Simply Unforgettable

Her hair was parted neatly down the middle, he saw, though the parting extended for only a few inches above her brow before disappearing under her carefully arranged curls.

Not like someone else’s that he knew . . .

“At least,” she said, “you had the good sense to hire a schoolteacher to accompany her, but the woman really ought to have stopped her from dancing, Lucius.”

His eyes narrowed with fury, and he silently contemplated the pleasure it would give him to flatten even one of those perfect curls and throw the whole coiffure out of balance.

“Miss Allard was my grandfather’s particular guest,” he said. “Amy danced with my permission.”

“One can only hope,” she said, “that you have not done her irreparable harm, Lucius. I shall look forward to offering her guidance and countenance next year.”

As his wife and Amy’s sister-in-law, no doubt.

“Will you?” he said.

She looked up, and her needle remained suspended over her work.

“I have offended you,” she said. “You need not trouble yourself, Lucius. Ladies know better than gentlemen what is what and are quite prepared to restore and keep the proprieties while men go freely about their own business.”

“Of raking?” he said.

He looked for two spots of color in her cheeks, but he realized suddenly that Portia never blushed—or needed to, he supposed.

“I think we might maintain a silence on that subject, Lucius,” she said. “What gentlemen do in their own time is their business and of no concern whatsoever to well-bred ladies.”

Good Lord! Devil take it! Would her calm not be ruffled if he went raking through life from their wedding day to the day of his death? The answer, he suspected, was that indeed it would not.

“You came here this morning to call upon Papa?” she asked him.

“I did,” he admitted. “I will come back some other time.”

“Of course you will,” she said, looking steadily at him.

Did she have any feelings for him? he wondered. Any warm feelings? Did she really want to marry him? Him, that was, as opposed to just Viscount Sinclair, the future Earl of Edgecombe?

“Portia,” he said as she resumed stitching, “do you have the feeling that we are being thrown together at every turn this spring, whether we wish it or not?”

Her needle paused, but she did not look up.

“Of course,” she said. “But why should we not wish for it?”

His heart sank.

“You wish for a connection with me, then?” he said.

A connection—what a clanger of a euphemism!

“Of course,” she said.

“Of course?” He raised his eyebrows as she looked up.

“Men are so foolish.” For a moment the look she bent on him seemed almost maternal. “They avoid reality at every turn. But it cannot be avoided indefinitely, Lucius.”

“You wish to marry me, then?”

There—the word was out, and he could not recall it or pretend that they were talking of something else.

“Of course,” she said.

His heart had no farther to sink. It attempted the impossible anyway.

“Why?” he asked her.

“Why?” It was her turn to raise her eyebrows. She rested the hand holding the needle on top of her work and seemed to forget it for the moment. “I have to marry someone, Lucius, and you are my most eligible choice. You have to marry someone, and I am your most eligible choice.”

“Is it a good enough reason?” He frowned at her.

“Lucius,” she said, “it is the only reason.”

“Do you love me?” he asked her.

She looked almost shocked.

“What a foolish question,” she said. “People like you and me do not marry for such a vulgar reason as love, Lucius. We marry for position and fortune and superior bloodlines.”

“It all sounds horribly unromantic,” he said.

“You are the last person I would expect to speak of romance,” she said.

“Why?” he asked again.

“Forgive me,” she said, “but your reputation is not entirely unknown to me, sheltered though I have always been from vulgarity. You will no doubt wish to continue that life, which I very much doubt you would call romantic. And therefore you will not expect or even wish for romance with your wife. You need not worry. I neither expect nor wish for it either.”

“Why?” he asked.

“Because romance is very foolish,” she said. “Because it is ungenteel. Because it is entirely imaginary. Because it is wishful thinking, usually on the woman’s part. Men are wiser and do not even believe in it. Neither do I.”

Until a few months ago, he thought, he would have agreed with her. Perhaps he still did. Romance had not really done him any good in the last few months, had it, beyond making him eternally irritated?

“What about passion?” he asked her. “Would you not expect that in your marriage?”

“I most certainly would not!” she said, openly shocked now. “The very idea, Lucius!”

He gazed gloomily at her as she returned her attention once more to her embroidery, her hand as steady as if they had been discussing the weather.

“Have I ever said or done anything to lead you to expect that I would offer for you?” he asked her.

He had, of course—very recently. He had just admitted to coming here this morning to call on her father.

“You have not needed to,” she said. “Lucius, I understand that you are reluctant and procrastinating. I understand that all men are the same way under similar circumstances. I understand too that eventually they all do what they must do, as will you. And the consequences will not be so very dreadful. There will be a home and a wife and a family where there were none before, and they are necessary components of a comfortable, genteel life. But in the main the man’s life does not change a great deal and does not need to. All the fear of leg shackles and parson’s mousetrap and those other foolish clichés men use are really quite without foundation.”

He wondered briefly if she was really cold to the very heart or if she was just unbelievably sheltered and innocent. Was there some man somewhere who could spark passion in her? He doubted it.

“You are determined to have me, then, are you, Portia?” he asked her. “There is nothing that would deter you?”

“I cannot imagine anything that would,” she said, “unless Mama and Papa withdrew their consent, of course. That is most unlikely, though.”

Heaven help him, he thought, he was a goner—as if he had not realized that before. He was here, for God’s sake, was he not?

Damn Frances. Damn her all to hell. She could have rescued him from this. He had asked her to marry him and told himself afterward that he would not have done so if he had stopped to think. But if she had taken a chance as he had and said yes, he would not have needed to think. He would have been too busy feeling—elation, passion, triumph.

Love.

But she had said no and so here he was, facing a life sentence as surely as his name was Lucius Marshall. Without having done anything more than pay a morning call on a man who was not even at home, he had gone too far with Portia, it seemed, to withdraw.

But before the conversation could resume, the door opened to admit her mother, who was looking very smug indeed though she expressed chagrin that Lord Balderston had chosen that very morning to go early to his club when he always remained home until well after breakfast.

They conversed, the three of them, on a few inane topics that included the obligatory remarks on the weather and one another’s health until Lucius felt enough time had passed that he could decently make his escape.

What the devil was he about to get himself into? he asked himself as he strode off in the direction of Jackson’s, where he hoped to don the gloves and pound the stuffing out of someone or, better yet, have someone pound the stuffing out of him. Though there was nothing future about his predicament.

She was beautiful and refined and accomplished and perfect. She was also a woman he had never quite been able to bring himself to like—and their conversation this morning had done nothing to change that.

And yet he was as surely leg-shackled to her as if the banns had already been called. He had gone to see Balderston this morning, and both Lady Balderston and Portia knew it. There could be only one reason for such a visit. And he had promised to call again. Portia fully expected it of him.

I will come back some other time.

Of course you will.

And then he felt fury again.

At least you had the good sense to hire a schoolteacher to accompany her, but the woman really ought to have stopped her from dancing.

To hire a schoolteacher!

The woman!

Frances!

He clamped his teeth together and lengthened his stride. He could never quite decide whether the longing to throttle her was stronger than the hurt and humiliation of her rejection. Or the pain of knowing he would never see her again.

Or the niggling suspicion that she had shown more good sense than he and had saved him from himself. He had had no idea when he set out from

Brock Street

that day that he was about to offer her marriage. He had not even known he was going to the school to see her, for God’s sake.

But calm good sense had never been his forte. He had always forged his way into the future with impulsive, reckless abandon.

He did it again not much more than twenty-four hours after his visit to

Berkeley Square

.

And again it was over Frances Allard.

“Mrs. Melford is in town, I have heard,” the Earl of Edgecombe said at breakfast. It was one of his better days healthwise, and he had got up to take the meal with his family.

For once there had been no ball or late party the night before, with the result that they were all gathered at the table with the exception of Caroline, who had joined a party at Vauxhall with Sir Henry last evening and had not returned home until after the fireworks.

“Is she?” Lady Sinclair asked politely, looking up briefly from the letter she was reading.

“With her sister,” the earl added. “They scarcely ever come to town. I do not know when I last saw them.”

“Oh?” His mother sounded quite uninterested, Lucius thought as he cut into his beefsteak. She was busy reading her letter again.

“They are great-aunts of the present Baron Clifton of Wimford Grange,” the earl explained. “Mrs. Melford made her come-out with my Rebecca, and they remained the best of friends all their lives until Rebecca’s passing. What pretty girls they both were!”

“Ah,” the viscountess said, looking up from her letter again, a little more interested now that she understood her father-in-law was talking about ladies who were virtually their neighbors in Somersetshire.

Lucius suddenly remembered why the name of Mrs. Melford was familiar to him.

So did Amy.

“Oh, but Mrs. Melford and her sister are Miss Allard’s great-aunts too,” she said. “Are they indeed in town, Grandpapa?”

“Whoever is Miss Allard?” Emily asked. “Do please pass the sugar, Amy.”

“She is a lady who has the most glorious soprano voice in Christendom,” the earl told Emily, pushing the sugar bowl across the table to her himself. “I do not exaggerate. We heard her sing when we were in Bath.”

“Oh,” Emily said, stirring a spoonful of sugar into her coffee, “the teacher. I remember now.”

“It is not going to rain, is it?” the viscountess asked of no one in particular, her eyes going to the window. “It will be most provoking if it does. I have my heart set upon walking to the shops today.”

“I believe I shall go and pay my respects to the ladies this afternoon,” the earl said. He chuckled suddenly. “It will be a pleasure to talk with people almost as ancient as I.”

“I shall accompany you if I may, sir,” Lucius said.

“You, Luce?” Emily looked at him in some surprise and then laughed. “You will go with Grandpapa to visit a couple of old women when Mama always says that pulling teeth would be easier than dragging you off to pay courtesy calls?”

“Elderly, Emily,” their mother said with sharp reproof. “Elderly ladies.”

“I will go too,” Amy said, brightening noticeably. “May I, Luce? May I, Grandpapa?”

“Well, I am not going,” Emily declared. “I am going shopping with Mama.”

“Nobody asked you, Em,” Amy pointed out. “Besides, Mrs. Melford and her sister are the great-aunts of my friend, and I particularly want to meet them.”

Lucius was left to wonder, as he got ready for the visit later in the day, why he wanted to meet them. Emily had, after all, spoken nothing but the truth when she had mentioned his aversion to paying social calls. And the two ladies must indeed be elderly. Doubtless the conversation would consist of lengthy health reports and even more lengthy reminiscences about the dim distant past and he would have to pinch himself to keep awake after the first few minutes.

Was he going simply because they were related to Frances? It would be the damnedest of poor reasons if that were so.

But what other reason could there possibly be?

In the event he was not bored at all. Mrs. Melford, a small, round lady, whose good-humored countenance still bore evidence of the prettiness his grandfather had spoken of, was delighted to see the husband of her old friend and exclaimed with delight over the fact that his grandchildren had chosen to accompany him. The two of them did indeed talk about the past, but they did so with such wit and humor that they kept both Lucius and Amy laughing and eager to hear more.

“But there is nothing more calculated to alienate young persons,” Mrs. Melford said at last, “than to have two old people prosing on about a past so distant that even to me it seems like something from another lifetime. Tell me about yourself, child.” She smiled kindly at Amy.

Amy immediately launched into a description of her newest triumph, her visit to Bath, where she had been allowed to attend a soiree and had heard Miss Allard sing, and where she had played hostess when Miss Allard came to tea and attended an assembly in the Upper Rooms with Miss Allard as her grandpapa’s special guest and her companion.

“I liked her exceedingly well, ma’am,” she said, beaming at her elderly hostess. “She treated me just as if I were a grown-up.”

“Well, and so you are, child,” Mrs. Melford said, “even if you have not yet made your come-out. You have that all to look forward to. How fortunate you are! You have the look of your grandmama, you know, especially about the mouth and chin, and all the world fell in love with her, as your grandfather will tell you. He did too.”

“I did indeed,” the earl confessed. “I rushed her off to the altar within six weeks of meeting her lest she see someone else she preferred.”

“She had eyes for no one else but you, as you very well know,” Mrs. Melford assured him as they all laughed. “But did you really meet our dear Frances when you were in Bath? And was she indeed singing again? I so wish we had been there to hear her.”

She spoke with obvious affection for her great-niece.

This was one of the ladies she had left behind the morning of that snowstorm, Lucius thought. It was in their ancient carriage, driven by their ancient coachman, that Frances had been traveling when he overtook her.

“It amazes me,” the earl said, “that no one discovered Miss Allard’s talent when she lived in London.”

“We understood that someone had,” Mrs. Melford said. “Her father always saw to it that she had voice lessons with the best teachers, you know. It was both his dream and hers that she would be a great singer one day. But then he died suddenly, poor man, and Frances went to live with Lady Lyle for a couple of years even though we offered her a home with us. We heard that someone had agreed to sponsor her and that she was indeed singing. We expected to hear any day that she had become famous, but one day she wrote quite suddenly from Bath to inform us that she had taken a teaching position at Miss Martin’s school there. We have been concerned for her happiness ever since, but when she spent this past Christmas with us in the country, it seemed to us that she was indeed quite contented with her chosen career.”

Lady Lyle? Lucius raised his eyebrows but made no comment.

“She assured me that she was quite happy with what she was doing with her life when I was impertinent enough to ask her why she was not enthralling the world with her singing,” the earl said.

“Both Gertrude and I think of her almost as a daughter,” Mrs. Melford told them. “I was never blessed with children of my own, and Gertrude never did marry. We both fairly dote upon Frances.”

The earl inquired politely about Miss Driscoll, who had not appeared to greet the visitors. She was in bed, her sister explained, quite unable to shake off the chill she had taken during the journey up to town. She suffered from a perennially weak chest, it seemed, and was a source of endless worry to her sister.

“Though one consolation is that at least we have access to the best physicians here in town,” she added.

“She doubtless needs a good tonic,” the earl said. “Something to cheer her up. You must ask your physician to prescribe something suitable, ma’am. I would recommend a course of the waters at Bath, but perhaps you feel that your sister is too weak to make the journey.”

“Indeed I do,” Mrs. Melford said, “though I will keep the recommendation in mind.”

That was the point at which Lucius abandoned common sense and spoke impulsively again without giving himself any chance to think first.

“Perhaps, ma’am,” he suggested, “Miss Driscoll would benefit most from seeing Miss Allard again.”

Mrs. Melford sighed. “I am quite sure you are right, Lord Sinclair,” she said. “How wonderful that would be for both of us. But Gertrude will have to improve considerably in health before we can travel down to see her.”

“I meant, ma’am,” he said, “that perhaps she can come here.”

Now what was he meddling in? his brain asked him. He paid it no heed.

“Oh, but she will be busy with her teaching duties until well on into the summer,” Mrs. Melford said. “I am sure she cannot be spared.”

“Not even for the sake of a beloved aunt?” Lucius asked. “If she knew that Miss Driscoll was in poor health and not making a rapid recovery even though she has been attended by a London physician, surely she would ask to be released from her duties for a week or two on compassionate grounds, and surely Miss Martin would not detain her.”

“Do you think so?” Mrs. Melford looked quite eager at the prospect. “It is kind of you to show such concern, Lord Sinclair. And really I cannot imagine why I did not think of it for myself. A visit from Frances would be just the thing to lift Gertrude’s spirits. Our niece always brings such a draft of fresh air into our lives.”

“Oh,” Amy cried, clasping her hands to her bosom, “I do hope you send for her, Mrs. Melford, and I do hope she comes. Then I will be able to see her again. I will have Luce bring me here. I would like it of all things.”

“And perhaps,” the earl said, chuckling, “she will sing for Miss Driscoll, and I will wangle an invitation to hear her again too. I cannot imagine a better tonic.”

“I shall do it,” Mrs. Melford said with firm decision, clapping her hands together. “I daresay she may not be able to get away in the middle of a school term, but I will not know if I do not ask, will I? I can think of nothing I would like better than to see Frances again, and I am convinced that a visit from her will do Gertrude the world of good.”

“Perhaps, ma’am,” Lucius said, smiling his most charming smile, “you should say in your letter that the idea was all yours.”

“And was it not?” Her eyes twinkled at him.

And what the deuce had that been all about? Lucius wondered during what remained of the visit and after they had taken their leave. Why would he have pounced upon a slim opportunity of enticing Frances to London?

Did he really want to see her again?

But for what purpose? Had she not made herself clear enough the last time he saw her? Had he not suffered enough rejection and humiliation at her hands?

What the deuce was he hoping to accomplish?

Just yesterday he had gone to

Berkeley Square

to talk marriage settlements with Balderston—and found him from home.

He had not returned this morning.

Would he go back there tomorrow?

Very probably Frances would not even come.

And if she did, so what? She would be coming to see her ailing great-aunt, not him.

But if she did come, he thought, clamping his teeth together as Amy prattled away to their grandfather beside her on the carriage seat and presumably to him too, he would certainly make it a point to see her.

No one had yet written the end beneath their story. It was not finished.

Deuce take it, it was not finished.

Not in his mind, anyway.

That is the trouble with you. You really cannot take no for an answer, can you, Lord Sinclair?

Yes, of course he could. He did it all the time. But how could he accept a no when he had never been quite convinced that she had not desperately wanted to say yes?

Then why the devil had she not?

The outskirts of London were not attractive in the best of circumstances. They looked downright ugly in the rain and with a swirling wind blowing rubbish across open spaces and into soggy piles against the curbs next to the pavements.

Frances ached in every limb, having made the journey from Bath all in one day in the dubious comfort and at the very plodding speed of her great-aunts’ carriage, with Thomas up on the box. She had a bit of a headache. She felt slightly damp even though all the windows were firmly shut. She was also chilly.

But really she was not thinking much about either the view beyond the windows or her physical discomforts—or even about being back in London. She was not coming here either to enjoy herself or to mingle with society, after all. No one would even know she had been here.

She was coming because Great-Aunt Gertrude was dying. Not that Great-Aunt Martha had announced the fact in such stark words, it was true, but the conclusion was inescapable. She had begged Frances to come if she possibly could even though she knew it was the middle of a school term. And though she had added that she was sure dear Frances would not be able to get away before the end of term and that she must not distress herself if she really could not, she had sent an inescapable sign that her great-niece’s presence in London was an urgent necessity. Instead of sending the letter by post, she had sent it with Thomas and the ancient private carriage—“for your comfort if you should be able to get away,” she had added in a postscript.

Claudia had granted her leave of absence before Frances had even formed the words to ask for something so inconvenient, assuring her that she would find a temporary replacement to carry on with her teaching duties. Anne had hugged her wordlessly. Susanna had helped pack her bags. Mr. Huckerby had offered to conduct her choir practices while she was gone. Each of her classes urged her to hurry back.

