Mary Balogh - Simply Magic

“I am indeed,” Claudia said, getting to her feet. “And now I suspect I have doomed you to a sleepless night, Susanna. But I believe you would have had one anyway after receiving that letter. It is strange, is it not, how one event can be the innocent cause of another quite unrelated to it? We were both elated when Anne arrived back from Wales in August just in time for you to go to Barclay Court with Frances and the earl. If she had been even one day later, none of all this would have happened. But then, perhaps it would have found a way to happen anyway. Perhaps it is impossible to avoid our own fate. I must be tired. I am talking nonsense.”

Susanna left the room after saying good night, and climbed the stairs to her own room. She was in bed a few minutes later, huddled beneath the bedcovers against the chill of the night. But sleep did indeed evade her for a long time.

If only Anne had not come home until a day later. If only the Duchess of Bewcastle and Viscountess Ravensberg had not planned a wedding breakfast for Anne and Mr. Butler here in Bath. If only she had not gone to Bath Abbey for that evening concert and so seen Lady Markham and Edith again. If only she had never known that her father had written her a letter.

And if only Claudia had agreed with her decision to write back to Theodore tomorrow refusing his invitation and even declining his offer to send her father’s letter.

Why did she not want to read that letter? The question woke her up fully again just when she was starting to feel drowsy.

Did she want to turn her back on her father as he had turned his on her? Was it a type of revenge for the suffering he had caused her? Did she want to hurt him even though he was not alive to feel the pain?

Papa,she thought, turning her face into her pillow.

She had not even thought of him by that name for years and years.

And finally, just before she fell asleep at last, she realized that in truth she had no choice. Having Theodore send the letter here might satisfy an empty craving within her, though she doubted even that. But there were other things to know, places to see, people to talk with.

She had to go back.

She had to hear it all, see it all, read it all.

Perhaps it could all be done without her ever having to set eyes upon Viscount Whitleaf. She had seen him only once during her childhood, after all.

And if she did by some chance see him again, well then…But her mind could not cope with that possibility. One thing at a time.

Tonight it was enough to know that she was going to go back. Enough to fill her with dread.

And yet, the decision made, she slept.

Susanna arrived at Fincham Manor very late in the afternoon three days before Christmas, having traveled post. She had left Bath early on the morning following the Christmas concert and all the other busy activities that came with the end of term. She was tired even before she started the journey. She was exhausted by the time it ended.

The fact that she had dreaded coming did not help, of course.

She had wondered how it would feel to step into the house again after all these years. When she had left it eleven years ago, her father had just killed himself and she had just heard Lady Markham describe her as a burden. She had been running away.

But though it all looked startlingly familiar, it also seemed like a place she must have visited during another lifetime. She felt no great emotional connection with it.

This time, of course, she was staying in a guest chamber in the main part of the house rather than in the pretty little attic room next to her father’s. She was a guest of the family.

Edith and Mr. Morley had already arrived for Christmas, and a few other guests were expected. The whole family gave Susanna a warm welcome-Theodore even shook her hand warmly after she had curtsied to him, and then held it in both his own while he assured her that she had grown into a rare beauty. He had grown into a great bear of a man himself, with wild, unruly dark hair and a genial face. She had worshipped him as a child and still instinctively liked him.

“You will want to freshen up and change for dinner, Susanna,” he said. “I may still call you Susanna?”

“Only if I may still call you Theodore,” she said.

He laughed heartily.

By the time dinner was at an end and she had drunk a cup of tea in the drawing room with Lady Markham and Edith while the two gentlemen drank their port in the dining room, Susanna was finding it hard to keep her eyes open.

“Susanna is very weary,” Lady Markham said when the gentlemen arrived in the room. “I do think that any business you planned to discuss with her tonight, Theodore, must wait until the morning.”

Her letter. It was in this very house-the words her father had written to her just before he died. She had come specifically to read it. And now that she was here she was almost sick with the longing to see it, to hold it, to read it. But not tonight. She needed to be wide awake and strong.

“I was going to suggest the very same thing, Mama,” Theodore said. “Will that suit you, Susanna? Would you like to retire for the night now?”

“Yes, please,” she said, getting to her feet. “Thank you, Theodore. And thank you for inviting me here.”

“We will talk tomorrow, then,” he said. “And later tomorrow our other guests should be arriving.”

Lady Markham walked with Susanna up to her room.

“I am very happy you came,” she said. “I have always felt that the story of eleven years ago was never properly ended. I have felt it even more since seeing you in Bath. Now perhaps we can all end the story, Susanna, and remain friends after you return to your school. Good night. Do have a good sleep.”

And Susanna did-have a good sleep, that was. She remembered nothing between setting her head on her pillow and waking to the sounds of a maid lighting a fire in the small fireplace in her room. There was a cup of steaming chocolate on the table beside her bed.

What luxury!

But as she dressed a short while later, her teeth chattered, not so much from cold as from sick apprehension of what the morning held in store.

First, though, she had to sit through breakfast and smile and make light conversation and assure Edith-quite truthfully-that she would indeed like to go up to the nursery with her to see Jamie.

“But not yet, Ede,” Theodore said, getting to his feet at the end of what had seemed an interminable meal. “Susanna and I have business first. I’ll fetch your letter, Susanna, and you may read it wherever you wish-in your room or in the drawing room, which is always empty at this time of day. Or in the library if you prefer.”

But suddenly she could not wait even long enough for him to bring it to her. She got to her feet too.

“I will come with you if I may,” she said.

“Certainly,” he said, and she followed him from the room.

But he hesitated outside a certain room, his hand on the knob, and Susanna instantly knew why. It was the study that had been her father’s. It was where he had shot himself.

“I’ll go in and get it,” he said, smiling kindly at her. “It will just take a minute.”

“Please,” Susanna said, touching his arm, “may I come in too?”

He heaved an audible sigh and opened the door to allow her to precede him inside.

It was a disturbingly familiar room even though she had not come in here many times as a girl. Her father had used to leave the door ajar most days, however, and she had often stood outside, smelling leather and ink and listening to his deep, pleasant voice if there was someone in there with him. Often it had been Theodore, and she had listened to them talk about horses and racing or about fishing, Theodore’s voice eager, her father’s indulgent. She had always longed to push the door open and go in to join them. Perhaps her father would not have turned her away. Perhaps he would even have welcomed her and let her climb onto his knee. Perhaps-and this was a novel thought-he had felt as neglected by her as she had by him. Perhaps he had thought that as a girl she preferred to spend all her days with Edith.

She was standing at the desk, she realized, running her hand over the leather-edged blotter while Theodore watched her silently. She looked up at him and half smiled.

“It is strange revisiting a portion of one’s life one had thought long gone,” she said.

“It is cold in here,” Theodore said after regarding her for a few moments. “I will find the letter and you can go somewhere warm to read it.”

“Thank you,” she said. She supposed it was cold in here since there was no fire in the hearth and she could hear the wind rattling the windows, beyond which the sky was a leaden gray. But even if she had not been wearing a winter dress and the soft wool shawl Claudia had given her as an early Christmas gift, she did not believe she would really have felt it this morning. “But I want to read the letter here. May I, please, Theodore?”

This was where the letter must have been written, she realized-on this very desk. Just before…

Theodore did not argue. He stooped down on his haunches to light the fire, and then he stepped up to the safe and opened it. He turned with a folded, sealed sheet of paper in his hand. Susanna could see that it was somewhat yellowed about the edges.

“I will leave you for a while, then,” he said, “and then come back to answer any questions you may have- if I can answer them, that is. I was away at school at the time, and I was not told much. But I have read my father’s letter, and I have spoken with my mother.”