Simply Magic

“I think it is more that she is afraid to read it,” Peter said.

“Eh?” Theo said, giving a log a shove farther onto the fire with the toe of one boot. “What would she be afraid of? Ghosts? I suppose it might put the wind up someone, though, to see a letter written more than a decade ago in the hand of a dead man.”

“I think she is afraid of what she will find there,” Peter said. “Sometimes it seems better not to know what one thought forever lost in the past. But I do wonder if the not knowing will fester in her now that she knows about the letter. Does she know it still exists?”

“Not unless my mother has told her,” Theo said. “Sometimes I wish I had a secretary of my own. Writing letters is not my favorite occupation. I suppose I must write one, though. I can hardly just bundle up her father’s and send it off to her without comment, can I?”

“Is there likely to be something in your father’s letter that would not be in in hers?” Peter asked. “Remember that hers was written to a twelve-year-old.”

Theo raised his eyebrows and considered the question as he gazed into the fire and took two more sips from his glass. Then he looked at Peter.

“I say, Whitleaf,” he said, “what the devil is your interest in all this?”

“Just that,” Peter said. “Interest.”

“You told me you had met Susa

But he chose to find the mental picture amusing, and first chuckled and then threw back his head and laughed outright.

“He would probably have a fit of the vapors,” he said. “Lord knows what Edith sees in him, but it was a love match.”

“Susa

“Eh?” Theo frowned. “Why the devil? She is a schoolteacher, isn’t she? And last time I looked you were a viscount. It would be a brilliant match for her, wouldn’t it? And that’s a colossal understatement.”

Peter did not answer the question.

“I think she needs to know the full truth,” he said. “Everything you know and everything your mother knows and everything both letters can tell her. It may be upsetting for her, but I don’t think she will be able to put the past fully behind her until she knows all there is to know. He was all she had, Theo, and he deliberately put a bullet through his brain.”

“Well, yes,” Theo said. “Poor devil. I say, I wonder if she would like to come here for Christmas. I’ll wager Edith would be ecstatic, and I think my mother would be pleased too-she is coming home the day after tomorrow, by the way. I’ll see what she says. Come to think of it, though, I have a hankering to see Susa

“It is auburn,” Peter said.

He had not been trying to lead Theo in the direction of inviting her to Fincham. He had been thinking more of Theo’s going down to Bath, taking Lady Markham with him and both letters so that the two of them could spend some time with her and help her deal with the past.

“You will invite her?” he asked.

Theo looked at him and chuckled before getting to his feet to fetch the brandy decanter.

“I will indeed,” he said, “and you can decide whether to give Fincham a wide berth over Christmas or haunt it every day. How firmly did she mean no when she said it? And how disappointed were you? They are rhetorical questions, Whitleaf-another fellow’s love life is not my concern. But I’ll fetch Susa

He held the decanter suspended over Peter’s glass.

“It’s dashed good,” Peter said, holding his glass up. “Smuggled, I suppose?”

“Is there any other kind?” Theo asked.

She would say no, Peter thought. Of course she would say no.

There was not even any point in wondering how he would behave if she did come. Would he stay away from Fincham? Or would he haunt it every day?

But he would never know, would he? She would not come.

Eleanor Thompson did indeed join the staff of Miss Martin’s school as geography and mathematics teacher. At first Claudia expected that she would come after Christmas, but she was very eager to start immediately and so moved into the school directly from her hotel and began her duties as soon as Claudia had adjusted the timetable and teaching loads.

She proved an instant favorite with the girls and her fellow teachers alike. She was a strict enough disciplinarian, but she also conducted her classes with humor and good sense. She was too late to do anything spectacular-her own word-for the Christmas concert, like directing a play or a choir or organizing maypole dancing. She would busy herself instead with the less glorious work behind the scenes, she a

“And to think,” she said with a weary sigh late one evening in Claudia’s sitting room as she rubbed at a stubborn spot of paint on her right forefinger, “that until Christine married Bewcastle and turned all our lives on their collective head I considered that the perfect life was sitting quietly at home in our cottage with an open book in my hand.”

“And do you still think the same thing?” Susa

Eleanor laughed. “Just occasionally,” she admitted. “Like this morning, for example, when Agnes Ryde uttered a Cockney curse when she could not solve a problem in mathematics and I had to resist the temptation to pretend I did not understand. It does help, I suppose, that Agnes is a favorite of mine, even though I am sure you would tell me, Claudia, that teachers ought not to have favorites. Agnes has character.”

“Altogether too much of it at times, I am afraid,” Claudia said ruefully. “But one ca

“She actually told me yesterday,” Lila said, “that learning to speak correctly by pretending to be a duchess as I had suggested is fun. She even smiled when she said it. And she cocked one haughty eyebrow and presented her hand to me as if she expected me to kiss it.”

They all laughed, and Susa

“Did your letter this morning upset you, Susa

At first Susa

“It came from Lady Markham at Fincham Manor,” she said. “That is in Hertfordshire, where I grew up,” she added for the benefit of Lila and Eleanor.

“And?” Claudia said, her cup suspended halfway to her mouth.

“I have been invited to spend Christmas there,” Susa