Simply Magic Read Online Free PDF

There is no part of one’s anatomy or soul that can be warmed or brightened by the sight of beauty?”
    He thought she was not going to answer. They came to the fork in the lane where they had met a couple of hours ago and followed Raycroft and Lady Edgecombe onto the branch that led to Barclay Court.
    â€œYou make a mockery of tender sensibilities,” Miss Osbourne said so softly that he bent his head toward her in case she had more to say.
    She did not.
    â€œAh,” he said, “you think me incapable of feeling the gentler emotions. Is that what you are saying?”
    â€œI would not so presume,” she said.
    â€œBut you would. You already have so presumed,” he said. He was rather enjoying himself, he discovered, with this curiously serious, prim creature who looked so like an angel. “You told me I made a mockery of tender sensibilities.”
    â€œI beg your pardon,” she said. “I ought not to have said such a thing.”
    â€œNo, you ought not,” he agreed. “You wounded me to the heart—to that chest organ, that mundane pump. How differently we view the world, Miss Osbourne. You listened to me pay you a lavish and foolish compliment and concluded that I know nothing about the finer human emotions. I on the other hand looked at you, serious and disapproving, and felt—ah, as if I had stepped into a moment that was simply magic.”
    â€œAnd now,” she said, “you make a mockery of
me
.”
    She had a low, sweet voice even when she sounded indignant. She was small in stature and very slender, though she was curved in all the right places, by Jove. He wondered how well she controlled a class of girls, most of whom undoubtedly wished themselves anywhere else on earth but at school. Did they give her a rough time? Or was there steel in her character, as there appeared to be in her spine?
    He would wager there was steel—and not a great deal of tenderness. Poor girls!
    â€œI fear,” he said, “that with a few foolish words I have forever condemned myself in your eyes, Miss Osbourne. Shall we change the subject? What have you been doing with your school holiday up until now?”
    â€œIt was not really a holiday,” she said. “Almost half of the girls at the school are charity pupils. They remain there all year long and some of us stay too to care for them and to entertain them.”
    â€œUs?” he asked.
    â€œThere are three resident teachers,” she told him. “There used to be four until Frances married the earl two years ago. Now there are Miss Martin, Miss Jewell, and I.”
    â€œAnd you all give up your holidays for the sake of
charity
girls?” he asked.
    She turned to look at him again—a level, unsmiling look in which there might have been some reproof.
    â€œI was one of them,” she said, “from the age of twelve until Miss Martin made me a junior teacher when I was eighteen.”
    Ah.
    Well.
    Extraordinary.
    He was walking and talking with an ex–charity schoolgirl turned teacher. It was no wonder they were having a difficult time of it communicating with each other. Two alien worlds had drifted onto the same country lane at the same moment, none too happily for either. Though that was not quite true—he was still enjoying himself. “There is no question of
giving up
our holidays,” she continued. “The school is our home and the girls our family. We welcome a break now and then, of course. Anne—Miss Jewell—has just returned from a month in Wales with her son, and now I am here for two weeks. Occasionally Claudia Martin will spend a few days away from the school too. But in the main I am happy—we are all happy—to be busy. A life of idleness would not suit me.”
    She was a prim miss right enough. She had nothing whatsoever to say about the weather, and had only brief reproaches to offer when he would have spoken of hearts and