Mary Balogh - Simply Magic

He sat up too.

“I cannot bear to let you go,” he said as she reached for her bonnet and pulled it on over her disheveled curls. “Can you bear to let me go?”

“No,” she admitted, pausing as she tied the ribbons beneath her chin. “But there are no alternatives that I can bear even as well as saying good-bye to you.”

“Susanna-” he began.

But she had got to her feet and stood looking down at him. She had even dredged up a half-cheerful smile from somewhere.

“I will treasure the memory of this fortnight,” she said. “Even the memory of this. But this is the end. It must be. Anything else would be sordid.”

“Sordid.” He frowned up at her and then reached for his hat and got slowly to his feet to stand beside her. “Would it?”

“Yes,” she said. “I am a teacher, not a courtesan. I will remain a teacher.”

He looked at her for a long moment, his eyes unfathomable, and then he nodded.

“I beg your pardon,” he said. “I do beg your forgiveness for the insult.”

“It was not insulting,” she said softly, “to let me know that you would prolong your acquaintance with me if you could. Shall we go back instead of walking farther? We must have been gone for some time, and Frances will wonder what-”

“We have been up to?” he suggested.

Slowly and ruefully they smiled at each other.

When he offered his arm, she took it, and they resumed their walk, albeit in the opposite direction. She felt all the unreality of the past half hour or so.

Except that it was not unreal.

Between her thighs she could feel the trembling aftermath of what they had done together.

Inside, she felt an unmistakable soreness.

Deep inside she harbored his seed.

Too late she thought of consequences.

Peter returned home to Sidley Park in September after he could be sure that all his mother’s houseguests had left. He wondered a little uneasily as his carriage approached the house if he was going to find it easy-or even possible-to share his home with his mother now that he had made a decision to settle here. He loved her dearly, but she had always ruled Sidley as though it were her own domain and everyone in it as though she were a supreme deity who knew what was best for them. It was a good thing she had ruled her children with a loving as well as a firm hand-though that very fact, of course, would make it harder to exert his will against her now.

But why anticipate problems when they did not even exist yet?

When his carriage drew to a halt before the house and the coachman opened the door, Peter did not even wait for the steps to be set down but vaulted out onto the cobbled terrace like an eager boy home from a dreary term at school.

It did not take him long to discover that problems did indeed exist.

His mother had been alleviating the tedium of her days since the departure of the houseguests by having the drawing room refurbished with a preponderance of pink colorings and frills. Most notably there were frilly pink cushions everywhere, though even they were preferable to the pink curtains, which were pleated and ruched and frilled and scalloped in ways that made him feel slightly bilious.

“This has always seemed such a plain, dark, gloomy room,” she explained, her arm linked through her son’s as she took him to inspect what had been done. “Now already it looks light and cheerful, would you not agree, my love? It will look even better when the portraits have been replaced with some pretty landscapes.”

“Where are the portraits going?” he asked her, masking the dismay he felt with a tone of polite interest. They were portraits of some of his ancestors, and he had always been proud of them, fascinated by them, and altogether rather fond of them. They were a link to his father, whom he could not remember, and to his heritage on his father’s side, in which no one else but he had ever seemed interested.

“To the attic,” she said. “I have always hated them. One does not need such gloomy reminders of the past, would you not agree, my love?”

He grunted noncommittally.

The drawing room, he thought-though he did not say so aloud-looked like an oversize lady’s boudoir. It would look even more so with different pictures.

“Well, what do you think?” she asked, beaming up at him.

It was time, perhaps, to play ruthless lord and master. But she looked so very happy and so very sure that he would be pleased too. And it was a mere room when all was said and done. He could live with a pink room-provided it was not the library or his bedchamber.

“It is very… you,Mama,” he said. It really was a room suited to her. She had always been pretty-she still was-and delicate and very feminine. Pink had always been her favorite color.

