As if that were a good reason for rejecting a dazzlingly eligible marriage offer.

But she did love him, and that made all the difference.

As she let herself into her bedchamber and closed the door behind her, she wished she felt even half as strong as Claudia had assured her she was.


Bath had long ceased to be a fashionable watering spot. It had become a retirement center for the elderly and the infirm and the shabby genteel and the upwardly mobile middle classes. But it still had its charm, and it had its rituals, one of the most enduring of which was the early morning promenade in the Pump Room to the accompaniment of the soft music provided by the chamber orchestra in the alcove at one end of the room.

Some people went to drink the waters in the hope of improving their health. A few went for the exercise or told themselves that they did. Most went in order to watch for new faces and listen to new gossip and pass on any news they thought someone else might not yet have heard.

Peter put in an appearance there the morning after the concert just as he had the day before. He had always enjoyed mingling with other people even when, as now, there was almost no one of his own age group and no one he knew apart from the acquaintances he had made the day before. That last fact was soon to change, though.

He was conversing with a group of ladies that included Lady Holt-Barron, who, upon hearing that he had attended the wedding breakfast at the Upper Rooms a few days earlier, informed him that she had an acquaintance with the Bedwyns, that the Duke of Bewcastle had actually called at her house on the Circus one afternoon when the present Marchioness of Hallmere had been staying with her daughter-the marchioness had still been Lady Freyja Bedwyn at the time though she had become betrothed to the marquess before leaving Bath. Peter was listening to the lady’s convoluted story with smiling indulgence when he spotted two very familiar faces across the room.

Lady Markham and Edith.

He excused himself as soon as he could politely do so and went to meet them, a delighted smile on his face. They watched him come with answering smiles.

“This is a surprise,” he said after greeting them and bowing to them both, “though I suppose it ought not to be since I discovered from Theo quite recently that Edith lives not far away and that you were spending some time with her, Lady Markham.”

“But it is not a surprise to us, Whitleaf, beyond the fact that you are here in Bath at all,” Lady Markham said. “We saw you last evening in Bath Abbey and fully intended to speak with you after the concert. But you vanished and left us wondering whether you had been simply a mirage.”

“Ah, yes,” he said. “One of the ladies in my party was unable to stay longer and so I left as soon as the concert had finished to escort her home.”

He remembered even as he spoke that Susanna had spent her childhood at Fincham Manor. He would not mention her name to them, though. It was altogether possible that she would not wish it.

Actually, he had been trying ever since he woke up from a broken, troubled sleep not to think too much of Susanna at all. Good Lord, he had offered her marriage last night- and she had refused him.

You need to look deeper into your own heart. You need to learn to like yourself too.

Ah, yes, and then there was that. Best not to think of it.

“I understand that congratulations are in order,” he said to Edith. “I trust you have recovered your health after your confinement? And that the child is well?”

“Both,” she said, smiling. “But Lawrence thought a change of air would do us good, and so he has taken lodgings on Laura Place for a month. It is good to see you again, Peter, and looking surely more handsome than ever. All the ladies here look as if they would gobble you up if given half a chance.”

Her eyes twinkled into his, and they all laughed.

“I came to attend a wedding breakfast a few days ago,” he explained, “and stayed on for a few days before returning to London.”

They chattered amiably for a few minutes before Edith set a hand on his sleeve.

“Peter,” she said, “I must ask, though it does seem impertinent. The lady you were escorting last evening-she was not…Could she possibly have been Susanna Osbourne, by any chance?”

It was impossible to avoid answering such a direct question.

“Yes,” he said. “I ran into her this summer and again at the wedding breakfast. The bride is a friend of hers while the groom is my cousin’s brother-in-law.”

Edith’s hand tightened on his arm.

“Oh, she is alive, then,” she said. “I have always wondered.”