Frances had actually dissolved into tears after sharing the contents of the letter with her friends.

“They are just great-aunts,” she had said. “I have not seen a great deal of them during my life and I write to them only once a month. But now that it seems likely that I may lose one of them, I realize what an anchor they have always been to my existence and how much I rely on their love and support. With my father gone, they are all I have of my very own. And I do love them.”

It was of them she had thought with most distress after Lady Fontbridge had made her threat more than three years ago. It was largely because of them that she had made the promise to leave London and never return. She could not have borne it if they had been told. So much of their world would have been destroyed.

“Of course you do,” Claudia had said briskly. “Stay as long as you need to, Frances. We will all miss you, of course, including the girls, but no one in this life is quite indispensable. It can sometimes be a humbling realization.”

And so here she was, in London again and sick with anxiety. Great-Aunt Gertrude had never enjoyed robust health, and she tended to coddle herself by staying too far away from fresh air and too close to the nearest fire. But Frances had never thought of actually losing her.

When the carriage finally rocked to a halt outside a respectable-looking house on Portman Street, she waited impatiently for Thomas to open the door and set down the steps and then hurried up to the house door, which opened even before she reached it, and into a tiled hall, where she fell into Great-Aunt Martha’s open arms.

“Frances, my love,” her aunt cried, beaming with happiness, “you did come! I hardly dared hope you would be able to get away. And how lovely you look, as usual!”

“Aunt Martha!” Frances hugged her back. “How is Aunt Gertrude?” She was almost afraid to ask. But the first thing she had noticed—with enormous relief—was that her great-aunt was not wearing black.

“A little better today despite the damp weather,” Aunt Martha said. “She has even got up from her bed and come down to the sitting room. What a delightful surprise this is going to be for her. I have not breathed a word about your coming. And indeed, I can scarcely believe that you have come only because I asked. I do hope Miss Martin has not dismissed you permanently?”

“She has granted me a leave of absence,” Frances said. “Aunt Gertrude is actually getting better, then? She is not—”

“Oh, my poor love,” Aunt Martha said, taking her arm and leading her in the direction of the staircase. “You did not imagine the worst, did you? She never was dangerously ill, but she has been dragged down by a chill she has been unable to shake off, and she has been in dreadfully low spirits as a result. We both have. It seemed to me—very selfishly, my love—that seeing you would be just the tonic we both needed.”

Great-Aunt Gertrude was not on her deathbed, then? It was the best of good news. At the same time Frances thought ruefully of all the trouble she had put Claudia to by leaving the school so abruptly for a few weeks in the middle of a term—and of all the disruption to her classes and choirs and music pupils.

It was enormously touching, though, to know that her presence meant so much to her aunts. She would never take them for granted again, she vowed. And it really was lovely to see Great-Aunt Martha again. Frances felt a rush of tears to her eyes and blinked them away.

There was great jubilation when she appeared in the sitting room, which was hot and stuffy with a fire roaring in the hearth. Great-Aunt Gertrude sat huddled close to it, a heavy woolen shawl about her shoulders and a lap robe over her knees, but both were cast aside the moment she set eyes upon her great-niece, and she got to her feet with surprising alacrity and came hurrying toward her. They met and hugged tightly in the middle of the room while Great-Aunt Martha fluttered about them, telling excitedly of the secret she had kept to herself for all of four days lest dear Frances not be able to come and Gertrude be plunged into even deeper gloom with disappointment.

Later, as she sat with a cup of tea in her hand and a plate of cakes—Aunt Martha had put three on it though she had asked for only one—on her knee, Frances felt warm and happy and pleasantly tired. It was obvious that Aunt Gertrude was not in the best of health, but neither was she dangerously ill. Frances even felt a twinge of guilt about having come here, but she had not come under false pretenses, and it seemed that she really had been a tonic for her aunts’ spirits. They were chattering merrily and seemed not even to have noticed that the fire had died down considerably.

She would spend a week or so with them and enjoy herself without guilt, Frances thought rather sleepily, and then she would go back to school and work doubly hard until the end of the term. There would be all the extra work of preparing for the year-end prize-giving and concert.

Perhaps she would try to visit her aunts in the country for another week during the summer. They needed her, she had just realized—and really she needed them too.

“Some friends of yours came calling on me a few days ago, Frances,” Great-Aunt Martha said, beaming at her. “Poor Gertrude was still in bed that day and did not meet them, but we will certainly invite them back.”

“Oh?” Frances looked inquiringly at her, a little flutter of alarm in the pit of her stomach. Someone who knew her was already aware that she was returning to London?

“The Earl of Edgecombe called on me,” Aunt Martha said. “His late wife and I used to be bosom bows when we were girls, you know, and I always did like him exceedingly. It was most obliging of him to call.”

Frances felt as if her stomach performed a complete somersault. Ah, yes, of course. She remembered then that he had said he once knew Great-Aunt Martha. She had not even thought of the possibility . . .

But her aunt had spoken of friends calling on her.

Plural.

“And he brought his grandson and one of his granddaughters with him,” Aunt Martha continued. “Viscount Sinclair and Miss Amy Marshall. They are delightful young people. And they were all full of praises for your singing, Frances, after hearing you in Bath. I do not wonder at it, of course.”

“I only wonder that you have not done more of it and become famous,” Great-Aunt Gertrude said.

Frances’s heart had plunged and lodged somewhere in the soles of her shoes. This was the stuff of her worst nightmares. She must somehow dissuade her aunts from inviting them all back here. She could not bear to see them again.

She could not bear to see him.

Gracious heaven, why had he come here? Just because his grandfather had wished to?

“And you accompanied them to an assembly at the Upper Rooms,” Aunt Martha continued, looking at her niece with a beaming smile. “It did my heart good, my love, to hear that you have started enjoying yourself again. We have always thought that you are too young and lovely to bury yourself inside a school and have no chance to meet suitable beaux.”

“Oh,” Frances said with a forced smile, finishing off her tea and setting the cup and saucer down on a table beside her, “I am really quite happy as I am, Aunt Martha. And I am not entirely without beaux.”

She had been to the theater with Mr. Blake and his sister and brother-in-law one evening during the past month and to dine with them on another. She had been to two services at Bath Abbey with Mr. Blake alone, and both times they had strolled back to the school by a long, circuitous route. What was between them could not exactly be called a courtship, she supposed, but she was very thankful that it could not. She far preferred a mild friendship that might—or might not—blossom into something warmer with time.

“What I would like to know,” Aunt Martha said, leaning forward in her chair, her eyes still twinkling, “is whether you danced with Viscount Sinclair, Frances.”

Annoyingly, Frances could feel herself blushing.

“Yes, I did,” she said. “He was very obliging. The earl had invited me to accompany them to the assembly at Miss Marshall’s urging, and the viscount was kind enough to dance with me after he had first led his sister out.”

“You did not tell me, Martha,” Aunt Gertrude said, “and I did not think to ask—is Viscount Sinclair both young and handsome, by any chance?”

“And charming too,” Aunt Martha said, and the elderly ladies exchanged a knowing smirk. “Now, was it one set or two you danced together, Frances, my love?”

“Two,” Frances said, horrified by the turn the conversation was taking. “But—”

“Two.” Aunt Martha clapped her hands together and looked enraptured. “I knew it. I knew as surely as I know my own name that he admired you.”

“Frances! How splendid!” Aunt Gertrude leaned forward and forgot about her shawl again. It slipped unheeded from her shoulders to the cushion behind her. The lap robe was already pooled at her feet. “Viscountess Sinclair! I like it.”

They were teasing her, of course. They were both chuckling merrily.

“Alas, I am afraid you are quite mistaken,” Frances said, trying to keep her tone light and the smile on her face. “Viscount Sinclair is to marry Miss Portia Hunt.”

“Balderston’s girl?” Aunt Martha said. “What a shame! Though I suppose it is no such thing for the lady herself. He is very handsome, Gertrude. But all may not be lost. No mention was made of any betrothal while they were here, and I have not seen any announcement in the papers since we came here, though I read them all quite conscientiously each morning. And he was pointedly interested in you, Frances, though he did not say so openly, of course. Without him I doubt I would have thought of inviting you here as a tonic for Gertrude’s spirits.”

“What?” Frances stared at her, aghast.

“It was he who suggested it.” Aunt Martha smiled smugly. “And though it was exceedingly kind of him to show such solicitude for two old ladies, something told me at the time that there was a young man with an ulterior motive. He wished to see you again himself, Frances.”

“This was all Viscount Sinclair’s idea?” Aunt Gertrude asked, looking quite charmed. “I like him already, Martha, though I have never yet clapped eyes on him. He sounds like a young man who knows what he wants and how to get it. We must invite him here to dine one evening—with his sister and the Earl of Edgecombe, of course. We came to London to see something of society after so long, did we not, yet after almost three weeks we have seen nobody—at least, I have not. But it is time I did. I already feel worlds better than I felt even an hour ago. Oh, Frances, dearest, I am only just realizing that you are actually here.”

Frances stared mutely at them.

This was his doing?

He was the one who had suggested luring her here?

Why?

He was not betrothed yet?

“But here we are rattling on,” Aunt Martha said, getting to her feet, “and you are so tired from your journey, Frances, that you are really looking quite pale. Come, my love. I will take you to your room, where you must rest until dinnertime. We will talk again this evening.”

Frances bent to kiss Aunt Gertrude’s cheek and allowed herself to be led from the room and up to a pleasant bedchamber on the floor above, which had obviously been prepared for her in the hope that she would come.

She lay down on the bed when she was alone, and stared up at the canopy over her head.

He had been here, in this very house.

He had suggested that she be sent for. Perhaps he had even suggested that Great-Aunt Gertrude’s condition be exaggerated so that she would be more sure to leave her duties behind. It would be just like him to do something so devious and high-handed.

How dared he!

Could he not take no for an answer? Could he not leave well enough alone?

Was it possible that he still wished to marry her? But when he had offered her marriage there in Sydney Gardens, he had done so entirely from impulse. That had been perfectly obvious to her. Surely when he had thought about it afterward he would have admitted to himself that he had had a narrow escape from doing something quite indiscreet.

After a whole month she was still raw with the pain of having seen him again, danced with him again, touched him, kissed him, talked with him, quarreled with him—and refused a marriage offer from him!

She was still deeply, hopelessly, in love with him.

She had been since just after Christmas, of course, and the feeling stubbornly refused to go away.

Perhaps because he stubbornly refused to go away.

And now he had contrived to see her again, using her great-aunts in a despicably devious plot to lure her to London.

Why?

He was the most irritating, provoking, overbearing man she had ever known. She deliberately set her mind to thinking of all she most disliked about him. She tried to visualize him as he had been on the road that first day when she had bristled with hostility toward him—and he had returned the compliment.

But instead she saw him turning suddenly to hurl a snowball at her and then engaging in a high-spirited, laughter-filled fight before bearing her backward into the snow, his hands on her wrists . . .

Frances sighed deeply and despite herself drifted off to sleep.

Lord Balderston had borne his lady and daughter off to the country for a few days to help celebrate the birthday of some distant relative. It was with some sense of temporary reprieve, then, that Lucius went riding in the park early one morning in the thoroughly congenial company of three male friends. The fact that a fine rain was drizzling down from a gray sky did not in any way dampen his spirits. Indeed, it added the advantage of an almost deserted Rotten Row so that they could gallop their horses along it without endangering other, more sober-minded riders. As he returned home to change for breakfast, he did not even have to hold the usual inner debate with himself about what he ought to do after he had eaten. He could not go to the house on

Berkeley Square

even if he wished to do so.

Only his grandfather and Amy were up, the others being still in bed after a late night at some ball he had not even felt constrained to attend. He rubbed his hands together with satisfaction and viewed the array of hot foods set out on the sideboard. He was ravenous.

But Amy was clearly bursting to tell him something and could not wait until he had made his selection and taken his place at the table.

“Luce,” she said, “guess what?”

“Give me a clue,” he said. “No, let me guess. You have had ten hours of sleep and are now overflowing with energy and ideas on how to use it—with me as your slave.”

“No, silly!” she said. “Grandpapa has just had an invitation to dine at Mrs. Melford’s tomorrow evening, and I am invited too. Mama will not say no, will she? You simply must speak up for me—you and Grandpapa both.”

“I don’t suppose she will,” he said guardedly, “provided it is a private dinner.”

“Oh, and you are invited too,” she said.

That was what he had been afraid of. One visit had been amusing, but . . .

“Miss Allard has come up from Bath,” she said.

Ah!

Well!

“She has, has she?” he asked briskly. “And I am expected to give up an evening to dine with Mrs. Melford and her sister merely because Miss Allard is there too?”

Merely!

“It would be the courteous thing to do, Lucius,” his grandfather said, “since you are the one who suggested she be summoned.”

“And so I did,” Lucius admitted. “I hope her arrival has had the desired effect.”

“Mrs. Melford declares that Miss Driscoll made something of a miraculous recovery within an hour of the arrival of their great-niece,” his grandfather told him. “It was an inspired suggestion of yours, Lucius. May I send back an acceptance for you as well as for Amy and myself?”

Lucius stood with a still-empty plate in his hand and an appetite that seemed somehow to have fled. When he had watched Frances run away from the pavilion in Sydney Gardens after refusing to marry him or give him a thoroughly satisfying reason for doing so, he had thought that if he never saw her again it would be rather too soon.

Yet he had undeniably maneuvered matters so that she would come to London to see her great-aunts.

And was he now going to stay away from her?

“Yes, please do, sir,” he said with as much carelessness as he could summon.

“I shall look forward to it of all things,” Amy said, turning her attention back to her own breakfast. “Will not you, Luce?”

“Of all things,” he said dryly as he scooped fried potatoes onto his plate and moved on to the sausages.

He would probably do something asinine like count down the hours until he would see her again. Like a love-struck mooncalf.

But would Frances? Look forward to it of all things, that was?

Frances was beginning to think—and hope—that her great-aunts had forgotten about their plan to invite the Earl of Edgecombe to come to dinner with Viscount Sinclair and Amy Marshall. Two days passed and nothing more was said about it.

She enjoyed those days. Her aunts—not only Great-Aunt Gertrude, but Great-Aunt Martha too—visibly improved in both health and spirits during that time. And so did she, she felt. It was good to be with them again, to be fussed over, to be the apple of their eye, to have the feeling of being part of a family. She really had been very depressed during the last month, and indeed she had not been in the best of spirits since Christmas.

She would stay for a week, she had decided. And she would not worry about being back in London. She was not planning to go out anywhere, after all, and the world was unlikely to come calling.

She was mistaken about the plan for dinner, though, as she discovered late in the afternoon of that second day, only a few hours before the guests were due to arrive. Her aunts had kept it a secret until the last moment, they explained, thinking to delight her with the surprise when they finally informed her.

They also begged her, with identical beams of sheer delight, to put on her prettiest gown and to allow Hattie, their own personal maid, to dress her hair suitably for evening.

It was bad enough to know that Lucius was going to be here within a couple of hours, Frances thought as she scurried upstairs to get ready. But far worse was the fact that her great-aunts seemed determined to play matchmaker. How excruciatingly embarrassing if he or any of the others should notice!

She had brought her cream silk to London with her. Not that she had expected to have occasion to wear it. But any lady must go prepared for a variety of circumstances when she traveled. She wore it for dinner, and she did not have the heart to send Hattie away and disappoint her aunts. And so by the time she descended to the sitting room a mere ten minutes before the guests were due to arrive, she was wearing her hair in a mass of soft curls at the back, with an elaborate arrangement of fine braids crisscrossing the smoothly brushed hair over the crown of her head.

She looked very fine, she had admitted to Hattie when the coiffure was complete. But that very fact embarrassed her. What if he thought she had done it for him? What if his grandfather and Amy thought it?

They came one minute early—Frances had, of course, been watching the clock on the mantel in the sitting room.

Amy came into the room first, all youthful high spirits as she curtsied first to Aunt Martha and then to Aunt Gertrude and smiled warmly at each of them. She stretched out both hands to Frances and looked as delighted to see her as if they were long-lost sisters—alarming thought.

“Miss Allard!” she exclaimed. “I am so glad to see you again. And you have made Miss Driscoll all better, as Luce predicted you would.”

The Earl of Edgecombe came next, all bent frailty and twinkling eyes as he made his bow to the older ladies and then reached out his right hand to Frances.

“By fair means or foul, ma’am,” he said, beaming genially at her, “I mean to hear you sing again before I die.”

“I hope, my lord,” she said, setting her hand in his and watching him carry it to his lips, “you are not planning to do that anytime soon.”

He chuckled and patted her hand before releasing it.

And then came Lucius, bringing up the rear, looking quite impossibly handsome in his black evening clothes with dull gold embroidered waistcoat and white linen and lace. He was smiling charmingly at the aunts and then turning to make a formal bow to Frances.

She curtsied.

The aunts smirked and looked charmed.

“Miss Allard?” he said.

“Lord Sinclair.”

Drawing air into her lungs was taking a conscious effort.

Everyone seemed remarkably pleased with everyone else despite the fact that they were an ill-assorted group. They proceeded in to dinner almost immediately, the earl with a great-aunt on each arm and Viscount Sinclair with Frances on his right arm and Amy on his left. And the conversation remained lively throughout the meal and in the sitting room afterward.

Soon, Frances thought, the evening would be over and her ordeal at an end. The courtesies would have been observed and in five days’ time she could retreat to Bath and her normal life.

It was a strangely dreary prospect, considering the fact that she really did like teaching—and that she loved all her pupils and had genuine friends at the school.

“I daresay Miss Marshall could entertain us at the pianoforte if only there were one in this house,” Great-Aunt Martha said. “And I know that Frances could with her voice. But I will not suggest that she sing unaccompanied, much as I know she would acquit herself well if she did.”

“She has always had perfect pitch,” Great-Aunt Gertrude explained.

“I am very thankful there is no instrument,” Amy said, laughing merrily. “And I daresay Grandpapa and Luce are glad of it too. Anyone who ever says I play competently is being excessively kind to me.”

“I will not pretend that I am not disappointed to be unable to hear Miss Allard sing again,” the earl said, “but all things happen for a purpose, I firmly believe. There is a pianoforte at Marshall House, you see, and a superior one too. It will be my greatest pleasure to entertain you three ladies to dinner one evening later in the week. And afterward, Miss Allard, you may sing for your supper.” His eyes twinkled kindly at her from beneath his white eyebrows. “If you will, that is. It will not be a condition of your coming to dine. But will you sing for me there?”

As had happened in Bath, then, this encounter was to be prolonged, was it? She was to see them all yet again?

