She could clearly remember the mingled relief and humiliation with which she had listened to his wholly unexpected offer.

“And you accepted,” Viscount Whitleaf said.

“I really had no choice,” she told him. “I was staring starvation in the face. I had had only one promising interview-for a position as a lady’s maid. I had said at the agency that I was fifteen though I was only twelve. But the lady who interviewed me did not believe me and dismissed me out of hand. She was not the housekeeper, as I had expected, but my prospective employer herself. She told me that since she was going to have to put up with the maid who was hired, she was going to have the choosing of her. I was terrified of her, even though she was very young herself. And yet I have always had the strange conviction that she must have had something to do with Mr. Hatchard’s finding me.”

“Really?” he said.

“How else would he have found me and why else would he have singled me out?” she asked. “London is teeming with destitute girls. And her name keeps popping up in connection with the school in the most puzzling way. Claudia Martin was once her governess but left in outrage at her unruly behavior and haughty manners. Then she turned up unexpectedly at the school one day after I was there and asked Claudia if she needed anything. Poor Claudia was outraged. But the school has a secret benefactor, you see. It seems never to have occurred to Claudia that perhaps it is Lady Hallmere herself, but I wonder if perhaps it is.”

“Lady Hallmere?” he said.

“She was Lady Freyja Bedwyn before her marriage,” she explained. “Sister of the Duke of Bewcastle. And then she married the Marquess of Hallmere, who just happens to have his home and estate in Cornwall, in the exact place where Anne Jewell lived before she was recommended to the school as a teacher.”

“I know the Bedwyn family,” he said. “Bewcastle is a close neighbor of my cousin Lauren, Viscountess Ravensberg.” He grinned. “I do not imagine that being Lady Hallmere’s governess would have been a comfortable thing. And I would guess that you had a fortunate escape in not being taken on as her maid. She is a formidable lady. But you think it was she who sent you to Bath? Interesting!”

“I may be wrong,” she said.

And if she had needed any further reminder that he was of a different world from her own, here it was. He actually knew Lady Hallmere and the Bedwyn family. His cousin was a viscountess.

But such knowledge was no longer a cause for intimidation. She and Viscount Whitleaf were indeed friends, she believed, though only for a short while. Soon they would return to their separate worlds.

She withdrew her hand from his, smoothed out her skirt without looking at him, and got up to step outside the grotto and stand on the path looking out on the waterfall. He followed her out.

“I have been very fortunate in my life,” she said. “Once I had settled at the school I was very happy there. And since becoming a teacher I have been happier.”

“In some ways,” he said, “I envy you.”

She looked up sharply into his face to see if he joked. What a very strange thing to say! But he was squinting off toward the waterfall and seemed to be talking to himself rather than to her. He had certainly not been joking. When he looked back at her, he was smiling again.

“Are you preparing to dance the night away at the assembly tomorrow?” he asked her.

“It is a country entertainment, Lord Whitleaf,” she said. “I daresay it will be over well before midnight.”

“One of the first things I noticed about you,” he said, “was that you are literal-minded-hearts as organs in the chest, for example. My poet’s soul still winces over that one. Let me rephrase my question, then. Are you preparing to dance the evening away?”

“I am preparing to enjoy myself,” she said. “I have never been to a ball or even a country assembly.”

“Never?” He looked arrested. “You do not know how to dance, then?”

“Learning to dance is a necessary part of any lady’s education,” she said, “even if she is only a charity pupil. We have a dancing master at the school-Mr. Huckerby. I learned from him. And now I often demonstrate the dances with him while the girls look on.”

“But you have never danced at a ball,” he said quietly.

She felt horribly embarrassed then. That was one pathetic piece of information she ought to have kept to herself.

“We should go back,” she said. “It must be getting late. Everyone will be thinking of going home, and our long absence will be remarked upon.”

“Miss Osbourne,” he said abruptly, “will you dance the first waltz with me at the assembly?”

Oh!