“She disappeared,” Lady Markham explained, “after her father died. None of our efforts to find her was successful, though we were quite frantic. We never heard of or from her again. It was all very distressing on top of everything else, as perhaps you remember, Whitleaf. Or perhaps not. You were away at school at the time, I believe. Susanna was only twelve years old, far too young to be out in the world on her own. But what could we do? We had no idea where to start looking, though we did look for a long time.”

“Well,” Peter said, smiling, “now after all this time you may take comfort from the knowledge that she did survive.”

“Where is she living or staying, Peter?” Edith asked eagerly. “I would love to call on her, to speak with her. We were the dearest of friends. We were almost like sisters. It broke my heart when she disappeared.”

“Perhaps,” he said warily, looking apologetically from one to the other of them, “she ran away and stayed away because she felt a need to break the connection with her father’s employers. Perhaps the memory of anything or anyone to do with him is still just too painful. Perhaps she felt she had good-”

“And perhaps,” Edith said, smiling ruefully, “you are too much the gentleman to betray her trust, Peter. We understand, do we not, Mama?”

“You see,” he said, “it took her a while during the summer to tell me who she was even though she had recognized me, or at least my name, immediately. And even then she would tell me only that her father had died at Fincham-of a heart attack, she led me to believe. It was Theo who told me the truth about his suicide after I went home. I suppose it is understandable that Miss Osbourne may not want any reminders of that time.”

And a distinct possibility had struck him. Had she seen Lady Markham and Edith last evening and recognized them? Was that why she had been in such a hurry to leave the Abbey as soon as the concert ended, even though she had appeared to be enjoying the evening immensely until then?

“But we never understood her leaving,” Lady Markham said with a sigh. “She was only a child and her father had just died. We had always treated her well, almost as if she were one of our own, and Edith positively adored her. One would have expected her to turn to us for comfort.”

“If you see her again, Peter,” Edith said, “will you ask her if I may call on her? Or if she will call on me if she wishes to remain secretive about her exact whereabouts?”

“I will ask,” he promised. But he could not resist asking another question of his own.

“ Why did Osbourne kill himself?” He addressed himself to Lady Markham. “Did you ever find out?”

She hesitated noticeably.

“I am surprised,” she said, “that you did not even know of the suicide until Theo told you recently. You were fond of Mr. Osbourne, as I recall, and he of you. However, I suppose it was to be expected that Lady Whitleaf would want to protect you from such a harsh truth, and she would have sworn your sisters to secrecy. As for William Osbourne’s reason for doing what he did, that died with him, the poor man.”

“He did not leave a note for Lord Markham?” Peter asked.

She hesitated again.

“He did,” she said. But she did not elaborate, and he disliked intruding any further into a subject on which she was clearly reluctant to talk. It must, of course, have been a remarkably distressing episode in her life. He did, however, ask one more question.

“Did he also leave a note for Sus-For Miss Osbourne?” he asked.

“Yes, he did,” she said.

“Did she read it?”

“Both notes were folded neatly inside the final updated page of a ledger inside the drawer of his desk,” she told him, “and were understandably not discovered until after his burial. By then Susanna was gone without a trace. It would be as well to leave it at that now, Whitleaf. It is an old, unhappy story and best forgotten. But it does have a happy ending of sorts after all. Susanna is alive and apparently well. Is she? Well? And happy?”

“Both, I believe,” he said.

He knew that he had made her very unhappy during the summer. Even now he liked to believe that the prospect of saying good-bye to him again saddened her. But honesty forced him to admit that she lived a life that brought her security and friendship and satisfaction and perhaps even happiness. He was not necessary to her life. She could live very well without him. He had not lied to Lady Markham.

It was a humbling thought-that Susanna did not need him, that last evening she had actually refused his marriage offer, which from any material point of view must be seen as extremely advantageous to her. She had told him he needed to learn to like himself. Before saying good night to him, she had removed her glove and touched his cheek with gentle fingertips-as if he were the one who needed tenderness and comfort.