Frances glanced at her great-aunts. They were beaming back at her, both of them looking utterly happy. How could she say no and deny them a little more pleasure? And really, deep down, did she even want to say no?

“Very well, then,” she said. “I will come and sing, my lord, just for you and my aunts. Thank you. It will be my pleasure.”

“Splendid!” He rubbed his hands together. “Caroline will accompany you. I shall ask her tomorrow morning. You must come one afternoon and discuss your choice of music with her and practice a little.”

“Thank you,” she said. “That would be a good idea.”

“Will you grant one more request?” he asked. “Whatever else you choose to sing, will you also sing what you did in Bath? I have longed to hear it again.”

“And I love to sing it, my lord.” She smiled warmly at him.

She was sitting at some remove from the fireplace, since Great-Aunt Gertrude always liked to keep the fire built high. The earl turned his attention to Great-Aunt Martha, who sat close to him, and Great-Aunt Gertrude invited Amy to sit on the stool by her feet and tell her all about her exciting experiences in Bath and what she had done in London since then. Viscount Sinclair, who had been standing behind his grandfather’s chair, one arm leaning on the back of it, came to sit on the sofa beside Frances.

“You are in good looks tonight,” he said.

“Thank you.” She had tried her best all evening to ignore him—rather akin, she thought ruefully, to trying to ignore the incoming tide when one was seated on the beach in its direct path.

“I trust,” he said, “Miss Martin’s school was not left in a state of chaos and incipient collapse when you came here.”

“It is no thanks to you that it was not,” she said sharply.

“Ah.”

It was all he said in acknowledgment of the fact that she knew his role in bringing her here.

“I trust,” she said, “Miss Hunt is in good health. And good looks.”

“I really do not give a tinker’s damn,” he said softly, prompting her to look fully at him for the first time. Fortunately, he had spoken quietly enough that she was the only one to have heard his shocking words.

“Why did you do this?” she asked him. “Why did you persuade my great-aunt to send for me?”

“She needed you, Frances,” he said. “So did your other aunt, who was actually bedridden the last time I was here.”

“I am being asked to believe, then,” she said, “that your motive was purely altruistic?”

“What do you think?” He smiled at her, a rather wolfish smile that had her insides turning over.

“And why did you come here the first time anyway?” she asked. “Just to visit two elderly ladies out of the kindness of your heart?”

“You are angry with me,” he said instead of answering. And instead of smiling now, he was looking at her with intense eyes and compressed lips and hard, square jaw.

“Yes, I am angry,” she admitted. “I do not like being manipulated, Lord Sinclair. I do not like having someone else thinking he knows better than I what makes me happy.”

“Contented,” he said.

“Contented, then,” she conceded.

“I do know better than you what will make you happy,” he said.

“I think not, Lord Sinclair.”

“I could accomplish it,” he said, “within a month. Less. I could bring you professional happiness. And personal happiness in such abundance that your cup would run over with it, Frances.”

She felt a yearning so profound that she had to break eye contact with him and look down hastily at her hands.

“My chances for either kind of happiness were ruined more than three years ago, Lord Sinclair,” she said.

“Were they?” he said as softly as before. “Three years?”

She ignored the question.

“I have cultivated contentment since then,” she said. “And incredibly I have found it and discovered that it is superior to anything else I have ever experienced. Don’t ruin that too for me.”

There was a lengthy silence while the earl and Great-Aunt Martha laughed together over something one of them had said, and Amy’s voice prattled on happily to Great-Aunt Gertrude.

“I believe I already have,” Viscount Sinclair said at last. “Or shaken it, anyway. Because I do not believe it ever was contentment, Frances, but only a sort of deadness from which you awakened when I hauled you out of that fossil of a carriage, spitting fire and brimstone at me.”

She looked up at him, very aware that they were not alone together in the room, that her great-aunts were only a few feet away and were very probably observing them surreptitiously and with great interest. She was quite unable therefore to allow any of the emotions she felt to show on her face.

“You are to be married,” she said.

“I am,” he agreed. “But one important question remains unanswered. Who is to be the bride?”

She drew breath to say something else, but her attention was drawn to the fact that the earl was getting to his feet with the obvious intention of bringing the visit to an end.

Viscount Sinclair rose too without another word and proceeded to thank the aunts for their hospitality. Amy hugged Frances and assured her that she would somehow persuade her mama to allow her to come downstairs when Mrs. Melford and Miss Driscoll and Miss Allard came for dinner.

“After all,” she said naively, “you are my special friend. Besides, I would not miss hearing you sing again for worlds. I may not perform music with any great flair, Miss Allard, but I can recognize when someone else does.”

The earl bowed over Frances’s hand again.

“Prepare more than one song, if you will,” he said. “After listening to you once, I know that I will long for an encore.”

“Very well, my lord,” she promised.

Viscount Sinclair bowed to her with his hands clasped behind his back.

“Miss Allard,” he said.

“Lord Sinclair.”

It was an austere enough farewell, but it did not deter Frances’s aunts from going into raptures after their guests had left.

“The Earl of Edgecombe is quite as charming as he was as a young man,” Aunt Martha said. “And almost as handsome too. And Miss Amy Marshall is a delight. But Viscount Sinclair—”

“—is handsome enough and charming enough to make any woman wish she were young again to set her cap at him,” Aunt Gertrude said. “But it is a good thing we are not young hopefuls, Martha. He had eyes for no one but Frances tonight.”

“He was very charming to us,” Aunt Martha said, “but every time he looked at Frances, his eyes fairly devoured her and he forgot our very existence. Did you notice how he went to sit beside her, Gertrude, the moment we drew the attention of Lord Edgecombe and Miss Marshall away from them?”

“Well, of course I noticed,” Great-Aunt Gertrude said. “I would have been severely disappointed if our ruse had not worked, Martha.”

“Oh, goodness,” Frances protested. “You must not see romance where there simply is none. Or try to promote it.”

“You, my love,” Aunt Martha said, “are going to be the Viscountess Sinclair before the summer is out unless I am much mistaken. Poor Miss Hunt is just going to have to find someone else.”

Frances held both hands to her cheeks, laughing despite herself.

“I absolutely agree with Martha,” Aunt Gertrude said. “And you cannot tell us that you are indifferent to him, Frances. We would not believe you, would we, Martha?”

Frances bade them a hasty good night and fled to her room.

They did not understand.

Neither did he.

Was there such a thing as fate?

But if there were, why was it such a cruel thing? For what it had set in her path three separate times now since Christmas was quite, quite unattainable.

Did fate not understand?

But one important question remains unanswered. Who is to be the bride?

Did he still want to marry her, then? Had it not been mere rash impulse that had prompted him to offer for her in Sydney Gardens while the rain poured down all around them?

Did he love her?

Did he?

Frances had agreed to sing at Marshall House, though she had imposed a sort of condition.

Very well, then. I will come and sing, my lord, just for you and my aunts.

They were words that echoed in Lucius’s head during the coming days while he schemed ruthlessly to thwart her modest will. She had not meant those words literally, he told himself.

At least, she probably had, he conceded, since there was something very strange, almost unnatural, about Frances’s attitude to her own talent. But she ought not to have meant them. Anyone with her voice ought to be eager to sing for an audience of a million if that many persons could only be packed within one room. It would be a criminal waste to allow her to sing just for his grandfather and her great-aunts—and presumably for his mother and sisters and him too.

Frances Allard had shuttered herself—body, mind, and soul—behind the walls of Miss Martin’s School for Girls for far too long, and it was time she came out and faced reality. And if she would not do it voluntarily, then by God he would take the initiative and drag her out. Perhaps she would never give him the chance to make her happy in any personal sense—though even on that matter he had not yet conceded final defeat. But he would force her to see that a glorious future as a singer awaited her. He would do everything in his power to help her to that future.

Frances had not been born to teach. Not that he had ever been present in one of her classrooms to discover that she was not up to the task, it was true. She very probably was, in fact. But she had so clearly been born to make music and to share it with the world that any other occupation was simply a waste of her God-given talent.

He was going to bring her out into the light. He was going to help her—force her, if necessary—to be all she had been born to be.

And so he ignored the words she had spoken to his grandfather—I will come and sing, my lord, just for you and my aunts.

He knew someone. The man was a friend of his and had only recently married. He was a renowned connoisseur of the arts, notably music, and was particularly well known for the concert he gave at his own home each year, at which he entertained a select gathering of guests with prominent musicians from all over the Continent and with new discoveries of his own. Just this past Christmas his star performer had been a young boy soprano whom he had discovered among a group of inferior church carolers out on

Bond Street

. He had married the boy’s mother in January.

It was strange to think of Baron Heath as a married man with two young stepchildren. But it seemed to happen to all of them eventually, Lucius thought gloomily—marriage, that was. At least Heath had had the satisfaction of choosing his own bride and marrying for love.

Lucius invited him to attend a concert at Marshall House and promised him a musical treat that would make his hair stand on end.

“She has an extraordinarily lovely voice,” he explained, “but has had no one to bring her to the attention of people who can do something to sponsor her career.”

“And I will soon be clamoring to be that sponsor, I suppose,” Lord Heath said. “I hear this with tedious frequency, Sinclair. But I do trust your taste—provided we are talking of taste in voices, that is, and not in women.”

Lucius felt a touch of anger, but he quelled it.

“Come,” he said, “and bring Lady Heath. You may listen and judge for yourself whether her singing voice does not equal her beauty.”

But a singer needed an audience, Lucius believed. How could Frances sing as she had in Bath with only his family and hers and the Heaths looking on? Yet even in Bath the audience had been modest in size.

The music room in Marshall House would seat thirty people in some comfort. If the panels between it and the ballroom were removed, there would be room for many more, and the size of the combined rooms would give range for the power of a great voice.

And a concert needed more than one performer . . .

His schemes became more grandiose by the hour.

“I am thinking of inviting a few people to join us in the music room after dinner on the evening Miss Allard comes here with her great-aunts to dine, sir,” he told his grandfather at tea three days before the said dinner. “Including Baron Heath and his wife.”

“Ah, a good idea, Lucius,” the earl said. “I should have thought of it for myself—and of Heath. He can do something for her. I do not imagine Miss Allard will have any objection.”

She well might, Lucius suspected. He knew her better than his grandfather did. But he held his peace.

“I have the distinct impression,” the viscountess said, “that it is this Miss Allard rather than Mrs. Melford and Miss Driscoll who is to be the guest of honor at our table. It is extraordinary when one remembers that she is a schoolteacher.”

“You will see, Louisa,” the earl told her, “that it is she who is extraordinary.”

Caroline meanwhile had uttered a muffled shriek at Lucius’s words.

“And I am expected to accompany Miss Allard before an audience that includes Baron Heath?” she said. “When is she coming here to practice, Luce?”

“The afternoon after tomorrow,” he said. “You had better not mention Lord Heath to her, though, Caroline, or any other guests. You will only make her nervous.”

“Make her nervous!” Her voice had risen almost to a squeak. “How about me?”

“When she begins to sing,” Amy said kindly, “no one will even notice your playing, Caroline.”

“Well, thank you for that,” Caroline said before laughing suddenly.

Amy laughed with her. “I did not mean it quite the way it sounded,” she said. “Your playing is quite superior—far better than mine.”

“Which is not much of a compliment, Amy, when one really thinks about it,” Emily said dryly.

“And you, Father,” the viscountess said firmly, “are looking tired. Lucius will help you to your room, and you will lie down until dinnertime.”

“Yes, ma’am,” the earl said with a twinkle in his eye—and a slight gray tinge to his complexion.

No one had voiced any objection to the idea of making the musical part of the evening into a full-blown concert, though, Lucius thought as he climbed the stairs slowly, his grandfather leaning heavily on his arm. Not that he had used those words exactly, of course, to describe his plans. But any small—or large—gathering of people for the purpose of listening to a few musical performances could be loosely defined as a concert.

He had three days during which to gather a respectably sized audience to do Frances Allard’s talent justice—at the height of the Season, when every day brought a flood of invitations to every ton household. But it could be done, by Jove, and he would do it. Her feet were going to be set firmly on the road to success and fame that evening. He had no doubt of it.

And it would be all his doing.

That might prove small comfort in the years ahead, of course.

But all was not yet lost on the personal front. He was not married yet, or even betrothed—not officially anyway. The Balderstons were back in town, but he had contrived to avoid them for all of twenty-four hours.

He had never been a man to give up lightly on what he badly wanted. And new leaf or no new leaf, he had not changed in that particular.

He desperately wanted Frances Allard.

Marshall House was a grand mansion on

Cavendish Square

in the heart of Mayfair, Frances discovered on the afternoon of the day before she was to dine there. She might have expected as much, of course, since it was the town house of the Earl of Edgecombe. But she felt apprehensive and strangely conspicuous as she bowed her head and hurried inside after Thomas had handed her down from the ancient carriage outside the doors.

She was very aware that she really was back in London.

She saw no one within, though, except for a few servants and the young lady who awaited her in the room to which she was shown and introduced herself as Miss Caroline Marshall. She was tall and poised and pretty and bore little resemblance to her brother.

Of him there was no sign.

The room was massive and gorgeously decorated, with its high ceiling painted with a scene from mythology and gilded friezes and crystal chandeliers and mirrored walls and a gleaming wood floor. It fairly took Frances’s breath away. This was where she was to sing for the earl and her aunts tomorrow evening?

It was very clearly not the family drawing room.

Miss Marshall offered an explanation that partly reassured her, though.

“The pianoforte in here is superior to the one in the drawing room,” she explained, “and my grandfather insists that nothing but the best is good enough for you, Miss Allard. I cannot understand why the panels have been removed, though. This is the music room and the ballroom combined. Tomorrow evening they will have been replaced, I do not doubt, and your voice will not have to fill such a vast space. But really this is not good enough. You ought to be able to practice in the space you will be singing in.”

How glorious it would be, though, Frances thought wistfully as her eyes feasted upon the opulent splendor of the double chamber, to rise to the challenge of singing to an audience that filled this vast space. She had once dreamed of singing in just such a place.

As she warmed up her voice with scales and exercises she had learned as a girl, she fit her voice to the room, well aware though she was that tomorrow evening she would have to make an adjustment to a smaller space.

“Oh, goodness,” Miss Marshall said even before they began to practice either of the pieces they had chosen for the occasion, “the combined room is not too big for you after all, is it? How extraordinary!”

They practiced in earnest then, and Frances reveled in the chance just to sing. She did sing at school, of course, but not often or at great length—or to the full power of her voice. The purpose of the school and her role as teacher there, after all, was to draw music out of her pupils, not to indulge her desire to create music of her own. It was a noble purpose, she had always thought. It was a joy to help young people realize their full potential.

She still did think so, but, oh, it felt good to indulge in a whole selfish hour of singing.

“Now I know what Amy meant,” Miss Marshall said when they were finished and she was folding the sheets of music neatly on the stand, “when she assured me that no one would notice my accompaniment once you had started to sing. I have never heard a lovelier voice, Miss Allard.”

“Well, thank you.” Frances smiled warmly at her. “But you are a very accomplished pianist, you know, and need never fear an audience. You have no cause to feel nervous about tomorrow evening, though, do you, when there will be only your family and my great-aunts to hear us. My aunts are quite unthreatening, I do assure you.”

She drew on her bonnet and tied the ribbons beneath her chin, taking one last awed look about the ballroom, which would be hidden from view behind panels tomorrow evening. But when Miss Marshall spoke next, it was not to her, she realized.

“How long have you been standing there?” she asked. “I thought you were escorting Miss Hunt to Muriel Hemmings’s garden party.”

She was speaking, of course, to Viscount Sinclair, who was lounging in the doorway of the music room as if he had been there for some time.

“Some cousins arrived from the country,” he said, “and the garden party had to be abandoned in favor of entertaining them.”

“Well, you might have made your presence known, Luce,” his sister said crossly. “Were you listening?”

“I was,” he admitted. “But if you hit one wrong note, Caroline, I did not hear it. I am certain that Miss Allard did not.”

“You must give the order for the panels to be put back between the rooms,” she said. “It has been most inconvenient to practice in this space. Miss Allard’s voice is more than up to it, though, I might add.”

“Yes,” he said, pushing himself away from the doorjamb in order to stand upright, “I noticed that too.”

Frances did not quite look at him.

“I must go,” she said. “I have been here ten minutes longer than I intended to be. Poor Thomas will be tired of waiting for me.”

“Poor Thomas is probably sipping his ale by now,” Viscount Sinclair said, “if he is capable of driving that carriage at a pace faster than a sedate crawl, that is. I sent him away.”

“You did what?” She raised her eyes to his and glared indignantly at him. “Now I will have to walk home.”

He clucked his tongue. “It is such a long way,” he said, “especially on a sunny, warm day like this.”

He did not understand. She might be seen if she wandered the streets of fashionable Mayfair.

“Luce,” his sister said severely, “Miss Allard did not bring a maid with her.”

“I will escort her,” he said.

“I do not need a maid,” Frances said. “I am not a girl. And I would not put you to such trouble, Lord Sinclair.”

“It will be no trouble at all,” he said. “I need the exercise.”

What else could she say with Miss Marshall present? He knew very well that she would not make a scene. There was a gleam in his eyes that was beginning to look familiar.

For someone whom she had twice rejected—she, a mere schoolteacher—he was being remarkably persistent. But she had known from the start that he was a determined, sometimes belligerent man. And she had learned since that he was impulsive and reckless and not easily persuaded to give up what he had set his mind on.

For some reason he had set his mind on getting her to agree to some sort of relationship with him. Whether it was still marriage she did not know. But it did not matter anyway. She had said no once, and she must continue to say it.

She walked silently beside him down the long, curving stairway to the great hall and the front doors. She must just hope that the streets between

Cavendish Square

and

Portman Street

would be deserted this late in the afternoon.

Lucius had been invited to take tea at

Berkeley Square

with the Balderstons and Portia and the Balderston cousins. But though he might have felt honor bound to attend the garden party since he had said long ago that he would, he felt no such compunction after the plans were changed. He sent a polite excuse and remained at home.

He had been pacing the hallway outside the ballroom—and occasionally standing stock still—since a few minutes after Frances’s arrival, which he had observed from an upper window. He could hardly believe what he had heard. He had thought her magnificent at the Reynolds’ soiree, but what he had not realized there was that her voice had been on a leash because of the relatively small size of the drawing room.

This afternoon it had been unleashed, though she had kept perfect control over it nevertheless.

Heath’s hair was going to do more than stand on end. He would be fortunate indeed if it did not fly right off his head.

