Simply Unforgettable

She continued to gaze at him.

“I must know something, Frances,” he said. “Please, I must know. Do you love me?”

“That has nothing to do with anything,” she said, shaking her head slowly.

“On the contrary,” he said, “it has everything to do with everything.”

“Of course I love you,” she said. “Of course I do. But I cannot marry you.”

He sat back in his chair, his pudding only half eaten, and beamed at her in that intense-eyed, tight-lipped, square-jawed way in which he had looked at her before. It could hardly be called a smile, and yet . . .

“Tomorrow,” he said, “you will continue on your way to Bath in the old boat, Frances. You have teaching duties there, and I know they are important to you. I will return to London in my curricle. I have duties awaiting me there, and they are important to me. Tonight we will make love.”

She licked dry lips and saw his eyes dip to follow the movement of her tongue.

He had given up the argument, then.

Her heart broke just a little more.

But there was tonight.

“Yes,” she said.

He could not believe what a difference loving her made—consciously loving her, not just bedding an attractive body for which he had conceived a strong sexual desire.

He had, he supposed, fallen in love with her early, as he had told her at dinner. Why else would he have pleaded with her to go to London with him when he had no real plan and when there was every reason not to take her? Why else would he have found it impossible to forget her in the three months after she had rejected him even though he had convinced himself that he had? Why else would he have made her such an impulsive marriage offer in Bath? And why else would he have pursued her so relentlessly ever since?

But somewhere along the way—and it was impossible to know exactly when or why it had happened—his feelings for her had shifted and deepened so that he was no longer just in love with her. He loved her. The beauty of her person and of her soul, the strong, sometimes misguided, almost always irritating sense of duty and honor by which she lived her life, the way she had of tipping her head slightly to one side and regarding him with a look of exasperation and unconscious tenderness, the way her face had of lighting up with joy when she forgot herself, her ability to give herself up to fun and frolicking and laughter—ah, there were a hundred and one things about her that had brought him to love her, and a hundred and one other intangibles that made her into the only woman he had ever loved—or would ever love.

When they came together, naked, in the middle of the wide bed in their inn room, he wrapped both arms about her slender, warm body and drew it against his and found that he was almost trembling. The thought that he might yet lose her threatened to overwhelm him, and he set his lips, parted, over hers and concentrated upon the moment.

Now, at this precise moment, she was naked and eager in his arms, and now was all that mattered.

Now they were together.

And she had admitted that she loved him. He had known it—in his heart he had known. But she had spoken the words.

Of course I love you. Of course I do.

“Lucius,” she said against his mouth, “make love to me.”

“I thought that was what I was doing.” He drew back his head to grin down at her in the faint light being cast through the window by the lamps burning in the stable yard below. “Am I not doing well enough?”

Her whole body trembled with her laughter. He loved it when she did that.

“Of course,” he said, turning her onto her back and looming over her, one arm beneath her head, one knee pressed between her thighs, “you are rather hot to handle, Frances. Red hot. I might burn myself with touching you. You are not coming down with some fever by any chance, are you?”

She laughed again and reached for the back of his head. She drew his mouth down to hers once more and thrust her breasts up against his chest.

“I think I am,” she said. “And I think it is going to get worse before it gets better. But there is only one cure I can think of. Make me better, Lucius.”

She spoke in a low, throaty voice that raised goose bumps along his arms and down his spine.

“My pleasure, ma’am,” he said, his lips feathering kisses down over her chin and throat. “Shall we dispense with the foreplay this time?”

“This time?” she said, twining her fingers in his hair. “Is there to be another time, then?”

“How many hours are left in the night?” he asked.

“Eight?” she suggested.

“Then there will be other times,” he said. “One hour for play, one for rest between times. Three other times, then? Perhaps four since this is likely to be brief.”

“Then let us dispense with the foreplay this time,” she said, and laughed softly again.

He came down on top of her, slid his hands beneath her, positioned himself between her thighs, and thrust hard and deep into her wet heat.

He had known almost from the start that she was a passionate woman. But tonight she had abandoned all her inhibitions to it. He had not lied when he had told her that she was almost too hot to handle. What followed his mount was pure, mindless, glorious carnality. She met him thrust for thrust, and they mated with vigor and panting breath and mingled heat and sweat—and ultimately with a shared and shattering climax.

Aware at the last possible moment that they were at a public inn and the walls might not be as thick and soundproof as they ought, he opened his mouth over hers to absorb her final cry.

Then he turned his head to one side, relaxed his weight down onto her, and sighed.

“The secret when one intends to spend a whole night at play,” he said, “is to save some energy, to conduct the first bout in a restrained manner and build to a lusty climax with the final bout sometime after dawn.”

“But that is exactly what we are doing, is it not?” she said softly, her breath warm against his ear. “Wait until that final bout, Lucius. It will shatter the globe, and we will find ourselves shooting through space.”

“Heaven help me,” he said. “And heaven help the world.”

