Susanna sighed again. “Was it not like a fairy tale, their romance?” she said. “He would not let her go, would he, even though he was Viscount Sinclair and heir to the earldom and Frances was a lowly teacher at our school. But she was so beautiful. She is even more so now. Marriage and travel and a singing career obviously agree very well with her.”

They were quiet for a moment, both glad of Frances’s happiness, both rather melancholy for their own sakes.

“And what of you?” Anne asked. “Did you really have a lovely time? Did you meet anyone interesting?”

“Like a duke to sweep me off my feet and bear me off to his castle as his bride?” Susanna laughed. “No, not quite, alas. But Frances and Lord Edgecombe were very obliging, Anne, and made sure there was some entertainment for me to attend almost every day, even though I am sure they would have been just as happy to relax and be quiet together after being away for so long. I met some amiable and interesting people, most of whom I knew from before, of course.”

“But no one special?” Anne asked.

“No,” Susanna said. “Not really.”

Anne raised her eyebrows.

“Only one gentleman,” Susanna admitted, “who made his intentions very clear, and they were not honorable ones. It was the old story, Anne. Yet he was very handsome and very amiable. Never mind. And you? You told us a great deal about your Welsh holiday the evening before I left, but nothing that was very personal. Did you meet anyone interesting?”

“The Bedwyns,” Anne said, smiling, “are all quite fascinating, Susanna-and that is actually an understatement. The Duke of Bewcastle is every bit as formidable as he is reputed to be. He has cold silver eyes and long fingers that are forever curling about the handle of his quizzing glass. He is quite terrifying. And yet he was unfailingly courteous to me. The duchess is a delight and not at all high in the instep, and it is quite clear that he adores her though he is never ever demonstrative in public. He also adores their son, who is a cross, demanding little baby-except when his father is holding him. And he holds him rather often. He is a strange, mysterious, fascinating man.”

Susanna rested her chin on her knees.

“All this talk of married dukes is depressing me,” she said, her eyes nevertheless twinkling. “Was there no one who was unmarried?”

“No dukes.” Anne smiled too, but she had a sudden, unbidden memory of sitting on the stile at Ty Gwyn, smiling down at Sydnam Butler and setting her hand in his before descending. And of the perfect summer day that had surrounded them.

Susanna was looking very directly at her.

“Oh, Anne,” she said. “Who?”

“No one really,” Anne said quickly, shifting position on the chair. But she felt instantly contrite. “Oh, what a dreadful thing to say of another human being. He very definitely is someone. He is the duke’s steward at Glandwr. He was alone and I was alone, and so it was natural enough that occasionally we walked out together or sat together on evenings when he was invited to dine. That is all.”

She willed herself not to blush.

“All,” Susanna repeated, still gazing steadily at her. “And was he tall, dark, and handsome, Anne?”

“Yes,” Anne said. “All three.”

Susanna continued to gaze.

“We were merely friends,” Anne said.

“Were you?” Susanna spoke softly.

“We were.” Anne could not quite bring herself to smile. And she could no longer sit still. She got to her feet and crossed to the window. She pulled back one curtain and looked out onto the blackness of the meadow. “We were very…dear friends.”

“But he did not make an offer,” Susanna said. “Anne, I am so sorry.”

There was a lengthy silence, during which Anne did not contradict her friend.

“Do you think,” Susanna asked as last, “life would be easier, Anne, if one had parents and family to take one about, to make sure one met suitable people, to arrange for one to meet eligible suitors? Would it be easier than living at a girls’ school as one of the teachers?”

“I am not sure,” Anne said, closing the curtains again, “that life is ever easy. Very often girls and women make disastrous marriages even while surrounded by family to help guide their choice or make it for them. I think given the choice between a bad marriage and life here, I would choose being here. In fact, I am certain I would.”

She set her forehead against the curtain for a moment before turning back into the room.

“It was so ungrateful of me,” Susanna said, “even to ask that question. Good fortune was smiling on me when I was sent here to school, and I was blessed beyond belief when Claudia offered me a position on the staff. And I have such very good friends here. What more could I ask of life?”

“Ah, but we are women as well as teachers, Susanna,” Anne said, sitting down again. “We have needs that nature has given us for the very preservation of our species.”

Needs that could sometimes be horribly damaged but not destroyed.

Susanna stared at her for several silent moments.

“And sometimes,” she said, “they are very hard to ignore. I was very tempted this summer, Anne. To be a man’s mistress. Part of me is still not convinced that I made the right choice. And will I be able to make the same choice next time? And the next?”

“I don’t know.” Anne smiled ruefully at her.

“What poor, sad spinsters we are,” Susanna said, laughing and pulling herself off the bed. She brushed out the creases from her skirt. “I am for my lonely bed. The journey has tired me out. Good night, Anne.”

Three days later all the boarders returned to school from their holiday and greeted one another-and their teachers-with boisterous good cheer and noisy chatter, and all the new girls arrived with stiff apprehension on their faces, especially the two charity girls who came alone, without even the comfort of parents, sent by Mr. Hatchard, Miss Martin’s London agent. The fees of one of them were being paid by Lady Hallmere-though Claudia did not know her identity, of course.

Anne took the two under her wing and noted almost immediately that one of them was going to need extra lessons in elocution, since her Cockney accent made the English language on her lips virtually unintelligible and that the other was going to have to be coaxed firmly and patiently-and with large doses of love-out of her unfortunate manner of belligerent bravado.

The following morning, the day pupils arrived and classes began.

For the next month life was busy. Anne fulfilled all her teaching duties and gave special care to the new charity girls. She spent most of her free time with David-who was excited at the promise Mr. Upton had made to introduce oil paints to his art classes after Christmas. She wrote and received several letters from the Bedwyn ladies and Joshua. She helped David reply to the letters Davy and Becky and Joshua had written to him.

Indeed, life seemed remarkably normal considering the fact that it was becoming increasingly obvious to Anne that there was nothing normal about hers at all. She had missed her courses before school started and had desperately tried to convince herself that it was merely because of the upsets in her life during the previous month. She had continued to hope even when she started to feel slightly nauseated after rising in the mornings-as she had done ten years ago.

But of course-had she expected a miracle?-she missed her courses for a second time at the end of September and thought about what Sydnam Butler had once said about choices. She had chosen a month and a half ago to lie with him because she had wanted him and he had wanted her and it was their last day together. And that choice had forever changed her life.

It was a terrifying thought.

But there was nothing she could do now to change that choice or avoid its repercussions. She could only move onward with her life.