Simply Unforgettable

SIMPLY UNFORGETTABLE

A Delacorte Book / April 2005

Published by

Bantam Dell

A Division of Random House, Inc.

New York, New York

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

All rights reserved

Copyright © 2005 by Mary Balogh

Delacorte Press is a registered trademark of Random House, Inc., and the colophon is a trademark of Random House, Inc.

Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data

Balogh, Mary.

Simply unforgettable / Mary Balogh.

p. cm.

eISBN 0-440-33530-2

1. Aristocracy (Social class)—Fiction. 2. Women teachers—Fiction. 3. Music teachers—Fiction. 4. Bath (England)—Fiction. I. Title.

PR6052.A465S53 2005

823'.914—dc22 2004058249

Contents

Title Page

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

Chapter 22

Chapter 23

Chapter 24

Chapter 25

Chapter 26

Also by Mary Balogh

Copyright Page

It never snowed for Christmas. It always snowed—if it snowed at all—before Christmas, when people were trying to travel to family gatherings or house parties, or long after Christmas, when it was a mere nuisance to people trying to go about the business of their everyday lives. It never snowed actually on Christmas, when it would have added a picturesque quality and some magic to the celebrations.

Such was the sad reality of living in England.

This year had been no exception. The skies had remained stubbornly gray and heavy with the promise of something dire all over the holiday, and the weather had been chilly and blustery and really not very pleasant at all. But the ground had remained obstinately bare and as drab as the sky.

It had been a rather dreary Christmas, if the truth were told.

Frances Allard, who had made the long day’s journey from Bath, where she taught at Miss Martin’s School for Girls on Sutton and Daniel streets, in order to spend the holiday with her two great-aunts near the village of Mickledean in Somersetshire, had looked forward to being in rural surroundings. She had dreamed of taking long walks in the crisp winter countryside, blue skies overhead, or else of wading to church and the Assembly Rooms through a soft white fall of snow.

But the wind and the cold devoid of sunshine had forced her to curtail the few walks she had undertaken, and the Assembly Rooms had remained firmly closed, everyone having been content, it seemed, to spend Christmas with family and friends this year rather than with all their neighbors at a communal party or ball.

Frances would have been lying to herself if she had not admitted to feeling just a little disappointment.

Miss Gertrude Driscoll and her widowed sister, Mrs. Martha Melford, Frances’s great-aunts, who lived at the dower house in the park of Wimford Grange, had been invited to join Baron Clifton’s family at the big house on Christmas Day, the baron being their great-nephew and therefore a cousin of some remove to Frances. Frances had been invited too, of course. They had also all been invited to a few other private parties in the neighborhood. But the great-aunts had sent back polite refusals to them all, declaring themselves too cozy in their own house to venture outdoors in such inclement weather and too contented with the coveted company of their great-niece to bother with any invitations. They could, after all, visit their great-nephew and his family and their neighbors any day of the year. Besides, Great-Aunt Gertrude had fancied that she was coming down with something, though she had displayed no clearly discernible symptoms, and dared not stray too far from the fireside of her own home.

Frances’s wishes had not been consulted.

Only when the holiday was over and they were hugging her and shedding a few tears over her and kissing her good-bye before she stepped up into their rather rickety private carriage, which they had insisted upon sending with her though it did not usually venture beyond a five-mile radius around the village, did it occur to her great-aunts that maybe they had been selfish in remaining at home all over the holiday and ought to have remembered that dear Frances was only three-and-twenty and would perhaps have enjoyed a party or two and the company of other young people to enliven the tedium of a Christmas spent entirely with two old ladies.

She had hugged them in return and shed a few tears of her own and assured them—almost truthfully—that they were all she had needed to make Christmas a wondrously happy occasion after a long term at school, though actually it had been more than one term. She had remained at the school all through last summer, since Miss Martin took in charity girls and it was always necessary to provide for their care and entertainment through the various holidays—and Frances had had nowhere particular to go at the time.

Christmas had, then, been a disappointingly dull holiday. But she really had enjoyed the quiet after the constantly busy bustle of school life. And she was extremely fond of her great-aunts, who had opened their arms and their hearts to her from the moment of her arrival in England as a motherless baby with a French émigré father who had been fleeing the Reign of Terror. She had no memory of that time, of course, but she knew that the aunts would have brought her into the country to live with them if Papa had chosen to let her go. But he had not. He had kept her with him in London, surrounding her with nurses and governesses and singing masters, and lavishing upon her all that money could buy for her comfort and pleasure—and oceans of love besides. She had had a happy, privileged, secure childhood and girlhood—until her father’s sudden death when she was only eighteen.

But her aunts had had some role to play in her growing years. They had brought her into the country for holidays and had occasionally gone to London to take her about and buy her gifts and feed her ices and other treats. And ever since she had learned to read and write she had exchanged monthly letters with them. She was inordinately fond of them. It really had been lovely to spend Christmas in their company.

There had been no snow to enliven her Christmas, then.

There was snow, however—and plenty of it—soon after.

It began when the carriage was no more than eight or ten miles from Mickledean, and Frances did consider knocking on the roof panel and suggesting to the elderly coachman that they turn around and go back. But it was not a heavy snow, and she did not really want to delay her journey. It looked more like a white rain for all of the hour after it began. But inevitably—when it really was too late to turn back—the flakes became larger and thicker, and in an alarmingly short time the countryside, which had been looking as if it were rimed with heavy frost rather than with snow itself, began to disappear under a thickening blanket of white.

The carriage moved steadily onward, and Frances assured herself that it was foolish to be nervous, that the road was probably perfectly safe for travel, especially at the plodding speed to which Thomas was keeping the horses. Soon the snow would stop falling and begin to melt, as was always the way with snow in England.

She concentrated her thoughts on the term ahead, planning which pieces of music she would choose for the senior madrigal choir to sing. Something bright and brilliant and Elizabethan, she thought. She wondered if she dared choose something in five parts. The girls had mastered three-part singing and were doing rather well at four-part pieces, though they did sometimes break off in the middle of a phrase to collapse in laughter as they got hopelessly entangled in complex harmonies.

Frances smiled at the thought. She usually laughed with them. It was better—and ultimately more productive—than weeping.

Maybe they would try five parts.

Within another half hour, it was no longer possible to see anything but unrelieved white in any direction—and no longer possible to concentrate upon thoughts of school or anything else. And the snow was still falling so thickly that it dazzled the eyes and made it hard to see any great distance from the windows even if there had been anything to see. When she pressed the side of her face against the glass in order to look ahead, she could not even distinguish the road from the ditches or the fields beyond. And there did not even seem to be any hedgerows on this particular stretch that might have provided some sort of dark border to signify where the road was.

Panic clawed at her stomach.

Could Thomas see the road from his higher perch on the box? But the snow must be blowing into his eyes and half blinding him. And he must be twice as cold as she was. She pressed her hands deeper into the fur muff that Great-Aunt Martha had given her for Christmas. She would pay a fortune for a hot cup of tea, she thought.

So much for wishing for snow. What sage was it who had once said that one should beware of what one wished for lest the wish be granted?

She sat back in her seat, determined to trust Thomas to find the way. After all, he had been her great-aunts’ coachman forever and ever, or at least for as far back as she could remember, and she had never heard of his being involved in any sort of accident. But she thought wistfully of the cozy dower house she had left behind and of the bustling school that was her destination. Claudia Martin would be expecting her today. Anne Jewell and Susanna Osbourne, the other resident teachers, would be watching for her arrival. They would all spend the evening together in Claudia’s private sitting room, seated cozily about the fire, drinking tea and exchanging reminiscences of Christmas. She would be able to give them a graphic account of the snowstorm through which she had traveled. She would embellish it and exaggerate the danger and her fears and have them all laughing.

But she was not laughing yet.

And suddenly laughter was as far from her thoughts as flying to the moon would be. The carriage slowed and rocked and slithered, and Frances jerked one hand free of her muff and grabbed for the worn leather strap above her head, convinced that they were about to tip right over at any moment. She waited to see her life flash before her eyes, and mumbled the opening words of the Lord’s Prayer rather than scream and startle Thomas into losing the last vestiges of his control. The sound of the horses’ hooves seemed deafening even though they were moving over snow and should have been silent. Thomas was shouting enough for ten men.

And then, looking out through the window nearest her rather than clench her eyes tightly shut and not even see the end approaching, she actually saw the horses, and instead of being up ahead pulling the carriage, they were drawing alongside her window and then forging ahead.

She gripped the strap even more tightly and leaned forward. Those were not her horses. Gracious heaven, someone was overtaking them—in these weather conditions.

The box of the overtaking carriage came into view with its coachman looking rather like a hunchbacked snowman bent over the ribbons and spewing hot abuse from his mouth—presumably at poor Thomas.

And then the carriage passed in a flash of blue, and Frances had the merest glimpse of a gentleman with many capes to his greatcoat and a tall beaver hat on his head. He looked back at her with one eyebrow cocked and an expression of supercilious contempt on his face.

He dared to be contemptuous of her?

Within moments the blue carriage was past, her own rocked and slithered some more, and then it appeared to right itself before continuing on its slow, plodding way.

Frances’s fears were replaced by a hot fury. She seethed with it. Of all the reckless, inconsiderate, suicidal, homicidal, dangerous, stupid things to do! Goodness gracious, even if she pressed her nose to the window she could not see more than five yards distant, and the falling snow hampered vision even within that five yards. Yet that hunchbacked, foul-mouthed coachman and that contemptuous gentleman with his arrogant eyebrow were in such a hurry that they would endanger life and limb—her own and Thomas’s as well as their own—in order to overtake?

But now that the excitement was over, she was suddenly aware again of being all alone in an ocean of whiteness. She felt panic contract her stomach muscles once more and sat back, deliberately letting go of the strap and folding her hands neatly inside her muff again. Panic would get her nowhere. It was altogether more probable that Thomas would get her somewhere.

Poor Thomas. He would be ready for something hot to drink—or more probably something strong and hot—when they arrived at that somewhere. He was by no means a young man.

With the fingers of her right hand she picked out the melody of a William Byrd madrigal on the back of her left hand, as if it were the keyboard of a pianoforte. She hummed the tune aloud.

And then she could feel the carriage rocking and slithering again and grasped for the strap once more. She looked out and ahead, not really expecting to see anything, but actually she could see a dark shape, which appeared to be blocking the way ahead. In one glimpse of near-clarity between snowflakes she saw that it was a carriage and horses. She even thought it might be a blue carriage.

But though the horses pulling her own had drawn to a halt, the carriage itself did not immediately follow suit. It swayed slightly to the left, righted itself, and then slithered more than slightly to the right—and this time it kept going until it reached what must have been the edge of the road, where one wheel caught on something. The conveyance performed a neat half-pirouette and slid gently backward and downward until its back wheels were nestled deep in a snowbank.

Frances, tipped backward and staring at the opposite seat, which was suddenly half above her, could see nothing but solid snow out of the windows on both sides.

And if this was not the outside of enough, she thought with ominous calm, then she did not know what was.

She was aware of a great clamor from somewhere—horses snorting and whinnying, men shouting.

Before she could collect herself sufficiently to extricate herself from her snowy cocoon, the door opened from the outside—not without some considerable assistance from male muscles and shocking male profanities—and an arm and hand clad in a thick and expensive greatcoat and a fine leather glove reached inside to assist her. It was obvious to her that the arm did not belong to Thomas. Neither did the face at the end of it—hazel-eyed, square-jawed, irritated, and frowning.

It was a face Frances had seen briefly less than ten minutes ago.

It was a face—and a person—against whom she had conceived a considerable hostility.

She slapped her hand onto his without a word, intending to use it to assist herself to alight with as much dignity as she could muster. But he hoisted her out from her awkward position as if she were a sack of meal and deposited her on the road, where her half-boots immediately sank out of sight beneath several inches of snow. She could feel all the ferocity of the cold wind and the full onslaught of the snow falling from the sky.

One was supposed to see red when one was furious. But she saw only white.

“You, sir,” she said above the noise of the horses and of Thomas and the hunchbacked snowman exchanging vigorous and colorful abuse of each other, “deserve to be hanged, drawn, and quartered. You deserve to be flayed alive. You deserve to be boiled in oil.”

The eyebrow that had already offended her once rose again. So did the other.

“And you, ma’am,” he said in clipped tones that matched the expression on his face, “deserve to be locked up in a dark dungeon as a public nuisance for venturing out onto the king’s highway in such an old boat. It is a veritable fossil. Any museum would reject it as far too ancient a vehicle to be of any interest to its clientele.”

“And its age and the caution of my driver give you the right to endanger several lives by overtaking it in such appalling conditions?” she asked rhetorically, toe to toe with him though none of their toes were visible above the snow. “Perhaps, sir, someone ought to relate to you the story of the tortoise and the hare.”

“Meaning?” He dropped both eyebrows and then cocked just the original one.

“Your reckless speed has brought you to grief,” she said, jabbing a finger in the direction of the blue carriage, which completely blocked the road ahead—though it did appear to be on the road, she saw when she looked directly at it. “You are no farther ahead after all.”

“If you will use your eyes for looking instead of just flashing fire and brimstone, ma’am,” he said, “you will see that we have come to a bend in the road, and that my coachman—and I too until I was interrupted by your coachman’s ineptitude in drawing from a crawl to a complete halt—is clearing a drift of snow so that my hare may proceed on its way. Your tortoise, on the other hand, is deep in a snowdrift and will be going nowhere for some time to come. Certainly not today.”

She looked over her shoulder. It was suddenly, sickeningly obvious that he was right. Only the front part of the carriage was even visible, and that was pointing half at the sky.

“And so who is likely to win the race?” he asked her.

What on earth was she going to do? Her feet were wet, her cloak was matted with snow about the hem, she was being heavily snowed upon, she was cold, and she was miserable. She was also frightened.

And furious.

“And whose fault is all this?” she asked him. “If you had not been springing your horses, we would not now be in a snowbank.”

“Springing the horses.” He looked at her with incredulity mingled with contempt and called over his shoulder. “Peters! I have it on expert authority that you were springing the horses when we overtook this ancient relic. I have told and told you not to spring the horses during a snowstorm. You are dismissed.”

“Give me a moment to finish digging through this drift, guv, and I’ll walk off into the sunset,” the coachman called back. “If someone will just tell me which direction that is.”

“You had better not do it anyway,” the gentleman said. “I would have to drive the carriage myself. You are rehired.”

“I’ll think about it, guv,” the coachman called. “There! That about does it.”

Thomas meanwhile was busy releasing the horses from their useless burden.

“If your carriage had been moving at any speed above an almost imperceptible crawl, ma’am,” the gentleman said, turning his attention back to Frances, “it would not have posed a reckless endangerment to serious, responsible travelers who would really prefer to get somewhere by the end of a day instead of spending eternity on one stretch of road.”

Frances glared at him. She would bet a month’s salary that not one whisper of cold could penetrate that greatcoat he wore, with its dozen capes, or that one speck of snow had found its way down inside his top boots.

“Ready to move on, then, guv,” his coachman called, “unless you prefer to stand admiring the scenery for the next hour or so.”

“Where is your maid?” The gentleman’s eyes narrowed.

“I have none,” she said. “That should be perfectly obvious. I am alone.”

She was aware of his eyes sweeping over her from head to foot—or to just below the knee anyway. She was dressed in clothes that were perfectly good and serviceable for her return to school, though it would be quite obvious to such a fashionable gentleman, of course, that they were neither expensive nor modish. She glared back at him.