And he promptly fell asleep without first bothering to move off her.

Was it possible, Frances wondered during one of the drowsy times in the course of that night when she was not either making love or dozing, that some people lived life this vividly day after day, week after week, even year after year? Giving joy and taking it with reckless disregard for the consequences or the future or anything, in fact, except the precious moment as it was being lived.

The cautious part of her mind told her she was being foolish, even immoral. But something in her soul knew that if she never reached for joy she would never find it and at the end of her life she would know that she had deliberately turned away from the most precious opportunities her life had offered as a gift.

She could not marry Lucius. Or rather she would not because she knew that without his family’s blessing he would never be quite happy. And how could they give that blessing if his bride was the daughter of an Italian singer and some unknown Italian man?

She could not marry him, but she could love him now tonight.

And so she did, giving herself up to all the passion she felt for him. They made love over and over again, sometimes with swift vigor as they had done at the start of the night, sometimes with prolonged, tantalizing, almost agonizing foreplay and long, rhythmic couplings, which were so excruciatingly sensual and beautiful that they both, by unspoken consent, held back from the moment when excitement would be unleashed to hurl them over a precipice into satiety and peace and sleep.

His hands, his body, his powerful legs and arms, his mouth, his hair, his smell—all became as familiar to her in the course of the night as her own body. And as dear. She came to understand the idea that man and woman could become one flesh. When he was inside her, it was hard to know where she ended and he began. Their bodies seemed made to fit together, to mate together, to relax together.

“Happy?” he murmured against her ear when dawn was graying the room. He had one arm beneath her neck, his fingers twined with hers, while his other hand described lazy circles over her stomach and one of his legs was draped over both of hers.

“Mmm,” she said.

But daylight inevitably followed dawn, she knew.

“You will be glad to get back to work?” he asked.

“Mmm,” she said again. But really she would. She had always been happy at the school, and the work there had always brought her satisfaction. Her fellow teachers were the closest friends she had ever had. She loved them—it was as simple as that.

“The rest of the school year will be busy?” he asked. He took her earlobe between his teeth and rubbed his tongue over the tip, causing her toes to curl up.

“There will be final examinations to set and mark,” she said. “There will be farewell teas for the senior girls who are leaving, and placements to arrange for the charity girls in positions for which their education and personal inclinations qualify them. There will be the selection of new girls for next year—Claudia always involves all her teachers in those decisions. And there is the end-of-year prize-giving evening and concert for parents and friends. Several of my music pupils will be performing and all my choirs. There will be daily practices from now until that evening comes. Yes, I will be too busy to think of anything else.”

“Will you be thankful for that?” he asked.

She kept her eyes closed and did not answer him for a while.

“Yes,” she said.

He turned her head with their interlaced hands and kissed her on the lips.

“And you will be busy,” she said, “attending all the balls and parties for the rest of the Season.”

“My mother and the girls do seem to enjoy dragging me about,” he said.

“And you will be wanting to meet someone new,” she said. “Perhaps—”

He kissed her again.

“Don’t talk nonsense, love,” he said. “In fact, don’t talk at all. I feel another energy attack coming along.”

He took her free hand in his and brought it against him. She could feel him harden into arousal again and wrapped her hand about him.

“But I am too lazy to come over on top of you,” he said, “or to lift you on top of me. Shall we see if there is a lazy way to love?”

He turned her onto her side against him, lifted one of her legs over his hip, pressed himself against her and wriggled into a better position, and pushed inside her. She pivoted her hips in order to give him deeper access.

And they loved slowly and lazily, their warm, almost relaxed climax coming several minutes later.

He lifted her leg back off his hip, and they drifted off to sleep for a while, still joined.

The sun was up and shining in her eyes when she next awoke.

Tomorrow you will continue on your way to Bath . . . I will return to London. . . .

Tomorrow had indisputably arrived.

She should be coming back to London with him. She should be going back to stay with her great-aunts, allowing them to fuss over her as she prepared for her betrothal celebrations and then her wedding before summer was out.

She should be going back to speak with Heath, to make arrangements with him for the concert he wanted to plan for her. She should be practicing her singing and preparing for the career that was just waiting for her to reach out and grasp.

But there was something far more important that she should be doing.

She should be going back to Bath, back to Miss Martin’s, back to her pupils and her teaching duties and all that had made her life rich and meaningful during the past three and a half years.

She might have crumbled all that time ago, caught as she was between the ultimatum the Countess of Fontbridge had given her and the ruthless exploitation of her talent that Ralston and Lady Lyle had engaged in for two years.

But she had not crumbled despite a sheltered upbringing. Rather, she had had the strength of character and purpose to turn her back on a rather disastrous start to her adulthood and to make a new life for herself.

He had been wrong to call her a coward, Lucius had come to realize, to accuse her of settling for contentment when she could be reaching for happiness with him—and with her singing.

She had not run away from her old life.

