“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.”
“Thank you,” she said, but as he handed her the letter, she realized that in fact there were two. Her hand closed about them, and she shut her eyes until she heard the quiet click of the door as he left.
She seated herself carefully behind the desk and looked down at the papers in her hand.
Her own letter was on top. The words Miss Susanna Osbourne were written in the firm, sloping, elegant hand that she recognized instantly as her father’s. His hand had not even shaken at the end, she thought as she set the other letter down on the desk, but her own was shaking as she held it. She slid her thumb beneath the seal and broke it before opening out the sheet.
“My dearest Susanna,” she read, “you will feel that I have abandoned you, that I did not love you enough to live for you. When you are older, perhaps you will understand that this is not true. My life, if I were to live on, would suddenly change quite drastically, and therefore so would yours. Perhaps I would face that change if I were alone as I faced another when I was much younger. Who knows? But I cannot subject you to it. I have been accused of two dreadful crimes, one of which I committed, one of which I did not. But my innocence in the second case does not matter. It will not be believed in light of the first.
“I am ruined, as perhaps I deserve to be. Your mother has already paid the ultimate price. It is time I did too. And I do it-or so I tell myself, trying to give my life some touch of nobility at the end-so that you may live. You have family, Susanna-mine and your mother’s. And either one will be happy enough to take you in once I am gone. They would have taken you at your birth, but I was too selfish to give you up. You were all I had left. I have given instructions to Sir Charles, and you will be united with your family. They will be good to you-they are good people. They will love you. You will have a secure, happy girlhood with them and a bright future. I promise you this though life will probably seem very bleak to you now as you read. I will take my leave of you, then, my dearest child. Believe that I do love you and always have. Papa.”
Susanna rubbed the side of her thumb over that final word. Papa. Had she really called him that? But of course she had. It was only afterward that she had changed his name to my father.
I do it so that you may live.