“You are going to have to come along with me,” he said ungraciously.

“I most certainly will not!”

“Very well, then,” he said, turning away, “you may remain here in virtuous isolation.”

She looked about her, and this time panic assaulted her knees as well as her stomach, and she almost sank into the snow never to be heard from again.

“Where are we?” she asked. “Do you have any idea?”

“Somewhere in Somersetshire,” he said. “Apart from that I have not the foggiest notion, but most roads, I have learned from past experience, lead somewhere eventually. This is your last chance, ma’am. Do you wish to explore the great unknown in my fiendish company, or would you prefer to perish alone here?”

It irked her beyond words that really she had no choice.

The two coachmen were exchanging words again, she was aware—none too gentle words either.

“Take an hour or two in which to decide,” the gentleman said with heavy irony, cocking that eyebrow again. “I am in no hurry.”

“What about Thomas?” she asked.

“Thomas being the man in the moon?” he asked. “Or your coachman, perhaps? He will bring the horses and follow us.”

“Very well, then,” she said, glowering at him and then pressing her lips together.

He strode ahead of her to the blue carriage, sending up showers of snow as he went. Frances picked her way more cautiously after him, trying to set her feet in the ruts made by the wheels.

What a coil this was!

He offered his hand again to help her up into the carriage. It was a wonderfully new carriage, she saw resentfully, with plush upholstered seats. As soon as she sat on one of them she sank into it and realized that it would offer marvelous comfort even through a long journey. It also felt almost warm in contrast with the raw elements outside.

“There are two bricks on the floor, both of them still somewhat warm,” the gentleman told her from the doorway. “Set your feet on one of them and cover yourself with one of the lap robes. I will see about having your belongings transferred from your carriage to mine.”

The words themselves might have seemed both kind and considerate. But his clipped tone belied that possible impression, as did the firmness with which he slammed the door shut. Frances nevertheless did as he had suggested. Her teeth were literally chattering. Her fingers might have felt as if they were about to fall off if she could just feel them at all—she had abandoned her muff inside her own carriage.

How long was she going to have to endure this insufferable situation? she wondered. She was not in the habit of hating or even disliking people on sight. But the thought of spending even half an hour in close company with that arrogant, bad-tempered, sneering, contemptuous gentleman was singularly unappealing. Just the thought of him made her bristle.

Would she be able to find some other mode of travel from the first village they came to? A stagecoach, perhaps? But even as the thought flashed through her mind, she realized the absurdity of it. They would be fortunate to reach any village. Was she expecting that if they did, there would be no trace of snow there?

She was going to be stranded somewhere overnight—without any female companion and without a great deal of money since she had refused what her great-aunts had tried to press upon her. She would be fortunate if that somewhere did not turn out to be this carriage.

The very thought was enough to make her gasp for air.

But it was a distinct possibility. It had seemed to her eyes just a couple of minutes ago that the road was all but invisible.

She countered panic this time by setting her feet neatly side by side on the slightly warm brick and clasping her hands loosely in her lap.

She would trust to the skills of the strange, impertinent Peters, who had turned out not to be hunchbacked after all.

Now this would be an adventure with which to regale her friends when she finally reached Bath, she thought. Perhaps if she looked more closely at him, the gentleman would even turn out to be describable as tall, dark, and handsome—the proverbial knight in shining armor, in fact. That would have Susanna’s eyes popping out of her head and Anne’s eyes softening with a romantic glow. And it would have Claudia pursing her lips and looking suspicious.

But, oh, dear, it was going to be hard to find any humor or any romance in this situation, even when she looked back on it from the safety of the school.

His mother had warned him that it would snow before the day was out. So had his sisters. So had his grandfather.

So indeed had his own common sense.

But since he rarely listened to advice—especially when offered by his family—and rarely heeded the dictates of common sense, here he was in the midst of a snowfall to end snowfalls and looking forward with less than eager zeal to spending the night at some obscure country inn in the middle of nowhere. At least he hoped he would spend it at some inn rather than in a hovel or—worse yet—inside his carriage.

And he had been in a black mood even before this journey began!

He looked hard at his woman passenger after he had climbed inside the carriage with her, everything that needed tending to having been accomplished. She was huddled beneath one of the woolen lap robes, the muff he had rescued from the other carriage and tossed in a couple of minutes ago under there with her, and he could see that her feet were resting on one of the bricks. Huddled was perhaps the wrong word to describe her posture, though. She was straight-backed and rigid with hostility and determined dignity and injured virtue. She did not even turn her head to look at him.

Just like a dried-up prune, he thought. All he could see of her face around the brim of her hideous brown bonnet was the reddened tip of her nose. It was only surprising that it was not quivering with indignation—as if the predicament in which she found herself were his fault.

“Lucius Marshall at your service,” he said none too graciously.

He thought for a moment that she was not going to return the compliment, and he seriously considered knocking on the roof panel for the carriage to stop again so that he could join Peters up on the box. Better to be attacked by snow outside than frozen by an icicle inside.

“Frances Allard,” she said.

“It is to be hoped, Miss Allard,” he said, purely for the sake of making conversation, “that the landlord of the next inn we come to will have a full larder. I do believe I am going to be able to do justice to a beef pie and potatoes and vegetables and a tankard of ale, not to mention a good suet pudding and custard with which to finish off the meal. Make that several tankards of ale. How about you?”

“A cup of tea is all I crave,” she said.

He might have guessed it. But, good Lord—a cup of tea! And doubtless her knitting with which to occupy her hands between sips.

“What is your destination?” he asked.

“Bath,” she said. “And yours?”

“Hampshire,” he said. “I expected to spend a night on the road, but I had hoped it would be somewhat closer to my destination than this. No matter, though. I would not have had the pleasure of making your acquaintance or you mine if the unexpected had not happened.”

She turned her head then and looked steadily at him. It was quite obvious to him even before she spoke that she could recognize irony when she heard it.

“I believe, Mr. Marshall,” she said, “I could have lived quite happily without any of the three of those experiences.”

Tit for tat. Touché.

Now that he had more leisure to look at her, he was surprised to realize that she was a great deal younger than he had thought earlier. His impression when his carriage passed hers and again on the road outside had been of a thin, dark lady of middle years. But he had been mistaken. Now that she had stopped frowning and grimacing and squinting against the glare of the snow, he could see that she was only perhaps in her middle twenties. She was almost certainly younger than his own twenty-eight years.

She was a shrew, nevertheless.

And she was thin. Or perhaps she was only very slender—it was hard to tell through her shapeless winter cloak. But her wrists were narrow and her fingers long and slim—he had noticed them when she took the muff from his hand. Her face was narrow too, with high cheekbones, her complexion slightly olive-hued, apart from the red-tipped nose. Put together with her very dark eyes, lashes, and hair, her face invited the conclusion that she had some foreign blood flowing through her veins—Italian, perhaps, Mediterranean certainly. That fact would account for her temper. Beneath her bonnet he could see the beginnings of a severe center part with smooth bands of hair combed to either side and disappearing beneath the bonnet brim.

She looked like someone’s governess. Heaven help her poor pupil.

“I suppose,” he said, “you were warned not to travel today?”

“I was not,” she said. “I hoped for snow all over Christmas and was convinced it would come. By today I had stopped looking for it. So of course it came.”

She was not, it seemed, in the mood for further conversation. She turned her face firmly to the front again, leaving him no more than the tip of her nose to admire, and he felt no obligation—or inclination—to continue talking himself.

At least if all this had had to happen fate might have provided him with a blond, blue-eyed, dimpled, wilting damsel in distress! Life sometimes seemed quite unfair. It had been seeming that way a great deal lately.

He turned his attention back to the cause of the black mood that had hung over him like a dark cloud all over Christmas.

His grandfather was dying. Oh, he was not exactly at his last gasp or even languishing on his deathbed, and he had made light of the verdict his army of London physicians had passed on him when he had gone to consult them in early December. But the fact of the matter was that they had told him his heart was fast failing, that there was nothing any of them could do to heal it.

“It is old and ready to be turned in for a new one,” his grandfather had said with a gruff laugh after the news had been forced out of him and his daughter-in-law and granddaughters were sniffling and looking tragic and Lucius was standing deliberately in the shadows of the drawing room, frowning ferociously lest he show an emotion that would have embarrassed himself and everyone else in the room. “Like the rest of me.”

No one had been amused except the old man himself.

“What the old sawbones meant,” he had added irreverently, “was that I had better get my affairs in order and prepare to meet my maker any day now.”

Lucius had not had a great deal to do with his grandfather or the rest of his family during the past ten years, having been too busy living the life of an idle man about town. He even rented rooms on St. James’s Street in London rather than live at Marshall House, the family home on

Cavendish Square

, where his mother and sisters usually took up residence during the London Season.

But the shocking news had made him realize how much he actually loved his grandfather—the Earl of Edgecombe of Barclay Court in Somersetshire. And with the realization had come the knowledge that he loved all this family, but that it had taken something like this to make him aware of how he had neglected them.

Even his guilt and grief would have been quite sufficient to cast a deep gloom over his Christmas. But there had been more than that.

He just happened to be the earl’s heir. He was Lucius Marshall, Viscount Sinclair.

Not that that in itself was a gloomy fact. He would not have been quite normal if he had hated the thought of inheriting Barclay, where he had grown up, and Cleve Abbey in Hampshire, where he now lived—when he was not in London or somewhere else with his friends—and the other properties and the vast fortune that went with them, even though they must come at the expense of his grandfather’s life. And he did not mind the political obligations that a seat in the House of Lords would place upon his shoulders when the time came. After all, ever since the death of his father years ago he had known that if life followed its natural course he would one day inherit, and he had educated and prepared himself. Besides, even an idle life of pleasure could pall after a time. Being actually engaged in politics would give his life a more positive, active direction.

No, what he really minded was that, in the opinion of his mother, his married sister and possibly her husband too—though one could never be quite sure with Tait—his three unmarried sisters, and his grandfather, a man who was soon to become an earl also needed even sooner to become a married man. In other words, an earl needed a countess.

Lucius needed a bride.

It had been as plain as the noses on all their faces, it seemed, except his. Though even that was questionable. He knew all about duty even if he had spent a large part of his life ignoring and even running from it. But up until now he had been free to do as he pleased. No one had even objected too loudly to his way of life. Normal young men were expected to sow wild oats, provided they did not descend too deeply into vice, and he had done what was expected of him.

But now everything was to change. And if one was to be philosophical about it, one would have to admit that duty caught up with most young men sooner or later—it was the nature of life. It had caught up with him now.

His relatives had all separately expostulated on the theme throughout the holiday whenever one, or sometimes two, of them could maneuver him into what they were all pleased to describe as a comfortable coze.

He had enjoyed more comfortable cozes over Christmas than ever in his life before—or in his life to come, he sincerely hoped.

The consensus was, of course, that he needed a bride without delay.

A perfect bride, if there were such a paragon available—and apparently there was.

Portia Hunt was far and away the most favored candidate, since it was next to impossible to find any imperfection in her.

She had remained single to the advanced age of twenty-three, his mother explained, because she fully expected to be his viscountess one day—and his countess eventually, of course. And the mother of a future earl.

She would make him an admirable wife, Margaret, Lady Tait, Lucius’s older sister, assured him, because she was mature and steady and had all the accomplishments a future countess would need.

She was still a diamond of the first water, Caroline and Emily, his younger sisters, pointed out—quite correctly, as it happened, even if they did choose to express themselves in clichés. There was no one more beautiful, more elegant, more refined, more accomplished, than Portia.

Miss Portia Hunt was the daughter of Baron and Lady Balderston and the granddaughter of the Marquess of Godsworthy, his grandfather reminded him—Godsworthy was one of his oldest and closest friends. It would be an eligible and highly desirable alliance—not that he was trying to put undue pressure on his grandson.

“Your choice of bride must be yours alone, Lucius,” he had said. “But if there is no one else you fancy, you might seriously consider Miss Hunt. It would do my heart good to see you wed to her before I die.”

No undue pressure, indeed!

Only Amy, his youngest sister, had spoken up with a dissenting voice, though only on the question of the candidate for perfect bride, not on the necessity of his finding such a creature somewhere within the next few months.

“Don’t do it, Luce,” she had said when they were out riding alone together one day. “Miss Hunt is so very tedious. She advised Mama just last summer not to bring me out this year even though I will be eighteen in June, just because Emily’s broken arm prevented her from coming out last year and so her turn was delayed. Miss Hunt might have spoken up for me since she intends to marry you and become my sister-in-law, but she did not, and then she smiled that very patronizing smile of hers and assured me that I would be glad next year when the focus of family attention will be on me alone.”

The trouble was that he had known Portia forever—her family had frequently come to stay at

Barclay Court

, and sometimes, when his grandparents had gone to visit the Marquess of Godsworthy, they had taken Lucius with them, and as like as not the Balderstons would be there too with their daughter. The desire of both families that they would eventually make a match of it had always been quite evident. And while he had never actively encouraged Portia after her come-out to sacrifice all other offers in favor of waiting for him to come to the point, he had never actively discouraged her, either. Since he was not of a romantical turn of mind and had always known that he was going to have to marry one day, he had assumed that probably he would end up married to her. But knowing that as a vague sort of future probability was altogether different from being confronted now with the expectation that it was actually to happen—and soon.

Indeed, a vague sort of panic had assailed him at frequent intervals all over the holiday. It happened particularly when he tried to picture himself in bed with Portia. Good Lord! She would doubtless expect him to watch his manners.

And yet another small fact that had darkened his mood even further was that he had distinctly heard himself promise his grandfather—it had happened when they were sitting together in the library on Christmas evening after everyone else had retired for the night, and a few glasses from the wassail bowl had mellowed his senses and made him really quite maudlin—that he would look seriously about him this coming spring during the Season and choose a bride and marry her before the summer was out.

He had not exactly promised to marry Portia Hunt, but her name had inevitably come up.

“Miss Hunt will be happy to see you in town this year,” his grandfather had said—which was a strange thing really as Lucius was always in town. But what the old man had meant, of course, was that Portia would be happy to see him dancing attendance on her at all the balls and routs and other faradiddle of social events that he normally avoided as he would the plague.

He was a doomed man. There was no point in even trying to deny it. His days as a free—as a carefree—man about town were numbered. Ever since just before Christmas he had felt the noose tightening ever more firmly about his neck.

“That coachman of yours deserves to be led in front of a firing squad,” Miss Frances Allard, that charmingly gentle lady, said suddenly and sharply, and at the same moment her hand clamped like a vise about Lucius’s sleeve. “He is going too fast again.”

The carriage was indeed slithering and sliding as it plowed its way through the heavy snow. Peters, Lucius thought, was probably enjoying himself more than he had in many a long day.

“I daresay you would say that,” he said, “since you have your own coachman trained to proceed at about half the walking speed of a gouty octogenarian. But what have we here?”

He peered out through the window and saw that the slithering had been occasioned by the fact that the carriage was being drawn to a halt. They had arrived at what appeared to be an inn, though it was a decidedly poor specimen of its type if this first glimpse of it was anything to judge by. It looked more as if it might be a community center for the drinkers of the village that must be close by than a stopping place for respectable travelers, but, as the old adage went, beggars could not be choosers.

The inn also looked somewhat deserted. No one had cleared any snow away from the door. The stables to the back of the building were shut up. No light flickered behind any of the windows. No reassuring plume of smoke was billowing from the chimney.