She had run to a new one.

It was wrong to expect her to give it up simply because she loved him and he wanted her to marry him. It was wrong to expect her to give it up for the prospect of a singing career even though she had dreamed all her life of such a career.

She had a life and she had a career, and she owed both of them her presence and her commitment at least until the end of the school year in July.

The hardest thing Lucius had done in a long while was to allow her to go on her way without trying to persuade her to go back to London with him—and even without begging her to allow him to come for her in July.

For she was right. Even though he knew now that he could not possibly marry any woman for whom he did not care, he also knew that the blessing of his family—his mother’s and his sisters’ as well as his grandfather’s—was important to him.

Whether his love for Frances would outweigh their disapproval if it should come to that he did not know, though he rather thought it might. But he did know that he must do all in his power to win their approval.

It would be easier to do that if he returned alone, if they were not simply confronted with a fait accompli.

And so after a breakfast they might as well not have ordered for the amount either of them ate, they took their leave of each other in the stable yard, he and Frances Allard.

Thomas was already seated up on the box of her carriage, the docile-looking pair of horses hitched to it awaiting the signal to start. Peters, meanwhile, stood at the head of a more frisky pair hitched to the curricle and looked eager to be on his way, though he had looked disappointed when informed this morning that he was not going to be driving the vehicle himself.

Lucius took both of Frances’s hands in his outside the open door of the carriage. He squeezed them tightly, raised one to his lips, and held it there, his eyes closed, for a few moments.

“Au revoir, my love,” he said. “Have a safe journey. Try not to work too hard.”

Her dark eyes, wide and expressive, gazed back into his own as if she would drink in the sight of him in order to slake her thirst for the rest of the day.

“Good-bye, Lucius,” she said. She swallowed awkwardly. “Good-bye, my dearest.”

And she snatched her hands away and scrambled into the carriage without assistance. She busied herself with organizing her belongings while he closed the door, and she kept her head down while he nodded to Thomas and the old carriage lurched into motion.

She kept her head down until the moment when the carriage was turning onto the road and out of sight. Then she looked up hastily and almost too late, raising one hand in farewell.

And she was gone.

But not forever, by Jove.

This was not good-bye.

He was never going to say good-bye to her again.

Even so, he thought as he strode over to the curricle, swung up to the high seat, and took the ribbons from Peters’s hand, it felt like good-bye.

He was damnably close to tears.

“You had better hang on tightly,” he warned as Peters clambered up behind. “As soon as we turn onto the road I am going to spring them.”

“I would think so too, guv,” Peters said. “Some people who aren’t too keen on eating country breakfasts would like to eat their midday meal in London.”

Lucius sprang the horses.

When no betrothal announcement concerning Viscount Sinclair had appeared in any of the London papers within two weeks of his startling announcement in the drawing room at Marshall House, Lady Balderston made it clear to Lady Sinclair in a series of hints and roundaboutations that if Viscount Sinclair would care to make an abject apology, he would be received with forgiveness and understanding. It was said, after all, that half the gentlemen who had attended the concert had fallen in love with Miss Allard—and it was a well-known fact that Viscount Sinclair frequently spoke and behaved impulsively.

When no such abject apology—or any apology at all, for that matter—had been made after another two weeks, Lady Portia Hunt suddenly became the on dit in fashionable London drawing rooms as word spread that she had dismissed the suit of Viscount Sinclair in favor of the advances of no less a personage than the Marquess of Attingsborough, son and heir of the Duke of Anburey, was making toward her. And suddenly, as proof that the gossips did not lie, the two were to be seen everywhere together—driving in Hyde Park, seated side by side in a box at the theater, dancing at various balls.

Lucius meanwhile had not been idle even though he was far less active than he usually was. He spent hours at a time sitting in his grandfather’s apartments, either beside the bed or else in the private sitting room when the elderly gentleman was feeling well enough to get up.

He had, the physician said, suffered another minor heart seizure.

Lucius sat at his bedside the afternoon of his return to London and chafed one of his cold, limp hands between both his own.

“Grandpapa,” he said, “I am sorry I was not here sooner. I have been halfway to Bath and back.”

His grandfather smiled sleepily at him.

“When I called on Mrs. Melford and Miss Driscoll yesterday afternoon,” Lucius explained, “I found that Frances had just left to return to Bath. I went after her.”

“She does not want to sing after all, then,” the earl asked, “even though Heath was so impressed with her?”

“She does,” Lucius told him. “But she is a teacher, and the school and her pupils and fellow teachers are more important to her than anything else at the moment. She does not wish to be away from them any longer.”

His grandfather’s eyes were on his face.

“And she does not want you either, Lucius?” he asked.

Lucius rubbed more warmth into his hand.

“She does,” he said. “She wants me as badly as I want her. But she does not believe she is worthy of me.”

“And you could not persuade her otherwise?” The old man chuckled. “You must be losing your touch, my boy.”