But Lucius had not arranged to walk her back to

Portman Street

only to talk about her singing or quarrel with her. Devil take it, he was in love with the woman and yet he knew so little about her. Not knowing a woman had never seemed important to him before. Women were strange, contrary, irrational, oversensitive people anyway, and he had always been contented to keep his distance from his mother and sisters and never even to try to know or understand the women he bedded. It had never really occurred to him until he thought about it now that he did not know Portia either, although he had been acquainted with her most of his life. It had not seemed to matter—and still did not.

It mattered with Frances.

“This is not the way back to

Portman Street

,” she said as he drew her hand through his arm and set out from

Cavendish Square

with her.

“There are any number of ways of getting there,” he said, “some faster and more direct than others. You are not going to tell me, are you, Frances, that you have so little physical stamina that we must take the shortest route.”

“It has nothing to do with stamina,” she said. “My great-aunts are expecting me back for tea.”

“No, they are not,” he said. “I sent back a message with Thomas, informing them that I was taking you for a walk in the park before bringing you home. They will be charmed. They like me.”

“You what?” She turned an indignant face on him and drew her hand free before he could clamp it to his side. “You had no business sending any message at all, Lord Sinclair. You had no business sending my carriage away. I have no wish to walk in the park. And how conceited of you to believe that my aunts like you. How do you know they do?”

“You look lovely when you are angry,” he said. “You lose the cool, classical madonna look and become the passionate Italian beauty that you are deep down.”

“I am English,” she said curtly. “And I do not wish to go to the park.”

“Because it is I who am escorting you?” he asked. “Or because you are not—forgive me—dressed in the first stare of fashion?”

“I care nothing for fashion,” she said.

“Then you are very different from any other lady I have ever known,” he said. “Or any gentleman, for that matter. We will not take the paths that will be frequented by the fashionable multitude at this hour, Frances. I am too selfish to share you. We will take some shady path and talk. And if you were dressed in rags you would still look more beautiful to me than any other woman I have ever known.”

“You mock me, Lord Sinclair,” she said, but she fell into step beside him again, her hands clasped firmly at her back. “I do not believe you take life very seriously at all.”

“Sometimes it is more amusing not to,” he said. “But there are certain things I take very seriously, Frances. I am serious at the moment. I have a hankering to know exactly what it is that I have lost since you will not have me.”

That silenced her. She looked up at him with uncomprehending eyes and then dipped her head sharply as two people approached them and then passed with murmured greetings.

“I know a number of facts about you,” he said. “I know that your mother was Italian and your father some sort of French nobleman. I know that you are related to Baron Clifton. I know you grew up in London and left it two years after your father’s death in order to teach music and French and writing at Miss Martin’s school in Bath. I know that you are a very good cook. I know you have one of the loveliest soprano voices—perhaps even the loveliest—of our generation. I know other things about your character. I know that you are devoted to duty and can be stubborn and sometimes downright belligerent and also amiable and affectionate to those you love. I know you are sexually passionate. I even know you biblically. But I do not really know you at all, do I?”

“You do not need to,” she said firmly as they reached a side gate into Hyde Park and entered it and turned onto a narrow, shaded path that ran parallel to the street outside though thick trees hid it from view. “No one can be a totally open book to another person even if there is the intimacy of a close relationship between them.”

“And there is no such intimacy between us?” he asked.

“No. Absolutely not.”

He wondered how much of a fool he was making of himself. He tried to imagine their roles reversed. What if she had pursued him and twice he had told her quite clearly that he did not want her? How would he feel if she came after him again anyway, maneuvered matters so that she could get him alone, and then demanded to know who he was?

It was an uncomfortable picture.

But what if the signs he had given her were mixed? What if, while his lips had said no, his whole being had said yes?

“Tell me about your childhood,” he said.

Good Lord, had he taken leave of his senses? He had never been interested in anyone’s childhood!

She sighed aloud and for a few moments he thought she was going to keep silent.

“Why not?” she said eventually, as if to herself. “We are taking a very long way home and might as well have something to talk about.”

He looked down at her. She was dressed in cream-colored muslin, with a plain straw bonnet. She looked quite unfashionable. Yet she looked neat and pretty and adorable. Bars of sunlight and shade danced over her as they walked.

“That is the spirit,” he said.

For the first time a smile played about her lips as she glanced up at him.

“It would serve you right,” she said, “if I talked for the next several hours without pausing for breath about every single detail I can remember of my childhood.”

“It would,” he agreed. “But the thing is, Frances, that I doubt I would be bored.”

She shook her head.

“It was a happy, secure childhood,” she said. “I never knew my mother and so did not miss her. My father was all in all to me, though I was surrounded with nurses and governesses and other servants. I had everything money could buy. But unlike many privileged children, I was not emotionally neglected. My father played with me, read to me, took me about with him, spent hours of every day with me. He encouraged me to read and learn and make music and do and be all I was capable of doing and being. He taught me to reach for the stars and settle for nothing less.”

He could have asked her why she had forgotten that particular lesson, but he did not want to argue with her again or cause her to turn silent again.

“You lived in London?” he asked her.

“Most of the time,” she said. “I loved it here. There was always somewhere new to go, some other church to admire or museum or art gallery to wander about or market to explore. There was so much history to absorb and so many people to observe. And there were always shops and libraries and tearooms and parks to be taken to. And the river to sail on.”

And yet now she shunned London. After Christmas he had been unable to lure her back here even though he had offered her an abundance of luxuries to replace those she seemed to have lost since childhood.

What a comedown it must have been for her to have to remove to Bath to teach—and to wear clothes that were either several years old, like the two evening gowns he had seen her wear, or else inexpensively made like today’s muslin.

“But I did go into the country too,” she said. “My great-aunts sometimes had me to stay with them. They would have taken me to live when I arrived in England—Great-Aunt Martha was already widowed then. I suppose they thought that a gentleman could not raise a daughter alone, especially in a country that was foreign to him. But though I love them dearly and have always been grateful for the affection they have lavished on me, I am glad my father would not give me up.”

“He had ambitions for you as a singer?” he asked, noting again that she dipped her head sharply downward when an elderly couple he did not know strolled past them on the same deserted path as the one he had chosen.

“Dreams more than ambitions,” she said. “He would not even hire a singing master for me until I was thirteen, and he would not allow me to sing at any auditions or public concerts even when my singing master said I was ready. It was to wait until I was eighteen, my father said, when my voice would have matured, and even then only if it was what I really wanted for myself. He was very adamant in his belief that a child ought not to be exploited even if she was talented.”

“But did he not expect that you would be thinking of marriage at the age of eighteen?” he asked.

“He recognized it as a possibility,” she said. “And indeed when Lady Lyle agreed to sponsor my come-out when I was eighteen, he insisted that we postpone doing anything about my music until after the summer was over. By then he was dead of a sudden heart seizure. But he had dreamed for me because he knew I had dreams. He would not have pushed me into anything against my will. That was what my mother’s father—my grandfather—had done to her when she was very young.”

“Your mother was a singer?” he asked.

“Yes,” she said. “In Italy. She was a very good one too, according to my father. He fell in love with her and married her there.”

“But did you allow your dream and your ambition to die with your father?” he asked her. “Did you make no attempt to sing at any auditions or to attract any sponsor?” Had not her aunts said that she had had a sponsor and even done some singing in public? “You went to live with Lady Lyle, did you not? Did she not offer you any help?”

“She did.” There was a change in her voice. It was tighter, more emotionless. “And I did sing a few times to small audiences. I did not like it. When I saw the advertisement for a teacher at Miss Martin’s school in Bath, I applied for it and was offered the position. I have not regretted the decision I made to take it. I have been happy there—oh, contented, if you will. But there is nothing wrong with contentment, Lord Sinclair.”

Ah. For a while he had felt drawn into her life. She had seemed to enjoy telling her story—there had been a glow in her face, a smile in her eyes, animation in her voice. But she had shut him out again. A lovely young lady who had been brought out under the sponsorship of a baroness must surely have had marriage prospects even if, as Lucius guessed, her father had left her without a penny. But even if there had been no particular beau in her life, there had been the dazzling prospect of an illustrious career as a singer stretching before her. It had been her father’s dream and her own for most of her life. Lady Lyle had been prepared to help her.

Yet she had given it all up at the advanced age of twenty?

Something was missing in her story. Something quite momentous, Lucius suspected. Something that was quite possibly the key to the mystery that was Frances Allard.

But she was not going to tell him.

And why should she? She had rejected him at every turn. She owed him nothing.

But someone should have done more for her at the time.

It was not too late, though, for her dream to be reborn.

He taught me to reach for the stars and settle for nothing less.

Tomorrow evening she would touch those stars and even grasp them.

He may have to say good-bye to her again and abide by it this time, but first he would, by Jove, restore her dream to her.

She looked up at him with a half-smile.

“I did not suspect, Lord Sinclair,” she said, “that you could be such a good listener.”

“That is because you know me as little as I know you, Frances,” he said. “There are many things about me that you do not suspect.”

“I do not think I dare ask for examples,” she said, and actually laughed.

“Because you are afraid that you might grow to like me after all?” he asked her.

She sobered instantly. “I do not dislike you,” she said.

“Do you not?” he said. “But you will not marry me?”

“There is no connection between the two,” she said. “We cannot marry everyone we like. We would live in a very bigamous society if we did.”

“But if two people like each other enough,” he said, “a marriage between them stands a better chance of succeeding than if they do not like each other at all. Would you not agree?”

“That,” she said, “is rather an absurd question. Will Miss Hunt not have you? Does she not like you?”

“I might have guessed that you would bring the conversation around to Portia,” he said, taking her by the elbow and leading her out through the gate at the end of the path they had taken and back out onto the street. He took the most direct route to

Portman Street

from there. “I take it very unkindly in you, Frances, to have refused me. I have to marry someone this year after all, as Portia herself has pointed out to me, and if you will not have me then I suppose I will have to have her. And before you pour scorn upon my head and sympathies upon hers, let me add that she told me with the same breath that she also must marry someone and he might as well be me. There is no sentiment involved on either side, you see, and very little liking either. There is no danger that you would be breaking another woman’s heart if you made off with me yourself. Would you care to put the matter to the test?”

“No,” she said, “I would not.”

“Would you care to explain exactly why, then?” he asked.

It was an ill-mannered question to ask and invited a sharp setdown that could only wound him. However, the question was out and he awaited her answer. It was brief.

“No,” she said, “I would not.”

“It is not that you do not care for me?” he asked her, taking her elbow again and hurrying her across a road before tossing a coin into the outstretched hand of a crossing sweeper who had cleared a path for them.

“I do not wish to answer any more questions,” she said. But a few moments later she spoke again. “Lucius?”

He looked down into her upturned face, jolted as he always was on the rare occasion when she used his given name.

“Yes?” he said.

“I will come to dinner at Marshall House tomorrow evening,” she said, “and I will sing in the music room afterward for your grandfather and my great-aunts. I will even take pleasure in doing so. But that must be the end. I shall be returning to Bath within the next two or three days. It must be the end, Lucius. You may not believe that you will be better off marrying Miss Hunt, but I assure you that you will. She is of your world, and she has the approval of your family and hers, I daresay. Affection and even love will grow between you if you try hard. You must forget about your obsession with me. That is all it is, you know. You do not really love me.”

He was furiously angry even before she had finished speaking. Had they still been in the park he would have lashed out at her. But the street on which they walked, though not busy, was in constant use. And who knew how many people lurked within sight or hearing behind the windows of the houses lining the street?

“Thank you,” he said curtly. “It is kind of you, Frances, to point out to me whom I love and whom I will grow to love. It is reassuring to know that what I feel for you is only an obsession. Knowing that, I shall recover in a trice. Ha! It is already done. There is your great-aunts’ house just up ahead, ma’am. It has been my pleasure to escort you home even if the course we took was rather too circuitous for your taste. I shall look forward to seeing you tomorrow evening. Good day to you.”

“Lucius—” She was looking up at him with stricken eyes.

“On the whole, ma’am,” he said, “I believe I prefer Lord Sinclair. The other suggests an intimacy between us that I no longer cultivate.”

“Oh,” she said. “Oh.”

He rapped on the door knocker for her and executed an elegant bow when it opened almost immediately. He did not watch her step inside. He turned and strode down the street.

He felt thunderous.

He felt murderous.

You must forget about your obsession with me.

He ground his teeth.

That is all it is, you know. You do not really love me.

Would to God she were right!

But sometimes, he thought, love could feel remarkably like hatred.

This was one of those times.

Mrs. Melford and Miss Driscoll arrived promptly at Marshall House the following evening with their great-niece and were received graciously in the drawing room by Viscountess Sinclair, to whom the Earl of Edgecombe presented them.

“I have, I believe, met you before, Mrs. Melford,” she said, “and you too, Miss Driscoll. It was many years ago, though, when my husband was still alive. And you are Miss Allard.” She smiled at Frances. “We have heard much about you and are greatly looking forward to hearing you sing after dinner. And I must thank you for being so kind to Amy when she was in Bath. It irks her to be the youngest in the family and to have to wait another year for her come-out.”

“She entertained me most graciously when I took tea at

Brock Street

, ma’am,” Frances assured her. “I was made to feel quite at home.”

There were nine people gathered in the drawing room, she had noted—rather more than she had expected. That made twelve altogether. But that fact surely could not account for the nervousness she felt. Or perhaps nervousness was the wrong word. She had not slept well last night or been able to settle to any activity today. The anger with which Viscount Sinclair had parted from her after escorting her home had bothered her ever since. For the first time she had been forced to consider the possibility that he really did have deep feelings for her, that his pursuit of her was not motivated merely by lust or thwarted will or impulse.

She could not escape the conclusion that he had been hurt yesterday.

And she was sorry then that she had not simply told him the whole story of her life. It could not matter now, could it? And it would have finally deterred him, shown him that a marriage between them was quite impossible.

The viscountess presented everyone to the new arrivals. The pretty, fair-haired young lady with the dimple in her left cheek when she smiled was Miss Emily Marshall. The earnest young gentleman with spectacles pinching the bridge of his nose was Sir Henry Cobham, Caroline Marshall’s betrothed. The other couple were Lord and Lady Tait. From her resemblance to Emily Marshall, Frances guessed that Lady Tait was an older sister.

The evening proceeded well enough after the introductions had been made. Frances avoided Viscount Sinclair, a task made somewhat easier by the fact that he seemed equally intent upon avoiding her. She sat between Mr. Cobham and Lord Tait at dinner and found them both easy conversationalists. Her great-aunts were both in good spirits and clearly enjoying themselves.

All that remained to do, Frances thought as the meal drew to an end and she watched for Lady Sinclair to give the signal for the ladies to withdraw and leave the gentlemen to their port—all that remained to do was sing for the pleasure of the earl and her aunts, and then they could take their leave and the whole ordeal would be over.

Tomorrow, or more probably the next day, she would return to Bath. And this time she was going to immerse herself fully in her life there and her work as a teacher. She was going to forget about Mr. Blake—it was unfair to try to force herself into welcoming his interest when she felt no regard for him beyond a mild gratitude. She was going to forget about beaux altogether.

Most of all, she was going to forget about Lucius Marshall, Viscount Sinclair.

She thought about the music she would sing and tried to get her mind prepared. Her only wish was that she could sing in the drawing room rather than in the music room. The latter seemed just a little too magnificently formal for a relatively small family entertainment. However, she supposed it would look different with the panels shutting it off from the vaster ballroom.

“Miss Allard,” the earl said suddenly, addressing her along the length of the table, “it has seemed in the last few days that it would be just too selfish to keep your performance all to ourselves. And so Lucius has invited some friends to join us after dinner in order to listen to you. We considered that the surprise would please you. I hope it does.”

Some friends.

Frances froze.

She did indeed mind. She minded very much.

This was London.

“How splendid!” Great-Aunt Martha exclaimed. “And how very thoughtful of you both.” She beamed first at the earl and then at the viscount. “Of course Frances does not mind. Do you, my love?”

How many were some? Frances wondered. And who were they?

But her aunts, she could see, were fair to bursting with pride and happiness. And the earl could not have looked more pleased with himself if he had been holding out to her the gift of a diamond necklace on a velvet cushion.

“I will be honored, my lord,” she said.

Perhaps some meant only two or three. Perhaps they would all be strangers. Surely they would, in fact. She had not been here in three years.

“I knew you would be pleased,” the earl said, rubbing his hands together with satisfaction. “But the honor is all ours, I assure you, ma’am. Now. You will not wish to be fussed with having to be sociable to other guests for the next little while. You will wish to relax quietly before you sing. Lucius will escort you to the drawing room while the rest of us proceed to the music room. Lucius?”

“Certainly, sir.” Viscount Sinclair got up from his place farther along the table and extended an arm as Frances rose from her place. “We will join you in half an hour?”

Frances set a hand on his sleeve.

The dining room and drawing room were not on the same floor as the music room. No particularly noticeable sounds were coming up from below. Nevertheless, Frances had an uneasy feeling that there would be sounds—of people—if only they were to descend the staircase.

“How many people are some friends?” she asked.

“Already, Frances,” he said, opening the door into the drawing room and ushering her inside, “you are sounding annoyed.”

“Already?” she said, turning to face him. “I will be even more so, then, when I know the answer?”

“There are people with a quarter of your talent who would kill for the sort of opportunity with which you are to be presented tonight,” he said.

Her eyes widened.

“Then give the opportunity to them,” she said, “and save them from having to commit murder.”

He cocked one eyebrow.

“And what sort of opportunity?” she demanded to know.

“I daresay you have not heard of Lord Heath,” he said.

She stared mutely. Everyone had heard of Lord Heath—everyone who was musically inclined, anyway.

“He is a renowned connoisseur and patron of music,” he explained. “He can promote your career as no one else in London can, Frances.”

That was what her father had once said. He had been planning to bring her to the baron’s attention, though he had said that it would be very difficult to do since everyone with even a modicum of musical talent was forever pestering him to listen.

“I have a career,” she said, “and you have taken me away from it in the middle of a term under largely false pretenses. I will be returning to it within the next day or two. I need no patron. I have an employer—Miss Martin.”

“Sit down and relax,” he told her. “If you work yourself into a fit of the vapors, you will not be able to sing your best.”

“How many, Lord Sinclair?” she asked him.

“I am not sure I can give you an exact number,” he said, “without going along to the music room and doing a head count.”

“How many? Approximately how many?”

He shrugged. “You should be glad,” he said. “This is the chance for which you have waited too long. You admitted to me yesterday that this was both your dream and your father’s.”

“Leave my father out of this!” She suddenly felt cold about the heart and sat down abruptly on the closest chair. She had had a ghastly thought. “The panels that divide the music room from the ballroom had been removed yesterday. Your sister drew your attention to the fact and reminded you to have them put back in place. Has it been done?”