It was something of a relief, then, when the door opened a crack after Peters had yelled something unintelligible, and a head complete with unshaven jaws and chin and a voluminous nightcap—in the middle of the afternoon—peered out and bellowed something back.

“Time to wade into the fray, I believe,” Lucius muttered, opening the door and jumping out into the knee-deep snow. “What is the problem, fellow?”

He interrupted Peters, who was in the process of informing the man of his startling and quite uncomplimentary pedigree from his perch on the box of the carriage.

“Parker and his missus has gone away and not come back yet,” the man shouted. “You can’t stop here.”

Peters began to give his unbidden opinion on the absent Parkers and on unshaven, bad-mannered yokels, but Lucius held up a staying hand.

“Tell me that there is another inn within five hundred yards of this one,” he said.

“Well, there ain’t, but that ain’t my problem,” the man said, making as if to shut the door again.

“Then I am afraid,” Lucius said, “that you have guests for the night, my fine fellow. I suggest that you get dressed and pull your boots on unless you prefer to do some work as you are. There is baggage to carry inside and horses to attend with more on the way. Look lively now.”

He turned back to hand down Miss Allard.

“It is a relief at least,” she said, “to see your ill humor turned upon someone else.”

“Do not try me, ma’am,” he warned. “And you had better set your arm about my shoulders. I’ll carry you inside since you did not have sense enough this morning to don proper boots.”

She favored him with one of her shrewish glares, and it seemed to him that this time the reddened tip of her nose did indeed quiver.

“Thank you, Mr. Marshall,” she said, “but I shall walk inside on my own two feet.”

“Suit yourself,” he told her with a shrug and had the great satisfaction of watching her jump down from the carriage without waiting for the steps to be set down and sinking almost to her knees in snow.

It was very hard, he observed with pursed lips, to stalk with dignity from a carriage to a building several yards distant through a foot or more of snow, though she did attempt it. She ended up having to wade, though, and flail her arms in order to avoid falling after one inelegant skid just before she reached the door, which the nightcapped occupant of the inn had left open.

Lucius grinned with grim amusement at her back.

“We picked up a right one there, guv,” Peters commented.

“You will keep a civil tongue in your head when referring to any lady in my hearing,” Lucius said, bending a stern gaze on him.

“Right you are, guv.” Peters jumped down into the snow, looking quite uncowed by the reproof.

“It looks as if I may indeed have my ale,” Mr. Marshall said. “And it looks as if you may have your tea if we can get a fire going and if there is tea hidden away somewhere in the kitchen. But I despair of my beef pie—and my suet pudding.”

They were standing in the middle of a shabby, cheerless taproom, which felt no warmer than the carriage, since there was no fire burning in the hearth. The servant who had opened the door to them and then not wanted to allow them inside despite the inclement weather came lumbering in with Frances’s portmanteau and deposited it on the floor just inside the door together with large clumps of snow.

“I don’t know what Parker and the missus will have to say when they hears about this,” he muttered darkly.

“Doubtless they will hail you as a hero for hauling in extra business and double your wages,” Mr. Marshall told him. “You have been left here all alone over the holiday?”

“I have,” the man said, “though they didn’t leave till the day after Boxing Day and they are supposed to be back tomorrow. They give me strict orders not to let no one in here while they was gone. I don’t know about no double wages, but I do know about missus’s tongue. You can’t stay here the night and that’s flat.”

“Your name?” Mr. Marshall asked.

“Wally.”

“Wally, sir,” Mr. Marshall said.

“Wally, sir,” the man repeated sullenly. “You can’t stay here, sir. The rooms ain’t ready and there ain’t no fires and there ain’t no cook here to cook no victuals.”

All that was painfully apparent to Frances, who was about as deeply sunk into misery as it was possible to be. Her only consolation—the only one—was that she was at least alive and had solid ground beneath her feet.

“I see that a fire is ready laid in the hearth here,” Mr. Marshall said. “You may light it while I go outside to bring in the rest of the baggage. Though first you will provide the lady with a shawl or blanket so that she may remain moderately warm until the fire catches. And then you will see about getting two rooms ready. As for food—”

“I will step into the kitchen myself to reconnoiter,” Frances said. “I do not need to be treated like a delicate burden. I am no such thing. When you have finished lighting the fire in here, Wally, you may come and help me find what I will need to produce some sort of meal that will satisfy five people, yourself included.”

Mr. Marshall looked at her with both eyebrows raised.

“You can cook?” he asked.

“I do need food and utensils and a stove if I am to succeed,” she told him. “But I have been known to boil a kettle without causing the water to turn lumpy.”

For the merest moment she thought that the gleam in his eyes might be amusement.

“That was beef pie in case you did not hear it the first time,” he said, “with plenty of onions and gravy—without lumps.”

“You may have to settle for a poached egg,” she said, “if there are any eggs.”

“At the moment,” he said, “that sounds like a worthy substitute.”

“There are eggs,” Wally said, his voice still sullen as he knelt to his task of lighting the fire in the taproom hearth. “They are supposed to be for me, but I don’t know what to do with them.”

“One would hope, then,” Mr. Marshall said, “that Miss Allard does know and is not merely indulging in idle boasting when she promises poached eggs.”

Frances did not bother to reply. She pushed open the door that she guessed led to the kitchen while he went back out into the snow to help his coachman unload the carriage.

The building was chilly and cheerless. The windows were small and let in very little light even though there was so much whiteness outside. Her feet inside her boots were wet and cold. The inn was not dirty, but neither was it sparkling clean. She dared not take off either her cloak or her bonnet lest she freeze. There was no one to see to her needs except for one slovenly, lazy serving man. There was no one to prepare a hot meal—or even a cold one for that matter. And she was alone here with one bad-tempered, ill-mannered gentleman and three crotchety menservants.

The situation was decidedly grim.

She was expected back at the school today. The girls would be returning for the new term the day after tomorrow. There was much work to do before then if she was to have her classes all ready for the following morning—she had deliberately not worked over Christmas. There was a pile of French essays by the senior class waiting to be marked and an even larger pile of stories—in English—from the junior girls.

This whole turn of events with its resulting delay was more than grim. It was a total disaster.

But as Frances first looked about the kitchen and then explored tentatively and then more boldly in drawers and cupboards and pantry, and finally went in search of Wally and ordered him into the kitchen to clean out the ashes in the large grate and build another fire and light it, she decided that practicality was the only sane way of dealing with the situation.

And perhaps looking back on this day from the safety of school once she finally got there, she would see it after all more in the light of an adventure than a disaster. She might even find something funny in the memories. It was hard to imagine such an outcome now, but she supposed this might well be considered an adventure of the first order.

Now if only she were stranded here with a handsome, smiling, charming knight in shining armor . . .

Though this man was certainly one of the three, she was forced to admit. Her first impression of him had been wrong in one detail. He was exceedingly large, but he did have a handsome face, even though he liked to ruin it by frowning and sneering and cocking one eyebrow.

He doubted she could poach an egg. He had spoken of beef pie as if it might be something she had never even heard of. Ha! How she would love to deal him his comeuppance. And she would too. She had amused her father and everyone else in his household by spending hours in the kitchen, watching their cook and helping her whenever she had been allowed to. It had always seemed to her a marvelously relaxing way of using her spare time.

She examined a loaf of bread that she found in the pantry and discovered that though it was not fresh enough to be eaten as it was, it would be appetizing enough if toasted. And there was a wedge of cheese that someone had had the forethought to cover, with the result that it looked perfectly edible. There was a slab of butter on another covered dish.

She sent Wally outside to the pump to fetch some water, filled the kettle, and set it to boil. It would take some time, she estimated, since the fire was only now crackling to life, but it would be worth waiting for. In the meanwhile, there was probably enough ale in the inn to slake the thirsts of four men. Indeed, it was her guess that Wally had consumed little else in the time since he had been left alone at the inn. Certainly there was no sign of any dishes having been used or any food handled. And he had probably done nothing else but stay warm in his bed, too lazy even to light a fire for comfort.

Mr. Marshall was in the taproom when Frances went back in there. A fire now burned in the hearth, making the room look altogether more cheerful, though nothing could save it from ugliness, and he was in the process of moving a table and chairs closer to the fire. He straightened up to look at her.

He had removed his greatcoat and hat since she last saw him, and she almost stood and gaped. That he was a large gentleman she had seen from the first. She had also thought of him as a heavyset gentleman. But she could see, now that he stood before her, clad in an expertly tailored coat of dark green superfine with fawn waistcoat and pantaloons and dry Hessian boots with white shirt and neatly tied cravat, that he was not heavyset at all but merely broad with muscles in all the right places. His powerful thighs suggested that he was a man who spent a great deal of time in the saddle. And his hair without the beaver hat looked thicker and curlier than she had imagined. It hugged his head in a short, neat style.

He was a veritable Corinthian, in fact.

Indeed he was nothing short of devastatingly gorgeous, Frances thought resentfully, remembering fleetingly all the amusement she felt every time she overheard the girls at school giggling and sighing soulfully over some young buck who had taken their fancy.

Yet here she stood, gawking.

Nasty gentlemen, she thought, deserved to be ugly.

She moved forward to set the tray down on the table.

“It is only teatime,” she said, “though I suppose you missed luncheon as I did. The kitchen fire will be hot enough for me to make a cooked meal for dinner, but in the meanwhile toast and cheese and some pickles will have to suffice. I have set some out on the kitchen table for the men too and have sent Wally running to the stables to fetch Thomas and your coachman.”

“If Wally is capable of running,” he said, rubbing his hands together and eyeing the tray hungrily, “I will eat my hat as well as the toast and cheese.”

Frances had dithered in the kitchen about whether to join Mr. Marshall in the taproom or stay there for her own tea. Her inclination was very much to stay in the kitchen, but her pride told her that if she did that she would be setting a precedent and putting herself firmly in the servant class. He would doubtless be content to treat her accordingly. She might be a schoolteacher, but she was no one’s servant—certainly not his.

And so here she was, alone in an inn taproom with Mr. Lucius Marshall, bad-tempered and arrogant and handsome and very male. It was enough to give any gently reared young lady the vapors.

She finally removed her cloak and bonnet and set them down on a wooden settle. She would have liked to comb her hair, but her portmanteau and reticule had disappeared from inside the door, she could see. She smoothed her hands over her hair instead and seated herself at the table that had been pulled forward.

“Ah, warmth,” she said, feeling the heat of the fire as she had not yet done in the kitchen, where the fireplace was much larger and slower to heat. “How positively delicious.”

He had seated himself opposite her and was regarding her with narrowed eyes.

“Let me guess,” he said. “You are Spanish? Italian? Greek?”

“English,” she said firmly. “But I did have an Italian mother. Unfortunately I never knew her. She died when I was a baby. But I daresay I do resemble her. My father always said I did.”

“Past tense?” he said.

“Yes.”

He was still looking at her. She found his gaze disconcerting, but she was certainly not going to show him that. She set some food on her plate and took a bite out of a slice of toast.

“The tea will be a while yet,” she said. “But I daresay you would prefer ale anyway. Perhaps you can find some in here without having to disturb poor Wally again. He has had a busy afternoon.”

“But if there is one thing he is good at and even enthusiastic over,” he said, “it is the liquor. He has already given me a guided tour of the shelves behind the counter over there.”

“Ah,” she said.

“And I have already sampled some of the offerings,” he added.

She did not deign to reply. She ate more toast.

“There are four rooms upstairs,” he said, “or five if one counts the large empty room, which I assume is the village Assembly Room. One of the smaller rooms apparently belongs to the absent Parker and his missus of the formidable tongue, and one is a mere box room with a single piece of furniture that may or may not be a bed. I did not sit or lie on it to find out. The other two rooms may be described in loose terms as guest chambers. I purloined sheets and other bedding from the large chest outside the landlady’s room and made up the two beds. I have put your things in the larger of the rooms. Later this evening, if Wally can keep awake so long, I will have him light the fire in there so that you may retire in some comfort.”

“You have made the beds?” It was Frances’s turn to raise her eyebrows. “That would have been something to behold.”

“You have a wicked tongue, Miss Allard,” he said. “I might have seen a mouse or two setting up house beneath your bed, but doubtless you will contrive to sleep the sleep of the just tonight anyway.”

And then suddenly, looking across the table at him, trying to think of some suitably tart rejoinder, she was assaulted, just as if someone had planted a fist into her stomach, with a strong dose of reality. Unless the absent landlord—and, more to the point, the landlady—arrived home within the next few hours, she was going to be sleeping here tonight quite unchaperoned in a room close to that of Mr. Lucius Marshall, who was horribly attractive even if he was also just plain horrible.

She lowered her head and got to her feet, pushing out her chair with the backs of her knees as she did so.

“I will go and see if the kettle is boiling yet,” she said.

“What, Miss Allard?” he said. “You are allowing me the final word?”

She was indeed.

As she hurried off into the kitchen, her cheeks felt suddenly hot enough to boil a kettle apiece.

It was the damnedest thing, Lucius thought when he was left alone, getting to his feet and going in pursuit of more ale.

She was clad quite hideously in a brown dress a few shades lighter than her cloak. It was high-waisted, high-necked, and long-sleeved and about as sexless as dresses came. It draped a tall figure that was slender almost to the point of thinness. It was a figure that was as unvoluptuous as figures came. Her hair was much as he had expected it would look when she still wore her bonnet. It was dressed in a purely no-nonsense style, parted ruthlessly down the middle, drawn smoothly back at the sides, and coiled in a simple knot at the nape of her neck. Even allowing for the flattening effect of a bonnet, he did not believe she had even tried this morning to soften the style with any little curls or ringlets to tease the masculine imagination. The hair was dark brown, even possibly black. Her face was long and narrow, with high cheekbones, a straight nose, and a nondescript mouth. Her eyes were dark and thick-lashed.

She looked prim and dowdy. She looked—and behaved—like the quintessential governess.

But he had been dead wrong about her, nevertheless.

For some reason that he had not yet fathomed—and it had to be the sum of the whole rather than any of the individual parts themselves—Miss Frances Allard was plain gorgeous.

Gorgeous, but without anything in her manner that he found remotely appealing. Yet here he was, stuck with her until sometime tomorrow.

He ought to have been happy to leave her alone in the kitchen, since she seemed content to be there. Certainly she did not put in any further appearance after drinking her tea and then clearing the table. Fortunately, she appeared to have taken just as strong an aversion to him as he had to her and was keeping out of his way.

But after half an hour he was bored. He could go out to the stables, he supposed, to discover if Peters and the other coachman had come to blows yet. But if they had, he would be obliged to intervene. He wandered into the kitchen instead—and stopped abruptly just inside the door, assaulted by sights and smells that were totally unexpected.

“Good Lord!” he said. “You are not attempting a beef pie, are you?”

She was standing at the great wooden table that filled the center of the kitchen, her sleeves rolled up to her elbows, a voluminous apron wrapped about her, rolling out what looked suspiciously like pastry.

“I am,” she said as he breathed in the aroma of cooking meat and herbs. “Did you think I was incapable of producing such a simple meal? I shall even contrive not to give you indigestion.”

“I am overwhelmed,” he said dryly, though really he was. Poached eggs had never been high on his list of favorite dinnertime fare.

There was a smudge of flour on one of her cheeks—and both the cheeks were flushed. The apron—presumably belonging to a very buxom Mrs. Parker—half drowned her. But somehow she looked more appealing than she had before—more human.