“No, I could not, sir,” Lucius said, “because I did not have the authority to convince her. She will not marry me unless I have the full blessing of my family.”

His grandfather closed his eyes.

“She knows,” Lucius said, “just as well as I do that you have your heart set upon my marrying Portia.”

Those keen eyes opened again.

“It is something Godsworthy and I have talked about over the years as a desirable outcome,” he said. “But you must cast your mind back to Christmas time, Lucius, when I told you that your choice of bride must be your own. Marriage is an intimate relationship—of body and mind and even spirit. It can bring much joy if the partners are committed to friendship and affection and love—and much suffering if they are not.”

“You will not be upset if I do not marry Portia, then?” Lucius asked. “And really, Grandpapa, I cannot. She is perfect in every way, but I am not.”

His grandfather chuckled softly again.

“If I were a young man,” he said, “and if I had not yet met your grandmother, Lucius, I do believe I would have fallen in love with Miss Allard myself. I have been aware of your growing regard for her.”

“She had a sheltered upbringing,” Lucius explained, “but there was no money left after her father died. She fell into the hands of Lady Lyle and George Ralston, of all people. He got her to sign a contract to manage her singing career. You can imagine if you will, sir, the kind of singing engagements he found for her. They were very much less than respectable. He and Lady Lyle raked in the money for a while—supposedly to pay off debts. Fontbridge was courting Frances, but the countess is too high a stickler to look kindly upon his wedding the daughter of a French émigré. Then Lady Lyle took a hand in breaking off the connection—Fontbridge had told Frances she would not be able to sing after their marriage, and doubtless Lady Lyle feared the loss of income. She dropped poison in Lady Fontbridge’s ear. But her plan succeeded too well. Not only did the countess frighten Frances away from Fontbridge, but she also caused her to break away entirely from the life she had been living. She went to Bath without a word to any of them and has been teaching there ever since.”

“My admiration for her has grown,” the earl said. “And the fact that she has returned there now, Lucius, rather than allow herself to be swept away on Heath’s enthusiasm and ours, shows steadiness and strength of character. I like her more and more.”

“It is the poison dropped in the countess’s ear that is of most concern to Frances, though,” Lucius said. “It is that which she sees as disqualifying her most to be my bride. It seems that she was not Allard’s daughter even though he married her mother before she was born—and knew when he married her that she was with child by another man. Frances does not know her real father’s identity but assumes he was Italian, like her mother. Allard acknowledged her at birth and brought her up as his daughter and never breathed a word of the truth to her. But he did tell Mrs. Melford and Miss Driscoll—and Lady Lyle, who I gather was his mistress. By law, then, Frances is legitimate.”

His grandfather lay with closed eyes for a long time. Lucius even thought that he might have drifted off to sleep. There was a slight gray tinge to his skin, and it looked parchment thin. Lucius felt rather like weeping—for the second time in one day. He stroked the hand he still held between his own.

“Lucius, my boy,” his grandfather said at last, his eyes still closed, “your marriage to Miss Allard has my blessing. You may tell her so.”

“Perhaps you can do that yourself, sir,” Lucius said. “There is a prize-giving and concert at the school at the end of the school year. All of her choirs will be singing, and some of her individual music pupils will be performing too. I thought we might attend.”

“We’ll do it,” his grandfather said. “But now I will rest, Lucius.”

He was snoring lightly even before Lucius could tuck his hand beneath the blankets.

Lady Sinclair and her daughters were surprisingly easy to persuade.

Lucius’s mother was so pleased to have him living at Marshall House and behaving responsibly—most of the time—and showing concern and kindness for his grandfather and a willingness to escort his sisters on various outings that she was sure she would be delighted with any bride he chose since she had quite reconciled herself to the idea that he might never be finished sowing his wild oats. And if Miss Allard’s birth was of questionable legitimacy—well, so was that of a large segment of the ton. Genteel people simply did not talk of such matters.

A week later Lucius learned that she had made a point of speaking with the Countess of Fontbridge at Almack’s the evening before when she had taken Emily there. She had deliberately brought the conversation around to Frances Allard and had talked quite openly about her birth and connections but had also given it as her opinion that a young lady of such modesty and gentility and astonishing talent could only be a desirable friend to cultivate and perhaps—who could know for sure?—even more than a friend to the family in time.

Oh, and did Lady Fontbridge know that Miss Allard was heir to both Mrs. Melford and Miss Driscoll, great-aunts of Baron Clifton? With both of whom ladies, by the way, she had such a close and loving relationship that there were no secrets between them whatsoever?

“I have never heard Mama talk like it before,” Emily said proudly. “She quite outdid any of the tabbies in sweetness and venom, Luce. One could tell from the stiff, haughty look on the countess’s face that she understood very well indeed.”

“Emily,” their mother said sharply, “do watch your tongue. Your mother a tabby, indeed!”

But everyone gathered about the breakfast table only laughed.

