“She actually told me yesterday,” Lila said, “that learning to speak correctly by pretending to be a duchess as I had suggested isfun. She even smiled when she said it. And she cocked one haughty eyebrow and presented her hand to me as if she expected me to kiss it.”
They all laughed, and Susanna got to her feet to pour them each a second cup of tea.
“Did your letter this morning upset you, Susanna?” Claudia asked after they had all settled again.
At first Susanna had thought it must be from Frances or Anne, but then she had seen that it was addressed in an unfamiliar hand.
“It came from Lady Markham at Fincham Manor,” she said. “That is in Hertfordshire, where I grew up,” she added for the benefit of Lila and Eleanor.
“And?” Claudia said, her cup suspended halfway to her mouth.
“I have been invited to spend Christmas there,” Susanna said. “Edith and Mr. Morley and their son will be going too. My invitation comes directly from Sir Theodore Markham himself. It is exceedingly kind of him and of Lady Markham, who told him, I suppose, of our meeting in Bath a few weeks ago, but I will say no, of course. I would have written back today if I had not been so busy with drama and a set of essays to mark after classes were over.”
“Susanna,” Lila said, her voice incredulous, “you have a chance to spend the holiday with a baronet and his family at a country home, and you are going to sayno?”
“But of course,” Susanna said, still smiling. “I had a two-week holiday at the end of August. It would be too, too greedy to ask for another now.”
“And yet Lila and I will be here over the holiday, as well as Claudia, to look after the girls who will remain,” Eleanor said.
“But I have no wish to go,” Susanna protested. “I would far rather stay here with all of you.”
They talked for a few minutes longer until Eleanor got to her feet and declared cheerfully that she needed her sleep if she was to survive another day as a schoolteacher. Lila left with her. Susanna would have followed them after stacking the dishes neatly on the tray if Claudia had not spoken to her.
“Something in that letter upset you more than a simple invitation to spend Christmas would have done,” she said. “Do you wish to talk about it, Susanna? Butonlyif you wish.”
Susanna stared at her for a moment before sighing and sinking back into her chair.
“I cannot go back to Fincham Manor, Claudia,” she said. “There are too many unhappy memories associated with it.”
“And it is too close to Sidley Park,” Claudia said. It was not a question.
“Yes.” Susanna looked down at her hands.
They sat in silence for a few moments. Viscount Whitleaf’s name had not been spoken between them since the afternoon when Susanna had said good-bye to him. The pain had been too intense to share with even the dearest of friends, and Claudia, as usual, had sensed and respected that fact.
“Is it perhapsnecessarythat you go back?” Claudia asked, breaking the silence. “Now that the past has been raked up again, whether you wished it to be or not, ought you perhaps to put it properly to rest this time?”
Susanna lifted her eyes to gaze into the dying embers of the fire.
“There were letters,” she said. “I did not tell you that after my visit to Laura Place, did I? My father wrote two before he died—one to Sir Charles Markham and one to me. They are both still in a safe at Fincham. Theodore asked Lady Markham to inform me that he will send me mine if I wish, but that he strongly recommends that I go to Fincham to see both letters and to speak with him.”
“Oh, Susanna!” Claudia exclaimed. “What a shock it must have been for you—but what a delightful one—to discover that your father wrote to you after all before taking his life. And how exciting to find out today that the letter still exists! Do you not ache to read it? I will send you there tomorrow if you wish so that you will not have to wait one day longer than necessary.”
“I do not want to see it,” Susanna said.
Claudia stared at her and raised her eyebrows.
“Iknowwhy he killed himself,” Susanna said, “and I cannot bear to read what he thought suitable for a twelve-year-old’s eyes. He loved Viscountess Whitleaf, Claudia, but she was cruel to him and broke his heart. Lady Markham told me a few weeks ago that there was something shameful in his past that was about to expose him to disgrace and dismissal and poverty, but I do not believe it. Iknowthe truth. Viscountess Whitleaf killed my father as surely as if she had pulled the trigger herself. Or it could be said that his own weakness in being unable to live on with a broken heart was what killed him.”
There. She had never said it aloud before. She had tried not even to think it—that one person could wield such emotional power over another, and that the other could not find the strength of character or will to fight back. She hadseenthem together. She hadheardthem. Sheknew. She had always known.
Her father had left her, abandoned her forever, because he had not been able to live without the love of a cruel woman who did not care the snap of two fingers for him—and those had been the viscountess’s own words.
It was no wonder Susanna had cringed from the nameWhitleafon that country lane near Barclay Court during the summer.
“Oh, Susanna,” Claudia said, “ViscountessWhitleafof all people? You poor dear.”
“You can see now why I want nothing to do with any of it,” Susanna said. “Or withhim.”
