“I feel very foolish at getting caught being a watering pot,” Susanna said after blowing her nose, “especially on such an inappropriate occasion. They are not tears of grief, I do assure you. Quite the contrary. It really was a wonderful,wonderfulevening, was it not? I’ll remember it all my life. I danced every set but two. It was all quite beyond my wildest dreams. And even one of those two I could have danced. Mr. Finn offered to lead me out, but Miss Honeydew was feeling a little faint and I took her to the refreshment room instead. And during the last set Viscount Whitleaf and I strolled outside where it was cool rather than dance.”
She went and sat on the bed and, when Frances took the chair beside the dressing table, she drew up her legs so that she could hug her knees, and tucked the folds of her robe about her feet.
“Ah, this feels just like old times,” Frances said with a smile. “I still miss you and the others, you know, and life at school and those times when two or more of us would sit up talking far too late into the night. Which is not to say I would give up my present life to return there, but…Well, even happy choices involve some sacrifice. And most of us, I suppose, would like to both have our cake and eat it if only it were possible.”
“Didyouenjoy the evening?” Susanna asked.
“Of course I did,” Frances said. “I always enjoy a local assembly better than any grand ball. And this one was made special by the fact that you were there and that you had a number of agreeable partners. And that there was a waltz and I was able to dance it with Lucius and see that you were dancing it too. Yes, it was all quite nearly perfect.”
“I will have a great deal to tell when I return to Bath,” Susanna said. “Among a dizzying number of other things, I will be able to tell Claudia and Anne—and Mr. Huckerby—that I actually waltzed at a real ball—or at a real assembly anyway—and with no less a personage than aviscount. Not quite a duke, perhaps, but close enough.”
She had always made a joke with her friends of her determination to snare a duke one day. She smiled and then rested her forehead on her up-drawn knees.
“Itislovelier than any other dance,” Frances said with a sigh. “It is so…oh,romantic.”
“Yes.” Susanna closed her eyes and remembered the glorious wonder of it. It had seemed to her that she had almost floated over the boards beneath her feet without actually touching them. It had seemed as if waltzing and her dream of flying free had become one and the same. Except that waltzing had not been done alone, but with a man who had held her in the circle of his arms and smelled of musk cologne and masculinity. For the space of that one set of dances dream and reality had touched and merged and she had known complete happiness—one of those rare interludes in any life.
It had been sheer magic.
She wouldalwaysremember—half with wonder, half with a sort of pain. For a while, she feared, the pain might outweigh the wonder.
And then, quite unexpectedly and ignominiously, the tears were back and soaking into her robe and she uttered a quite audible hiccough as she tried to control them.
“Oh, goodness,” she said, fumbling in her pocket for her handkerchief and managing to produce a shaky laugh, “what an idiot you will think me.”
There was a brief but disconcerting silence.
“Susanna,” Frances said then, “you have not fallen in love with Viscount Whitleaf, have you?”
Susanna jerked her head upward and gazed horrified at her friend, wet, reddened eyes and all.
“No!” she exclaimed. “Oh, no, Frances, of course I have not. Whatever put such a silly notion into your head?”
But the trouble was that her tears seemed to be beyond her control tonight. Her eyes filled again, and she felt two tears spill over onto her cheeks. She mopped at them hastily with her handkerchief and held it to her eyes.
“Ah, my poor dear,” Frances said softly.
“But you are quite wide of the mark. Oh, this is very silly of me,” Susanna wailed. “I am not inlovewith him, Frances. Truly I am not. But I dolikehim exceedingly well, you see. We have even become friends during these two weeks. And tonight Iwaltzedwith him. But now that the assembly is all over, I cannot help remembering that the holiday is almost over, that within a few days I will be returning to Bath. Don’t mistake me—I look forward to going back. It is my home and my other friends are there. And the prospect of a new teaching year with some new girls and the return of the old is always exhilarating. But just at the moment I am contemplating the sadness of saying good-bye to you and Lord Edgecombe and everyone else here.”
“Including Viscount Whitleaf,” Frances said softly.
“Yes.” Susanna smiled wanly as she put her handkerchief away again. “Including him.”
“But heisjust a friend?” Frances asked, frowning, her eyes looking troubled even in the candlelight.
“Yes,” Susanna assured her, making her smile brighter. “Of course that is all he is, you silly goose.”
Friends do not kiss.
He had kissed her under the elm outside the church. Or was it pathetic to call that brief brushing of lips a kiss? She knew, though, that she would remember it for the rest of her life as a kiss—her first and doubtless her last.
Friends do not kiss.
But theywerefriends.
There was nothing else between them but friendship, in fact.
She did not want there to be anything else.