Margaret, who at Christmas time had been volubly in favor of Portia as her brother’s bride, had married Tait for love and now gave it as her opinion that if Miss Allard was the woman Lucius loved, then she was not going to say anything to dissuade him. Besides, Tait had warned her long ago that Lucius would slit his throat rather than marry Portia when the time came.

Caroline, who was still living with her head in the clouds following her betrothal, could only applaud her brother’s choice of someone with whom he was so obviously enamored. Besides, she still felt somewhat awed by Miss Allard’s singing talent and thought that she would like very much to have her as a sister-in-law.

Emily had been severely disillusioned with Portia since seeing more of her than usual this spring. She did not think Portia at all right for Luce. Miss Allard, on the other hand, was perfect, as witness the fact that she had had the backbone to return to Bath to teach even though Luce had gone after her to try to persuade her to come back to London.

Amy was simply ecstatic.

A week or so after her meeting with the Countess of Fontbridge at Almack’s, the viscountess ran into Lady Lyle at a garden party to which she had taken both Caroline and Emily, and had a very similar sort of conversation with her about Frances—if conversation was the word, since Lady Sinclair did most of the talking and Lady Lyle listened with her habitual half-smile playing about her lips.

“But she was listening,” Caroline reported afterward.

Lucius was not allowing his mother to fight all his battles, however. He encountered George Ralston at Jackson’s boxing saloon one morning. Normally the two would have ignored each other, not because of any particular hostility between them but because they moved in totally different crowds. But on this particular morning Lucius took exception to the fall of Ralston’s cravat and told him so—to the mystified surprise of his friends. And then, quizzing glass to his eye, Lucius noticed a splash of mud on one of Ralston’s top boots and wondered audibly that anyone could keep such a slovenly valet unless he were basically slovenly himself.

He then, as if the thought had just struck him, invited Ralston to spar with him.

By now his friends’ reaction had progressed from surprise to amazement.

It was not a friendly sparring bout. Ralston was incensed at the insults to which he had been subjected by one of society’s most respected Corinthians, and Lucius was more than ready to give him satisfaction.

By the time Gentleman Jackson himself put a stop to the bout after six rounds of a planned ten, Lucius had shiny cheekbones and shinier knuckles and ribs that would remind him of the bout for several days to come, while Ralston had one eye reduced to a puffy slit, a cut over the other eye, a nose that glowed red and looked suspiciously as if it might be broken, and bruises about his arms and torso that would turn blacker by day’s end and keep their owner awake and stiff for many days and nights to come.

“Thank you,” Lucius said at the end of it all. “This has been a pleasure, Ralston. I must remember to tell Miss Frances Allard the next time I talk with her that I ran into you and spent a pleasant hour, ah, conversing with you. But perhaps you remember her as Mademoiselle Françoise Allard. Lord Heath is eager to sponsor her singing career—had you heard? She may well take him up on the offer since she is quite free to do so. You met her, I believe, when she was still a minor? A long time ago. Perhaps you do not even remember her after all. Ah, you have a tooth loose, do you? If I were you, I would not wiggle it, old chap. It might settle back into place if you leave it alone. Good day to you.”

“And what the devil was that all about?” one of the more obtuse of his friends asked him when they were out of earshot of Ralston.

“So that is the way the wind blows, is it, Sinclair?” a more astute friend asked with a grin.

It was indeed.

The two months until the end-of-year concert at Miss Martin’s school in Bath seemed interminable. And of course they were fraught with anxiety for Lucius since there was no assurance that Frances would be pleased to see him again or that she would have him even though he would be arriving armed with the blessing of every single member of his family.

One never knew with Frances.

In fact, just thinking about her stubbornness could arouse severe irritation in him.

He was just going to have to kidnap her and elope with her if she said no again. It was as simple as that.

Or go down on his knees and plead.

Or sink into a romantic decline.

But he would not think of failing. His grandfather, who was ready to try the Bath waters again, and Amy, who was mortally tired of London, were going with him. So were Tait and Margaret, who would not miss the action for worlds, they said. At least Tait said that. Margaret was far more genteel and declared her eagerness to see Bath again, since she had not been there in five years.

And Mrs. Melford and Miss Driscoll were going, since Bath was not far off their route home and they were eager to see their dear Frances in the setting of her school. And they had always wanted to meet her friends there, including Miss Martin, and to hear her choirs.

Lucius strongly suspected that they had decided to go there after hearing that he was going. They wanted him to marry their great-niece.

And he, heaven help him, was more than willing to oblige.

The last month of the school year was always frantically busy. This year was no exception. There were examinations to set and mark, oral French examinations to administer, report cards to make out, prizewinners to select—and the final concert to prepare for.

That last was what consumed everyone’s energies through every spare moment that was not taken up with academics and eating and sleeping—and even those last two activities had to be curtailed during the final week.