He reached out and picked up a stray remnant of pastry from the table and popped it into his mouth a moment after she slapped at his hand—and missed it.

“If all you are going to do is eat the pastry when I have gone to the trouble of making it,” she said sharply, “I shall be sorry I bothered.”

“Indeed, ma’am?” He raised his eyebrows. He had not had his fingers slapped for at least the past twenty years. “I shall pay you the compliment of returning the beef pie untouched after dinner, then, shall I?”

She glared at him for a moment and then . . . dissolved into laughter.

Lord, oh, Lord! Oh, devil take it! She suddenly looked very human indeed, and more than a little attractive.

“It was a foolish thing to say,” she admitted, humor still lighting her eyes and curving the corners of her lips upward so that he could see they were not nondescript at all. “Did you come in here to help? You may peel the potatoes.”

He was still gawking at her like a smitten schoolboy. Then he heard the echo of her words.

“Peel the potatoes?” He frowned. “How is that done?”

She wiped her hands on her apron, disappeared into what he assumed was a pantry, and emerged with a pail of potatoes, which she set at his feet. She took a knife from a drawer and held it out, handle facing him.

“Perhaps,” she said, “you are intelligent enough to work it out for yourself.”

It was not nearly as easy as it looked. If he cut the peel too thickly so as to obtain a smooth, clean potato, he was also ending up with very small potatoes and a great mound of peelings. If he cut it too thinly, he had to waste another minute or so on each, digging out eyes and other assorted blemishes.

His cook and all his kitchen staff would have an apoplexy apiece if they could see him now, he thought. So would his mother and sisters. His friends would not have an apoplexy, but they would be under the table by now, rolling around under there with mirth and holding their sides. Behold Viscount Sinclair, the consummate Corinthian, singing for his supper—or at least peeling potatoes for his dinner, which was even worse!

At the same time he kept more than half an eye on Miss Frances Allard, who was lining a deep dish with the pastry, her slim hands and long fingers working deftly, and then filling the shell with the fragrant meat, vegetable, and gravy concoction that had been simmering over the fire, and finally covering the whole with a pastry lid, which she pressed into place all about the rim with the pad of her thumb and then pierced in several places with a fork.

“Why are you doing that?” he asked her, digging an eye out of a potato before pointing the knife at the pie. “Will the filling not all boil out?”

“If there were no outlet for the steam,” she explained, bending to put the pie into the oven, “the pastry lid would quite possibly blow off and we would be scraping half of both it and the pie’s contents off the roof of the oven and onto our plates. Onto your plate, I should say. I would have whatever was left in the dish.”

And speaking of lids blowing off . . .

She probably had no idea what an enticing picture she presented as she bent over the oven, her derriere nicely rounded against the fabric of her dress—proof positive that she was certainly not unshapely. She certainly had not gone out of her way to entice him since they had met. Indeed, her very first words to him, if he remembered correctly, were that he deserved to be subjected to any number of ghastly terminal tortures.

But there—he had just been proved wrong again. First she had seemed shrewish and prunish. Then she had appeared gorgeous but unappealing. Now he was feeling as if the top of his head might blow off at any moment.

“Have I peeled enough potatoes to please you?” he asked irritably.

She straightened up and looked, her head cocked a little to one side.

“Unless each of you men eats enough for a whole regiment instead of just half, yes,” she said. “This is the first time you have done this, I suppose?”

“Strangely, Miss Allard,” he said, “I do not feel unmanned in admitting that, yes, indeed it is—and the last time too, I fervently hope. Who is going to wash all those dishes?”

A stupid question if ever he had asked one.

“I am,” she said, “unless I have a volunteer helper. I doubt it is even worth asking Thomas. And I sent Wally away to shave. I daresay that task will occupy him for the next hour or so. That leaves your coachman or . . .” She raised her eyebrows.

How the devil had he got himself into this ridiculous situation? She was not seriously expecting . . . But of course she was not. There was undisguised ridicule in her eyes.

“Do you want me to wash or dry?” he asked curtly.

“You had better dry,” she said. “You might ruin your gentleman’s hands if you had to keep them submerged in water for too long.”

“My valet would weep,” he admitted. “He went home ahead of me yesterday. He would refuse to leave my side ever again.”

This was turning into a stranger day by the moment, he thought as they proceeded to wash and dry the dishes while the potatoes bubbled merrily in their pot and the smell wafting from the oven caused his stomach to groan in protest at being kept waiting for its dinner. It was a day unlike anything else in his previous experience.

He never ever stopped at any inn but the very best. He rarely traveled without his valet, but Jeffreys had had a cold and Lucius had not been able to bear the thought of listening to his self-pitying sniffs all the way home in the carriage. He had not set foot inside a kitchen since he was a child, when he had visited frequently and clandestinely in order to beg tasty morsels. He liked his creature comforts, or, if he did give them up, in order to go out riding on a rainy day, for example, he liked to do so voluntarily and in pursuit of an activity he enjoyed or considered worthwhile.

This day had been a disaster ever since Peters had overtaken a carriage so ancient that Lucius had wondered if the snowstorm had somehow catapulted him back in time. And the day was not getting any better.

It was strange, then, that he was beginning almost to enjoy it.

“You do realize, do you not,” she said as he tossed down the wet towel on top of the final dish after drying it, “that there will be this to do all over again after dinner?”

He looked at her with incredulity.

“Miss Allard,” he said before making his escape back into the taproom, “has no one ever explained to you what servants are for?”

By the time they had dined and Mr. Marshall had assigned Wally and the two grooms the task of washing the dishes, Frances was feeling tired. It had been a long, more than strange day, and the darkness of the winter evening made it seem later than it was. The wind that rattled the window of the taproom and moaned in the chimney, and the heat and crackling sounds coming from the fire were lulling. So was the hot tea she was sipping.

She sat gazing into the fire, drinking her tea and watching with her peripheral vision the supple, highly polished leather of Mr. Marshall’s Hessian boots crossed at the ankle and resting on the hearth in an informal, relaxed pose that somehow made him seem twice as male as he had seemed before.

Dangerously male, in fact.

She dared not excuse herself and go up to bed. She would actually have to get to her feet and announce that she was going up there, to the room next to his. There was not even a lock on the door, she had discovered. Not that she suspected him of fancying her. But even so . . .

He sighed with apparent contentment.

“There was only one thing wrong with that beef pie, Miss Allard,” he said. “It has spoiled me for all others.”

It had turned out rather well considering the fact that she had never before cooked unsupervised and had not cooked at all for several years. But the compliment surprised her. He did not seem like the sort of man who handed out a great deal of praise.

“The potatoes were rather good too,” she said, provoking an unexpected bark of laughter from him.

Their acquaintance had started very badly, of course. But there was no point in keeping up an open hostility just for the sake of being nasty and provoking nastiness, was there? Somehow, by unspoken consent, they had laid down their weapons and made a sort of grudging peace.

But how strange it was to be sitting thus, alone with a very handsome, masculine gentleman, who was slouched in his chair, totally at his ease. And to know that they would spend the night within a few feet of each other, alone together on the upper floor of the inn. This was the stuff of fantasy and daydreams. But such fantasies were not quite as comfortable when they became reality.

Good heavens, for the past three years she had lived and consorted with none but females, if one discounted Mr. Keeble, the elderly porter at Miss Martin’s school.

“Your home is in Bath, is it?” Mr. Marshall asked her.

“Yes,” she said. “I live at the school where I teach.”

“Ah,” he said, “so you are a teacher.”

He had guessed it, had he? But it was not surprising. She was obviously not a fashionable lady any longer, was she? Even the private carriage in which she had been traveling was shabby despite the wealth of her great-aunts.

“At a girls’ school,” she said. “A very good one. Miss Martin opened it nine years ago with a few pupils and a very small budget. But her reputation as a good teacher and the help of a benefactor whose identity she does not even know enabled her to expand into the house next door and to take in charity girls as well as paying ones. She was also able to employ more teachers. I have been there for three years.”

He sipped from his glass of port.

“And what does such a school teach girls?” he asked her. “What do you teach?”

“Music and French and writing,” she said. “Creative writing, not penmanship—Susanna Osbourne teaches that. The school instructs girls in all the accomplishments they are expected to acquire as young ladies, like dancing and painting and singing as well as etiquette and deportment. But it also teaches academics. Miss Martin has always insisted upon that, since she firmly believes that the female mind is in no way inferior to the male.”

“Ah,” he said. “Admirable.”

She turned her head sharply to look at him, but it was unclear to her whether that judgment had been spoken ironically or not. His head was resting against the high back of his chair. He looked sleepy. His short curly hair looked somewhat rumpled. She felt a strange little fluttering in her lower abdomen.

“I like teaching there,” she said. “I feel that I am doing something useful with my life.”

“And you were not doing anything useful with it before three years ago?” He rolled his head around to look at her.

Her mind touched upon the two years following her father’s death, and for a moment she felt that she could weep. But her tears for those distressing, bungled years had all been shed long ago. And she had never been sorry for the choice she had then made to teach instead of running off abjectly to the sanctuary of her great-aunts’ house and support. If she could go back, she would do the same thing all over again.

Independence was a marvelous thing for a lady.

“I was not happy three years ago,” she said. “Now I am.”

“Are you?” he asked, his eyes moving lazily and disconcertingly over her face and neck and shoulders and even down to her bosom. “You are fortunate to be able to say so, ma’am.”

“Are you not happy, then?” she asked him.

“Happiness.” His eyebrows rose in obvious scorn. “It is a foolish word. There are enjoyment and sensual gratification, and there are their opposites. I cultivate the former and avoid the latter whenever I may. It is, you may say, my philosophy of life—and of most people’s lives if they are honest with themselves.”

“I spoke unadvisedly,” she said. “I used the wrong word. I ought to have said that I am content with my life. I avoid either of the extremes you named for the sake of greater peace. It is my philosophy of life, and I believe many people have discovered that it is a wise way of living.”

“And also dashed boring,” he said.

And then he did something that caused far more than flutterings within her. It took her breath away for a moment and left her almost panting.

He grinned at her—and revealed himself as a very handsome man indeed.

She reached for a reply, failed to find one, and ended up gazing silently into his eyes and feeling heat rise in her cheeks.

He gazed back, equally silent, his grin fading.

“I think,” she said, finding her voice at last, “it is time for bed.”

If ever she had wished to recall words after they were spoken, this was the occasion. And if ever she had wished for a black hole to open at her feet and swallow her up whole, this was the time.

For a few ghastly moments she could not look away from him, and he did not look away from her. The air between them seemed to sizzle. And then he spoke.

“I presume,” he said, “that you mean alone, Miss Allard. And you are quite right—it is time for bed. If we were to sit here much longer, I daresay we would both nod off only to be awoken later when the fire had burned down, with cricked necks and frozen toes. You go on up, and I will see to banking the fire and putting the guard across it. I’ll check the kitchen fire too, though I daresay Peters and your Thomas will be playing cards in there and grumbling darkly at each other for some time to come.”

He got to his feet and bent over the fire even as he spoke.

She wondered as she rose from her chair if her knees would support her. What a ghastly slip of the tongue! She should have made her home in the kitchen after all.

“Good night, Mr. Marshall,” she said to his back.

He straightened up and turned to her, one mocking eyebrow cocked.

“Are you still there?” he said. “Good night, Miss Allard.”

She fled, stopping only long enough to take up one of the candles from the counter. She hurried upstairs to her room, where she was surprised to see a fire burning. Although Mr. Marshall had said earlier that he would get Wally to light one, she had not heard him give the order. She undressed and made her other preparations for bed quickly even though the room was not cold, and dived beneath the covers, pulling them up over her head as if to shut off her thoughts.

There were feelings, though, as well as thoughts—and they were definitely not the feelings of one who cultivated calm contentment in her life. Her breasts felt uncomfortably tight. Her lower abdomen throbbed. Her inner thighs ached. And she was not such an innocent that she did not recognize the symptoms for what they were.

She desired a man she did not even know—and probably would not like if she did. She had even despised him for a few hours. How mortifying!

She waited tensely beneath the covers for the sound of his footsteps coming up the stairs and entering his room.

But though she did not fall asleep for a long time, she did not hear him come.

The snow had stopped falling by the time Lucius got up the next morning and peered out through a small circle he cleared with his warm breath on the window of his bedchamber. But a great deal had come down and the wind had blown it into massive drifts. In addition, the sky had still not cleared off, and if the temperature of his room was anything to judge by, there was not going to be much melting for a while.

Although it was still dark and impossible to see any distance with perfect clarity, nevertheless it was painfully obvious that no one was going to be doing any traveling today.

He waited for gloom and ill-humor to descend upon his spirits again and was surprised to discover that instead he was feeling more cheerful than he had since before Christmas. None of the new conditions of his life had changed, of course, but fate had provided him with this slight respite from them. There was going to be nothing he could do today that would in any way further his plans to reform his life and be the model grandson, son, brother, and bridegroom, and so he might as well enjoy what the day might offer.

It was a strange thought when he was stranded at a sorry apology of a country inn without his valet—and without most of the other comforts he usually took for granted.

He shaved in the cold water that had been sitting in the pitcher on the washstand since the night before, got dressed, and pulled on his top boots, his greatcoat, and his hat. He held his gloves in one hand as he descended the stairs. All was in darkness. As he had fully expected, Wally was still in his bed—and maybe the coachmen were still in theirs. They had still been playing cards and voicing dark suspicions about each other’s honesty when he had finally felt it safe to go up to bed well after midnight—safe for his own peace of mind, that was. When she had said that it was time for bed, he had felt for a few moments—again!—that the top of his head might well blow off.

He had an excess of energy this morning despite the fact that he had not slept much. And since he could not go riding—his favorite early morning exercise—or boxing or fencing, which would have been worthy alternatives, he would clear some of the snow away from before the door, he decided, pulling on his gloves, letting himself out into the dusk of approaching daylight, and wading back to the stables in search of a shovel and broom. With the help of Peters, who was already out there tending the horses, he found what he was looking for.

“I’ll do it myself after I’ve finished in ’ere, guv, if you like,” Peters said. “I’d rather that than wash bloomin’ dishes again. But I can see you are fair to bustin’ with wanting something to do yourself. So you go ahead.”

“Much obliged to you,” Lucius said dryly.

He took the shovel and set to work with it.

In the gathering light he could see that the inn was at some remove from a village, which he had suspected must be there, but that the road connecting them was so completely submerged beneath the snowfall that it was impossible to know exactly where it was. There were unlikely to be visitors today even if would-be imbibers of ale knew that the landlord was due home. It was even more unlikely that the Parkers would be able to return.

He rather suspected that he might prefer Miss Allard’s cooking anyway, unless beef pie was her pièce de résistance and she was incapable of preparing anything else. She could make it again, though, as far as he was concerned.

After an hour he had shoveled a path from the door to the stables and another from the door to what he estimated to be the road. He felt breathless and warm and invigorated. While he had been working, the sun had come up. At least, he presumed it had—the sky was still cloudy and a few snowflakes still sifted down from the heavens now and then. But at least the world was light.

He leaned on the shovel and drew in a deep breath of fresh air. He still had more energy than he was going to be able to use up stranded inside a small country inn for a whole day.

He shoveled along beside the inn, past what he realized was the kitchen window. He straightened up and glanced inside.