“Actually no,” he said. He strolled to the fireplace and stood with his back to it, watching her.

“Why not?”

Dear God, the combined rooms would make a sizable concert hall. Surely that was not—

“You are going to be magnificent tonight, Frances,” he told her. His hands were clasped at his back. He was looking at her with an intensity that might have disconcerted her under other circumstances.

Yes, that was the intention, she realized. The panels between the two rooms had been removed deliberately because the audience was expected to be too large for the music room alone. And they had done it—he had done it—without consulting her.

Just as he had brought her to London by trickery, without consulting her wishes.

“I ought to walk out of here right now,” she said. “I would if doing so would not make my great-aunts appear foolish.”

“And if it would not disappoint my grandfather,” he said.

“Yes.”

She glared at him. He stared back, tight-jawed.

“Frances,” he said after a few moments of hostile silence, “what are you afraid of? Failing? It will not happen, I promise you.”

“You are nothing but a meddler,” she said bitterly. “An arrogant meddler, who is forever convinced that only he knows what I ought to be doing with my life. You knew I did not wish to return to London, yet you maneuvered matters so that I would come anyway. You knew I did not want to sing before any large audience, especially here, but you have gathered a large audience anyway and made it next to impossible for me to refuse to sing before it. You knew I did not wish to see you again, but you totally ignored my wishes. I think you really do imagine that you care for me, but you are wrong. You do not manipulate someone you care for or go out of your way to make her miserable. You care for no one but yourself. You are a tyrant, Lord Sinclair—the worst type of bully.”

He had, she thought, turned pale while she spoke. Certainly his expression had grown hard and shuttered. He turned abruptly to stare down into the unlit coals in the fireplace.

“And you, Frances,” he said after long moments of uncomfortable silence, “do not know the meaning of the word trust. I have no quarrel with your choosing to teach rather than sing. Why should I? You are free to choose your own course in life. But I do need to understand your reason for doing so—and there is a reason beyond simple preference or even simple poverty. I have no real quarrel with your refusal to come to London with me after Christmas or to marry me when I asked you a little over a month ago. I do not consider myself God’s gift to women, and I do not expect every woman to fall head over ears in love with me—even those who have bedded with me. But I need to understand the reason for your refusal, since I do not believe it is aversion or even indifference. You will not trust me with your reasons. You will not trust me with yourself.”

She was too angry to feel renewed regret that she had not been more open with him yesterday.

“I do not have to,” she cried. “I am under no compulsion to confide in you or any man. Why should I? You are nothing to me. And I am certain of only one thing in this life, and that is that I may trust myself. I will not let myself down.”

He turned to look at her, all signs of humor and mockery wiped from his face.

“Are you sure of that?” he asked her. “Are you sure you have not already done so?”

She understood suddenly—she supposed she had known it all along—why she had been able to contemplate a future with Mr. Blake but not with Lucius Marshall. Beyond a full confession about her past, including what had happened just after Christmas, she would not have had to share anything of her deepest self with Mr. Blake—not ever. Some instinct told her that. Courtesy and gentility and certain shared interests and friends would have taken them through life together quite contentedly. With Lucius she would have to share her very soul—and he his. Nothing else would ever do between them—she had been wrong yesterday about open books. As a very young woman she might have risked opening up to him—indeed she would have welcomed such a prospect. Young people tended to dream of the sort of love and passion that would burn hot and bright throughout a lifetime and even beyond the grave.

Although she was only twenty-three she shrank from the prospect of such a relationship now—and yearned toward it too.

She remembered their night together with sudden, unbidden clarity and closed her eyes.

“I will come to escort you to the music room in twenty minutes’ time,” he said. “It is a concert I have arranged for you, Frances. There will be other performers, but you will be last, as is only fitting. No one would wish to have to follow you. I will leave you alone to compose yourself.”

He crossed the room with long strides, not looking at her. But he paused with his hand on the doorknob.

“If you ask it of me when I return,” he said, “or even now, I will take you home to

Portman Street

. I will find some excuse to make to the guests in the music room. I am endlessly inventive when I need to be.”

He waited, as if for her answer, but she made none. He let himself quietly out of the room and closed the door behind him.

It was a miracle beyond hoping for, Frances supposed, that there would be no one in the music room and ballroom who would recognize her. Strangely, the realization made her feel almost calm—resigned to her fate. There was nothing she could do about it now. She could leave the house, of course—she could do it without even waiting for Lucius’s return. But she knew she would not do that.

The Earl of Edgecombe would be disappointed.

Her great-aunts would be upset and humiliated.

And somewhere deep within her there was a more selfish reason for staying.

A lifelong dream was being painfully reborn.

He had not answered her question about the size of the audience. But he had not needed to. She knew that it must be large. Why else would the panels between the music room and the ballroom have been removed? Even the music room itself was a fair-sized room and must be capable of seating a few dozen people. But it was not large enough for tonight’s audience.

And one member of that large audience was to be Lord Heath. How proud her father would be if he could know that!

The artist in her, the performer who had grown up dreaming of singing in public, yearned to sing tonight regardless of the consequences.

A painter, after all, did not paint a canvas and then cover it with a sheet so that no one would see it. A writer did not write a book and set it on a shelf beneath other books so that no one would ever read it. A householder, as the biblical story would have it, did not light a lamp and set it beneath a basket so that it would give no light to those within the house.

She had not even realized fully during her years of teaching how much she had repressed her natural instinct to sing so that others would hear.

He taught me to reach for the stars and settle for nothing less.

Papa!

Well, tonight she would sing, both for him and for herself.

And tomorrow she would make arrangements to return to Bath.

Lucius’s intention when he left the music room was to creep off to his own room to sulk in private for twenty minutes—or to storm at the four walls in righteous fury. But he had the niggling suspicion that his thoughts would be more than a little disturbing if he went somewhere where he would have nothing else to do but allow them to rattle about in his head and clamor accusingly at him.

A meddler.

A tyrant.

A bully.

You do not manipulate someone you care for or go out of your way to make her miserable.

Damnation!

His next instinct was to stalk off to the music room and shoo everyone out of the house. There must be a dozen and one other entertainments for them to take themselves off to, after all—there always were during the Season. But though he was frequently impulsive and even reckless, he was almost never bad-mannered—not on such a colossal scale, anyway. Besides, this was not his house. And his grandfather had looked forward so much to this evening.

What he actually ended up doing was going to the music room to see who had come and to make himself agreeable. And it looked, he thought as soon as he walked into the room, as if everyone he had asked had come—and that was actually a vast number of people. The music room was crowded. So was the ballroom, though admittedly many people had not yet taken their seats but were milling about making a great deal of noise.

He greeted Baron Heath and his wife and showed them to the seats in the front row that had been reserved for them. He exchanged pleasantries with a number of friends and acquaintances. He made a point of welcoming Lady Lyle and assured her that she was going to particularly enjoy the concert. When she looked slightly mystified, he smiled at her and told her that she would see what he meant soon enough.

He made his way toward Portia Hunt and the Balderstons and realized with something of a grimace that this was the first time he had given them a thought all evening. The Marquess of Godsworthy, he noticed, was in conversation with his grandfather.

“This is very pleasant,” Lady Balderston said. “A concert at Marshall House is an unusual treat.”

“It will be the best treat, ma’am,” Lucius assured her.

“Caroline told me that the schoolteacher from Bath is to sing,” Portia said. “Is it wise, Lucius? The audience here is likely to be far superior in taste to what she is accustomed to.”

“Miss Allard was not born a schoolteacher, Portia,” he told her. “Nor was she born in Bath. She grew up here in London as a matter of fact and had the best of singing masters.”

“One can only hope,” she said, “that those seated at the back will be able to hear her. Forgive me, Lucius, but your mama is busy with the guests. Is she aware that Amy is here?”

“There is not much concerning her daughters of which my mother is unaware,” he said. “Amy is a member of this family, and this is a family evening that has been opened up to our friends.”

He nodded amiably and walked away before he could start feeling irritable again. He already felt a number of negative things without adding irritability to the list.

The other entertainers had already arrived, and more and more of the members of the audience were taking their seats. There was nothing worse than concerts that started late. It was time to fetch Frances.

She would have his head on a platter when she saw the size of the audience, he thought as he made his way back up to the drawing room. For some reason that escaped his understanding she had given up her dream three years ago and was more than reluctant to take it up again.

A meddler. A tyrant. A bully.

Well, he was guilty as charged, he supposed. Better to be a meddler than a milksop. He had always met life head-on. He was not likely to change at this late date.

She was standing by the window, her back to the room, looking out into the heavy dusk. She looked very straight-backed, but when she turned at the sound of the door, he could see that her face and general demeanor were calm and composed.

He was, he realized, in the presence of the consummate professional. She had been taken by surprise and she had not liked it one bit, but she was now ready to sing.

“Shall we go?” he asked.

She crossed the room without a word and took his offered arm.

It was perhaps, he thought, the last time he would walk anywhere with Frances Allard. She did not want him—or rather she would not have him. And it was time he gave up the pursuit. After tonight she would have a clear choice—he was convinced of that. She could return to Bath or she could put herself into Heath’s hands and forge a new and glorious career.

At least he had arranged matters so that she would have that choice. But he would meddle no more.

If proving his love for her meant letting her go, then he would do it.

It would be the hardest thing he had ever done, though. Passivity did not come naturally to him.

Frances paused when they reached the doorway into the music room and her hand tightened slightly on his sleeve.

“Ah,” she said softly, “so this is what some friends look like.”

There was no question in her words. He did not offer any answer but led her to the empty seat between her great-aunts in the front row.

“Is this not a delightful surprise, dearest?” Miss Driscoll asked her as she seated herself.

“You are not too dreadfully nervous, my love?” Mrs. Melford asked.

Lucius moved away to take his own place on the other side of the center aisle. But everyone was seated, he had seen. And a near hush had fallen at his appearance. He stood again, welcomed everyone, and introduced the first performer of the evening, a violinist of his acquaintance who had been enjoying some success in Vienna and other parts of the Continent during the past year.

His performance was flawless and well received by the audience. So was that of the pianist who followed him and that of the harpist who followed her. But it was hard for Lucius to concentrate. Frances’s turn was next.

Had he made a dreadful error in judgment?

He did not doubt that she would acquit herself well, but . . . Would she ever forgive him?

But, devil take it, someone had to shake her out of her torpor.

He got to his feet to introduce her.

“My grandfather and my youngest sister and I attended a soiree in Bath several weeks ago,” he said, “at which there was musical entertainment. It was there, as part of that entertainment, that we heard for the first time a voice my grandfather still describes as the most glorious soprano voice he has heard in almost eighty years of listening. It was a voice we felt both honored and privileged to hear. Tonight we will hear it again, as will you. Ladies and gentlemen, Miss Frances Allard.”

There was polite applause as Frances got to her feet and Caroline took her place at the pianoforte and spread out sheets of music on the stand.

Frances looked slightly pale but as composed as she had been in the drawing room. She looked calmly at the audience and then lowered her head and even closed her eyes for a few moments. She was, Lucius could see while a hush fell in the combined rooms, filling her lungs slowly with air and then releasing it.

Then she opened her eyes and nodded to Caroline.

She had chosen “Let the Bright Seraphim” from Handel’s Sampson, an ambitious piece for trumpet and soprano. There was no trumpet, of course, only the pianoforte and her voice.

And so her voice became the trumpet, soaring through the intricate runs and trills of the music, filling both rooms with pure sound, which was never shrill, which never overpowered the space or overwhelmed the listeners. Voice, music, space—all were one glorious, perfect blend.

“Let the bright Seraphim in burning row, their loud, uplifted angel trumpets blow.”

She looked at the audience as she sang. She sang to them and for them, involving them all in the triumph of the lyrics and the brilliance of the music. And yet it was clear that this was no mere performance to her. This time—and for the first time—Lucius could see her as she sang, and it was clear to him that she was deep in the world of the music, creating it anew with every note she sang.

He was in that world with her.

So immersed was he, in fact, that he started with surprise when a loud and prolonged applause followed the song. Belatedly he joined in, his throat and chest constricted with what could only be unshed tears.

To say that he was proud of her would be an imposition. He had no right to claim any such feelings. What he felt was . . . joy. Joy in the music, joy for her, joy for himself that he was part of the experience.

And then, even more belatedly, he realized that he should have stood and made some comment and asked for another song. But it was unnecessary to do so. The applause had died away, to be succeeded by a few shushing noises as Caroline spread out another sheet of music and awaited the signal to begin playing.

Frances sang “I Know That My Redeemer Liveth.”

What had been pure brilliance in the first piece became sheer raw emotion in the second. Before she had finished Lucius was blinking back tears, totally unaware of the ignominy of weeping in public at a mere musical performance. She sang it better than she had the last time, if that was possible. But the last time, of course, he had had to fight distractions in order to hear her.

He was on his feet even before the final note had died away, though he did not immediately applaud. He watched her, tall and regal and beautiful, stay in the world of the music until the last echo of sound had died away.

During the timeless moment between the last bar of music and the first sounds of applause, Lucius knew beyond all doubt that Frances Allard was the woman he would love deep in his soul for the rest of his life even if he never saw her again after tonight. And, despite everything, despite all she had accused him of earlier in the drawing room, he was not sorry for what he had done.

By God, he was not sorry. He would do it all again.

And she would never be sorry. She could surely never ever regret tonight.

Finally she smiled and turned to indicate Caroline, who really had done a superb job at the pianoforte. Both of them bowed, and Lucius stood beaming at both, happier than he could ever remember feeling in his life.

It was impossible in that moment not to believe in happy endings.

Frances was happy. Consciously, gloriously happy.

She was where she belonged—she knew that. And she was doing what she knew she had been born to do.

She was filled to the brim and overflowing with happiness.

And instinctively, without thought, she turned as the applause gradually died down to smile at Lucius, standing in the front row, beaming back at her with what she could not avoid seeing was pride and an answering happiness.

And surely more than that.

How foolish she had been! From almost the first moment of their acquaintance she had been given the chance to reach for the stars, to risk all for the vividness of life—for passion and for love itself. And then for music too.

She had chosen not to take the risk.

And so he had taken it for her.

She felt a rush of love so intense that it fairly robbed her of breath.

But the Earl of Edgecombe was making his way toward her. He took her right hand there in front of everyone, bowed over it, and raised it to his lips.

“Miss Frances Allard,” he said, addressing the audience. “Remem-ber the name, my friends. One day soon you will boast of having heard her here before she became famous.”

The concert was over then, and there was the buzz of conversation as some people rose from their places and a line of footmen appeared at the ballroom doors, bearing trays of food and drink to set on the white-clothed tables at the back.

But Frances was not left unattended even though the earl turned away to speak with her great-aunts. Viscount Sinclair stepped up to take his place. He was looking wary again.

“There are no words, Frances,” he said. “There simply are no words.”

She wanted to weep then. But his mother had come forward too, and she actually hugged Frances.

“Miss Allard,” she said. “I have been to heaven and back this evening. My father-in-law and Lucius and Amy did not exaggerate when they spoke so glowingly of your talent. Thank you for coming here to sing to us.”

Lord Tait bowed and Lady Tait beamed and said she could not agree more with her mama. Emily Marshall linked an arm through Caroline’s and then smiled at Frances.

“I heard you, Caroline,” she said, “and you did superlatively well. But Grandpapa was right. One day I will be able to boast that my sister accompanied Miss Allard during her first concert in London.”

Amy, sparkling with enthusiasm, hugged Frances too.

“And I shall be able to boast to everyone I know that you were my special friend before I was even out,” she said.

Frances laughed. It did not escape her notice that she was surrounded by Lucius’s family, and that they were all looking on her with approval. It was a precious moment that she knew she would look back upon with pleasure.

And then they all stepped aside as another lady and gentleman came forward. Lord Sinclair performed the introductions. But Frances had seen the gentleman before. He was Lord Heath. She curtsied to him and Lady Heath.

“Miss Allard,” he said, “I hold one concert each year around Christmas time, as perhaps you know, at which I gather together for the delight of my friends and carefully chosen guests the very best musical talent I can attract from all over England and the Continent. I wish you will allow me to make an exception to my usual rule and arrange an additional musical evening now, during the Season, with you as the sole performer. I do assure you that everyone who has heard you tonight will wish to do so again. And word will spread like the proverbial wildfire. There will not be enough room in my house for those who will wish to attend.”

“Perhaps, then, Roderick,” Lady Heath said, laying a hand on his sleeve and looking at Frances with smiling eyes, “you should consider hiring a concert hall for the occasion.”

“Brilliant, Fanny!” he said. “It shall be done. Miss Allard, I need only your word of agreement. I can make you great in no time at all. No, let me correct that ridiculous assertion. You do not need me for that—you already are great. But I can make you the most sought-after soprano in Europe, I make bold to claim, if you will put yourself into my hands. I must enjoy this feeling of slight power while I may, though. It will not last long. Very soon you will not need either my patronage or anyone else’s.”

His words served up with them a healthy dose of reality.

It was too much to bear. Too much light had come flooding into her life in too short a time. She felt a desperate need to take a step back, to hold up a staying hand, to think. She would have given anything at that moment, she felt, to have seen the calm, sensible face of Claudia Martin in the crowd nearby. She longed for Anne and Susanna.

She was aware at the same time of Viscount Sinclair beside her, silent and tense, his eyes burning into her.

“Thank you, Lord Heath,” she said. “I am deeply honored. But I am a teacher. I teach music among other subjects at a girls’ school in Bath. It is my chosen career, and even now I long to get back to my pupils, who need me, and to my fellow teachers, who are my dearest friends. I love singing for my own satisfaction. Occasionally I enjoy singing for an audience, even one as large as this. But I do not wish to make a career of it.”

There was certainly truth in what she said. Not the whole truth, perhaps, but . . .

“I am sorry to hear it, ma’am,” Lord Heath said. “Very sorry indeed. I am afraid I misunderstood, though. When Sinclair invited me here tonight, I thought it was at your request. I thought you wished to be promoted. If you do not, I understand. I have a stepson with an extraordinarily sweet voice, but my wife keeps a very firm rein on my ambitions for him. Quite rightly so—he is a child. I respect your decision, but if you should ever change your mind, you may call upon me at any time. I have been exceedingly well blessed to have heard the purest of boy soprano voices and now the most glorious of female soprano voices all within five months.”

Frances looked up at Lord Sinclair after they had moved away.

“I may yet find myself shaking you until your teeth rattle, Frances,” he said.

“Because I do not share your ambitions for me?” she asked him.