Frances was perhaps the busiest, since all the musical items with the exception of the country dancing were hers to prepare and perfect. But all the teachers had a part to play. Claudia was to be the mistress of ceremonies, and she had her own final speech to prepare. Susanna had written, cast, produced, and stage-managed a skit on school life and rehearsed with her girls for long hours and in great secrecy—and with much laughter, judging by the sounds that drifted down from her classroom. Mr. Upton had designed the stage sets for the whole concert, and Anne had a group of girls—plus David—producing them in the art room every afternoon and evening when they could escape from study and homework.

Frances had given Claudia notice effective the end of the year. She had not been running away when she came here more than three years ago. She had come to make her life better and to find herself, and she was proud of the success she had achieved at both. But if she stayed, she had decided after several sleepless nights and several frank talks with her friends, then she would be hiding from reality.

For reality and dreams had finally coincided, and if she turned away this time she would be denying fate and might never again have the chance to fulfill her destiny.

She was going to find Lord Heath. She was going to put herself in his hands and discover where her singing voice could take her.

She was going to follow her dream.

Anne and Susanna had both shed tears over her, though both vehemently declared that she was doing the right thing. But they would miss her dreadfully. Their life at the school would not be the same without her.

But they would never speak to her again, Susanna told her, if she did not go.

And they would hear of her progress and her fame, Anne told her, and burst with pride over her.

She was simply not going to accept the notice, Claudia declared. She would hire a replacement teacher until Christmas. If by then Frances wished to return, her position would be open for her. If not, then a permanent replacement would be made.

“You will not fail whatever happens, Frances,” she said. “If you go on to sing as a career, then it will be what you were born to do. If you find that after all the life does not suit you, then you will return to what you do superbly well, as numerous girls who have been at this school during the past three years will testify for the rest of their lives.”

And so the day of the concert dawned and progressed in the usual pattern, with every possible disaster threatening and being averted at the last possible moment—dancers could not find their dancing slippers and singers could not find their music and no one could find Martha Wright, the youngest pupil at the school, who was to be first on the stage to welcome the guests and who was finally found shut inside a broom closet, reciting her lines with tightly closed eyes and fingers pressed into her ears.

Susanna was peeping around the stage curtain shortly before the program was to begin to see if anyone had come—always the final anxiety of such evenings.

“Oh, my,” she said over her shoulder to Frances, who was arranging her music on a music stand, “the hall is full.”

It always was, of course.

“Oh, and look!” Susanna continued just when she had seemed about to drop the curtain back in place. “Come and look, Frances. Six rows back, left-hand side.”

Frances always resisted the temptation to peep. She was too afraid that someone in the audience would catch her at it. But she could hardly refuse when Susanna looked at her with such saucer eyes and flushed cheeks—and then impish grin.

Frances looked.

Strangely, though they were more to the middle than the left, it was her great-aunts she saw first. But before she could react to the joy that welled up in her, she realized that Susanna had never met them and would not therefore recognize them. Her eyes moved left.

The Earl of Edgecombe sat next to Great-Aunt Martha, and then Lady Tait and Lord Tait and then Amy and then . . .

Frances drew a slow, long breath and allowed the curtain to fall into place.

“Frances.” Susanna caught her up in a hug despite the curious glances of a few of the girls who were busy in the wings. There were tears in her eyes. “Oh, Frances, you are going to be happy. One of us is going to be happy. I am so . . . happy.”

Frances was too numb to feel anything except bewilderment.

But there was no time for feelings. It was seven o’clock, and Claudia always insisted that school functions begin promptly.

Anne appeared with Martha Wright, squeezed her thin shoulders and even kissed her cheek, and sent her out onto the stage.

The dress rehearsal during the afternoon had proceeded as badly as it possibly could. But Miss Martin had cheerfully assured girls and teachers alike that that was always a good sign and boded well for the real performance during the evening.

She was proved quite right.

The choirs sang in perfect pitch and harmony, the dancers were light on their feet and did not get tangled up in their ribbons even once, the choral speaking group recited with great verve and dramatic expression as if they were one voice, Elaine Rundel and young David Jewell sang their solos to perfection, Hannah Swan and Veronica Lane played their duet on the old pianoforte without hitting a wrong key, though it must have been clear even to the least musical ear in the audience that the instrument had had its day and was not likely to have many more, and the skit Susanna’s group performed, depicting teachers and girls preparing for a concert, drew laughter from the audience and applause even before it was finished.

The evening ended with a speech by Miss Martin, outlining some of the more significant achievements of the year, and then the presentation of prizes.

Frances never afterward knew how she had got through it all. Every time she was on stage conducting a choir and turned to acknowledge the applause of the audience, she saw either her great-aunts beaming up at her or the earl and Amy. She never once glanced at Lucius. She dared not.

But she knew he was smiling at her with that gleam in his eyes and that tight-lipped, square-jawed expression that demonstrated pride and affection and desire.

And love.

She no longer doubted that he loved her.