Frances Allard was up already and busily employed close to the fire. Whether she had built it and lit it herself he did not know, but it looked as if it had been going for some time.

She was wearing a similar dress to yesterday’s except that this one was cream in color and suited her better. Her hair was neatly, sleekly dressed. She was wrapped again in a large apron. He could see steam curling from the spout of the kettle. There was something cooking on the range top. On the table was a bowl of what looked like whipped eggs.

He was, he realized suddenly, ravenously hungry.

He was also curiously charmed by the domesticity of the scene—and more than a little aroused by it. There was something almost erotic about the sight of a woman bending and turning and absorbed in the task of cooking a meal.

It was a thought that he must definitely not pursue any further. She was a schoolteacher and doubtless virtuous to a fault.

She was, in other words, strictly off-limits.

She turned from the fire as if she felt his eyes on her and saw him looking in on her. And then—damnation!—she actually smiled and looked dazzling even this early in the morning. That smile of hers was a lethal weapon, and under present circumstances he would be just as happy if she did not use it on him.

She beckoned him and pointed at the cooking food.

When he entered the kitchen a few minutes later after shaking out his greatcoat and changing his boots, he could see that she had laid two places at the long kitchen table.

“I trust you do not mind eating in here,” she said, turning her head to acknowledge his presence before returning her attention to the eggs, which she was now scrambling over the heat. “I roused Wally a while ago and sent him for water. Then he felt he had earned breakfast with Thomas and Peters. Only now has he been assigned the lighting of the fire in the taproom. The kitchen will be a cozier place for us to eat.”

“The men have already eaten?” he asked, rubbing his hands together and breathing in the mingled smells of smoked bacon and fried potatoes and coffee.

“I could have called you in too,” she said. “But you looked as if you were enjoying yourself.”

“I was,” he said.

She set a generous plateful of food before him and a more modest one at her place. She removed the apron and took her seat.

“I suppose,” he said, getting up again to pour the coffee, “you made the fire in here yourself.”

“I did,” she said. “Is this not a strange adventure?”

He laughed, and she looked sharply at him before dipping her head to look down at her plate again.

“Have you ever been in charge of an inn kitchen before?” he asked her. “And the appetites of four grown men?”

“Never,” she said. “Have you ever shoveled snow away from a country inn?”

“Good Lord! Never.”

This time they both laughed.

“A strange adventure indeed,” he agreed. “You told me yesterday that all over Christmas you longed for snow. What would you have done with it if it had come?”

“I would have gazed out on it in wonder and awe,” she said. “Snow for Christmas is so very rare. And I pictured myself wading about the neighborhood through it with the village carolers—but there were no carolers this year. And wading through it to the Assembly Rooms for a Christmas ball. But there was none.”

“A poor-spirited village if ever I heard of one,” he said. “Everyone stayed at home and stuffed themselves with goose and pudding, I suppose?”

“I suppose so,” she said. “And my great-aunts refused the invitations they received in favor of remaining home in order to enjoy the company of their great-niece.”

“Who would have far preferred to be kicking up her heels at a village dance,” he said. “A grim Christmas you had of it, ma’am. You have my heartfelt sympathies.”

“Poor me,” she agreed, though her eyes were now dancing with merriment.

“Those are the only uses you would have put the snow to?” he asked her. “It was hardly worth longing for, was it?”

“Well, you see,” she said, setting one elbow on the table and resting her chin in her hand, against all the rules of etiquette, “my great-aunts would not have enjoyed engaging in a snowball fight and one can hardly fight with oneself. I probably would have built a snowman. When it snowed two winters ago, Miss Martin canceled afternoon classes and we took the girls out into the meadows beyond the school and had a snowman-building contest. It was great fun.”

“Did you win?” he asked.

“I ought to have,” she said, picking up her knife and fork again. “My snowman was far and away the best. But the teachers were declared ineligible for prizes. It was grossly unfair. I almost resigned on the spot. But when I threatened to do so, I was rolled in the snow by a dozen or more girls, and Miss Martin studiously looked the other way and made no attempt to exert her authority and come to my rescue.”

It sounded, he thought, like a happy school. He could not somehow imagine rolling any of his own former teachers in the snow, especially with the headmaster looking on.

Miss Frances Allard was certainly not the bad-tempered, prunish woman he had taken her for yesterday. And he must admit that if their positions had been reversed, he would have been in an even more cantankerous mood than he had been anyway and would have been entertaining gruesome dreams of boiling someone in oil too. Not that either he or Peters would tolerate someone’s overtaking them on any road under any circumstances, of course.

“Teachers are not ineligible for this morning’s prizes,” he said.

“Oh?” She looked at him with raised eyebrows.

“Out beside the inn,” he said, pointing in the direction of the side facing away from the village. “As soon as I have helped you do the dishes. One problem, though. Do you have proper boots?”

“Yes, of course I do,” she said. “Would I have longed for snow for Christmas if I did not? Am I being challenged to a snowman-building contest? You will lose.”

“We will see,” he said. “What did you put in these potatoes to make them so delicious?”

“My own secret combination of herbs,” she said.

He finished his meal and gathered the dishes together to wash while she set about mixing a fresh batch of bread—it could rise while she was outside winning the competition, she told him.

Fresh bread! His mouth watered even though his stomach was full.

He even—horror of horrors!—dried the dishes.

If it had not snowed, he would now be on the final leg of his journey. He could have been home by this afternoon—to the quiet, familiar peace of Cleve Abbey and the prospect of an early return to London and its myriad pleasures—though only until the Season began, by Jove. But here he was instead, planning to alleviate the boredom of a useless day by building a snowman.

Except that he was no longer bored—had not been since he rose from his bed actually.

He tried to remember the last time he had built a snowman or otherwise frolicked in the snow, and failed.

He was making the mistake, Frances noticed with a furtive glance in his direction, of building his snowman too tall and thin—an error often made by novices. It looked much larger than hers, but he was going to have problems with the head. Even if he could lift a suitable one that high, it would not remain in place but would roll off and ruin all his efforts. She would be the undisputed winner.

Her snowman, on the other hand, was solid and squat. He was broader than he was tall. He was—

“Too fat to pass through any door,” Mr. Marshall commented, diverted from his own efforts for a moment, “even if he were to turn sideways. Too fat to find a bed wide enough or sturdy enough to sleep on. Too fat to be allowed any bread or potatoes with his meals for the next year. He is disgustingly obese.”

“He is cuddly,” she said, tipping her head to one side to survey her unfinished creation, “and good-natured. He is not cadaverous like some snowmen I have seen. He does not look as if he will blow over in the first puff of wind. He is—”

“Headless,” he said, “as is mine. Let us get back to work and resume the name-calling afterward.”

Her poor snowman looked even more obese after she had fixed a nice round head on his shoulders. The head was too small. She tried to pack more snow about it, but it fell off in clumps about his shoulders, and she had to be content with picking out the two largest coals they had brought from the kitchen with them so that she could at least give him large, soulful eyes. She added a somewhat smaller coal nose and a fat carrot to act as his pipe and a few more small coals for coat buttons. With one forefinger she sculpted a wide and smiling mouth about the carrot.

“At least,” she said, stepping back, “he has a sense of humor. And at least he has a head.”

She looked down with a smirk at the massive one he had sculpted on the ground, complete with jug-handle ears and sausage curls.

“The contest is not over yet,” he said. “There was no time limit, was there? It would be somewhat premature to start jeering yet. You might feel foolish afterward.”

She saw then that he was not as ignorant of the laws of gravity as she had assumed. He spent some time on the shoulders of his snowman, scooping out a hollow to hold the head so that it would not roll off. Of course, he still had to get the head up there.

She watched smugly as he stooped to pick it up.

But she had reckoned without his superior height and the strength of those arm muscles. What would have been an impossibility for her looked like child’s play for him. He even had the strength to hold the head suspended over the torso for a few moments so that he could get it at just the right angle before lowering it into place. He selected the coals and carrot he wanted and pressed them into place—though he used his carrot for a nose. And then he reached into one of the pockets of his greatcoat and drew out a long, narrow knitted scarf in a hideous combination of pink and orange stripes and wrapped it about the neck of his snowman.

“The vicar’s wife in my grandfather’s parish presented it to me for Christmas,” he said. “General opinion in the village has it that she is color-blind. I think general opinion must have the right of it. It is kinder than saying she has no taste at all, anyway.”

He stepped back and stood beside Frances. Together they contemplated their creations.

“The scarf and the curls and the lopsided mouth save yours from looking mean and humorless,” she said generously. “Not to mention those ears. Oh, and those pockmarks are meant to be freckles. That is a nice touch, I must confess. I like him after all.”

“And I must admit to a fondness for Friar Tuck with his black coat buttons,” he said. “He looks like a jolly old soul, though I do not know what holds his pipe in his mouth if he is smiling so broadly.”

“His teeth.”

“Ah,” he said. “Good point. We forgot to appoint a judge.”

“And to have a trophy awaiting the winner,” she said.

It was only then, when he turned his head to grin at her, that she realized he had one arm draped about her shoulders in a relaxed, comradely gesture. She guessed that he had only just realized it himself. The smiles froze on their faces, and Frances’s knees felt suddenly weak.

He slipped his arm free, cleared his throat, and wandered closer to the snowmen.

“I suppose,” he said, “we might as well declare the competition a draw. Agreed? If we do not, we will get into a scrap again and you will be devising some other hair-raising scheme for putting a period to my existence. Or are you going to insist upon declaring me the winner?”

“By no means,” she said. “Mine is definitely sturdier than yours. It will withstand the forces of nature for much longer.”

“Now that is a provocative statement when I have been magnanimous enough to suggest a draw,” he said, and he stooped and turned and without warning hurled a snowball at her. It caught her in the chest and spattered up into her face.

“Oh!” she cried, outraged. “Unfair!”

And she scooped up a gloveful of snow and tossed it back at him. It hit the side of his hat, knocking it askew.

The battle was on.

It raged for several minutes until to a casual observer it might have looked as if four snowmen had been erected beside the inn. Except that two of them were moving and were helpless with laughter. And except that one of them, the taller and broader of the two, suddenly lunged for the other and bore her backward until she was lying on her back in a soft snowdrift with his weight pressing her deeper and his hands clamped to her wrists and holding them imprisoned on either side of her head.

“Enough!” he declared, still laughing. “That last one caught me in the eye.”

He blinked flakes of snow off his eyelashes.

“You admit defeat, then?” She laughed up at him.

“Admit defeat?” His eyebrows rose. “Pardon me, but who is holding whom vanquished in the snow?”

“But who just declared that he had had enough?” She waggled her eyebrows at him.

“The same one who then ended the battle with a decisive annihilation of the enemy.” He laughed back at her.

She suddenly became aware that he was actually on top of her. She could feel his weight bearing her down. She could feel his breath warm on her face. She looked into his hazel eyes, only inches away, and found them smoldering back into her own. She looked down at his mouth and was aware at the same moment that his eyes dropped to hers.

Her strange adventure moved perilously close to danger—and perhaps to something rather splendid.

His lips brushed across hers and she felt as if she were lying beneath a hot August sun rather than December snow clouds.

She had never known a man so very male—a thought that did not bear either pursuing or interpreting.

“I have just remembered the bread,” she said in a voice that sounded shockingly normal to her ears. “I will be fortunate indeed if it has not risen to fill the kitchen to the ceiling. I will be fortunate if I can get through the door to rescue it.”

His eyes smoldered into hers for perhaps a second longer, and then one corner of his mouth lifted in what might have been a smile or perhaps was simple mockery. He pushed himself to his feet, brushed himself off, and reached down a hand to help her up. She banged her gloved hands together and then shook her cloak, but there was as much snow down inside the collar of it as there was on the outside, she was sure.

“Oh, this was such fun,” she said, not looking at him.

“It was indeed,” he agreed. “But if I ever meet fortune face-to- face, I will demand to know why I had to be stranded here with a prudish schoolteacher. Go, Miss Allard. Run. If I can have no fresh bread with my soup after all, I shall be quite out of humor.”

For the merest moment Frances thought of staying in order to protest his use of the word prudish. But if she were foolish enough to do that, she might find herself having to prove that it did not apply to her.

She fled, though for very pride’s sake she did not run.

Part of her was feeling decidedly annoyed with herself. Why had she broken the tension of that moment? What harm would one full kiss have done? It was so long since she had been kissed, and the chance might never come again—she was all of twenty-three.

By the same token, she was only twenty-three.

What harm would a kiss have done?

But she was no green girl. She knew very well what harm it would have done. Neither of them, she suspected, would be content with just one kiss. And there was nothing in their circumstances to inhibit them from taking more.

And more . . .

Heavens above, even just the brush of his lips had half scrambled her brains and every bone and organ in her body.

She hurried into the kitchen after removing her outer garments and threw herself busily into baking the bread and making the soup.

The conversation at luncheon was rather strained and far too bright and superficial—on her part anyway. Lucius retreated into taciturnity. But though the bread was light and among the best he had ever tasted and the soup more than worthy of a second bowl, he found himself unable to concentrate upon the enjoyment of either quite as much as he might have liked.

He was distracted by unconsummated lust.

And he cursed his luck that while circumstances were ideal for a little sexual fling, the woman with whom he was stranded was not. If only she had been an actress or a merry widow or . . . Well, anyone but a schoolteacher, who might be gorgeous but who was also prim and virtuous—except when she was building snowmen and hurling snowballs and forgot herself for a while.

While she talked brightly on a variety of inane topics, he tried to think about Portia Hunt. He tried to bring her face into focus in his mind and succeeded all too well. She had that look in her eye that told him she despised all men and their animal appetites but would tolerate them in him provided she never had to know about them.

He was probably doing her an injustice. She was a perfect lady, it was true. It was also possible, he supposed, that there was an appealing woman beneath all the perfection. He was going to discover the answer soon.

And this adventure, as Frances Allard had called it, would soon be over. Already the sun had broken through the clouds, and water was dripping off the eaves outside the taproom window. There was only the rest of today to live through.

And tonight . . .

Tonight he would sleep in the taproom. He would not set even one toe beyond it in the direction of the stairs and the chambers above. When he died, his virtue would take him straight into heaven, where he could bore himself silly by playing on a harp for all eternity.

Damnation! Why could she not have continued to be the prunish shrew he had taken her for yesterday—less than twenty-four hours ago? Or else the laughing, eager woman she had been outside until his lips had touched hers? Why did she have to be such a frustrating mix?

He ordered Wally and Thomas to do the dishes—Peters was still busy with the carriage, though that fact did not stop Thomas from muttering something about favoritism as Peters disappeared through the back door. Lucius pulled his boots and his greatcoat back on and spent most of the afternoon outside, first in the carriage house feeling useless, and then chopping wood, since the pile that was already chopped looked seriously diminished. He could have hauled Wally outside to do the job, of course, and would have done so under normal circumstances. But he was glad of the excuse to remain outside. He was doubly glad of the chance to use up more energy. He chopped far more than would be needed tonight and tomorrow morning. This wood would be warming the toes of the Parkers for the next week or more.

She had tea ready when he went back inside—fresh bread with more of the cheese and pickles, and some currant cakes that were still warm from the oven. Who was it who had said that the way to a man’s heart was through his stomach? Not that it was exactly his heart that was the affected organ, but she was certainly a good cook.

“I have decided,” he said when they had finished eating, “not to offer you employment as my cook. I am large enough as I am—or as I was yesterday.”

