Simply Magic

There was a lengthy silence, during which A

“Do you think,” Susa

It seemed absurd, she thought, to miss her mother so very much even now when she was twenty-three-her mother, whom she had never known.

“I am not sure,” A

“It was so ungrateful of me,” Susa

“Ah, but we are women as well as teachers, Susa

Ah, and that was the trouble. That was the whole trouble. Without those needs, Susa

“And sometimes,” she said, “they are very hard to ignore. I was very tempted this summer, A

As if there ever would or could be a next time.

And she had been tempted in more than one way, hadn’t she? And had certainly not resisted one of those temptations.

“I don’t know,” A

“What poor, sad spinsters we are,” Susa

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 A

One Saturday morning late in September a sudden deluge of rain sent Susa

She found Claudia and A

“We are to lose A

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 Susa

“Oh, A

“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.” A

“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.”

Susa

Poor A

And it could so easily have happened to her too, Susa

Except that she would never have let Viscount Whitleaf know if she had shared A

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.

A

Susa

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 A

She did dare to hope, though, that A

Susa

“Susa

“I believe,” Susa