Simply Unforgettable (26 page)

“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.

22

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
un
respectable? 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.”