She stared at him, filled with such longing that for a moment she could not even speak. “Oh,” she said then, “there is no need to ask such a thing just because I told you it will be my first assembly and I am in a sense your friend.”

He seized her hand again then, but not just to hold. He raised it to his lips and held it there for a few moments while he looked intently into her eyes over the top of it.

“What does this in a sense mean?” he asked. “How can two people be friends in a sense? Either we are or we are not. I have asked you to waltz with me because I wish to waltz with you and no one else. Sometimes motives are as simple as that.”

She had watched her hand held against his lips, and she had felt it there-not just with the hand itself but with every cell in her body. No man had ever made her such a courtly gesture before. Ah, no one had. And it felt very good indeed. It felt more than just good.

And then his face blurred before her vision and she realized in some horror that her eyes had filled with tears.

She tried to pull her hand away, but he held on to it, his grasp tightening.

“Susanna,” he said, “have I upset you? I do beg your pardon. Do you not wish-”

“Yes,” she said shakily, dashing her free hand across her eyes. “I do. I will. I mean, it would give me the greatest pleasure to waltz with you, my lord. Thank you.”

But her stomach felt as if it had performed a somersault inside her. He had called her Susanna. How foolish to be so affected by that slight breach of good manners-by that wonderful sign of friendship.

He bowed elegantly over her hand and grinned at her.

“The evening preceding that waltz will be dull indeed,” he told her, his free hand over his heart.

Ah, he had seen that she was upset and otherwise discomposed, she realized. And so he was deliberately lightening the atmosphere by teasing her, even flirting with her. Oh, he was a kind man.

“Nonsense, Lord Whitleaf,” she said with a laugh that came out on a strange gurgle. “I have not forgotten that you are engaged to dance at least the first four sets of the evening with other partners. You cannot pretend that the prospect of so much female company is dull.”

He chuckled.

“But I had engaged to dance with them,” he said, “before I even met you. Once I did, I became impervious to all other female charms.”

“Flatterer!” She clucked her tongue and laughed again, with genuine amusement this time, and withdrew her hand from his.

“I am speaking the truth, you know,” he added. “I have found that friendship is far more stimulating than flirtation.”

“The female population of England would go into a collective decline if they heard you say such a thing,” she said. “We must go back.”

“Must we?” he said. “Or shall we run away and stay away forever and ever? Do you ever wish you could do that?”

“No.” But she gazed wistfully at him. Sometimes she did wish it. She had run away once. But in her dreams she could sometimes fly…

“You once told me you were not a romantic,” he said. “Are you not an adventurer either?”

“No,” she said. “My feet are firmly planted on the ground.”

“And your heart firmly pumping away in your chest,” he said, reaching out one hand to brush his knuckles lightly beneath her chin. “I am not quite sure I believe you, Miss Osbourne-on either count. But you are right, I suppose. If we are not to run away together, we had better return.”

He fell into step beside her and they proceeded on their way in a silence that soon became companionable again.

But a nameless yearning grew in her as they descended the path-a yearning perhaps to throw caution to the winds and step out of herself entirely into an unknown…

An unknown what?

Adventure?

Romance?

Neither was being offered her with any seriousness, and she would refuse even if they were. Dreams were all very well as long as one never confused them with reality.

The reality was that she was walking beside Viscount Whitleaf along the wilderness walk at Barclay Court during a lovely summer afternoon. The reality was that she was going to waltz with him tomorrow evening at her first-ever assembly. Even after that there would still be three days of her holiday left.

There was nothing whatsoever wrong with reality. Reality was very close to being perfect.

And even after those three days were over there would be Anne and Claudia waiting for her in Bath and the security of her teaching position. There would be the other teachers and the girls, including several new ones. There would be all the challenge of a new school year to prepare for. And pleasant memories of her holiday.

“A penny for your thoughts,” he said after they were down the steep part of the path and were drawing closer to the lake.

“I was realizing how many blessings I have to count,” she said.