Or that she loved him.

The only thing she had doubted was the possibility that there could ever be any future for them.

But the Earl of Edgecombe was with him. So were Amy and Lord and Lady Tait. So were her great-aunts.

What could it mean?

She did not dare answer her own question.

She tried not even to ask it. She tried to concentrate on the concert, to give the girls the attention they deserved. Unwittingly, she gave them even more than usual, and they performed for her even better than they usually did.

But finally the last prize had been presented and the last applause had died away, and there was nothing left to do but go out into the hall with the girls and the other teachers to mingle with the guests while trays of biscuits and lemonade were handed around.

Great-Aunt Martha and Great-Aunt Gertrude were there waiting to hug Frances and exclaim over the loveliness of all the music. Amy was right behind them. Lord Tait bowed to her and Lady Tait smiled with something more than just graciousness in her manner. The Earl of Edgecombe, looking a little more stooped than usual, took both her hands in his, squeezed them, and told her that she appeared to be just as good a teacher as she was a singer—and that was saying something.

Lucius remained in the background and was in no hurry to come forward, it seemed. But Frances, glancing at him, felt as if her knees might buckle under her. His eyes were positively devouring her.

“Frances,” he said at last, reaching for her hand and carrying it to his lips when she offered it, “I have said good-bye to you for the last time. I positively refuse to say it ever again. If you try to insist, I shall go off on my own without a word to sulk.”

She could feel the color rising in her cheeks. Her great-aunts were listening. So were his grandfather and sisters and brother-in-law. So were Anne and David, who had come up behind her.

“Lucius!” she said softly.

He would not let her hand go. His eyes were definitely smiling now.

“The final impediment has been removed,” he said as Susanna approached from behind him. “We have the blessing of every member of my family. I have not asked your great-aunts, but I would wager we have their blessing too.”

“Lucius!”

She was beginning to feel horribly embarrassed. People were beginning to look. A number of the girls were beginning to nudge one another and titter. There was their teacher, Miss Allard, in the middle of the hall, her hand held close to the heart of a handsome, fashionable gentleman who was laughing down into her face, the expression on his own suggesting that it was more than just amusement he was feeling.

Claudia had noticed and was coming their way.

Frances looked at him in mute appeal.

And then her daring, impulsive, annoying, wonderful Lucius did surely the most reckless thing he had ever done in his life. He risked everything.

“Frances,” he said without even trying to lower his voice or make the moment in any way private, “my dearest love, will you do me the great honor of marrying me?”

There were gasps and squeals and shushing noises and sighs. Someone sniveled—either Amy or one of the aunts.

It was the sort of marriage proposal, a distant part of Frances’s brain thought, that no woman would ever even dream of receiving. It was the sort of marriage proposal every woman deserved.

She bit her lip.

And then smiled radiantly.

“Oh, yes, Lucius,” she said. “Yes, of course I will.”

She had been wrong. The last applause of the evening had not yet died away. Her cheeks flamed as everyone within hearing distance clapped again.

Viscount Sinclair, lowering his head as if to kiss the back of Miss Allard’s hand, kissed her briefly and hard on the lips instead.

And then they were claimed by family and friends and squealing girls.

“And now,” Claudia said at last with a sigh that was belied by warmly smiling eyes, “I suppose I am going to have to accept your resignation after all, Frances. But I always did say I would be prepared to do so in a good cause, did I not?”

The wedding of Miss Frances Allard and Viscount Sinclair was solemnized at Bath Abbey one month after the very public marriage proposal and acceptance.

The viscountess—soon to become the dowager viscountess—had wanted the nuptials to take place in London at St. George’s on Hanover Square. Mrs. Melford had wanted them to be held in the village church at Mickledean in Somersetshire.

But much as her great-aunts were Frances’s family, her friends at the school were at least as dear to her. And though Anne was planning to spend part of the summer in Cornwall, neither Susanna nor Claudia could leave Bath, as there were nine charity girls to care for at the school.

It was inconceivable to Frances that all three of her closest friends should not attend her wedding.

And Lucius put up no argument.

“Provided you are there, my love,” he said, “I would be quite happy to marry in a barn on the farthest Hebridean island.”

And so Frances was able to dress for her wedding in her own familiar room at the school—the very last day it would be hers—and say her own private farewells to her fellow teachers before they left for the church and she descended to the visitors’ sitting room where Baron Clifton, her cousin of some remove, was waiting to escort her to the church and give her away.

“Frances,” Susanna said, looking at her smart new pale blue dress and flower-trimmed bonnet, “you look so very beautiful. And you are going to be a viscountess today. All I can say is that it is a good thing Lord Sinclair is not a duke. I would fight you for him.”

She laughed merrily at her own joke, but there were tears in her eyes too.

“I will leave your duke for you,” Frances said, hugging her. “He will come along one of these days, Susanna, and sweep you off your feet.”

“But how will he ever find me,” the girl asked, “when I live and teach within the walls of a school?”

