well she would not.
Good Lord! Damn it to hell! He should have thought of it sooner and made an effort to discover the truth for himself. That would have been the gentlemanly thing to do-if there were a gentlemanly way to handle such a situation. Or had he thought of it and suppressed the ghastly possibility? He was not a total ignoramus after all, was he? He knew what frequently resulted when men slept with women.
Perhaps he had assumed that if he suppressed the thought, the whole ghastly possibility would just go away.
All these jumbled thoughts and counterthoughts flashed through his head in a mere second or two while he smiled cheerfully back at Lauren.
“I have nothing better to do with myself,” he said, “and I would like to see Sydnam again and wish him happy. Yes, I would be delighted to go with you.”
He had thought he would never see Susa
He had even thought that within a week or two he might forget how badly he had treated her. Perhaps it was to his credit that he had not done so, though he certainly did not congratulate himself too highly on that score.
But now he was going to Bath. And he almost certainly was going to see her once more.
It was necessary that he do so, he told himself. He would far rather go somewhere else. But he did need to discover if he had done her any lasting harm, and it really was too bad of him that he had left it so long.
Oh, dash it all! What if?…
Yes, indeed.
What if?
13
Susa
All her emotions were generally happy ones for the next little while as she assured her friends and then the girls, whom she joined in the middle of their tea, that she was very delighted to be back even though she had had an absolutely marvelous time in Somerset. And they all looked delighted to see her. She felt enveloped in familiarity and love.
She was home.
And from this moment on she would have plenty with which to occupy her mind. There was a whole busy school term to plan for and look forward to.
The journey, comfortable as the earl’s carriage undoubtedly was, had been dreadful. With only herself for company, she had been unable to stop the memories of the past two weeks from churning around and around in her head-particularly, of course, the memory of that last afternoon. She could still scarcely believe that it had actually happened-that she had allowed it to happen. But it had-and she had. She had been aware with every turn of the carriage wheels that she was moving farther and farther from him -which was a foolish thought indeed when they had always been universes apart.
Even when they were children his sister had been horrified to see them playing together and had dragged him away.
She had had her great adventure, her grand romance of a lifetime, Susa
And yet her determination to be cheerful was tested the very evening of her return. Claudia had gone out to dine with the parents of one of the new pupils, and A
Susa
“And what of you?” she asked. “Did you really have a lovely time? Did you meet anyone interesting?”
For one moment Susa
“Like a duke to sweep me off my feet and bear me off to his castle as his bride?” She laughed at the old joke. “No, not quite, alas. But Frances and Lord Edgecombe were very obliging, A
“But no one special?” A
Susa
“No,” she said. “Not really.”
A
“Only one gentleman,” Susa
A
“The Bedwyns,” A
Susa
“All this talk of married dukes is depressing me,” she said, smiling as if her heart were not breaking. “Was there no one who was unmarried?”
“No dukes.” A
Something in her tone alerted Susa
“Oh, A
“No one really,” A
“All,” Susa
“Yes,” A
Susa
“We were merely friends,” A
“Were you?” Susa
“We were. We were…very dear friends,” A
But Susa
“But he did not make an offer,” she said. “A