by Mary Balogh
“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.
20
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 r
elax 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.