She smiled but did not say anything. And when he got to his feet to help her into the kitchen with the tray, she told him to stay where he was, that he had been busy enough all afternoon.

She had been reading, he could see. Her book was resting open and facedown on the settle beside the hearth. It was Voltaire’s Candide, of all things. She was reading it in French, he saw when he picked it up. She had said that she taught French, had she not? French and music and writing.

She was a prim, staid schoolteacher. No doubt she was a dashed intelligent one too. If he repeated those facts to himself often enough, perhaps he would eventually accept them as hard reality and the knowledge would cool his blood.

Who the devil would want to bed an intelligent woman?

Wally came to make up the fire, and Lucius nodded off in his chair soon after. Frances Allard did not rejoin him until dinnertime, when she appeared with a roasted duckling and roast potatoes and other vegetables she had found in the root cellar.

“I did not even help with the potatoes tonight,” he said. “I am surprised you will allow me to eat.”

“I did not help chop the wood,” she said, “but here I am sitting in front of the fire.”

Lord, they could not even have a satisfactory quarrel any longer.

“Candide,” he said, nodding his head in the direction of the book. “Do you always read in French?”

“I like to when the original was written in that language,” she said. “So much is lost in translation even when the translator is earnest and well educated. Something of the author’s voice is lost.”

Yes, there was no doubt about it. She was intelligent. He tried to feel his attraction to her wane as a result. He was attracted only because he was stranded here and she was the only woman within sight, he told himself. Under normal circumstances he would not afford her so much as a second glance.

They conversed without too much awkwardness or too many silences for the rest of the meal, but he found as it progressed and then as they washed and dried the dishes together that a certain melancholy had descended upon his spirits. It was not the black mood that had assailed him all over Christmas and even yesterday but a definite . . . melancholy nevertheless. Tomorrow they would part and never see each other again. By this time next week she would be simply a memory. By this time next month he would have forgotten all about her.

Good Lord! Next he would be growing his hair and wearing brightly colored cravats and spouting sentimental verse and sinking into a decline.

He set down a heavy pot he had just dried and cleared his throat. But when she looked up with raised eyebrows—and slightly flushed cheeks—he had nothing to say.

She led the way back into the taproom and sat on her usual chair. He stood before the fire, gazing into it, his hands clasped at his back. And he gave in to temptation. Not that he put up much of a fight, it was true. Perhaps he would do that later.

And perhaps not.

“And so,” he said, “you never did get to dance over Christmas?”

“Alas, no.” She chuckled softly. “And I was all prepared to impress the villagers with my prowess in the waltz. Mr. Huckerby, the dancing master at school, insisted upon teaching the steps to the girls, as he says it will almost certainly be all the rage within a few years. And he chose me with whom to demonstrate. As if my days were not busy enough without that. But I stopped grumbling once I had learned the steps. It is a divine dance. However, I was given no chance to dazzle anyone with my performance of it over Christmas. How sad!”

Her voice was light with humor. And yet in her words, and in what she had said during the morning, he gathered an impression of a Christmas that had been dreary and disappointing. A lonely Christmas, with only two elderly ladies for company.

But he had already given in to temptation and could not now deny himself the pleasure of pressing onward.

He looked over his shoulder at her.

“Dazzle me.”

“I beg your pardon?” She looked blankly up at him, though some color had crept into her cheeks.

“Dazzle me,” he repeated. “Waltz with me. You do not even have to wade through snow to reach the Assembly Room. It awaits you abovestairs.”

“What?” She laughed.

“Come and waltz with me,” he said. “We can have the luxury of the room and the floor to ourselves.”

“But there is no music,” she protested.

“I thought you were a music teacher.”

“I did not see either a pianoforte or a spinet up there,” she said. “But even if there were either, I would not be able to play and dance at the same time, would I?”

“Do you not have a voice?” he asked her. “Can you not sing? Or hum?”

She laughed. “How absurd!” she said. “Besides, it is cold up there. There is no fire.”

“Do you feel cold, then?” he asked her.

He suddenly felt as if the taproom fire were scorching him through to the marrow of his bones. And with his eyes intently holding hers, he knew that she felt the same way.

“No.” The word came out on a breath of sound. She cleared her throat. “No.”

“Well, then.” He turned fully, made her an elegant leg, and reached out one hand, palm up. “May I have the pleasure of this set, ma’am?”

“How absurd!” she said again, but the color was high in both cheeks now, and her eyes were huge and bright, and he knew that she was his.

She set her hand in his, and his fingers closed about it.

Yes, they would waltz together at the very least.

At the very least!

And perhaps he would remember her even this time next year.

He carried two candles in tall holders up the stairs while she carried one, which she took into her room in order to find a shawl in her portmanteau. She wrapped it about her shoulders before going into the Assembly Room, taking her candle with her.

He had placed his at either end of the room, which was not really very large at all. He took hers from her hand and strode across to the fireplace opposite the door to set it on the mantel. He must have made a quick visit to his room too. He was wearing shoes in place of his Hessian boots.

This was terribly foolish, she thought. They were actually going to dance together? Without company, without music, without heat?

No, there was heat aplenty. And foolishness could sometimes feel marvelously exhilarating. She held the ends of her shawl and tried to steady her heartbeat as he came back across the room, his eyes intent on hers, looking distinctly dangerous. He repeated the elegant, marvelously theatrical bow he had made her downstairs, and cocked one eyebrow.

“Ma’am?” he said. “This is my dance, I believe.”

“I believe it is, sir.” She dipped into a low curtsy, set her hand in his, and felt the warmth of his fingers close strongly about hers again.

They spoke and behaved frivolously as if this were some amusing lark.

It felt anything but.

It felt downright sinful.

But, good heavens, they were only going to dance together.

He led her to the center of the floor and stood facing her.

“I confess,” he said, “that my experience with the waltz is somewhat limited. Let me see. My right hand goes here, I believe.”

Holding her eyes with his own, he slid it about her waist to come to rest against the small of her back. She could feel the heat of it through her wool dress and chemise—and there went her heartbeat again.

“And my left hand goes here.” She set it on his broad shoulder, a few inches above the level of her own—and there went the bones in her knees.

“And—” He held up his left hand and raised his eyebrows.

“This.” She placed her palm against his and curled her fingers in between his thumb and forefinger even as his own fingers closed over the back of her hand.

Her shawl, she suddenly felt, had been quite an unnecessary addition even though the air she was inhaling was chilly. She was terribly aware that his broad chest, encased behind his expertly tailored coat and the pristine shirt and elegantly tied neckcloth, was only inches away from her bosom. And that his face was close enough that she could feel the warmth of his breath.

Her eyes were locked with his.

It was no wonder some people still considered the waltz an improper dance. It had felt nothing like this at the school. And they had not even started it yet.

“The music, ma’am?” His voice was low, even husky.

“Oh, dear,” she said. Was she going to have breath enough for this?

But she had had experience singing when she was nervous. Not this type of nervousness, it was true, but even so . . . It was a matter of breathing from deep in the diaphragm, where the air could be stored and released gradually, instead of from the throat, from which the nerves would expel it all in one breathy whoosh.

Now if she could just think of a waltz tune. If she could just think of any tune—other than a William Byrd madrigal, that was.

She closed her eyes, breaking at least some of the tension, and remembered the rhythm and the pleasure of waltzing with Mr. Huckerby, who was a very good dancer even if he was rather a fussy man and even if he did always smell strongly of lilies of the valley.

She hummed softly to herself for a few moments, and then she opened her eyes, smiled at Mr. Marshall, and hummed more loudly and firmly, emphasizing the first beat of each measure.

His right hand tapped the rhythm lightly against her back and then tightened slightly as he led her off into the steps of the waltz—small, tentative steps at first and then gaining in confidence, until after a minute or so they were moving with long, firm, rhythmic steps and twirling about until she could have sworn there were a dozen candles instead of just three.

She laughed.

So did he.

And then, of course, they came to grief because she had stopped humming for a moment.

She started again.

It soon became clear to her that when he had said he had limited experience with the waltz, he must have been talking in relative terms—or lying outright, which was more probable. He knew the dance very well indeed. More than that, he had a feel for the rhythm and the grace of it, his left hand holding hers high in a strong clasp, his right hand splayed against the arch of her back, leading her with such assured command into intricate little twirls and wider whirls that she felt as if her feet moved almost of their own volition, and as if they scarcely touched the wooden floor.

Their dance could not have been more exhilarating, she thought, even if it had been performed in a warmed, brightly lit Assembly Room full of people glittering in their evening array and with a full orchestra to provide the music.

By the time the tune came to an end, she was breathless. She was also fully aware that she was flushed and that she was smiling and happy and sorry the dance was over. His eyes glinted with a strange light and gazed very directly back into her own. His lips were pressed tightly together, making his jaw look very square and masterful.

She could feel his body heat and smell his very masculine cologne.

“Now,” he said, “you may no longer say that you did not attend an assembly over the Christmas season or that you did not dance. Or waltz.”

“What?” she said. “I may no longer wallow in self-pity?”

“Not,” he said, “unless I did not measure up to the standard of the dancing master.”

“Oh,” she assured him, “you far surpass Mr. Huckerby.”

“Flattery,” he said, both eyebrows arching upward, “will get you everywhere, Miss Allard. Have you recovered your breath? A set, I believe, consists of more than just one dance. And I did reserve the whole set with you, if you will recall. Something a little slower this time, perhaps?”

She was assaulted suddenly with the realization that this adventure was almost at an end. They would not be here at the inn this time tomorrow. She would probably be back at the school, and he would be . . . wherever he was going. Somewhere in Hampshire, he had said.

She would never see him again.

But they were to waltz together one more time—one last time. She knew then with utter certainty that she would live on the memory of this day and this evening for a long time to come, perhaps even for the rest of her life. She rather believed it might be a painful memory for a time, though surely at some time farther in the future she would remember with pleasure.

She thought of another waltz tune, a slower one, which Mr. Huckerby had used to begin his instructions, though she had not realized until she began first to hum it and then to la-la-la it how poignantly beautiful it was, how haunting, how heartbreakingly romantic.

She was as foolish as any of the schoolgirls under her care, she thought. She was quite in love with him.

She kept her eyes closed as they waltzed this time, their steps slower and longer, their twirls more sweeping, until it felt altogether more natural to feel the fingers of his right hand slide farther up her back to bring her closer to him, to move her own hand farther into his shoulder and then behind his neck. It felt comforting to spread her right hand over the warm fabric of his coat above his heart and to have it held there by his palm and his fingers. It felt wonderful to rest her cheek against his, and to reduce the volume of the music to a soft humming.

Her bosom brushed against his chest and then pressed more firmly against it. With her abdomen she could feel his watch fob and his warmth. Her thighs touched his as they continued to dance.

And then they stopped dancing and she stopped humming.

It felt like the most natural thing in the world. As if yesterday had been meant to happen, as if this had been meant to be. Although she did not actually think such foolish thoughts, she felt them. She felt that she was where she belonged, where she had always belonged, where she always would belong. It did not matter that a saner, more practical part of herself was clamoring to be heard. She simply did not listen. The whole of the rest of her life was for sanity, but for now, for this moment she had found something deeper than sanity. She had found herself. She had found what all her life she had dreamed of and searched for and doubted really existed.

“Frances,” he murmured, his voice low against her ear.

The intimacy of her name on his lips sent a thrill along her spine and warmed her all the way down to her toes.

“Yes.” She drew back her head to smile at him, and she lifted her hand from behind his neck to twine her fingers in his short curly hair. She knew then what the strange, intense light in his eyes was. But of course, she had never not known. It was desire. Raw and naked desire.

And then he moved his head closer to hers and closed his eyes and kissed her.

She had been kissed before. She had been kissed by a man she thought she loved. But it had never been like this. Ah, surely it never had. His arms came about her, the fingers of one hand closing over the knot of hair at her neck, the other spread below her waist, drawing her intimately against him. His mouth opened over hers, teasing her lips apart, inviting further intimacy. When she opened her mouth, his tongue came inside, circled hers, and stroked the roof of her mouth.

She leaned into him, her arms about his hard-muscled frame, her body on fire from the topmost hair on her head to her toenails. If she could have drawn him closer, she would have. She knew beyond any doubt that he would be an expert and experienced lover. Curiously, that knowledge did not alarm her at all. It only thrilled her.

“Lucius.”

He had lowered his head to nuzzle the hollow between her neck and her shoulder. His hands were cupping her breasts through the wool of her dress beneath her shawl, molding them, making them tender with need.

When he lifted his head, his hair looked slightly rumpled, his hazel eyes heavy with passion.

“I want you,” he said against her lips. “I want you in bed. I want to get inside these clothes.”

She was not so far gone into mindlessness that such plain speaking did not jolt her. It was the moment of ultimate decision. She knew that. He would not force her—she knew that too. There were all sorts of dangers and moral concerns to discourage her from proceeding. And he was, when all was said and done, little more than a stranger. She knew almost nothing about him. She would be sure to regret giving in to a temptation that she had been fighting valiantly since last evening.

But she knew too in the few seconds that elapsed before she answered him that she would also and always regret not being bold enough to carry her adventure to its ultimate conclusion. She could spend this one night with Lucius Marshall if she chose. Or she could spend the night virtuously tossing and turning in her own solitary bed and forever regret that she had said no.

Besides, saying no now would make her into a tease. She had come too far—much too far—to pretend that she thought they had been indulging in a mere kiss.

“Yes,” she said, hearing the throaty catch in her voice as if it were someone else’s. “It is what I want too.”

It was a relief to have spoken the words, to have owned her own desire, her own freedom of choice.

Her own madness.

He drew her close again and parted his lips over hers.

“It will be good,” he promised. “This will be a night to remember, Frances.”

She did not doubt it for one moment.

They did not take a candle with them when they went to her room. But Wally must have taken the rare initiative of starting a fire in there unbidden. It burned warmly in the grate, and light from it flickered over the walls and ceiling—and over the bed. But it was only when they stepped inside the room and he shut the door behind them that he realized how very chilly the Assembly Room must have been.

She turned to face him, her very dark eyes heavy with desire, her teeth sinking into her lower lip. She lifted her arms to wrap about his neck, and he set his arms beneath hers and reached up to tackle the prim schoolteacher’s knot at the back of her head. He dipped his head to touch his lips lightly to hers. She released her lower lip and thrust both softly, and parted, against his own.

This was not seduction, he told himself, or even half seduction. She was very willing. And it was not cynical amusement he was taking with a willing partner to while away an idle night. He burned for her, though, if he had been forced to put into words the powerful attraction he felt toward her, he would have been hard-pressed. He did not normally favor either dark women or tall women. He admired small women with blond curls. And he liked them well rounded and softly feminine. He liked English rose complexions. Frances Allard was none of those things.

But he burned for her as he had rarely burned for any other woman before her.

His fingers deftly removed hairpins, and her hair came cascading down over her shoulders, heavy and sleekly gleaming in the firelight and almost waist length. It framed her narrow face, and made her look like a Renaissance madonna. At that moment he could not imagine any woman more beautiful, more desirable. He ran his fingers through her hair, wrapping them in it in order to cup the back of her head and keep her face tilted toward his.

“It is glorious,” he said. “And yet you keep it so ruthlessly confined. It is a crime against mankind.”

“I am a schoolteacher,” she said, feathering light kisses along his jaw to his chin.

“Not tonight,” he told her, dipping his head to take her mouth with his again. “Tonight you are my woman.” He sucked her full lower lip into his mouth.