“Because you do,” he retorted. “But I am not going to argue with you anymore. I am not going to manipulate or bully you ever again, you will be delighted to know. After tonight you will be free of me.”

She would have reached out and set a hand on his sleeve then, though with what motive she did not know, but other people crowded about, wishing to talk with her, congratulate her, and praise her performance. Frances smiled and tried to give herself up to the mere pleasure of the moment.

And there was pleasure. There was no point in denying it. There was something warm and wonderful about knowing that what one did, what one loved doing, had entertained other people and more than entertained them in a number of cases. Several people told her that her singing had moved them, even to tears.

And then some of her pleasure was dashed as Viscount Sinclair presented her to Lord and Lady Balderston and the young lady with them.

“Miss Portia Hunt,” he said.

Ah.

She was exquisitely lovely, with the perfect type of English rose beauty that Frances had always envied when she was growing up until she realized that she could never be like it herself. And in addition to her loveliness, Miss Hunt displayed an excellent taste in clothing and a perfect poise and dignity of manner.

How could any man look at her and not love her?

How could Lucius . . .

Miss Hunt’s smile was gracious and refined.

“That was a very commendable performance, Miss Allard,” she said. “The headmistress and teachers at your school must be proud indeed of you. Your pupils are fortunate to have you as their teacher.”

She spoke with well-mannered condescension—that latter fact was immediately apparent.

“Thank you,” Frances said. “I am honored to have the opportunity to shape the minds and talents of the young.”

“Lucius,” Miss Hunt said, turning to him, “I shall take the liberty of accompanying Amy upstairs to her room now that the concert has ended.”

Lucius. She called him Lucius. And clearly she was familiar with the family and with Marshall House. She was going to marry him, after all. He might deny it, clinging to the strict truth of the fact that he was not betrothed to her yet, but here was reality right before Frances’s eyes.

And did it matter?

“You must not trouble yourself, Portia,” he told her. “My mother will send her to bed when she thinks the time appropriate.”

Miss Hunt smiled again before turning away to join her parents, who were now talking with Lady Sinclair. But the smile, Frances noticed, did not quite reach her eyes.

Frances turned to Lord Sinclair to find him looking back at her with one eyebrow cocked.

“One of those excruciating moments sprung to life from one’s worst nightmare,” he said. “But behold me still alive and standing at the end of it.”

He was speaking, she supposed, of the fact that she and Miss Hunt had come face-to-face.

“She is lovely,” she said.

“She is perfect.” His other eyebrow rose to join the first. “But the trouble is, Frances, that I am not and have never wanted to be. Perfection is an infernal thing. You are far from perfect.”

She laughed despite herself and would have turned away then to join her great-aunts, but two more people were approaching, and she turned to them, still smiling.

Ah!

The gentleman, who was ahead of the lady, still looked boyishly handsome with his baby-blond hair and blue eyes and rather round face. He also looked somewhat pale, his eyes slightly wounded.

“Françoise,” he said with eyes only for her. “Françoise Halard.”

She had known before she entered the music room on Lord Sinclair’s arm that something like this might happen. She even remembered thinking that it would be a minor miracle if it did not. But from the moment she had started singing until now she had forgotten her fears—and her knowledge that she ought not to be here.

But here was the very person she had most wished to avoid seeing—unless that honor fell to the woman behind him.

“Charles,” she said and extended one hand to him. He took it and bowed over it, but he did not carry it to his lips or retain it in his own.

“You know the Earl of Fontbridge, then?” Lord Sinclair asked as Frances felt that she was looking down a long, dark tunnel at the man she had once loved and come close to marrying over three years ago. “And the countess, his mother?”

She turned her eyes on the woman standing behind him. The Countess of Fontbridge was as large and as formidable as ever, almost dwarfing her son, though more by her girth and the force of her presence than by her height.

“Lady Fontbridge,” she said.

“Mademoiselle Halard.” The countess did not even try to hide the hostility from her face or the harshness from her voice. “I see you have returned to London. When you decide to give a concert in future, Sinclair, you may wish to divulge the identity of those persons who are to perform for your guests so that they may make an informed decision about whether it is worth attending or not. Though on this occasion it is altogether possible that my son and I would not have understood that Miss Frances Allard was the same person as the Mademoiselle Françoise Halard with whom we once had an unfortunate acquaintance.”

“Françoise,” the earl said, gazing at her as if he had not even heard what his mother had just said, “where have you been? Did your disappearance have something to do with—”

But his mother had laid a firm hand on his arm. “Come, Charles,” she said. “We are expected elsewhere. Good evening to you, Sinclair.”

She pointedly ignored Frances.

Charles bent one lingering, wounded look upon Frances before submitting to being led away by the countess, whose hair plumes nodded indignantly above her head as she swept from the room without looking to left or right.

“Your own excruciating little moment sprung to life from nightmare, Frances?” Viscount Sinclair asked. “Or should I say Françoise? I take it Fontbridge is a discarded lover from your past?”

“I had better leave,” she said. “I daresay my aunts are ready to go. It has been a busy evening for them.”

“Ah, yes, run away,” he said. “It is what you do best, Frances. But first perhaps I can cheer you up a little. Let me take you to Lady Lyle.”

“She is here?” Frances actually found herself laughing. All she needed to complete the disaster of the evening now was to find that George Ralston was here too.

“I thought that she would like to hear you,” he said. “And that you would like to see her once more. I invited her to come.”

“Did you?” She smiled up at him. “Did you really? Do you not suppose I would have called upon Lady Lyle before now if I had wished for a tender reunion with her?”

He sighed out loud.

“I remember,” he said, “that on a certain snowy road several months ago I informed you that you were going to have to ride up with me in my carriage and you gave me a flat refusal. At that moment, Frances, I made the greatest mistake of my life. I gave in to a chivalrous impulse, albeit grudgingly, and stayed to argue. I ought to have driven away and left you to your fate.”

“Yes,” she said, “you ought. And I ought to have stuck with my first decision.”

“We have been the plague of each other’s lives ever since,” he said.

“You have been the plague of mine,” she said.

“And you have been nothing but sweetness and light to me, I suppose,” he said.

“I have never wanted to be anything at all to you,” she told him. “I have always been firm on that.”

“Except on one memorable night,” he said, “when you joined your body with mine three separate times, Frances. I do not believe it was ravishment.”

Oh, goodness, she thought, they were quarreling in full sight of a whole ballroomful of people. And she had just spotted Lady Lyle, sitting slightly apart from everyone else just inside the ballroom. She was looking as elegant as ever, her distinctive silver hair piled high and decorated with plumes. She was also looking slightly amused, her eyes fixed upon Frances.

“I have no wish to speak with Lady Lyle,” Frances said. “And I have no wish to remain here any longer. I am going to join my great-aunts now. Thank you for what you tried to do for me this evening, Lord Sinclair. I realize that you thought it would please me, and for a while it really did. But I am going to go back to Bath within the next few days. This is good-bye.”

“Again?” One of his eyebrows lifted once more and he smiled. But for all that, she thought, there was a certain bleakness in his eyes—a bleakness that was echoed in her heart. “Does this not become a little tedious, Frances?”

She could have reminded him that it would not have been necessary this time if he had left well enough alone and not suggested that Great-Aunt Martha summon her to London, supposedly to Great-Aunt Gertrude’s deathbed.

“Good-bye,” she said, and realized only when the word was out that she had whispered it.

He nodded his head a few times and then turned abruptly to stride away into the ballroom.

Frances watched him go and wondered if this now finally was the end.

But how could it not be?

The Countess of Fontbridge knew that she had come back to London.

So did Charles.

And so did Lady Lyle.

It would not take long for George Ralston to discover it too.

All she was left to hope for was that Bath would still be a safe enough refuge.

Lucius fully intended to honor his vow to let Frances go this time. He had made his feelings and intentions clear to her, he had done his utmost to get her to admit that she was not indifferent to him, he had even tried to be selfless and further the singing career that ought to have been hers a long time ago even if he could not at the same time further any romance between them.

But she had remained stubborn.

He had no choice but to let her go—unless he was prepared to make even more of an ass of himself than he already had.

He was simply going to have to keep himself busy with wedding plans.

His own, perish the thought.

When he sat through an afternoon visit with Portia and her mama, however, the very day after the concert, he found himself feeling trapped rather than joyful or even resigned. He had just brought Amy home from a visit to the Tower of London and had poked his head around the door of the drawing room to inform his mother that he did not expect to be home for dinner.

A moment later he cursed himself for not checking with the servants to see if anyone was with her. But curses, even silent ones, were now pointless. There they all were—his mother, Margaret, Caroline, and Emily, with Lady Balderston and Portia. If Tait had not been there too, looking hopefully toward the door as if for rescue, Lucius might have withdrawn after a brief exchange of pleasantries. But he did not have the heart to abandon his brother-in-law to his lonely fate.

And so two minutes later he was sitting on a sofa beside Portia, a cup of tea in his hands.

It seemed that he had interrupted a lengthy discussion on bonnets. He exchanged an almost imperceptible grimace with Tait as it resumed.

But Portia turned to him after everything that could possibly be said on the subject had been said.

“Mama has explained to Lady Sinclair that it really was a mistake to allow Amy to attend the concert here last evening,” she said.

“Indeed?” Instant irritation set in.

“The whole thing was a mistake, in fact,” she continued, “and will doubtless be an embarrassment to you for the next few days. But I daresay you did not know, and that must be your defense. It will be my defense on your behalf. Mistakes need not be quite disastrous, though, unless we refuse to learn from them. I am assured that you will learn caution, Lucius, especially when you have someone with a more level head to advise you.”

He was looking at her with both eyebrows raised. What the deuce was she talking about? And was she offering her level head as his future adviser? But of course she was. She was not offering, though—she was assuming.

“In future you must choose the musical talent at your concerts with greater care,” she said kindly. “You ought to have checked Miss Allard’s credentials more carefully, Lucius, though one really ought to be able to assume that a schoolteacher is respectable. Mama and Papa and I certainly made that assumption when we condescended to seek an introduction to her.”

Everyone was listening, of course. But they seemed to be content to allow Portia to do the talking.

Lucius’s eyes narrowed. Irritation was no longer an option. He had moved beyond it to something more dangerous. But he kept his feelings leashed.

“And what exactly is it, Portia,” he asked, “that makes Miss Allard unrespectable? What sort of gossip have you been listening to?”

“I really do not believe, Lord Sinclair,” Lady Balderston said, her voice stiff with suppressed indignation, “we can ever be accused of being vulgar enough to listen to gossip. We heard it from Lady Lyle’s own lips last evening, and Lady Lyle was once kind and misguided enough to give a home to that French girl, who is now trying to pass herself off as an Englishwoman.”

“And this,” Lucius said, raising his eyebrows, “is Miss Allard’s sin, ma’am? That some people pronounce her name Halard? That she had a French father—and an Italian mother? She was planted here as a baby, perhaps, so that she might grow into a French spy? How exciting that would be! Perhaps we should dash off to capture her and drag her in chains to the Tower of London to await her fate.”

Tait turned a snort of laughter into a throat-clearing exercise.

“Lucius,” his mother said, “this is hardly the time for levity.”

“Did someone say it was, then?” he asked, turning his eyes on her and noticing that Emily beyond her was regarding him with dancing eyes and her dimple in full view.

“I like the French pronunciation of her name,” Caroline said, “and wonder that she changed it.”

“The truth is, Lucius,” Portia said, “that Lady Lyle was compelled to turn Miss Allard out of her home because she was consorting with the wrong people and singing at private parties no respectable lady should even know about, let alone attend, and building a scandalous reputation. Who knows what else she was involved in.”

“Portia, my love,” her mother said, “it is better not to talk of such things.”

“It is painful to do so, Mama,” Portia admitted. “But it is necessary that Lucius know how perilously close he brought Lady Sinclair and his sisters to scandal last evening. The truth must be broken very gently to Lord Edgecombe, who is resting in his bed this afternoon. We will rely upon the discretion of Lady Lyle to tell no one else what she told us. And we will certainly not spread the word. She swore us to secrecy, but we would not dream of saying anything to anyone anyway.”

“She swore you to secrecy.” Lucius’s eyes had narrowed again.

“She would not wish anyone to know how she was once deceived by her charge, would she?” Portia asked. “But she felt that Mama and Papa should know. And that I should know.”

“Why?” Lucius asked.

For once Portia looked almost nonplussed. But she recovered quickly.

“She knows, I suppose,” she said, “of the close connection between our families, Lucius.”

“I wonder,” he said, “that she did not simply speak to me.”

“What I believe,” Margaret said, “is that Lady Lyle was chagrined that she could not claim any of the glory for Miss Allard’s performance last evening and contrived a way of introducing some spiteful gossip into our family circle so that we would drop our acquaintance with her. I believe it is all a pile of nonsense.”

“So do I, Marg,” Emily said. “Who cares what Miss Allard once did?”

“I would be honored to accompany her again anytime,” Caroline said. “I wonder that you would want to repeat such silliness, Portia.”

“Oh, but we must thank Lady Balderston and Portia for bringing what they heard to our attention,” Lady Sinclair said, ever the diplomat. “Better that than discover it was being whispered behind our backs. Miss Allard appears to have corrected any faults there were in her nature when she stayed with Lady Lyle, though, and that does her credit. And I will be forever glad that I did not miss the opportunity of hearing her glorious voice last evening. Perhaps, Emily, someone would like another cup of tea.”

Lucius got abruptly to his feet.

“You are leaving, Lucius?” his mother asked.

“I am,” he said curtly. “I have just remembered that I must call upon Miss Allard.”

“To thank her in person for last evening?” his mother asked. “I do think that is a good idea, Lucius. Perhaps your grandfather will wish to accompany you if he is up from his afternoon rest. Even Amy—”

“I will go alone,” Lucius said. “I thanked her last evening. I have another mission today.”

He did pause, but it was too late not to complete what he had begun to say—they were all, without exception, looking expectantly at him.

“I am going to ask her to marry me,” he said.

Although the drawing room floor was covered from wall to wall with a thick carpet, a pin might nevertheless have been heard to drop as he strode from the room.

And now what the devil had he gone and done? he asked himself as he took the stairs two at a time up to his room.

He had opened his mouth and rammed his foot in it, boot and all, that was what.

But the thing was, he was not even sorry.

Frances spent a busy morning. She had not expected to do so after the excitement and upsets and general turmoil of the evening before. And she had had an almost sleepless night to boot.

But her great-aunts remained in bed late, and so she was alone in the breakfast room when the letter from Charles was delivered into her hand.

He begged to see her again. He had never understood why she had run away without a word. It was true that they had quarreled during their final meeting, but they had always made up their disagreements before that. He was no longer angry with her, if that was what she feared. He could see that she had redeemed herself since leaving. He understood that she had been teaching quietly and respectably in Bath ever since she left London.

She folded the letter and set it beside her plate. But her appetite was gone.

She had met the Earl of Fontbridge early in her come-out Season, and they had quickly fallen in love. He had wanted to marry her—but it would take some time to bring his mother around to accepting the daughter of a French émigré as his wife. And then her father had died. And then his mother would have to be reconciled to the fact that she had no fortune. And then he did not think that his future wife ought to be known as a singer who actually sang for her living. As Frances had wondered if he would ever consider the time and circumstances just right for them to marry, she had also started to fall out of love with him. And then they had had a bitter quarrel after he had heard of one particular party at which she had sung. She had defended her right to do as she wished since they were not even officially betrothed, and then she had told him that that was the end, that she never wanted to see him again.

And indeed she had not done so—not until last evening. And in the meantime she had promised never to see him again. She had done worse than that . . .

She was honor bound, then, not to answer the letter.

She was developing a nasty history, she thought, of not offering the explanations that ought to be made. And besides that, the two years following her father’s death had been fraught with errors and misjudgments on her part—the result of having been the pampered, adored daughter of a man who had sheltered her and guided her and made most of her decisions for her.

She closed her eyes and pushed her plate away. She had made it a practice not to think of those two years. She had done well since. She had taken charge of her own life, and she was proud of what she had made of it. But of course it was impossible to put something entirely from mind simply by the power of one’s will—especially when that something was as prominent as two misspent years of one’s life. She had often wished she could go back and do things differently at the end. She still wished it.

Well, she thought, opening her eyes and staring down at the white tablecloth, she was back. And it was too late to creep out of London as she had crept in, unseen. All the people she had particularly wanted to avoid—Charles, the Countess of Fontbridge, Lady Lyle—had actually seen her. She did not doubt that George Ralston knew by now too that she was here.

If it was too late to creep away unseen, then perhaps she should stop even stepping lightly.

Perhaps she could do things differently after all, even if her actions were belated.

An hour later she was on her way alone and on foot to call upon the Countess of Fontbridge. It was not the fashionable time to make social calls, but then this was no social occasion.

When she was admitted to the earl’s house on Grosvenor Square, she asked if the countess was at home and entrusted to the butler’s care a short letter she had written to Charles, with the instructions that it was to be placed into his own hands. She was left standing in the tiled hall, but she did not really expect that the countess would refuse to admit her. A few minutes later she was shown into a small sitting room on the floor above.

No greetings were exchanged. The countess was standing before a small desk, her head at an arrogant tilt, her hands clasped at her waist. She did not offer her visitor a chair.

“So you have seen fit to break your word, Mademoiselle Halard,” she said. “I suppose you have come here this morning with some explanation. None is acceptable. It is to be hoped that when you decided to return to London, you also came prepared to take the consequences.”

“I came because one of my great-aunts was ill, ma’am,” Frances said. “When I agreed to sing at Marshall House last evening at the request of the Earl of Edgecombe, I was quite unaware that other guests were being invited to listen to me. My great-aunt is better and the concert is over. I will be returning to Bath without further delay. But I did not come here to offer an excuse. I ought not to have made the agreement I did with you more than three years ago. I did so because I was angry on Charles’s behalf that you controlled his life so ruthlessly that you thought you could buy off the woman he wished to marry. I did so with bitter cynicism. By that time I had no intention of marrying him. I had even told him so.”

“There were to be consequences of your breaking our agreement,” the countess reminded her.

“Yes, there were.” They still greatly troubled Frances, but she would not be ruled by fear any longer. Perhaps Lord Sinclair had done her a favor after all in bringing her here under false pretenses. Perhaps all this had needed to happen. “And you may proceed to implement them if you choose, ma’am. I am in no position to stop you, am I? But I do wonder why you would bother. I made a promise to you three years ago that I fully intended to keep. But forever is too long a time for any agreement. Your purpose was to separate me from your son. That it was accomplished even before you paid me such a handsome sum is neither here nor there. My purpose was to pay off some troublesome debts. It was done and is forgotten about. I will be returning to Bath soon and remaining there to teach. But I will not promise never to come back here. I will no longer give you or anyone else that hold over me.”

