“Magical.” He smiled down at her. “You had better not let any clergyman hear you describe it with that word.”
She laughed softly.
“Mystical, then,” she said. “Oh, look, there must be a thousand candles burning, and the light is shivering in the drafts of air. Have you ever seen anything more…”
“Magical?” he said. “No, never.”
He loved her innocent enthusiasm, something the typical young lady of thetonsoon learned to disguise beneath a fashionable veneer of ennui. And yet there was nothing childlike about Susanna Osbourne. She was all vivid womanhood.
Her attention soon moved, though, from their surroundings to the people who occupied it, and she looked immediately apprehensive.
The audience was impressively large. Its nature was much as Peter had expected, though. Most people were elderly or at least past the first blush of youth. Except for Susanna and Miss Thompson, there was no one here he had known longer than a couple of days. It was the wrong time of year for there to be many visitors. These people would be almost exclusively residents of Bath.
He had met a number of them at the Pump Room this morning during the daily promenade, which he had joined for lack of anything else to do—and because he genuinely liked people no matter what their age or social status. He had aroused a great deal of interest, partly because he was a stranger and partly, he suspected, because he was below the age of forty.
Several of those people greeted him now as he moved along the central aisle closer to the front of the church with his party. Several others looked at him and Miss Osbourne with interest. Others greeted Lady Potford, and she stopped a few times to exchange greetings with acquaintances.
“Oh, there is Mr. Blake,” Susanna said, and smiled more broadly as she raised a hand in greeting, “and Mr. and Mrs. Reynolds.”
“Do you wish to speak with them?” he asked.
“Maybe later,” she said. “Mr. Blake is the physician who attends the school when anyone is ill. Betsy Reynolds is a day pupil at the school.”
She was holding firmly to his arm, but he suspected that she was enjoying herself.
Shewasa lady, he thought. Her father had been William Osbourne. A mere nobody did not generally rise to the exalted position of secretary to a government minister or take up residence in that minister’s country home.
But William Osbourne, for some unknown reason, had put a bullet through his brain.
Peter took a seat next to the aisle. Susanna sat beside him with Miss Thompson beyond her and then Lady Potford. It was a little chilly, but even so he helped Susanna off with her cloak, which he draped over the back of her chair while she arranged her paisley shawl about her shoulders. She was wearing the same green gown she had worn to the assembly, he could see. It was trimmed with the ribbon she had bought at the village shop to which he had escorted her.
For a few moments he was assaulted by nostalgic memories of that fortnight, during which she had so unexpectedly become his friend—before he had spoiled it all by becoming her lover. He could vividly remember her laughing in his curricle and thus revealing the fact that as well as being terrified she was also exhilarated.
She had been so full of surprises during those two weeks. He had come very close to falling in love with her in earnest—something he had not admitted to himself until very recently.
Perhaps fortunately for his peace of mind, the concert began soon after they had seated themselves. There was a full orchestra. More important, there was the great pipe organ, which played several solos and inundated every light-filled space and every shadowed alcove of the Abbey with the music of Handel and Bach.
“You were quite right about the organ,” he said, moving his head closer to Susanna’s at the end of one of the pieces.
Her eyes were glowing with happiness.
“This is like a little piece of heaven,” she said.
This.What did she include in the word? he wondered. But she was quite right. This was easily the best evening he had spent since…Well, since he did not know when. His mind scanned all the evenings he had spent in London before going to Alvesley Park and then slipped back beyond them to a certain evening in Somerset when he had waltzed at a mere country assembly and then taken a stroll along the village street.
Perhaps he reallyhadfallen a little in love with her. He hoped not. But he did not know quite how else to describe his relationship with Susanna Osbourne or his feelings for her. It was not just friendship, was it? It was a little deeper than that. And it was not quite being in love either. It was less frivolous than that.
He realized that the orchestra was in the middle of Handel’sWater Music,but he had no recollection at all of the first half of the performance. He focused his mind on the rest of it.
There were several small interludes during the course of the evening, when the audience could relax for a minute or two and exchange comments on the program. At the end, Peter knew, everyone would be reluctant to go home. Everyone would stand about in groups, talking, for perhaps half an hour before drifting off home. He looked forward to that half hour or so even though he would not wish away the rest of the evening.
But as it happened he was almost the first to leave.
Susanna had turned her head several times during the evening and had sometimes tipped it back to look upward. She was unabashedly admiring her surroundings and looking at her fellow audience members, Peter knew. He supposed that she was storing memories to take back to school with her. She turned her head away from him just before the final organ piece and looked back over her shoulder. It seemed to him that she turned to face the front again in great haste, and he noticed that she gripped the edges of her shawl very tightly with both hands.
He looked back himself, but a large, broad man two rows back was just straightening up after talking with someone next but one to him, and he effectively blocked the view of most of the audience farther back.
Peter turned his attention to a triumphant organ rendition of Bach’sJesu, Joy of Man’s Desiring.