She drew back her head and gazed into his eyes, her own heavy-lidded now with desire.

“And tonight,” she said, “you are my man.”

Well. He felt himself harden into arousal.

“Yes, tonight,” he said, kissing her eyes closed, kissing her lips again, kissing the hollow at the base of her throat. “For tonight, Frances.”

He took hold of her shawl and tossed it aside before opening her dress down the back. He felt her shiver against him as her fingers twined tightly in his hair, though he knew it was not with cold.

He slid first one hand inside the soft wool of her dress, and then the other. Her flesh was warm and smooth, with the slight stickiness of desire. He drew the garment off her shoulders and down her arms until of its own momentum it fell to the floor. She wore a chemise beneath but no stays—an explanation, perhaps, for the fact that he had thought her small-bosomed until he had cupped her breasts in his hands in the Assembly Room. They were not voluptuous, but they were enticingly feminine for all that. He held her a little away from him and looked down at her.

She was long-limbed, slender, beautifully shaped. With her thick, very dark hair about her, she looked younger.

He drew a slow breath.

“Sit down on the bed,” he said, turning to it and drawing back the covers.

He set his hands on her bare shoulders as she did so, and bent his head to kiss one shoulder in the hollow where it met her neck. She smelled enticingly of soap and woman.

He went down on one knee before her and lifted one of her feet onto his raised knee before rolling the stocking down her leg and off her foot. He leaned forward and kissed the inside of her knee and trailed kisses down her shapely calf to her heel and her instep.

“Oh, yes,” she said in the same low, throaty voice she had used earlier.

He looked up to smile at her. But she was supporting herself with both hands behind her on the bed, and her head was thrown back and her eyes closed. All her glorious hair trailed to the bed behind her and spread over the bottom white sheet.

He removed her other stocking in the same way.

She lay down when he got to his feet in order to remove his own clothes. But she did not close her eyes or turn her head away. She lay with her arms spread loosely to the sides, her head half turned toward him, one leg straight, the other slightly bent with her foot flat on the mattress. It was difficult not to tear off his clothes in order to join her there as quickly as he could. But with slow deliberation he shrugged out of his tight-fitting coat and dropped it to the floor, and then out of his waistcoat. He untied his neckcloth and dropped it to the pile. And then he drew his shirt off over his head and discarded that too.

Her bosom, he could see in the firelight, was rising and falling quite noticeably against her shift. Her lips had parted.

He smiled deliberately at her and crossed to the fire in order to throw on a few more coals before returning to the bed and removing his remaining garments.

He smiled again when she crossed her arms and stripped her shift off over her head before dropping it over the edge of the bed. That answered one question. He had been wondering whether he would allow her to keep that final barrier of modesty at least until both of them were beneath the covers.

It was strange how just yesterday he had thought her thin and unappealing. Tonight her beauty was so perfect in every detail that it quite took his breath away. She reached up her arms to him.

“The bed is rather narrow,” she said.

“But why would we want one that is any wider?” he asked her, lowering himself into her arms and sliding one of his own beneath her before kissing her. “Half of it would be wasted.”

“To echo what you said earlier of the waltz,” she said, threading the long fingers of one hand into his hair, “I must confess that my experience with this sort of activity is severely limited.”

“Or perhaps nonexistent?” He kissed the tip of her nose and looked into her eyes.

“Something like that,” she admitted.

“I had no experience in peeling potatoes,” he said, nuzzling one earlobe.

He felt her shiver.

“But they ended up tasting delicious,” she said.

“Exactly my point.” He blew softly into her ear.

She drew his mouth to hers once more, and the passion that had ended their waltz prematurely and brought them to this moment was instantly rekindled and redoubled in force. He kissed her open-mouthed, reaching deep into the heat of her mouth with his tongue while his hand moved over her, fondling, teasing, arousing. And her slender, long-fingered hands touched him, lightly, tentatively at first, and then boldly, urgently, hungrily.

They made love to each other with hot, fierce, panting foreplay. When his mouth enclosed and suckled a nipple and one of his hands slid between her thighs to find the hot, moist core of her desire, his fingers probing, rubbing, scratching lightly, she rolled onto her back and he came over on top of her, pinning her to the bed with his not inconsiderable weight. She needed no coaxing to spread her legs. They came up, slim and strong-muscled, to hug his hips and twine about his own legs. He slid his hands beneath her, positioned himself, and entered her firmly and as slowly as he could contrive.

But she would not let him make any allowance for her virginity. She pressed up against him so that he ruptured the barrier and embedded himself deeply in her far more forcefully than he had intended. Her hands pressed against his buttocks, straining him to her. She was gasping for air.

She was tight and hot and wet. The blood hammered through his body so that he heard his heart like a drum beating urgently in his ears. He held very still in her and fought for control.

“Easy,” he murmured, lowering his mouth to hers. “Take it easy. I would give you pleasure, Frances, not go off like a schoolboy on his first outing.”

Surprisingly—and delightfully—she laughed. He could feel the tremors of her amusement shivering through her body, and her inner muscles tightened about him.

“You are giving me pleasure,” she said. “Oh, Lucius, you are.”

He kissed her into silence. But some of the frenzy of their joining had been dissipated for the moment, and he was able to move in her with slow, deliberate strokes while she closed her eyes and tipped back her head and relaxed her muscles. He worked her through several minutes, her passage growing wetter and slicker until sound mingled with sensation and drove him closer and closer to his own limits.

But he would not change the rhythm yet. There was too much pleasure in anticipating pleasure, and she was a gorgeous, responsive, passionate bedmate. After the first minute she had begun to move with him, and her inner muscles had caught and complemented the rhythm of his thrusts. Her hips circled slowly, creating a pleasure so exquisite that it bordered on pain.

He had had experienced courtesans who were less skilled.

And then finally her control slipped, and she moaned softly to each stroke and contracted her muscles convulsively and off-rhythm. He could feel her increased body heat and the slickness of her sweat. He could hear the raggedness of her breathing. Her arms and thighs strained him closer.

He thrust faster and deeper.

It was impossible for a virgin to reach climax the first time. It was rare for a woman to reach climax at all. He had heard both pronouncements—from other men, of course. Frances Allard proved them all wrong.

She came to a sudden and shattering climax, every muscle in her body tensing before she cried out and shuddered in his arms while he stopped moving. It was a strangely wondrous gift, her cresting of the wave of passion, her shuddering descent down the other side. It had rarely happened to him before, though he had known many women who went to valiant lengths to pretend.

He waited until she was quiet and still beneath him, and then he completed his own pleasure, plunging into her over and over again until he reached the blessed moment of release.

He sighed against the side of her face and relaxed his weight down onto her warm, yielding body.

It had been and was, he thought as he rolled off her a few moments later and gathered her close in his arms, a fitting ending to an adventure—to use her word—that had been strange and unpredictable from the first moment.

Though his mind shied away from dwelling upon the realization that this was the end.

He would think about that tomorrow morning.

Frances was, she discovered, totally head over ears in love with Lucius Marshall. With yesterday’s nasty, bad-tempered gentleman, of all men. She smiled against his shoulder. She almost chuckled aloud.

With her intellect, of course, she knew that she was not in love at all. Not really. Not in the way of those great, enduring romances one occasionally heard or read about anyway. She had only just met him, after all, and she really did not know him. Even though he had somehow managed to learn several details of her life, he had said remarkably little about his own. What they had shared and were sharing tonight was entirely physical. It was lust pure and simple. She was under no illusions about that. And she was not ashamed of the admission. Perhaps she would be later, but not now. For now she was quite happy to accept the situation for what it was.

As she lay in the narrow bed with him, their limbs all tangled together, and he slept while she tried hard not to, she did her thinking with her emotions rather than with her intellect.

And she tried—she desperately tried to cling to the moment, to revel in the sensation of being in love and of having been physically loved in a manner more glorious than anything she could possibly have imagined.

She had expected lovemaking to be painful. It had been when he first came inside her and for a minute or two after he had started moving in her. She had also expected it to be horribly embarrassing. How could it not be when one considered what actually happened? But ultimately it had been neither.

It had been by far the most wonderful experience of her life.

And it was still wonderful. She was warm and cozy. She could feel his strong arms about her and one powerful leg pushed between her own. She could feel his hard-muscled body against hers, her breasts pressed to his chest with its light dusting of hair. She could smell his cologne, his sweat, his maleness, and thought that no perfume could ever smell half so enticing.

Strange thought!

It was a good thing, she thought, nestling closer to him and butting her head into a warm spot beneath his chin, prompting a sleepy grunt of protest from him, that she would never have anyone with whom to compare him. Marriage opportunities—or even opportunities for casual amours, for that matter—did not come the way of lady schoolteachers with any great frequency. Once she had had chances to make a good marriage, even a happy one, but those days were long gone.

She was trying to stay awake, not because she was not tired but because tonight was something that was going to have to last her for all the rest of her life. Whenever her mind touched upon the thought that tomorrow she would be back in her own bed on

Daniel Street

in Bath, she felt twinges of panic somewhere in the region of the bottom of her stomach.

If she did not sleep, perhaps the night would never end.

What foolishness!

But tragedy—the certain knowledge of a dreadful, desolate pain to come—loomed just beneath the surface of her drowsy happiness.

She would think about it tomorrow when she would have no choice.

“Cold?” a low, sleepy voice asked her.

The fire had burned itself out sometime before, but she was as cozy as she could possibly be where she was.

“No,” she said.

“Too bad,” he said. “I might have thought of a way of warming you up if you were.”

“I am frozen,” she assured him, chuckling softly.

“You lie through your teeth, ma’am,” he said, “but I like your spirit. Now, I suppose I need to think of some way of warming you—and myself. Doubtless you can tell that I am shivering too. Any suggestions?”

She drew her head back from its warm burrow and kissed him on the mouth. He had a lovely mouth, wide and firm, with the promise of all sorts of delights within.

“Mmm,” he murmured. “Keep thinking.”

It was not just his physical appeal, she thought, though there was tons and tons of that. But today she had discovered wit and humor and intelligence in him with the result that she had been able to rather like him as a person as well as to admire him as a man. They could perhaps be friends under different circumstances, if only there were more time. But time was something they did not have. Not much time anyway—only the rest of tonight.

She lifted herself on one elbow in order to kiss him more thoroughly, but suddenly two strong hands grasped her by the waist and lifted her bodily upward while he turned over onto his back and into the middle of the bed, and then deposited her right on top of him.

“That is better,” he said. “You make a nice warm blanket.” He pulled the rest of the covers right up over their heads and kissed her with lingering thoroughness, his tongue circling hers, exploring the inside of her mouth and then simulating the sexual act.

Ah, yes, there was still the rest of tonight.

She drew her head free and nuzzled the side of his neck with her lips and teeth and splayed her hands over his shoulders so that she could lift herself sufficiently to rub her breasts and nipples over his chest.

“Mmm,” she said.

“You took the words right out of my mouth,” he told her.

She spread her legs wide so that she could kneel astride his body and thus have greater freedom to move, to touch him, to caress him, to explore his body with palms and fingers and nails and lips and teeth and tongue. He lay still and let her do it, responding for a while only with low, appreciative little grunts. And then she felt him grow large and hard against her abdomen and rubbed against him until she felt that someone must have lit a dozen fires in the room.

It was marvelously exciting to feel her power over him, to know that they would make love again, that she led the way.

But finally he took charge, spreading his hands over her hips, drawing her into position over his hard erection, and pulling downward. Though that last was not necessary. She pressed down onto him until once more she was filled with him.

Gloriously, wondrously filled.

She leaned over him, her hair falling about them both, and gazed into his eyes, just visible in the faint light coming through the window. She lifted some of her weight onto her knees again, spread her hands over his chest once more, and moved, lifting and pressing, creating again the heady rhythm of love.

“Ah, yes,” he murmured to her, “ride me, then, Frances.”

It was a startling and erotic image. But she did indeed ride him over and over again until she could ride no more but only surrender to his hands that came back to her hips to hold her steady as he pressed up hard into her and held there while something at the core of her burst open and blossomed into perfect pleasure—and then perfect peace.

She knelt where she was until he had finished, and then she lay down on him, her legs stretched on either side of his, while he drew the covers warmly over her again and wrapped his arms about her.

They were still joined.

This, she thought drowsily, was what happiness felt like. Not contentment, but happiness.

And tomorrow . . .

But mercifully she slept.

Peters and Thomas had both gone out by the time Lucius appeared downstairs the following morning, even though it was still well before dawn. They returned soon after he had gone out to the stables himself, bringing with them the news that the snow had melted considerably and that the road was already passable, provided one proceeded with extreme caution. Miss Allard’s carriage, though, was still firmly stuck in its snowbank. It would take assistance and the best part of the day to haul it out and dry it off and look it over to ensure that it was roadworthy.

“Though it might be said, guv, that it never was that anytime during the last thirty years or so,” Peters could not resist adding.

Thomas muttered darkly to the effect that there would be nothing wrong with his carriage if a certain impudent young ’un, who would remain nameless for the sake of peace, had not passed it when he didn’t ought and then stopped dead in front of it in the middle of the road. And in his day, he added, carriages were made to last.

If Thomas’s coach had not been moving so slowly that it was almost going backward, Peters retorted, and if at that pace it could not stop behind another carriage without slithering into a snowbank, then it was high time a certain coachman who would remain nameless was put out to grass.

Lucius left them to it without attempting any mediation and went back inside the inn and into the kitchen. Frances was in there, busy getting breakfast.

Knowledge hit him like a fist to the stomach. He had been holding that slender body naked in his arms not so long ago.

“If you wish,” he said after giving her the bad news about her own carriage, “we will both remain here another day. It will surely be rescued and roadworthy by tomorrow.”

The suggestion certainly had its appeal—except that the world would find them sometime during the course of the day even if they stayed here. Villagers would come for their ale. The Parkers would return from their holiday. There was no way of recapturing the charm of yesterday’s isolation—or the passion of last night’s.

Time had moved on as it always and inevitably did.

She hesitated, but he could almost read her mind as it turned over the same thoughts and came to the same conclusions.

“No,” she said. “I must get back to the school today somehow. The girls return today, and classes begin tomorrow. There is so much to do before then. I will see if a stagecoach stops somewhere in the village.”

She was not quite looking into his eyes, he noticed. But her face was flushed, and her lips looked soft and slightly swollen, and there was something more than usually warm and feminine about her whole demeanor. She looked like a woman who had been well and thoroughly bedded the night before.

He felt partly aroused again by the sight of her. But last night was over and done with, alas. It ought not to have happened at all, he supposed, though of course he had gone to some pains to see that it did happen. And to say that he had enjoyed the outcome would be to understate the case.

It was simply time to move on.

“There is none,” he said. “I have asked Wally. But if you are willing to leave Thomas here to take your carriage back where it came from tomorrow, you may come with me this morning. I’ll take you to Bath.”

She raised her eyes to his then, and her flush deepened.

“Oh, but I cannot ask that of you,” she said. “Bath must be well out of your way.”

It was. More than that, since yesterday could not be recaptured, he did not really want to prolong this encounter beyond its natural ending. It would have been best this morning if they could simply have kissed, bidden each other a cheerful farewell, and gone their separate ways. It would have all been over within an hour or so.

“Not very much out of the way,” he said. “And you did not ask it of me, did you? I think I ought to see you safely delivered to your school, Frances.”

