Free Susie by M.C. Beaton Page A
Authors: M.C. Beaton
that.”
“Very well, Felicity.”
“I don’t know why you never seem to listen to me,” Felicity went on. “That dreary, common little face and that voice of yours get on my nerves.”
Felicity intercepted a sympathetic look that Thomson threw at Susie, and this championship from a most unexpected quarter drove her to further lengths of bitchiness.
“I suppose a silly goose like you thinks a lady can be made overnight. But she can’t! In fact, anyone from your class can only hope for a veneer of refinement. Underneath, they’ll always be the same. Common as dirt. Just like your parents.”
Now, there is just so much that even a girl like Susie can take.
She rose to her feet and threw her napkin down on the table.
“Oh, shut up!” she said distinctly.
Felicity rose to her feet in a rage. “How dare—”
“Yes, I dare,” shouted Susie, feeling all the rage and satisfaction of the turning worm. “Furthermore, I’m tired of your lectures. I wish you were dead, do you hear? Dead! Dead! Dead!”
“Go to your room,” said Felicity, suddenly as cold as she had been hot. “I shall expect your apology in the morning.”
Susie’s fit of rebellion fizzled and died. She felt small and insecure and thoroughly ashamed of herself.
She trailed miserably up to her room.
She knew she would apologize to Felicity in the morning. She had not the courage left to do anything else.
Two footmen and a housemaid kindly brought the rest of her dinner up to her small sitting room. They banked up the fire, laid out her slippers, brought her up piping-hot cans of washing water, and Susie gave them a grateful, timid smile, which, as the housemaid, Gladys, told the rest of the servants later, “went right to ’er heart.”
I can’t go on like this
, thought Susie miserably.
I wish I were dead
.
Then as she thought about dying she began to weave a romantic funeral for herself while a small smile began to play about her mouth. The service would be held at the village church. All the servants would cry. Lady Felicity would tear her hair and beat her bosom with remorse. She would throw herself on Susie’s coffin and cry with grief. The vicar who would perform the service would be a homely young man with an honest, tanned face and blue eyes. “Weep, oh unfortunate woman!” he would admonish Felicity as he removed the pipe from between his manly teeth. “You and you alone are responsible for driving this child into the decline from which she died.” A ray of sun would strike her coffin, and the manly vicar would begin to cry as well. “So young and so beautiful,” he would sob. “Had she not been so far above me in social station, why, I might have married her and helped her escape from her dreadful life.”
Nursing her fantasy and taking it carefully to bed, as a child would a favorite teddy bear, Susie soon fell into a dreamless sleep. She never once thought about Giles, Lord Blackhall.
Why should she?
She had nearly forgotten that he existed.
Giles, Earl of Blackhall, had, on the other hand, not forgotten Susie. He had stayed with friends in Paris for a month and then had slowly drifted southward toward the sunny Mediterranean shore. The farther away from Blackhall Castle he traveled, the more it seemed to pull him back. It was his now, and there was so much to be done, so much land that could be farmed and was, at present, lying fallow. The moat could be drained, the keep modernized, made warmer, more comfortable. It was something to still have a castle to live in these days.
But still he traveled aimlessly on until one night in the garden of a villa in Nice, he kissed a very beautiful, very sophisticated, very passionate, and very willing lady and was deeply surprised that he should be unable to conjure up any answering response. While he pressed his lips against the warm face beneath his own, he remembered vividly the passion one kiss from Susie had aroused in him. He wondered urgently how she was and if she
“Very well, Felicity.”
“I don’t know why you never seem to listen to me,” Felicity went on. “That dreary, common little face and that voice of yours get on my nerves.”
Felicity intercepted a sympathetic look that Thomson threw at Susie, and this championship from a most unexpected quarter drove her to further lengths of bitchiness.
“I suppose a silly goose like you thinks a lady can be made overnight. But she can’t! In fact, anyone from your class can only hope for a veneer of refinement. Underneath, they’ll always be the same. Common as dirt. Just like your parents.”
Now, there is just so much that even a girl like Susie can take.
She rose to her feet and threw her napkin down on the table.
“Oh, shut up!” she said distinctly.
Felicity rose to her feet in a rage. “How dare—”
“Yes, I dare,” shouted Susie, feeling all the rage and satisfaction of the turning worm. “Furthermore, I’m tired of your lectures. I wish you were dead, do you hear? Dead! Dead! Dead!”
“Go to your room,” said Felicity, suddenly as cold as she had been hot. “I shall expect your apology in the morning.”
Susie’s fit of rebellion fizzled and died. She felt small and insecure and thoroughly ashamed of herself.
She trailed miserably up to her room.
She knew she would apologize to Felicity in the morning. She had not the courage left to do anything else.
Two footmen and a housemaid kindly brought the rest of her dinner up to her small sitting room. They banked up the fire, laid out her slippers, brought her up piping-hot cans of washing water, and Susie gave them a grateful, timid smile, which, as the housemaid, Gladys, told the rest of the servants later, “went right to ’er heart.”
I can’t go on like this
, thought Susie miserably.
I wish I were dead
.
Then as she thought about dying she began to weave a romantic funeral for herself while a small smile began to play about her mouth. The service would be held at the village church. All the servants would cry. Lady Felicity would tear her hair and beat her bosom with remorse. She would throw herself on Susie’s coffin and cry with grief. The vicar who would perform the service would be a homely young man with an honest, tanned face and blue eyes. “Weep, oh unfortunate woman!” he would admonish Felicity as he removed the pipe from between his manly teeth. “You and you alone are responsible for driving this child into the decline from which she died.” A ray of sun would strike her coffin, and the manly vicar would begin to cry as well. “So young and so beautiful,” he would sob. “Had she not been so far above me in social station, why, I might have married her and helped her escape from her dreadful life.”
Nursing her fantasy and taking it carefully to bed, as a child would a favorite teddy bear, Susie soon fell into a dreamless sleep. She never once thought about Giles, Lord Blackhall.
Why should she?
She had nearly forgotten that he existed.
Giles, Earl of Blackhall, had, on the other hand, not forgotten Susie. He had stayed with friends in Paris for a month and then had slowly drifted southward toward the sunny Mediterranean shore. The farther away from Blackhall Castle he traveled, the more it seemed to pull him back. It was his now, and there was so much to be done, so much land that could be farmed and was, at present, lying fallow. The moat could be drained, the keep modernized, made warmer, more comfortable. It was something to still have a castle to live in these days.
But still he traveled aimlessly on until one night in the garden of a villa in Nice, he kissed a very beautiful, very sophisticated, very passionate, and very willing lady and was deeply surprised that he should be unable to conjure up any answering response. While he pressed his lips against the warm face beneath his own, he remembered vividly the passion one kiss from Susie had aroused in him. He wondered urgently how she was and if she