by Mary Balogh
And then she had opened her eyes and smiled about at her audience and . . .
And had found herself gazing at Lucius Marshall.
At first there had been simple, mindless shock. And then the plunge from happiness to wretchedness had been total. And now she felt mortally weary.
He was back in Bath when she no longer wanted him to be there. Only now would she admit to herself that for days, even weeks, after his departure she had hoped and hoped that he would come back.
How foolish and unreasonable of her!
Now he had come back, but he had made no attempt to call upon her. He would no doubt have left again without her ever knowing he had been here if there had not been the accident of tonight’s meeting.
It hurt that he had made no attempt to see her.
There was no such thing as common sense, it seemed, in affairs of the heart.
When Lucius knocked on the door of Miss Martin’s school the following afternoon he was admitted by an elderly, stoop-shouldered porter, who wore a black coat shiny with age, boots that squeaked with every step he took, and a shrewd squint that said as clearly as words that every man who stepped over the threshold was to be considered an enemy to be watched closely.
Lucius cocked an eloquent eyebrow at the man as he was shown into a not-quite-shabby visitors’ parlor and shut firmly inside while the porter went to inform Miss Allard of his lordship’s arrival. But it was not she who was first to come. It was another lady—of medium height and ramrod-straight posture and severe demeanor. Even before she introduced herself, Lucius realized that this must be Miss Martin herself, despite the fact that she was younger than he might have expected, surely no more than a year or two older than himself.
“Miss Allard will be another five minutes yet,” she explained after introducing herself. “She is conducting a practice with the senior choir.”
“Is she indeed, ma’am?” he said briskly. “You are fortunate to have such an accomplished musician as a teacher here.”
It had bothered him—or his pride anyway—for a whole month before he put her from his mind that Frances had chosen to teach at a girls’ school rather than go away with him. But since last evening he had found himself even more bothered that anyone with such a truly glorious voice could have chosen a teaching career when an illustrious career as a singer could have been hers with the mere snap of her fingers. It made no sense to him. She made no sense to him. And the fact that he did not know her, did not understand her, had kept him awake and irritable through much of the night. He scarcely knew her at all, he realized, and yet he was allowing her to haunt him again as no other woman had come close to doing.
“And no one is more sensible of that fact than I, Lord Sinclair,” Miss Martin said, folding her hands at her waist. “It is gratifying to have her talent recognized by no less a person than the earl, your grandfather, and I am pleased that he has seen fit to invite her to take tea with him. However, Miss Allard has duties at this school and will need to be back here by half past five.”
By the time this headmistress grew into an old battle-ax, Lucius thought, she would have had much practice. No doubt her girls—and her teachers—were all terrified of her. Good lord, it was almost a quarter to four now.
“I shall return her here not even one second past the half hour, ma’am,” he said, raising his eyebrows and regarding her with cool hauteur. But if she felt in any way intimidated, she did not show it.
“I wish I could spare a maid to accompany her,” she said, “but I cannot.”
Good Lord!
“You must trust to my gentleman’s honor, then, ma’am,” he told her curtly.
She did not like him—or trust him. That was perfectly clear. The reason was less so. Did she know about that episode after Christmas? Or did she just distrust all men? He would wager that it was the latter.
And this was what Frances had chosen over him? It was enough to make a man turn to some serious drinking. But then this was what she must have chosen over a singing career too.
And then the door opened and Frances herself stepped into the room. She was dressed as she had been up on the Royal Crescent, in a fawn-colored dress with a short brown spencer over it and an unadorned brown bonnet. She also wore a tight, set expression on her face, as if she had steeled herself for a dreadful ordeal. She looked, in fact, remarkably like the prunish shrew whom he had hauled out of an overset carriage just after Christmas and dumped on a snowy road—except that her nose was not red-tipped today or her mouth spewing fire and brimstone.
He would have left her there knee deep in snow to fend for herself if he had known half the trouble she was going to cause him.
“Miss Allard?” He swept her his most elegant bow.
“Lord Sinclair.” She curtsied, her eyes as cool and indifferent as if he had been a fly on the wall.
“I have informed Viscount Sinclair,” Miss Martin said, “that he is to have you back here at precisely half past five, Frances.”
Her eyes flickered, perhaps with surprise.
“I will not be late,” she promised, and turned to leave the room without waiting to see if Lucius was ready to follow her.
A minute or two later they were seated side by side in his carriage, and it was turning onto Sutton Street before swinging around in a great arc onto Great Pulteney Street. She was clinging to the leather strap above her head, presumably so that she would not sway sideways and inadvertently brush against his arm.
He was deeply irritated.
“I have taken to devouring lady teachers when I cannot wait for my tea,” he said.
She turned an uncomprehending face toward him.
“And what,” she asked, “is that supposed to mean?”