The Countess of Fontbridge bent a hard, narrow-eyed gaze on her, but before she could say more—if she intended doing so—Frances turned and left the room.

She felt slightly dizzy as she descended the stairs and stepped out onto the pavement and into the fresh air—and vastly relieved that Charles had not made an appearance. He must be from home.

For a moment she was tempted to turn her steps homeward. She had lived through more emotional turmoil during the past twenty-four hours—less!—than she had experienced in the three years before this past Christmas, she was sure. But there was no point in stopping now.

A short while later she was being ushered into a far more opulent sitting room than the one she had just left. And Lady Lyle was not standing with an unwelcoming pose to receive her. Rather, she was reclining on a sofa, petting a small dog in her lap with one hand and looking somewhat amused.

“Well, Françoise,” she said by way of greeting, in the low, velvet voice that sounded so familiar, “you find yourself unable to ignore me after all, do you? Am I to feel honored, child? You are in reasonable good looks, though those clothes are shockingly provincial and your gown last evening was no better. And your hair! It is enough to make one weep.”

“I am a schoolteacher, ma’am,” Frances reminded her.

Lady Lyle shushed the lapdog, which had been yapping at the advent of a stranger into its territory.

“So it is said, Françoise,” Lady Lyle said. “How amusing that you have been in Bath all this time and as a teacher. What an excruciatingly boring life it must have been.”

“I enjoy teaching,” Frances said. “I like everything about it.”

Lady Lyle laughed again and made a dismissive gesture with one hand.

“George Ralston will be interested to know that you are back,” she said. “He will forgive you and restore you to favor, Françoise, though it was very naughty of you to disappear without a word. I have already written to him and interceded on your behalf.”

“I am going back to Bath,” Frances told her.

“Nonsense, child,” Lady Lyle said. “Oh, do sit down. It gives me a stiff neck to have to look up at you. You have no intention whatsoever of leaving. You have been doing some careful scheming and have won the favor of the Earl of Edgecombe and Viscount Sinclair, who were in Bath recently, I understand. And you have secured the interest of Lord Heath through their sponsorship. I give you full credit. It has taken you a few years but you have done it. And I must say that your voice has actually improved. That was an impressive performance last night. But your schemes will get you no farther, you know. Even apart from the fact that you are not free to accept the patronage of Baron Heath, there is the fact that you are about to lose your influential friends, Françoise. One word in the ear of a certain young lady who is about to be affianced to Sinclair and in those of her mama and papa, and your only recourse is to look elsewhere for the furtherance of your career. Oh, and by the way, child, that word was dropped into those ears last evening. Nothing too, too damning, I assure you, but it does not need to be with that young lady. She is very proper, and she has very firm control over poor Sinclair.”

Even just yesterday Frances might have cringed. But something had snapped in her this morning, and she felt as if she were alive again after a long, deathlike sleep. She had thought herself free in the new life she had built for herself, but she had not been free at all. Her past needed to be dealt with before she could call herself free.

She had not sat down.

“I am not in your debt, Lady Lyle,” she said, “though I have a feeling that you are about to claim that I am so that you can have the old hold over me. I never was in debt to you except perhaps for my board while I lived here—at your insistence after Papa died. But I paid that debt many times over. I am not bound to George Ralston either, though I am sure he would soon be assuring me that I am his slave for life if I were to stay in London long enough to hear him.”

“Slave!” Lady Lyle looked amused again. “Poor George! And after all he did for you, Françoise. You were well on your way to being famous.”

“I believe notorious would be a more appropriate word,” Frances said. “You may say whatever you wish to Miss Hunt or to Lord Sinclair and even to Lord Heath. It does not matter to me. I am going back to Bath—by choice. It is where my home is and my profession and my friends.”

“Oh, poor Françoise,” Lady Lyle said, pushing the dog to the floor and moving into an upright sitting position before patting the sofa cushion beside her. “Have you not punished yourself enough? Come and sit here and let us be done with this foolish wrangling with each other. We were always fond of each other, were we not? And I adored your papa. You still desperately want your career in singing. There is no point in denying it. It was perfectly evident last evening. Well, you can have it back, you silly child. You never needed to throw it away and then scheme to get it back by your own efforts. We will have a word with Ralston and—”

“I am leaving now,” Frances said. “I have other things to do this morning.”

“Ah,” Lady Lyle said, “you sound just like your papa. He was stubborn too and so very proud. But handsome and charming and quite, quite irresistible.”

Frances turned to leave.

“Ralston will not be pleased, Françoise,” Lady Lyle said. “Neither am I. And I do know where to find you now. I daresay it will be no trouble at all to discover the name and direction of the school at which you teach and the identity of the head of the board of governors or the headmistress or whoever it is who employs you. Bath is not a large place, and I daresay there are not many girls’ schools there.”

For a moment Frances felt as if icy fingers had reached out to grasp her. But she was no longer the girl she had been three years ago to cringe beneath every threat.

“Miss Martin’s school is on Daniel Street,” she said curtly without turning. “Good day to you, ma’am.”

She held her poise until she was back out on the street, but then her shoulders sagged. It was all very well to have hurled defiance in the teeth of both the Countess of Fontbridge and Lady Lyle this morning, but the euphoria of doing so had given her a false sense of security. In reality her world was threatening to come crashing down about her ears. The Countess of Fontbridge now knew where she lived and worked. So did Lady Lyle. Both ladies, she knew, were very capable of spite. If either one of them chose to make life difficult for her there, she would have to leave. Not that she had kept any secrets from Claudia. But it was imperative that the teachers at a respectable girls’ school be above reproach. She would not be able to stay if any breath of scandal concerning her got to the ears of the parents of her pupils—or to those of Claudia’s unknown benefactor.

And it was all Viscount Sinclair’s fault! Without his interference she would not have come to London and all this would not have happened.

No, that was unfair.

She did think about calling at Marshall House, but to what purpose? It would be most improper to go there and ask to speak to Viscount Sinclair.

It would be better to write to him. He had been a nuisance and a bother to her for some time, but he did deserve, perhaps, to be given a full, truthful explanation for her refusal to marry him.

Besides, she was dreadfully in love with him. She needed to make him understand.

She would not write to him from here in London, though, she decided as she walked home. As like as not he would rush impulsively over to Portman Street again and try to persuade her into doing what he would know deep down was not possible.

Anyway, it had been very evident last evening that his betrothal to Miss Hunt was imminent.

She would wait until she was back in Bath and then write to him.

A last good-bye.

She smiled wanly at the thought.

That left only her great-aunts to consider.

It had not been just cynicism that had led her into making Lady Fontbridge the promise to go away without another word to Charles and to stay away forever. It had also been fear—not so much for herself as for her great-aunts. She could not bear to think of them being hurt—they had often told her that she was like a daughter to each of them, that she was the person they loved most of all in the world besides each other.

The countess might yet decide to be spiteful.

Her great-aunts were both up, she discovered when she arrived home. They were sitting out in the little summer house in the back garden, enjoying the fine weather.

Frances made a decision as she went to join them there.

A little less than three hours later she was on her way back to Bath. It was already afternoon. It would certainly have been wiser to wait until morning, as her aunts had tried to convince her, but once the decision had been made she had been almost desperate to be back in Bath, back to the sane, busy routine of school life, back with her friends.

It was almost certain that she would have to stop somewhere on the road for the night, but she was not penniless. She could afford one night at an inn.

It was not just a desperation to be in Bath that drove her to such an abrupt departure, though. It was also a desperation to leave London, to leave him before he could come with more excuses to speak with her—and she very much feared that he would come despite his protestations to the contrary last evening.

She could not bear to see him again.

She wanted her heart to have a chance to begin mending.

Her great-aunts had been disappointed, of course. What about Baron Heath? they asked her. What about her singing career? What about Lord Sinclair? He was surely in love with their dear Frances. They had both come to that conclusion last evening.

But finally they had accepted her decision and assured her they felt well blessed that she had come all the way to London just to see them and had stayed for almost a whole week.

They had insisted upon sending her back in their traveling carriage.

And finally, after lengthy, tearful farewells and tight hugs Frances was on her way.

This was a little like the way it had all begun after Christmas, she thought as the London streets gradually gave place to countryside and she tried to find a comfortable position in the carriage—she felt weary right through to the marrow of her bones. It was fitting perhaps that this was how it would all end.

But this time there was no snow.

And this time there was no Lucius Marshall coming along behind her in a faster carriage.

She shed a very few tears of self-pity and grief and then dried them firmly with her handkerchief and blew her nose.

If he had many more dealings with Frances Allard, Lucius decided, he might well find that he had ground his teeth down to stumps.

He had arrived at the house on Portman Street, all prepared to shake the living daylights out of her, only to find that she had flown from there a scant half hour before. He had then had to spend all of ten minutes with her rather tearful great-aunts, who declared that he ought to have come sooner and persuaded their dear Frances to stay longer. But she had decided that she had been away from her classes long enough and must return to them immediately even though she could not possibly expect to reach Bath today.

“You sent her in your carriage, then, ma’am?” he had asked, addressing Mrs. Melford.

“Of course,” she had told him. “We certainly would not allow her to travel in the discomfort of a stagecoach, Lord Sinclair. She is our niece—and our heir.”

He had taken his leave soon after. And that, of course, ought to have been that.

End of story.

Good-bye.

The end.

But he had left the drawing room at Marshall House with such a flourish of high drama—totally unplanned and unrehearsed—that it would seem anticlimactic now to creep back there with the announcement that he had abandoned his plan to offer Frances Allard marriage because she had left town.

Offer her marriage indeed after she had refused him once and shown no sign of changing her mind since!

He really did appear to be suffering from an incurable case of insanity.

After walking back to Marshall House, he took the stairs two at a time up to his room—at least, that was his intention. But he met a veritable wall of people at the top of the first flight—they must have been watching for him at the drawing room window and had come to intercept him.

He half expected to see Portia among them, but neither she nor Lady Balderston was there. All the rest of them were, though, except his grandfather—even Amy.

“Well, Luce?” that young lady called out when he was still six stairs below them. “Did she say yes? Did she?”

“Amy,” their mother said sharply, “hold your tongue. Lucius, whatever have you done?”

“I have been out on a wild-goose chase,” he said. “She was not there. She is on her way back to Bath.”

“I have never been more mortified in my life,” his mother said. “Portia will not have you now, you know. Lady Balderston will not allow it, and neither will Lord Balderston, I daresay, when he hears what has happened. And even if they would, I do not believe she will. She behaved with great dignity after you had left and even advised Emily on the gown she ought to wear to the Lawson ball tomorrow evening. But you humiliated her in front of most of your family.”

“Did I, Mama?” He came up to the top stair and Tait stepped to one side to give him room. He also managed to favor his brother-in-law with a private smirk. “How? By suggesting that she is a gossip? I ought to have been more tactful, perhaps, but I spoke nothing but the truth.”

“I quite agree,” Emily said. “As if I am not perfectly capable of choosing my own gown!”

“I have never liked Lady Lyle,” Margaret added. “She always has a half-smile on her face. I do not trust it.”

“Oh, do be quiet,” the viscountess said. “You are being quite deliberately obtuse, Lucius. You know very well that Portia has been expecting a marriage offer from you every day for the past month and more. We have all expected it.”

“Then you have all been wrong,” he said. “I promised to choose a bride this spring, not Portia Hunt.”

Amy clapped her hands.

“I am glad, Luce,” Caroline said. “I have not liked Portia’s attitude this spring. I have not liked her.”

“And you believe Miss Allard is a suitable choice?” his mother asked, frowning.

“I cannot see why not,” he said, “except that she has refused me more than once.”

“What?” That was Emily.

“Is she mad?” That was Margaret.

Tait grimaced.

“Oh, no, Luce,” Amy said. “No! She would not do that.”

“Oh, do be quiet, all of you,” Lady Sinclair said. “You will be waking your grandfather.”

“He is still sleeping?” Lucius asked.

“He has overtaxed his strength, I am afraid,” his mother said. “He is not at all the thing today. And now this. He will be very upset, Lucius. He has had his heart set on your marrying Portia. Are you sure you did not act with more than usual impulsiveness this afternoon? Perhaps if you were to call at Berkeley Square and apologize—”

“I’ll not do it,” Lucius said. “And while I am standing here talking, I am wasting valuable time. Pardon me, but I have to change my clothes. My curricle should be at the door within half an hour.”

“Where are you going?” His mother looked pained.

“After Frances, of course,” he said, heading for the next flight of stairs. “Where else?”

Amy, he could hear, whooped with delight before being shushed by their mother.

Frances was aching in every limb. It was impossible to find a comfortable position on the hard seat of the carriage. And whenever she did think that perhaps she had found one, the vehicle was sure to bounce over a hard rut or else jar through a pothole and she was reminded that if the carriage had ever been well sprung it was no longer so.

Even so she found herself near to dozing as evening approached. Soon it would be dusk and they would be forced to stop, she knew. She had refused her great-aunts’ offer of a maid to accompany her for respectability. She did not mind being alone. They would not stop at a busy or fashionable posting inn, and her serviceable clothes would prevent her hosts and fellow guests from being too scandalized.

Tomorrow she would be back at the school. There would be little rest, of course. She would have to find out exactly what the temporary teacher had been doing with her classes and she would have to prepare to take over the next day. It would not be easy. She had never before taken even as much as a day off work. But she welcomed the thought of being busy again.

And every passing day would push the glorious wonder of last evening’s concert and the terrible moment of saying a final good-bye to Lucius farther and farther back in memory until finally a whole day would pass when she would not think of either the height or the depth of emotion the last week had brought her.

She was dreaming of being inside a block of snow hiding from Charles. She was dreaming that she was singing and holding a high note when a snowball collided with her mouth and she saw Lucius grinning broadly and applauding with enthusiasm. She was dreaming that the senior madrigal choir was singing for Lord Heath but everyone was flat and singing at a different tempo while she flapped her arms in an ineffectual attempt to restore order.

She dreamed a dozen other meaningless, disjointed, vivid dreams before starting awake as the carriage swayed and tipped, seemingly out of control.

Frances grabbed for the worn leather strap above her head and waited for disaster to strike. There were the sounds of thundering hooves and yelling voices, and then horses came into view—traveling in the same direction as her own carriage was taking. They were pulling a gentleman’s curricle, Frances could see, her eyes widening in indignation. A curricle on the road to Bath? And traveling at such a breakneck speed? It was thundering past on what seemed to be a particularly narrow stretch of road. What if there was something coming the other way?

She pressed her face to the window and peered up at the driver on his high perch. He was very smartly clad in a long buff riding coat with several capes and a tall hat set at a slight angle.

Frances, eyes wide as saucers, was not quite sure she recognized him. He was up high and almost past her line of vision. But the groom up behind him was neither. He was looking utterly contemptuous and yelling something, presumably at Thomas, that she mercifully could not hear. Just the expression on his face told her that it was not complimentary, though.

She had not been mistaken, then. If the man was Peters, the driver was certain to be Viscount Sinclair.

Why was she somehow not surprised?

She leaned back in her seat after the light vehicle was past. She closed her eyes, caught between fury and a totally inappropriate hilarity.

He talked about banishing the word pleasant from the English language. But it seemed that he had already totally obliterated the word good-bye from his own personal vocabulary.

She did not relinquish her hold on the strap. When Thomas pulled the carriage to an abrupt halt she was ready for the resulting jars and jolts that might have catapulted her across to the seat opposite and flattened her nose against its backrest had she been unprepared.

She looked out the window and ahead along the road. But the scene was very much what she had expected. The curricle, now in the care of Peters alone, was stationary and positioned right across the road. Viscount Sinclair was striding toward the carriage, his long coattails flapping against his glossy boots, his riding whip tapping against both. He was looking decidedly grim.

“If you would only choose to travel the king’s highway in a carriage instead of an apology for an old boat, Frances,” he said after yanking the door open, “you might have been to Bath and back by now. Move over.”

Frances gazed helplessly at him and moved.

It offended Lucius’s Corinthian soul to have to ride in the old fossil. But there was no avoiding such a fate—the carriage would offer more privacy than his curricle, especially with Peters—and, more important, Peters’s ears—riding up behind. He very much hoped that none of his friends was tooling along the road to Bath to see the vehicle in which he traveled, though. He would never recover from the ignominy.

“Thanks to you I have lost a perfectly perfect bride today,” he said, slamming the door and taking the seat beside Frances—he remained firmly on the surface of it instead of sinking comfortably into it, he noticed. “And I want recompense, Frances.”

Understandably she sat across the corner to which she had retreated and stared at him with hostile eyes.

There was a good deal of bad-tempered shouting going on outside, presumably while Peters and Thomas exchanged genealogies again, and then Peters must have driven the curricle onward, as instructed. A posting chaise rumbled past in the opposite direction, its coachman’s face purple with rage, and then the carriage in which Lucius sat with Frances creaked and jarred into slow motion and proceeded on its way.

“Miss Hunt actually refused you?” she asked at last. “I am surprised, I must confess. But in what sense am I responsible, pray?”

“She did not refuse me,” he said. “She was not given a chance. I announced in her hearing and her mama’s that I was off to Portman Street to offer you my compliments and my hand. By the time I discovered you gone and crept home again, both ladies had left Marshall House in high dudgeon, and in my mother’s considered opinion Portia would no longer have me if I crawled toward her on my hands and knees, eating dirt as I went, or humble pie—whichever happened to be available.”

“And would you do it if you were given the opportunity?” she asked.

“Crawl on my hands and knees?” he asked. “Good Lord, no. My valet would resign on the spot, and I am partial to the way he ties a neckcloth. Besides which, Frances, I have no wish to marry Portia Hunt—never have had and never will. I believe I would rather be dead.”

“She is very lovely,” she said.

“Exceedingly,” he agreed. “But we had this conversation last evening, Frances. I would rather talk about you.”

He was babbling, he knew—making a joke of things that were not really funny at all. Truth to tell, he had no business being where he was. But he was not about to admit that.

“There is nothing to say about me,” she said. “I think you had better summon your curricle and go back to London, Lord Sinclair.”

“On the contrary,” he said, “there is a great deal to talk about. The fact that you are a Frenchwoman masquerading as an Englishwoman, for example. How is one to know that you are not a spy?”

She clucked her tongue.

“You knew that I was French,” she said. “Does it matter whether I choose to be known as Françoise Halard or Frances Allard? Somehow people expect a Frenchwoman to be flamboyant, to talk with her hands, to flutter with emotion. They expect her to be foreign. I grew up in England. I am an Englishwoman in every way that matters.”