“I knew you would adore it,” she said, squeezing his arm. “It is so good to have you home again. But, my love, it was most provoking of the Raycrofts to insist that you remain in Somerset when they knew you wished to be here. Our guests were very disappointed, especially Lady Larchwell, who was hoping, I daresay, that her daughter would take your eye. Miss Larchwell is a pretty young lady and modest too, considering the fact that her maternal great-grandfather was a duke. You would like her. You really ought to have asserted yourself with the Raycrofts, you know. You are just too kindhearted for your own good.”

“I must confess, Mama,” he said, “that I enjoyed my stay at Hareford House very much indeed.”

“Well, of course you did,” she said, seating herself on a chair and almost sinking out of sight amid a pile of cushions. “Though I daresay the company was not very distinguished. It is not so here either now that all the houseguests are gone. I will be glad of your company, my love.”

“Well, there are the Markhams,” he said. “I will certainly be happy to see Theo again. And there are the Harrises and the Mummerts and the Poles.”

But his mother pulled a face and made no reply.

She had always behaved graciously enough toward their neighbors, but she had always treated them too with a condescension that spoke of the social distance she felt existed between them. The Markhams were a distinguished enough family, it was true, and had always been prominent in political circles-Theo’s father had actually been a minister in the government for a number of years. But though there had been a time when his mother visited often at Fincham Manor and occasionally took him and his sisters with her, the relationship had cooled long ago. It was a pity. Theo’s mother still lived at Fincham during the winter months, and she was much of an age with his mother. They might have been friends.

“And speaking of the Markhams,” he said, suddenly thinking of something, “do you remember Mr. Osbourne?”

Her fingers stopped playing with the lace frill of one of the cushions, and she stared blankly at him.

“I cannot say I do,” she said.

“He was the late Sir Charles Markham’s secretary for a number of years,” he explained.

“Was he?” She gave the matter some thought, but then shrugged and shook her head. “Then I would not have known him, would I?”

“You scolded me once,” he said, “when he was teaching Theo and me to write in some fancy script in his study. You came dashing in and then were very upset because you had thought we were up in Theo’s room when instead we were breathing in ink fumes and probably giving ourselves a headache.”

“You had very delicate health, my love,” she said. “I always feared for you, especially if I could not find you where I expected you to be. But I do not remember that particular incident.”

“And then there was the time,” he said, “when I was home from school for a week and went over to Fincham with you-without the girls-only to discover that Theo did not have a school holiday and Edith was away at a birthday party somewhere. I went riding off on one of the horses from the stable to run an errand with Mr. Osbourne-I daresay I told him I had your permission or else he thought that at my age I did not need it. You were so upset by the time we came back that I believe you were actually ill after we came home. It was the last time I saw him.”

“Oh?” she said. “Was he dismissed? I daresay he ought to have been.”

“He died,” he said. “Suddenly. Of a heart attack.”

“Oh?” she said. “That was unfortunate. But what can have put a mere secretary into your mind years after his death? Do be a love and ring for the tea tray.”

He did so without answering her question. It made perfect sense, of course, that she would not remember a man who had really been no more than a glorified servant. It was even less likely that she would remember Susanna Osbourne-not that he had been about to mention her name to his mother.

He was trying hard to forget it himself-or at least the guilt with which he remembered it.

He called upon all his neighbors in the coming weeks. The Harrises told him about their recent stay at Tunbridge Wells, the Mummerts wanted to know about all the latest fashions in London, since they were planning to spend a few weeks there in the spring, and the Poles regaled him with stories of the exploits of their numerous grandchildren. They were all perfectly amiable, but none of them issued any invitations to him to dine or play cards or join them at any other entertainment. It had never been done-he was Viscount Whitleaf and as far above them in station as the stars. Everything in their manner during his visits demonstrated an almost awed respect. All of them assured him that they were deeply honored that he had called. But he issued no invitations either-his mother would be uncomfortable, even upset, about having her house invaded by inferior company.