“You cannot sit much farther away from me,” he said, “without putting a dent in the side of the carriage, and I warn you I would be somewhat displeased if that were to happen. If I should decide to attack, though, you may scream and Peters will come running to your rescue even if only to stop you from murdering his eardrums.”
She let go of the strap, though she turned her face away and looked out through the window on her side.
“Of all the places in England where you might have gone to enjoy yourself,” she said, “why did you have to choose Bath?”
“I did not,” he said. “My grandfather chose it for his health. He is a very sick man and fancies that the waters agree with him. I came to keep an eye on him. Did you think I had come deliberately to see you, Frances? To renew my addresses, perhaps? To stand beneath your bedchamber window and serenade you with lovelorn ballads? You flatter yourself.”
“You make very free with my name,” she said.
“With your—? You might at least try not to be ridiculous—ma’am,” he retorted.
He watched her profile—or what he could see of it around the brim of her bonnet—as they proceeded along the long, straight stretch of Great Pulteney Street, and wondered why she was angry. She surely could not seriously believe that he had come to Bath to torment her. He was not even the one who had invited her to tea this afternoon—or the one who had accepted the invitation. He was not the one who had abandoned her after Christmas either. It had been the other way around.
Like Miss Martin’s, her posture was stiff and straight as any ramrod. She continued to gaze out the window like a queen looking for subjects on whom to confer a royal wave.
“Why are you angry?” he asked her.
“Angry?” She turned to look at him again, her nostrils flared, her eyes flashing. “I am not angry. Why should I be? You are a mere courier, are you not, Lord Sinclair, sent to bring me to the Earl of Edgecombe’s house? It was kind of him to invite me and I am pleased to come.”
She sounded it!
“Despite all the women I have known,” he said, “I have never yet come close to fathoming the female mind. You were given the chance to prolong and advance our relationship three months ago, but you rejected it—quite emphatically, if memory serves me
correctly. And yet now, Frances, your whole demeanor tells me that you think you have a grievance against me. Is it possible that I somehow hurt you?”
Color flamed in her cheeks and light flashed from her dark eyes—and she grabbed for the strap again as the carriage passed through the diamond-shaped Laura Place and circled the fountain in the middle of the road.
“What absurdity is this?” she cried. “How could you possibly have hurt me?”
“I do believe men and women sometimes react differently to the sort of . . . liaison in which you and I became involved,” he said. “Men are able to enjoy the moment and let it go, while women are more inclined to find their hearts engaged. It was certainly never my intention to hurt you.”
But, devil take it, he thought irritably, he had not exactly let the moment go, had he?
“And you most certainly did not,” she said with hot indignation as the carriage rumbled onto the shop-lined Pulteney Bridge to cross the river. “How presumptuous of you, Lord Sinclair! How . . . arrogant of you to imagine that you broke my heart!”
“Frances,” he said, “we shared a bed and a great deal more for one whole night. You make yourself ridiculous when you call me Lord Sinclair in that prim schoolteacher’s voice as if I were some distant stranger.”
“With the exception of that one night, which ought not to have happened and which I have regretted ever since,” she said, “I am prim. And I am a schoolteacher and proud of it. It is what I choose to be—for the rest of my life.”
She turned her head sharply away again.
“That balding gentleman who would have relinquished you to my grandfather and me without a fight last evening is not your betrothed, then?” he asked.
He heard her draw in a sharp, indignant breath.
“What Mr. Blake is—or is not—to me is absolutely none of your business, my lord,” she said.
He glowered at the back of her bonnet. She really was prim and shrewish and prickly and a mass of contradictions. He did not know why the devil she had stuck in his memory and in his emotions the way she had. The sooner he removed her from both the happier he would be.
Perhaps if he tried very hard he could contrive to fall in love with Portia Hunt this spring. But, good Lord, even if it were possible—and he very much doubted it was—Portia would be horrified!
“Why the devil do you choose to be a teacher when you ought to be singing professionally?” he asked abruptly. Because he had arrived in the drawing room doorway only as she was finishing her song last evening, it was still difficult to believe that Frances and that singer could be one and the same person.
“I would ask you to watch your language, Lord Sinclair,” she said.
He surprised himself—and her, it seemed—by emitting a short bark of laughter.
“I believe,” he said, “you may have just provided the answer to my question. You did not tell me after Christmas that you could sing like that.”
“Why would I have told you such a thing?” she asked, looking around at him. “Ought I to have said, ‘Oh, by the way, Mr. Marshall, I sing in a way that might just impress you a little.’ Or ought I to have woken you up one morning with a particularly strident aria?”
He chuckled at the mental image of her waking him thus on the second morning, as she lay tucked up in his arms in her bed.
He did not know if she was having the same thought, but however it was, her eyes suddenly lit with merriment, her lips twitched, and she could not prevent a gurgle of laughter from escaping them.
“I wonder,” he said, “if I would have found it arousing.”
The prim schoolteacher made an instant reappearance, and she sat back on her seat and directed her eyes forward.
For a moment—damnation!—he had been entranced by her all over again.