If he had to travel very far in this carriage, he thought, his spine would surely suffer permanent damage—not to mention his hindquarters.

“I will release you from suspicion as a spy, then,” he said. “But what about the fact that you were singing at orgies before you became a teacher, Frances? You must have some interesting anecdotes to relate about that.”

Suddenly he felt grim again. And she looked tight-lipped.

“Orgies,” she said softly.

“Lady Lyle did not use that exact word,” he said. “She was speaking to Portia and so would have felt obliged to temper her language. But that is what she meant.”

She turned her head to look out the window. She was not wearing a bonnet—it was lying on the seat opposite. Her profile, he could see, looked as if it were carved out of marble. It was about that color too.

“I do not have to justify myself to you, Lord Sinclair, when you take that tone with me,” she said. “Or even when you do not, for that matter. You may get out of my aunts’ carriage and go back to town.”

He heaved an audible sigh of exasperation.

“I cannot do it, though, you see,” he told her. “I cannot simply go away, Frances. Not until our story has been ended. I remember reading a book as a boy—an ancient tome from my grandfather’s library. I became totally immersed in the story and let two perfectly decent summer days go by outdoors while I remained indoors and lapped up its contents. And then the story came to an abrupt halt—the last who-knows-how-many pages were missing. I was left feeling as if I were hanging over the edge of a cliff by my fingernails with no hope of rescue. And no one I questioned had ever read the infernal thing. When I hurled the book across the library, it sailed through a window, taking a large pane of glass with it, and I lost my allowance for at least the next six months. But I have never forgotten my wrath and frustration. They have been rekindled lately. I like stories to have neat endings.”

“We are not living within the pages of a book,” she said.

“And therefore the story can end however we wish it to end,” he said. “I no longer demand a happily-ever-after, Frances. It takes two to make a happy marriage, and so far we seem to have a total of one willing partner. But I do need to know why—why you have spurned me, why you rejected an opportunity last evening with Heath that many musicians with half your talent would kill for. Deuce take it, what happened in your past? What skeleton are you hiding in your wardrobe?”

She almost noticeably slumped into her corner.

“You are right,” she said. “You deserve an explanation. Perhaps I would have offered it in Sydney Gardens if I had realized that you were really serious in your offer and not merely acting from romantic impulse. I ought to have told you when you took me walking in Hyde Park—but I did not. I intended to write to you from Bath. But now I will have to say it in person.”

“From Bath?” he said. “Why not from London?”

“Because,” she said with a sigh, “I was afraid you would come to confront me after reading the letter. I was afraid that you would not see sense.”

She looked up at him, and he held her gaze. A smile tugged at the corners of her lips.

“Do you never see sense?” she asked him.

“There is a fine line between sense and nonsense,” he said. “I have not yet worked out exactly where you belong on the line, Frances. Tell me about the skeleton in the wardrobe.”

“Oh,” she said, “there are enough to fill a whole mansionful of wardrobes. It is not one single thing, but a whole host of things. I made a mess of my life after my father died, that is all. But I was fortunate enough to be able to break free and build a new life for myself. It is what I am going back to now. It is a life that cannot include you.”

“Because I am a viscount, I suppose,” he said irritably, “and heir to an earldom. Because I live much of my life in London and mingle with the ton.”

“Yes,” she said. “Precisely.”

“I am also Lucius Marshall,” he said, and had the satisfaction of seeing her eyes brighten with tears before she looked down at her hands.

The carriage had lumbered around a bend in the road, and the evening sunlight slanted through the window beside him to shine on her hair.

“Tell me about Lady Lyle,” he said. “You lived with her for a couple of years but almost bit my head off when I told you last evening that I had invited her to hear you sing. Then she dropped a word in Portia’s fertile ear. She could only have meant mischief.”

“She was very fond of my father,” she said. “I believe she was in love with him. Perhaps—no, probably—she was his mistress. She sponsored my come-out and was attentive to me in other ways too. When he died, she invited me to live with her and it seemed natural to me to go there. I do not believe she meant me harm. But he left enormous debts behind him, some of them to her. I was quite destitute, though I did have hopes of making an advantageous marriage.”

“To Fontbridge,” he said.

She nodded.

Fontbridge was something of a milksop, a mother’s boy. It was hard to picture Frances in love with him. But then it was notoriously difficult to understand anything she did. Besides, that had been several years ago. And Fontbridge was good-looking in the sort of way that might bring out the maternal instinct in some women.

“I was uncomfortable about being totally dependent upon Lady Lyle,” she said. “I was very grateful and very happy when she brought me to the attention of a man who was willing to sponsor and manage my singing career. And he was very complimentary and very sure that he could bring me fame and fortune. I signed a contract with him. It seemed like a dream come true. I could have my singing career, I could pay off all my father’s debts, and I could marry Charles and live happily ever after. I was a very naive girl, you must understand. I had lived a very sheltered life.”

“Who?” he asked. “Who was this sponsor?”

“George Ralston,” she said.

“Dash it all, Frances!” he exclaimed. “The man makes a career of preying upon helpless, foolish women. Did you know no better? But of course you did not. Did Lady Lyle know no better?”

“She had told me,” she said, “that singing would enable me to pay off my father’s debts to her and my own for the expenses I had incurred while living with her. I felt honor bound—though that was only later. At first I was so ecstatic just at the thought of finally singing as I had always dreamed of doing that the money and the debts were quite secondary considerations.”

“And so,” he said, “you sang at orgies.”

“At parties,” she said. “I was soon disappointed. I could not choose either the places at which I sang or the songs or even the clothes I wore—my contract stated that George Ralston had total control over such matters. And the audiences were almost exclusively men. If the parties were also orgies I did not know, though I daresay they were. I received a few offers through my agent—none of them marriage offers, you will understand—and he tried to persuade me that they came from wealthy and influential men who could further my career even faster than he could. Soon, he kept telling me, I would be singing at large concert halls and would have the artistic freedom to sing whatever I wished to sing.”

“Good Lord, Frances.” He made a grab for one of her hands and held it tightly when she would have withdrawn it. “Is this the terrible past you have been keeping from me? What an idiot you are, my love.”

“I still moved in society,” she said. “I still went to ton parties. But word was beginning to leak out. Charles heard of where I was singing and for whom. He confronted me with it and commanded me to stop and we had a terrible quarrel. But even before that I had decided I could never marry him. He could not break away from beneath his mother’s thumb, and I knew his character was essentially weak. And he told me that it would be out of the question for me to sing in public after I had become his countess.”

“What an ass,” Lucius said.

“But it would be no different with you,” she said, looking sharply up at him and squinting a moment before the carriage moved around another bend and set her face in shadow again. “If it had been possible for me to take up Lord Heath’s offer—if I were not still under contract with George Ralston, that is—and if he could have arranged for me to sing at prestigious concerts in England and on the Continent, you would not still have wanted me as your wife. A viscountess does not do such things.”

“Devil take it, Frances.”

But he was too exasperated to be able to think of words to speak. He caught her up in his arms instead, pressed his mouth to hers, and held her tight until she relaxed and kissed him back.

“You always presume to know me so well,” he said when he finally lifted his head. “I am frequently an impulsive, ramshackle fellow, Frances, but I would have to be a raving lunatic to be asking you to marry me and then arranging for Heath to hear you sing if I thought having the singing career you ought to have and marriage to me were mutually exclusive activities. Damn it, you have made a great deal out of nothing.”

“It never did feel like nothing,” she said bitterly, pulling away from him and retreating to her corner again. “My father’s debts were larger than I thought, I had signed a contract I could never get out of, and Lady Lyle became less pleasant when I started to complain.”

“A contract,” Lucius said. “How old were you, Frances?”

“Nineteen,” she said. “Does that fact make a difference?”

“Of course it does,” he said. “It is not worth the paper it is written on. You were a minor.”

“Oh,” she said. “I did not realize that mattered.” She pressed both hands to her face for a moment and shook her head. “Things kept going from bad to worse. And then the worst thing of all happened. After I had quarreled with Charles, the Countess of Fontbridge came to see me. She had not heard of the quarrel, but she was determined to separate us. She offered me money—a large sum—if I would agree to leave London without another word to Charles and never come back again.”

“And you took the money?” He looked at her incredulously—and also with something of a grin.

“I did,” she said. “I was so angry. But I also had no choice but to promise—at least, I thought I had no choice. And then I thought—why not? Why not take her money even though I had no intention of marrying her son anyway? So I did. I needed money to set myself free, and so I rationalized my decision. I gave it all to Lady Lyle, and then I packed a valise and left the house while she was at an evening party. I had no plans, but the next day I saw the advertisement for the teaching job at Miss Martin’s, and the day after that her London agent agreed to send me down to Bath for an interview. I needed to leave, Lucius, and I did leave. There was nothing for me in London. I thought I was tied to a contract that I found quite abhorrent, scandal was about to break around me, and either Lady Lyle or Lady Fontbridge could have unleashed it in a moment. I left, hoping almost against hope that I would have a chance to start again, to build a better life for myself. And incredibly it worked. I have been happy ever since. Until I met you.”

“Ah, my love.” He took her hand again, but this time she succeeded in pulling it away.

“No, you do not understand,” she said just as the carriage made a sharp turn into the cobbled stable yard of a small country inn, where Peters was already standing beside the curricle. “You do not understand why I had to give my promise to the Countess of Fontbridge. She knew something that Lady Lyle had told her, something I did not even know myself. Lady Lyle wanted to make sure that I did not marry Charles, I suppose, and stop singing and paying her large sums of money for debts she had quite possibly fabricated. But my only thought was that my great-aunts must never discover the truth. It would have hurt them unbearably, I believed.”

She seemed not to have noticed that the carriage had stopped. With one raised hand Lucius stopped Peters from opening the door.

“I am not who you think I am,” she said.

“Neither Françoise Halard nor Frances Allard?” he asked softly.

“I am not French at all or English either,” she said. “My mother was Italian, and so was my father as far as I know. I do not, in fact, know who he was—or is.”

He stared at her profile as she spread her hands across her lap and looked down at them.

“She was a singer,” she told him. “My father fell in love with her and married her even though she was already with child by someone else. After she died, a year after my birth, he brought me back to England with him and brought me up as his daughter. He never breathed a word of the truth to me—I heard it for the first time just over three years ago.”

“Are you sure, then,” he asked, “that it is true?”

She smiled at her hands. “I suppose part of me always wondered if perhaps it was a malicious invention,” she said. “But my great-aunts confirmed it just today. I told them the truth before I left, only to discover that my father had done so when he first arrived in England with me. They have always known.”

She was weeping, he realized when a spot of moisture fell onto her lap and darkened the fabric of her dress. He handed her a handkerchief, and she took it and pressed it to her eyes.

“So you see,” she said, “I cannot marry anyone of high rank. I cannot marry you. And before you rush in to contradict me, Lucius, stop and think. You have made a promise to your grandfather and indeed to your whole family. I have met them, and I have seen you with them. I know you are fond of them. More than that, I know you love them. And I know that your impetuosity is more often than not motivated by love. You are a far more precious person than I think you realize. For your family’s sake you cannot marry me.”

And then—absurdly—he wanted to weep. Was it true? Was he perhaps not quite the wastrel he sometimes believed himself to be?

I know that your impetuosity is more often than not motivated by love.

“It is almost dark,” he said, “and if this inn does not offer a decent beef pie for dinner I am going to be mightily out of sorts. I suppose you are ready for a cup of tea?”

She blew her nose then and looked about her as if realizing for the first time that they were not still rattling along the highway.

“Oh, Lucius.” She laughed shakily. “Two cups would be better.”

“Just one thing,” he said before giving Peters the signal to open the door and let down the steps. “For tonight we are Mr. and Mrs. Marshall. We will not scandalize our host by arriving in the same carriage and announcing ourselves as Viscount Sinclair and Miss Allard.”

He did not give her a chance to reply. He jumped out of the carriage and turned to hand her down.

“I was beginning to think, guv,” Peters said, “that I was going to be up until the wee hours of the morning waiting to attract old Thomas’s attention so that he would turn in here rather than crawling on past.”

Lucius ignored the witticism.

“It does matter,” she said. “It really does, Lucius.”

“It most certainly does not.” He looked at her in obvious exasperation. “Good Lord, Frances, if only you had told me all this when we were in Sydney Gardens, marooned by the rain, we could have been married by now and proceeding to live happily ever after.”

“We could not.” But all was pain about her heart. “You never stop to think, Lucius.”

They could not immediately continue the discussion. They were in the public dining room, there being no private parlors at the inn. There was only one other group there, and they were at the far side of the room, deep in conversation. But the landlord had arrived with their food—roast beef and vegetables. Frances wished she had ordered only bread and butter and tea.

Lucius was looking handsome and elegant. He had changed for dinner, and he was freshly shaved. That latter activity had been performed in her full view while she sat on the large bed in their shared room, her arms clasped about her knees. He had been shirtless.

The scene had felt almost suffocatingly domestic. And she had been able to see all the rippling muscles of his arms and shoulders and back. He really did have a splendid physique. Not that her perusal of him had been entirely scientific. She had been terribly aware of him sexually.

She had been very aware too of the fact that they would be spending the night together in that room—and in that bed. It had not occurred to her to be in any way horrified.

“It matters to you,” Lucius asked, picking up his knife and fork and cutting into his beef, “that Allard—or Halard, I suppose—was not your real father?”

“It mattered very much at first,” she said, “and I was inclined not to believe it. But it did not seem to me the sort of thing Lady Lyle would have invented. She was greedy and occasionally spiteful, but I did not believe her to be wicked. Eventually, once I had recovered from the first shock, I realized that the love he had always lavished upon me was even more precious than I had always thought it since I was not even his flesh and blood. But it mattered in other ways. I was an imposter in society. I could not have married Charles even if I had still loved him. And this is not even all in the past tense. I cannot marry you.”

She put a forkful of food into her mouth and then found the effort of chewing it almost beyond her powers.

“Are you really so naive, Frances?” he asked. “Numerous members of the ton do not have the parents they profess to have. Have you not heard it said that once a woman has presented her husband with an heir and a spare she can proceed to enjoy life in any manner she chooses provided she is discreet? There are many women of good ton who do so with great enthusiasm and present their husbands with an array of hopeful offspring that he did nothing to beget. What did your great-aunts have to say on the matter?”

“They told me,” she said, “that I was a tiny, big-eyed child when they first saw me and they fell in love with me on sight. They told me that when my father told them the truth about me, it simply made no difference to them. My father was their beloved nephew, and he acknowledged me as his own. And so it never occurred to them not to acknowledge me as their great-niece. They told me I was the apple of their eye.”

“When I called there this afternoon,” he said, “they also told me that you are their heir.”

“Oh,” she said, setting down her knife and fork with something of a clatter and giving up even the pretense of eating.

“You are not going to weep again, are you, Frances?” he asked her. “If I had known, I would have brought a dozen clean handkerchiefs with me, but I did not know. Don’t cry, my love.”

“Oh, I am not,” she said. “But three years ago when the Countess of Fontbridge came to me with her threats, it was of them I thought. I could not bear to have them know how they had been deceived all those years. And I suppose I could not bear the thought of losing their love. But when I went out to the summer house today to tell them the truth, they looked at me in dismay because I knew. And then they hugged me and kissed me and called me a goose for having doubted them for one moment.”

“You see?” he said, his plate already almost empty. “They agree with me, Frances—about your being a goose. It never pays to give in to threats and blackmail. I’ll go and find Lady Fontbridge and plant her a facer, if you wish—or I would if it were not ungentlemanly to do such violence to a lady.”

“Oh, Lucius.” She laughed. “I called on her this morning and told her that though I was leaving for Bath I would no longer consider myself bound by the promise I made more than three years ago—except the one not to marry Charles because I had not intended to marry him anyway. And I called on Lady Lyle and told her that I no longer considered myself in her debt or under obligation to George Ralston. When she threatened to pursue me to Bath with her vicious gossip, I told her the name of the school and where to find it.”

His fork remained suspended halfway to his mouth. He grinned at her and made her heart turn right over in her bosom, she was sure.

“Bravo, my love!” he said.

She sighed. “Lucius,” she said, “that is the third or fourth time you have called me that in the last hour or so. You must stop. You really must. You need to set your mind to fulfilling the promise you made your grandfather. If Miss Hunt is no longer a candidate, you will need to find someone else.”

“I have found her,” he said.

She sighed again. “Your bride must be someone acceptable to your family,” she said. “You know she must. You made the promise as soon as you knew the Earl of Edgecombe was failing in health. Do you know why you made that promise? Because it was the dutiful thing to? Yes. I believe duty means much to you. Because you love him, and your mother and your sisters too? Yes. You bound yourself to marrying and settling down and having a family of your own, Lucius, because you love the family that nurtured you and felt that you owed them that stability in your life.”

“You are very ready to assign all sorts of sentimental motives to me today,” he said. His plate was empty. He set down his knife and fork and picked up his glass of wine. “But if there is some truth in what you say, Frances, there is truth in this too. I will marry for love. I have decided that, and that puts you in an awkward position. For I love you. And so I cannot settle for anyone else. And yet I have a certain promise to keep before the summer is out.”

The landlord arrived to clear away their plates. A maid behind him carried in two dishes of steaming pudding. Frances waved hers away and asked for tea.

“Your father acknowledged you from the moment of your birth, did he not?” Lucius asked as soon as they were alone again. “He was married to your mother? He gave you his name?”

“Yes,” she said, “of course.”

“Then you are legitimate,” he said. “In the eyes of the church and the law you are Frances Allard—or perhaps Françoise Halard.”

“But no high stickler, knowing the truth, would want to marry me,” she said.

“Good Lord, Frances,” he said, “why would you want to marry a high stickler? It sounds like a dreadfully dreary fate. Marry me instead.”

“We are arguing in circles,” she said.

He looked up from his pudding to smile at her.

“It has only now struck me,” he said, “that you never did make suet pudding and custard to follow the beef pie, Frances. But I will say this. That pie was so satisfying that the pudding would surely have gone to waste if you had made it.”

She loved him so very, very much, she thought, gazing across the table at him. She must have fallen in love with him—

“I believe,” he said, “I fell in love with you after tasting the first mouthful of that pie, Frances. Or perhaps it was when I walked into the kitchen and found you rolling out the pastry and you slapped at my hand when I stole a piece. Or perhaps it was when I lifted you out of your carriage and deposited you on the road and you gave it as your opinion that I ought to be boiled in oil. Yes, I think it must have been then. No woman had ever spoken such endearing words to me before.”