Susanna grimaced and reached for her gloves. Her stomach felt suddenly queasy and her knees less than steady.
“I wish I were going to walk to Miss Honeydew’s cottage,” she said.
“You know we would have called out a carriage for you before we allowed that to happen,” Frances said.
“But he was there when I offered to go read to Miss Honeydew,” Susanna explained, “and he felt obliged to offer to take me in his own conveyance. Poor man! I was horribly embarrassed.”
Frances laughed and moved aside to allow Susanna to step out of her room.
“I do not suppose he minded in the least,” she said. “He is nothing if not gallant to ladies. It is very sweet of you, Susanna, to be willing to give up an afternoon for Miss Honeydew. I try to call on her a few times whenever we are at home. It has never occurred to me, though, to offer to read to her, despite the fact that I remember you did it the last time you were here too.”
By that time they were downstairs and approaching the front doors. They were open, and Susanna could see the Earl of Edgecombe and Viscount Whitleaf standing just outside them at the top of the horseshoe steps. They turned at the approach of the ladies, and the viscount swept off his hat and bowed.
“It is a glorious day again,” he said, his eyes laughing at Susanna. “Today there are definitely a few clouds in the sky-I counted twelve on my way over here-but they are small and white and harmless and actually add to the beauty of the sky.”
Susanna might have laughed out loud or at least smiled if she had not just stepped outside and seen the vehicle in which she was to ride-Frances and the earl must wonder why he was making such an issue of what ought to have been a passing mention of the weather. But she had seen the vehicle. He had said last night that he would escort her in his curricle, but she had been too caught up in the knowledge that he was going to drive her to reflect upon the fact that she had never ridden in one before. And this was no ordinary curricle. It was, she guessed, a gentleman’s racing curricle, light and flimsy, its wheels large, its seat looking small and fragile and very far up off the ground.
“And the occasional shade is welcome,” Frances said. “It is very warm today.”
“Miss Honeydew seems determined to ply us with tea and cakes after Miss Osbourne has read to her,” the viscount said. “We may be gone for quite a while, but you may rest assured that I will return Miss Osbourne safe and sound.”
“Whitleaf is a notable whip, Susanna,” the earl said with a laugh as they all descended the steps to the terrace. “You need not fear for your safety.”
“I am not afraid,” she said. “It is just that I have never ridden in a curricle before.”
And the seat looked even higher and the whole thing flimsier from down here-and marvelously elegant. The horses, which were being held by one of the grooms from the stable, looked alarmingly frisky. But even before she need start worrying about the journey itself…how on earth was she going to get up there?
Fortunately it proved easier than it looked. She climbed up to the seat with no dreadful loss of dignity, though she clung to the viscount’s hand as she did so. She moved over on the seat as far as she could go, but even so…
But even so, when he joined her there and gathered the ribbons into his hands, his outer thigh and hip were touching hers-and there was nothing she could do about it. And she had thought two days ago when they were walking back to Barclay Court from Hareford House that she had never felt more uncomfortable in her life! She had known nothing then about discomfort.
He gave the horses the signal to start, the curricle swung into motion, and her hand took a death grip on the rail beside it. For a few moments she could think of nothing but her own safety-or lack thereof.
“I will not let you fall,” he said as they moved from the terrace onto the lane. “And I will not spring the horses-unless you ask me to do so, that is.”
Ask him to…
She laughed and turned her head toward him. He looked back, and she felt all the shock of discovering that their faces were only inches apart.
“Laughter, Miss Osbourne?” he said, raising his eyebrows. “You are not enjoying the ride by any chance, are you?”
She was terrified. Her toes were curled up inside her shoes, her hand was still gripping the rail hard enough-or so it seemed-to put five dents in the metal, and every muscle in her body was clenched. The hedgerows rushed past them somewhere below her line of vision, the little clouds dashed by overhead, the horses trotted eagerly down the lane, their chestnut coats gleaming in the sunshine, the seat swung effortlessly on its springs. She was…
She laughed again.
“This is wonderful!” she cried.
Then, of course, she felt terribly foolish. How gauche of her! She was behaving like a child being given a rare treat. And yet she did not feel like a child as she became aware again of his thigh and shoulder brushing against hers.
His laughter mingled with her own.
He had caused her a largely sleepless night, she recalled. She had dreaded this afternoon and the thought of being alone with him again. What would she talk about? She had no wish to talk with Viscount Whitleaf of all people. Even apart from the name he bore she had decided on her first acquaintance with him-on her first sight of him-that he was shallow and frivolous. And yet she had not been able to forget that he had been sitting with Miss Honeydew when most of the other young people had avoided her all evening whenever they could do so without appearing ill-mannered. And that he had made her laugh with that foolish but surely kindly-meant flattery about an old lady. And he had voluntarily doomed himself to the tedium of an afternoon at Miss Honeydew’s cottage. He had not-as Susanna had led Frances to believe-been trapped into offering her a ride in his curricle. He might easily have avoided doing so.
“You certainly enjoyed yourself with all the young ladies last evening” she said. “They would have been perfectly happy if there had been no other gentlemen present.”
“I did,” he admitted, turning the curricle onto the fork of the lane that led directly to the village with hands that looked very skilled indeed on the ribbons. “Enjoy myself, that is. It is a pleasure, you know, to listen to young ladies chatter and to turn the pages of their music when one knows that doing so makes them happy. But your barbed tongue was at work again, was it not? Would they have been happy with only me? I doubt it. Miss Calvert would not have been happy if Finn had not been there. Perhaps you did not notice that she spent some time in his company? And Miss Krebbs was very happy indeed when Moss asked her to reserve a set for him at the assembly-so happy that she allowed him to fill a plate for her at supper and sit beside her. Miss Jane Calvert would have spent a less enjoyable evening if she had not had the Reverend Birney in her sights for most of the time. And you would have sat all alone for an hour if Dannen had not been there.”
“Mr. Dannen was the host, ” she protested. “Besides, I was not talking of myself.”
“And as a final word in my defense,” he said, “it might be pointed out that all the gentlemen had an equal opportunity to gather at the pianoforte and turn pages of music.”
She could not think of an answer to that one.
“Is this a racing curricle?” she asked.
“The thing is, you see,” he said, “that no self-respecting gentleman below the age of thirty would want to purchase for himself a curricle that could not race.”