The question was lightly asked, but Frances could guess that Susanna, young and lovely though she was, probably despaired of ever making a marriage of her own or even of having a beau.

“He will find you,” Frances assured her. “Lucius found me, did he not?”

“And kept finding you and finding you.” Susanna laughed again and made way for Anne.

“Ah, you do look lovely, Frances,” she said. “The dress and bonnet are handsome, but it is your glow of happiness that makes you beautiful. Be happy! But I know you will. It is a love match, and you are marrying an extraordinary man, who is going to allow you a career in singing—who is encouraging you to pursue it, in fact.”

“You will be happy too, Anne,” Frances said as they hugged. “I know you will.”

“Oh,” Anne said, “I am happy. I have David and I have this life. It is far preferable to what I had before, Frances. Here I belong.”

She was smiling and very obviously delighted for her friend. But Frances always sensed a touch of sadness behind Anne’s warm smiles.

But Claudia had appeared in the doorway of her room.

“Oh, Frances,” she said, “how we are going to miss you, my dear. But it is not a day for self-pity. I am truly, truly happy for you.”

Claudia Martin was not the type to do a great deal of hugging. Neither was she the type to weep for any reason. She did both now—or if she did not actually weep, two tears definitely trickled down her cheeks.

“Thank you,” Frances said while Claudia’s arms were still about her. “Thank you for taking a chance on me when I was desperate. Thank you for making me feel like a professional teacher and a friend—and even a sister. Claudia, I want you to be this happy one day too. I do want it.”

But then it was time for them to leave.

And soon after that it was time for Frances to go to her own wedding at the Abbey.

The congregation was not very large. Even so, a surprising number of people had come down from London for the occasion, including Baron Heath and his wife and stepchildren.

Most important, Lucius saw as he waited at the front of the Abbey for his bride to appear, all her family and friends, including the charity girls from the school, wearing their Sunday best, and all his family were in attendance.

Just a year ago he would have cringed at the thought of wanting all his family about him.

Just a year ago he would have cringed at the thought of marrying.

He certainly would not have believed that today—or any day—he would be marrying for love.

Ah, but love was not nearly a powerful enough word.

He adored Frances. He liked her and admired her in addition to all the romantic and lustful feelings he had for her.

And then there she was, stepping into the nave and approaching on Clifton’s arm, slender and elegant and darkly beautiful.

He remembered his first sight of her—a fleeting glimpse as his carriage passed hers in the middle of a snowstorm. And he remembered his second sight of her as he hauled her out of her submerged carriage—a bedraggled virago, breathing fire and brimstone.

He remembered her making beef pie and bread.

He remembered her carving a smiling mouth on her snowman and stepping back to regard it with pleased satisfaction, her head tipped slightly to one side.

He remembered her waltzing with him and humming the tune.

He remembered stepping into the doorway of the Reynolds drawing room and discovering that the singer who had so captivated his soul was Frances Allard.

He remembered . . .

But today he did not have to rely upon memory from which to draw pleasure. Today they were here before their family and friends to pledge themselves to a lifetime together.

She was here at his side, her very dark eyes luminous with the wonder of the moment.

It was a moment he would live to the full now while it was happening—and a moment he would hold in memory for the rest of his life.

He smiled at her, and she smiled back.

“Dearly beloved . . .” the clergyman began.

The morning had been cloudy with the threat of possible rain. But when Viscount Sinclair stepped out into the Abbey Yard with his new viscountess on his arm, the sun was shining down from a sky of pure blue.

“We have gone through some extremes of weather together, my love,” he said, looking down on her. “But now we have sunshine. Do you suppose it is a good omen?”

“It is nothing,” she said, “but a lovely day. We do not need omens, Lucius, only our own will to grasp our destiny and live it.”

He took her hand and they dashed across the yard, past the small crowd of interested spectators who had stepped out of the Pump Room, and beneath the arches to the carriage that awaited them with Peters up on the box. It would take them back to the school, where a wedding breakfast awaited them and their guests.

“The hall has been forbidden to me for the past two days,” Frances explained. “But Claudia and Anne and Susanna have been in there for long hours at a time with the girls. I think they have been decorating the room.”

Lucius laced his fingers with hers.

“It will doubtless be a work of art,” he said. “We will admire it, Frances, and greet our guests and be happy with them. Today I have kept a promise, and my grandfather has lived to see it. And today we have made two elderly sisters, your great-aunts, very happy. But now, this moment, is ours alone. I do not intend to waste it. Ah, this is convenient.”

The carriage was making a sharp turn onto the Pulteney Bridge and had thrown them together.

“Very.” Frances looked across at him with bright, laughing eyes.

He wrapped one arm about her shoulders, lowered his head, and kissed her long and thoroughly.

Neither of them seemed the slightest bit concerned that there were no curtains to cover the windows.

The world was welcome to share their happiness if it so chose.