Despite herself her mouth quirked at the corners and drew up into a smile.

“Then I am definitely not a good teacher,” she said. “But you are a good man, Peter. You are. It is just that…”

He raised his eyebrows.

“I am not only a woman,” she said. “I am a person. All women are persons. If we are weak and dependent upon men, it is because we have allowed men to mold us into those images. Perhaps it makes men feel good and strong to see us that way. And perhaps most women are happy to be seen thus. Perhaps society works reasonably well because both men and women are happy with the roles our society has given them to play. But I was thrown out on my own early in life. I will never say it was a good thing that happened to me, but I am grateful that circumstances have forced me to live outside the mold. I would rather be a complete person than just a woman even if I must be alone as a result.”

“You do not need to be alone,” he said.

“No.” She smiled at him. “You would marry me and support and protect me for the rest of my life. And so we move full circle. I am sorry, Peter. I did not mean to deliver such a pompous speech. I did not even know I believed those things until I heard them come out of my mouth. But I do believe them.”

“It is as I thought, then,” he said, getting to his feet and handing her her bonnet. “You are happier without me. It is a humbling reality.”

And she could not now contradict him, could she?

She took her bonnet and busied herself with putting it back on and tying the ribbons beneath her chin.

“Will you do one thing for me?” she asked him.

“What?” he asked her.

She looked into his eyes.

“When you go home to Sidley Park for Christmas,” she said, “will you stay there? Make it your home and your life?” She was appalled suddenly by her presumption.

“And marry Miss Flynn-Posy too?” His smile was crooked.

“If you decide that you wish to marry her, yes,” she said. “Will you talk to your mother, Peter? Really talk?”

“Throw my weight around? Lay down the law?” he said. “Leave misery in my wake?”

“Tell her who you are,” she said. “Perhaps she has been so intent upon loving you all your life that really she does not know you at all. Perhaps- probably -she does not know your dreams.”

She felt horribly embarrassed when he did not immediately reply. How dared she interfere in his life this way? Even when guiding and advising the girls at school about their various problems and about their futures, she was careful never to be as dogmatic as she had just been.

“I am sorry,” she said, “I have no right-”

“And will you do one last thing for me?” he asked her.

Reality smote her like a fist to the stomach. One last thing. This time tomorrow he would be long gone. He would be only a memory and not even the purely happy one she had persuaded herself earlier in the afternoon he would be. The last several minutes had destroyed that possibility. She looked at him in inquiry.

“Will you allow me to take you to meet Lady Markham and Edith?” he asked her.

“Now?”she said.

“Why not?” he asked her. “Lawrence Morley, Edith’s husband, has taken lodgings on Laura Place, only a stone’s throw away. I promised to call there before leaving Bath. And I promised Edith that I would ask you if she may call on you or if you will call on her.”

She shook her head.

“Do consider,” he said. “I do not know if it is my place to tell you this, but there really were letters, you know-to Lord Markham and to you.”

There was a coldness about her head and in her nostrils.

“Letters?” Somehow no sound came out with the word.

“From your father.” He took one step closer and possessed himself of both her hands, which he held very tightly. “I have no idea if they were kept, Susanna, or what their contents were. But ought you not at least to see Lady Markham?”

There had been letters-one of them for her.

Her father had written her a letter!

Disclosing what? What had the letter to Lord Markham disclosed?

But as quickly as shock had come, panic followed on its heels.

“It would be as well if they have been destroyed,” she said, pulling her hands free again and going back to the seat to rescue her gloves. “There is no point in trying to go back after all these years to rake up an old unhappiness that drove a man to his death.” She fumbled to pull on the gloves. “It can only cause more unhappiness for the living.”

“Have you ever not been back there, Susanna?” he asked.

He did not explain his meaning. He did not have to. Of course she had never let go of the past. How could she? Those things had happened and her suffering had been dreadful. The past was a part of her. But she had moved beyond it. She lived a life that was secure and meaningful and happy when compared to the lives of many thousands of other people. Nothing could be served by going back. It was too late.

“William Osbourne wanted to be heard,” he said. “He had something to say.”

“Then he should have said it,” she said, whirling about to face him, “to Lord Markham and to me. He said precious little to me in twelve years. He would not even talk about my mother, who was a yawning emptiness in my life. He might have spoken to me instead of killing himself. He might have loved me instead of seeking the comfort of death.”

“You loved him,” he said softly.

“ Of course I loved him.”

“Then forgive him,” he said.

“Why?” She was swiping angrily at the tears that were spilling from her eyes, her back toward him.

“It is what love does,” he said.

She laughed-a shaky, pathetic sound.

“All the time,” he said. “ All the time.”

If he just knew. If he just knew.

“Very well.” She spun around to face him. “Let us go, then. Take me to them. Let us ask about the letters-and their contents. But know in advance, Lord Whitleaf, that it may be a Pandora’s box that will be opened, that once it is open it will be impossible to close it again.”

“But this does not concern me, ” he said. “I believe it is something you need to do for yourself. The letters may not even still exist, Susanna, and yours may never have been opened before it was destroyed. It is just that I think you ought to meet Lady Markham and Edith again. You need to give them a chance-the chance you believe your father denied you.”

She stared at him and then nodded curtly.

“Let us go, then,” she said.

“ If we can find our way out of this maze,” he said, his eyes suddenly softening into a smile.

“Now I really, really wish we could be lost here forever,” she told him, smiling ruefully despite herself.

“Me too,” he agreed. “We should have gone and built a cabin on the top of Mount Snowdon when we had a chance, Susanna.”

He offered her his arm and she took it.


19


It seemed to Peter as they approached Laura Place, the diamond-shaped street at the bridge end of Great Pulteney Street, that this was the damnedest time to discover that he was not in love with Susanna Osbourne after all.

He loved her instead.

And there was a world of difference between the two types of love.

He loved her, yet much of the time she disliked him and even despised him.

If there was a God, then that deity must be a joker indeed. At the risk of appearing vain in his own eyes, he would have to say that almost every other young lady he had ever met-and he had met a large number just in the five years since reaching his majority-both liked and admired him and would even be prepared to love him if he set himself to wooing them.

He was going to leave Bath early tomorrow morning, and nothing was going to stop him this time. He could hardly wait to be on his way, in fact. If he had not committed himself to this afternoon call, he would start his journey now, this afternoon.

They had walked all the way from Sydney Gardens in silence.

“This is the house,” he said at last after keeping his eyes on the numbers. And he stepped up to the door and rapped the knocker against it.

He would have taken Susanna’s arm again, knowing how nervous she must be feeling, how reluctant she was to make this call, but he did not do so. His mother and his sisters had overprotected him, and it seemed that without realizing it he had learned to do the same with other people-especially the woman he loved. She did not want his support or protection. She did not need them either, dash it.

The ladies had just returned from shopping, the manservant who opened the door informed them. He would see if they were receiving visitors. He glanced at the card Peter handed him and raised his eyebrows before turning away.

Two minutes later, they were being ushered into a small drawing room abovestairs, and Edith was introducing a thin, fair-haired, bespectacled young man to Peter as Lawrence Morley, her husband. Then she turned to Susanna, two spots of color high in her cheeks.

“You are Susanna,” she said. “Oh, of course you are. I could not mistake that hair or those eyes anywhere. You have grown up but really you have not changed at all. I was convinced it was you in the Abbey with Peter last evening.” She stretched out both her hands. “Oh, just look at you. Lawrence, dearest, this is the Susanna Osbourne we were telling you about at breakfast.”