“My grandfather has been very much looking forward to meeting you again,” he said after a few moments of silence. “And my sister is beside herself with excitement. She is not yet out, you see, and does not often have a chance to entertain and even play hostess.”
“Then she may play it for me,” she said. “I am accustomed to young ladies and their uncertainties and exuberances. I will be a very undemanding guest.”
Conversation lapsed between them then as the carriage began its slow climb uphill.
She set her hand in his when he offered it to help her alight from the carriage after it had stopped on Brock Street—their first touch since he had pressed his card into her palm outside the school three months ago. He felt again the slenderness of her hand, the long, slim artist’s fingers. Even through her glove and his own he felt the shock of familiarity.
She preceded him inside the house while his grandfather’s butler held the door open.
Lucius glowered at her back and went after her.
11
The carriage ride had been a horrible ordeal for Frances, bringing to mind as it did the last time she had ridden in the same vehicle with Lucius Marshall, Viscount Sinclair. He had held her hand then. For a large part of the journey he had had his arms right about her. They had kissed. They had dozed in each other’s arms.
Today she had been horribly aware of him physically. She had been very careful not to touch him—until she could no longer avoid doing so when he offered a hand to help her alight outside the house on Brock Street.
As they entered the house and were preceded upstairs by the butler after he had taken her bonnet and gloves and spencer, she felt bruised and humiliated.
Is it possible that I somehow hurt you?
She still seethed at the arrogance of it.
Men are able to enjoy the moment and let it go, while women are more inclined to find their hearts engaged.
How mortifyingly true that seemed to be! His whole manner and conversation had demonstrated that he had not suffered one iota as a result of what had happened between them.
He had enjoyed the moment and let it go.
She had been battling a bruised heart ever since.
Despite all the women I have known . . .
Of which number she was one insignificant unit. If she had gone with him to London when he had asked, how soon would he have tired of her? Long before now, she was sure.
But, she thought, her coming here this afternoon had nothing whatsoever to do with him. She squared her shoulders and donned her best social manner as she was ushered into a cozy sitting room at the front of the house. The Earl of Edgecombe was rising from a chair by the fire, a welcoming smile on his thin, rather wan face, and Miss Marshall was hurrying toward her, both hands outstretched, her cheeks flushed, her face eagerly smiling.
“Miss Allard,” she said when Frances set her hands in hers, “I am so delighted that you were able to come. Do take the seat beside Grandpapa if you will. The tea tray will be sent up immediately.”
“Thank you.” Frances smiled warmly at the girl, who was clearly on her best behavior and half elated, half anxious lest she make some mistake. She was pretty, with her brother’s brown hair and hazel eyes, though her face was heart-shaped, with rounded cheeks and a pointed little chin.
The earl smiled kindly at Frances and reached out his right hand for hers as she approached. He carried it to his lips.
“Miss Allard,” he said, “you do us a great honor. I hope I have not taken you away from anything very important at your school.”
“I am sure,” she said, taking the chair next to his, “that the junior choir was quite delighted to discover that there was to be no practice this afternoon, my lord.”
“And so,” he said, “you conduct a choir and you teach music, including pianoforte lessons. But how much do you sing, Miss Allard?”
“Last evening,” she told him as he took his seat again and Viscount Sinclair took another chair and Miss Marshall fluttered about while the tea things were brought in by a maid and the butler, “was the first time I have performed outside a school setting in several years. It was a good thing for my nerves that the audience was not larger.”
“And it was a tragedy for the musical world,” he said, “that the audience was so small. You do not only have a good voice, Miss Allard, or even a superior voice. You have a great voice, definitely one of the loveliest I have ever heard in almost eighty years of listening. No—not one of. It is the loveliest.”
Frances would not have been human if she had not felt a glow of pleasure at such lavish and apparently sincere praise.
“Thank you, my lord.” She could feel herself flushing.
A plate of dainty sandwiches was set on a table close to where Miss Marshall sat behind the tea tray, together with scones spread with clotted cream and strawberry jam. There was also a plate of fancy cakes. The girl poured the tea into exquisitely fine china cups and brought one to each of them before offering the sandwiches.
“But you must have been told all this before,” the earl said. “Many times, I suppose.”
Yes. Sometimes by people whose opinion she could respect. Ultimately, after her father’s death, by people who had promised fame and fortune while caring not one iota for her artist’s soul. But—for a variety of reasons of which youthful vanity was not the least—she had believed them and allowed them to act for her and almost ruined herself in the process. And then she had lost Charles because of her singing and finally had behaved very badly. Much really had been ruined—all her girlhood dreams, for example. Sometimes, even though only three years had passed since she had seen the advertisement for the teaching position at Miss Martin’s and applied for it and been sent to Bath by Mr. Hatchard for an interview with Claudia—sometimes it was hard to believe that all those things had happened to her and not someone else. Until last night she had not sung in public for three long years.
