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Lila laughed and took a cup of tea from Claudia. Fifteen minutes later she was on the way up to her own room, clearly relieved that the day was finally over.
“Academically Lila does very well indeed,” Claudia said after she had left. “In other areas she is still fragile. She may discover that teaching really does not suit her at all, though I still have hopes that she will settle. I have high hopes that Miss Thompson will come here. She is older and more mature. Did you like her, Susa
“Yes,” Susa
Claudia laughed.
“Her sense of humor will be put to the test if she comes here,” she said, “though it would be a decided asset. Would it be possible to teach successfully if one did not have a healthy sense of the ridiculous? I very much doubt it.”
They sipped their tea and lapsed into silence-and Susa
It had after all been good to see him again and to know that it was concern for her-and his possible responsibility toward her-that had brought him.
But now there was an inevitable ache of emptiness inside that was very difficult to ignore.
“I am very sensitive to undercurrents,” Claudia said. “It is another asset for a teacher, I firmly believe. I can sometimes sense things that are brewing long before they bubble to the surface and cause trouble or even disaster.”
Susa
“You met Viscount Whitleaf when you were staying at Barclay Court this summer,” Claudia said.
“Yes,” Susa
Claudia nodded. She had spent a few days at Barclay Court earlier in the year, before Frances left for Europe.
“My first impression of the viscount,” Claudia said, “was that he was conceited-as well as wondrously handsome, of course. Both the Earl of Edgecombe and Miss Thompson assured me that I was mistaken. Neither you nor Frances expressed any opinion, however. And then you proceeded to eat half a cucumber sandwich and perhaps a third of a currant cake and maintain an uncharacteristic near-silence throughout tea. And Frances did not do much better. She was watching you almost the whole time, a look of troubled concern in her eyes. Indeed, I am not even sure it was undercurrents I felt. It was something altogether more overt than that.”
It would be pointless, Susa
“It is not quite what you think,” she said.
“And what is it that I think?” Claudia asked, her look keen.
“Viscount Whitleaf and I became friends,” Susa
She smiled-and sloshed her tea into her saucer. She set the cup down in haste until such time as her hands had stopped shaking.
Good heavens! Oh, gracious heavens. She would be weeping next-as she had the night after the assembly when Frances came to her room. How utterly mortifying.
“Is it not a shame,” Claudia said with a sigh after a short silence, “that we ca
Susa
“I was able to offer you the relative security of a teaching position when you grew up,” Claudia said. “I was not, alas, able to find you a husband despite your beauty and vitality and intelligence.”
“Oh, Claudia,” Susa
Claudia sighed again.
“Of course you are not,” she said briskly. “Come, it is time we went to bed even though it is still not very late, is it? It has been a long and busy and emotional day, though, and I feel like a limp rag. And I have promised to take study hall tomorrow evening on top of everything else.”
“I will be conducting a rehearsal for the Christmas play,” Susa
Life would go on, she told herself a few minutes later as she shut her bedroom door behind her. She had survived the end of August. She would survive today.
At least there would be much to occupy her mind tomorrow and in the coming days.
And at least there were pleasant memories of today to add to the ones from the summer. She was glad he had come to ask her if she was with child. He would not have abandoned her to her fate if she had been. She knew that as clearly as if he had said so.
He was still a man she could like and even…
Well, yes, of course she still loved him too.
It would be foolish to deny it.
She would survive the admission. She had survived it in August, and she would survive it now. But she did wonder wistfully when an unfed love died. It did not last forever, surely? She fervently hoped not.
She looked forward to the day when she could bring out the memories and derive only a sort of nostalgic pleasure from them.
That day had not yet come.
Not by a long way.
Peter did not go with Lauren and Kit when they left for Alvesley Park the following morning even though both of them assured him that he would be very welcome and their children begged him to come. He was going to set out for London a little later in the day, he told them-he had some business to attend to there. The business consisted of keeping his eye out for a new team of horses to buy, though, truth to tell, there was nothing wrong with his chestnuts. He also needed to visit his clubs, notably White’s, to discover who was still in town and who was new in town and what the latest news and gossip might be-though those particular pursuits could hardly be described as business.
Really, of course, he had no pressing reason for going anywhere in the world, except home. But there was still a while before Christmas, and he had decided not to go before then.
His mother was going to transform his dining room into a lavender monstrosity-she had mentioned the color in her last letter-as a complement to the drawing room. But she was going to leave it until after Christmas since they were expecting guests-she had used the plural pronoun. Christmas would be soon enough, then, to stop such a disaster from happening. A lavender dining room, for God’s sake!