“Because you feel responsible for what happened to my carriage?” she asked.

“Nonsense!” he said. “If Thomas were my servant, I would set him to digging about the flower beds in a remote corner of my park, where no one would notice if he pulled out the flowers and left the weeds. If he ever was competent at driving a carriage, it must have been at least twenty years ago.”

“He is a loyal retainer to my great-aunts,” she said. “You have no right to—”

He held up a staying hand and then strode toward her and kissed her hard on the mouth.

“I would love to have a good scrap with you again,” he said. “I remember you as a worthy foe. But I would rather not waste good traveling time. I want to take you to Bath in person so that I do not have to worry about your getting there safely.”

The roads might be passable, but there was no doubt that they would be dangerous. Snow, slush, mud—whichever they were fated to encounter, and it seemed probable that it would be all three before the journey was ended—the going would be difficult. He would worry about her if he knew she was alone with the elderly Thomas driving her more-than-elderly carriage. Even tomorrow the roads would not be at their best.

Good Lord! he thought suddenly. He had not gone and fallen in love with the woman, had he? That would be a deuced stupid thing to do.

He had just promised his grandfather that he would begin seriously courting a suitable bride—and a suitable bride in his world meant someone with connections to the aristocracy, someone who had been brought up from the cradle to fill just such a role as that of Countess of Edgecombe.

Someone perfect in every way.

Someone like Portia Hunt.

Not someone like a schoolteacher from Bath who taught music and French.

It was a harsh reality but a reality nonetheless. It was the way his world worked.

“I would be very grateful, then,” she said, turning away to finish cooking their breakfast. “Thank you.”

She was cool and aloof this morning—except for the flushed cheeks and swollen lips. He wondered if she regretted last night, but he would not ask her. There was no point in regretting what was done, was there? And she had certainly not been regretting it while it was happening. She had loved with hunger and enthusiasm—a thought he had better not pursue further.

He wished there were a stagecoach coming through the village. He needed to get away from her.

But less than an hour later, having eaten and washed the dishes and left money and instructions with Thomas and a generous payment with Wally for their stay at the inn, Lucius’s carriage set out on its way to Bath with Frances Allard as a passenger.

There had been some argument, of course, over who should make the payments. He had prevailed, but he knew that giving in had been painful, even humiliating, to her. If his guess was correct—and he was almost certain it was—her reticule did not contain vast riches. Her pride was doubtless stung. She sat in stiff silence for the first mile or two, looking out through the window beside her.

Lucius found himself wishing again that they could relive yesterday—just exactly as it had been except perhaps for the afternoon, which they had wasted by spending apart in a vain attempt to avoid what had probably been inevitable from the moment of their meeting. It must be years since he had frolicked as he had with her out in the snow just for the simple enjoyment of frolicking. It was years since he had danced voluntarily. Indeed, he did not believe he had ever done so before last evening. And he still felt relaxed and satiated after a night of good, vigorous sex.

Damnation, but he was not ready to say good-bye to her yet.

And why should he say it? The Season would not begin in any earnest until after Easter. There was not much he could do about fulfilling his promise until then. And despite what his mother and sisters seemed to believe, he had not yet committed himself to Portia Hunt. In fact, he had always been very careful in her presence and in that of Balderston, her father, and most especially in that of Lady Balderston not to commit himself in any way, not to say anything that might be construed as a marriage offer. He had not even promised his grandfather that she would be the one.

Honor was not at stake here, then. Not yet, anyway. He had not been unfaithful to anyone last night.

Why should he say good-bye?

He was rationalizing, of course. He knew that. There was no realistic future for him and Frances Allard. But he went on trying to devise one anyway.

He had little experience with not getting whatever he wanted.

Why could there not have been a stagecoach passing through the village?

Or why could she not simply have said that she would wait alone for her great-aunts’ carriage to be ready tomorrow? But he would not, she was sure, have been willing to leave her alone at the inn. And, truth to tell, she could not have borne to be left alone there, to watch his carriage drive away from the inn and disappear to view. The emptiness of the inn, the silence, would have been unbearable.

It was what would happen in Bath, though. The thought caused a painful churning of her stomach that made her sorry she had eaten any breakfast.

The best solution, of course, would have been to say good-bye this morning after breakfast and to have both left in a different carriage—to go in the same direction for a while. His carriage would soon have outpaced hers, though. Anyway, that had not been an option.

Ah, there was no easy way to say good-bye.

What on earth had possessed her last night? She had never come close to giving in to such temptation before.

She had given herself to a stranger. She had made love with him and spent all night in bed with him. They had coupled three separate times, the third time hot and swift and wonderful just before he got up and left her room, wearing only his pantaloons and carrying the rest of his clothes.

And now she was going to have to suffer all the considerable emotional consequences. She was already suffering them even though she was still with him. She could feel his body close to hers on the carriage seat. She could feel his body heat down her right side. But it was the end. Soon—at the end of this slow, dreary journey past snow fields that looked gray rather than pristine white today—soon they would be saying good-bye, and she would never see him again.

And as if depression and grief were not enough, there was her nervousness every time the carriage wheels slithered on the slushy road surface—and they did so almost constantly during the first few miles until Lucius Marshall slid his hand beneath her lap robe, drew her right hand free of her muff, and held it firmly in his, lacing his fingers with hers.

She could have wept at his warm, assured touch.

“Peters is not the most subservient of retainers,” he said, “but he is the finest driver of my acquaintance. I would, and do, trust him with my life.”

“I think,” she said, “that the feeling of slithering then sliding backward right off the road and finding myself submerged in a snowbank will live in my nightmares for a long time.”

“But if it had not happened to you,” he said, “you would not have met me.”

He was looking down at her, she knew, but she would not turn her head to see his expression. He had said the same thing on that very first day—was it only the day before yesterday?—but he had been being nastily ironic on that occasion.

“No,” she said. “I would not, would I? How dreadful that would have been.”

“There, you see?” He chuckled. “You forgot your nervousness for a moment in order to be spiteful. Or do you mean it?”

She laughed too despite herself.

Her nervousness largely disappeared after that, and so did the tension there had been between them ever since he walked into the kitchen this morning. They continued to hold hands, and after a while she realized that her shoulder was resting against the heavy capes of his greatcoat. She could feel the warmth and strength of his arm beneath them.

She would have her classes write an essay—no, a story—within the next few days, she thought. Not the dull topic of how they spent Christmas that they might expect, but something more creative—“Imagine that as you returned alone to school after Christmas, you ran into a snowstorm and were stranded at a deserted inn with one other person. Write the story . . .”

Marjorie Phillips would dip her quill pen in the inkwell and bend over her paper without further ado and would not straighten up again until she had scribbled a dozen pages of closely packed writing. Joy Denton would do almost as well. Sarah Ponds would put up her hand and remind Miss Allard that she had not left the school before Christmas and therefore did not return to it after Christmas. The rest of the class would sit with furrowed brows and inactive or even nonexistent imaginations, wondering if she would notice if they wrote large, widely stretched words on widely spaced lines and made their stories one page long.

Frances smiled fondly at the thought. All the girls were very precious to her.

But her thoughts were not easily diverted during that long day of travel.

They stopped a few times for changes of horse, and once for almost a full hour to dine, but for the rest of the time they sat together in the carriage, not talking a great deal, their hands clasped, their thighs and arms touching, her head sometimes tipped sideways to rest on his shoulder. Once she dozed off and, when she woke up again, she found that he had laid his cheek against the top of her head and was himself asleep.

Again she felt like weeping. Her chest was tight and sore from the necessity of holding back her tears.

It was sometime after that, when it seemed to her that they must surely not be very far from Bath, that he set one arm right about her shoulders, turned her to him, lifted her chin in the cleft between his thumb and forefinger, and kissed her.

His mouth felt shockingly warm in contrast to the chill of the air. She heard herself utter a low moan, and she wrapped her arm about his neck and kissed him back with all the yearning she felt.

“Frances,” he murmured after a long, long while. “Frances, what the devil am I going to do about you?”

She drew away from him, sat back in her seat, and eyed him warily.

“I think,” he said, “we ought to ask ourselves if it is really necessary to say good-bye to each other when we arrive in Bath.”

His words were so exactly what she had been dreaming of hearing all day that her heart lurched with painful hope.

“I teach school there,” she said. “You have your own life elsewhere.”

“Forget about teaching,” he said. “Come with me instead.” There was a reckless intensity in his eyes.

“Come with you?” She frowned, and her heart raced enough to make her breathless. “Where?”

“Wherever we choose to go,” he said. “The whole world is out there. Come with me.”

She set her shoulders across the corner of the seat, trying to put a little more distance between them, trying to think clearly.

The whole world is out there.

It was reckless.

“I do not even know anything about you beyond your name,” she said.

And yet a part of her, that equally reckless part of herself that had waltzed and then lain with him last night, heedless of the consequences, wanted to shout out yes, yes, yes, and go off with him wherever he chose to take her—to the ends of the earth if need be. Preferably there, in fact.

“You do not even know my name in its entirety.” He made her a half-bow with a flourish of one hand. “Lucius Marshall, Viscount Sinclair, at your service, Frances. My home is Cleve Abbey in Hampshire, but I spend most of my time in London. Come there with me. I am vastly wealthy. I will clothe you in satin and deck you with jewels. You will never want for anything. You will never need to teach another class in your life.”

Viscount Sinclair . . . Cleve Abbey . . . London . . . wealth . . . satin and jewels.

She sat staring at him aghast, while her initial euphoria drained away and with it the romantic dream that had fogged her mind since last night—or perhaps even before then.

He was not just an almost anonymous gentleman with whom she could perhaps have disappeared into the obscurity of a happily-ever-after—though even that was a childish and impossible dream. No one was anonymous or even almost so. Whoever he had turned out to be, he would have had a family and a history and a life somewhere. He was no fairy-tale prince. And there was no such thing as happily-ever-after.

But the reality was so much worse than anything she could have anticipated or guessed at. He was Viscount Sinclair of Cleve Abbey, and he was vastly wealthy . . .

“Viscount Sinclair,” she said.

“But also Lucius Marshall,” he said. “The two persons are one and the same.”

Yes.

And no.

An impossible dream died and she saw him for what he was—an impulsive, reckless aristocrat, who was accustomed to having his own way regardless of cold reality—especially where women were concerned.

But perhaps reality had never been cold for him.

“Forget about having to work,” he urged her. “Come with me to London.”

“Perhaps,” she said, “I enjoy teaching.”

“And perhaps,” he said, “convicts enjoy their prison cells.”

His words angered her and she frowned. She was reminded that this was the same man as the one who had so angered her just two days ago with his arrogant, high-handed behavior.

“I find that comparison insulting,” she said.

But he caught her hands in his and pressed his lips first to one palm and then to the other.

“I absolutely refuse to quarrel with you,” he said. “Come with me. Why should we do what neither of us wishes to do? Why not do what we want? I cannot say good-bye to you yet, Frances. And I know you feel as I do.”

“But you will be able to say it next week or next month or next year?” she asked him.

He looked sharply up into her face, his eyebrows raised.

“Is that why you hesitate?” he asked. “You think I would make you my mistress?”

She knew he would.

“Is it marriage you offer, then?” she asked, unable to keep the bitterness from her voice.

He stared at her for what seemed a long while, his expression fathomless.

“In truth,” he said at last, “I do not know what it is I offer, Frances. I just cannot bear to say good-bye, that is all. Come to London with me and I will find you lodgings and a respectable woman to live with you as a companion. We may—”

She closed her eyes briefly and shut out the sound of his voice. It was clear he had not thought this through at all. But of course, he did not need to. He was not the one being asked to throw away all that had given anchor and meaning to life for three years. His own life would remain much the same as usual, she supposed, except that he would have a new mistress—and of course it was as a mistress that he wanted her. He had looked somewhat stunned when she had mentioned marriage, as if it were something he had never heard of.

“I will not come with you,” she said.

Even as she spoke the words, though, she knew that she might still have been tempted if it were not for one fact—London was the one place on this earth she could never go back to. She had promised . . .

There was something else too. When he spoke of clothing her in satin and decking her in jewels, he sounded so much like other men she had once encountered that she could not avoid seeing with blinding clarity the sordidness of the future that would be awaiting her if she gave in to this longing to grasp at anything that would save her from having to say good-bye to him.

The thought of never seeing him again was almost unbearable.

He squeezed her hands painfully. “I will remain in Bath with you, then,” he said.

For a moment her heart leaped with gladness at his willingness to be the one making the sacrifice—but only for a moment. It would not work. He was Viscount Sinclair of Cleve Abbey. He was a wealthy, fashionable aristocrat. He lived much of his life in London. What would Bath have to offer him that would keep him there indefinitely? If he stayed, they would be merely postponing the inevitable. Nothing could ever come of any relationship between them. And no relationship satisfying to him could exist between them in Bath. No sexual relationship anyway—and no other type would satisfy him. Good heavens, she was a teacher!

There simply was no future for them. Some realities were that stark, and all one could do was accept them.

She shook her head, her eyes on her hands still clasped in his.

“No,” she said. “I would rather you did not stay.”

“Why the devil not!” he exclaimed, his voice louder and more irritable—the voice of a man unaccustomed to being denied what he had set his heart on.

She tried to withdraw her hands, but he held on, squeezing her fingers and hurting them.

“The last couple of days were very pleasant,” she said. “At least, yesterday was. But it is time to get back to normal life, Mr. Marshall—Viscount Sinclair. It is time for both of us. I will never be your mistress and you will never marry me—or I you for that matter. There would be no point, then, in trying to prolong what was merely a pleasant interlude in both our lives.”

“Pleasant,” he said, sounding more than irritable now. He sounded downright thunderous. “We spent a day in close company with each other and a night in bed together, and it was pleasant, Frances?”

“Yes.” She kept her voice steady. “It was. But it was not something that can ever be repeated. It is time to say good-bye.”

He stared at her for a long time before releasing her hands. His eyes had flattened, she noticed, so that she could no longer read any of his thoughts or feelings in them. His expression had changed in other ways too. His mouth had lifted at the corners, but not really in a smile. One eyebrow had risen. He had retreated behind a mask of cynical mockery. It felt as if he had already gone away.

“Well, Miss Allard,” he said, “it seems that I was right about you at the start. It is not often I am rejected by a woman. It is not often my lovemaking is damned with such faint praise as to be called pleasant. You have no wish for any continuation of our acquaintance, then? Very well. I shall grant your wish, ma’am.”

In one short speech he had turned into a chilly, haughty aristocrat who bore little resemblance to the Lucius Marshall who had held her and loved her through the night.

She had expressed herself poorly, she realized.

But how else could she have expressed herself when she must have said essentially the same thing? There was no point now in telling him that his lovemaking had been earth-shattering, that her heart was breaking, that she might well mourn his loss for the rest of her life.

None of those things was true anyway in all probability. They were all true today, but tomorrow they would be a little less so and next week less so again. It was in the nature of strong emotion that it faded away over time. Her own previous experience had taught her that.

They sat silently side by side until finally—it seemed like forever, and it seemed far too soon—they were entering the outer limits of the city of Bath.

“You see?” he said, his voice so normal that her heart lurched again. “I told you I would deliver you safely to your school.”

“And so you did.” She smiled brightly, though he did not turn his head to see. “Thank you. I appreciate your coming out of your way more than I can tell you.”

“Miss Martin will be relieved to find that she is not to be one teacher short for tomorrow,” he said.

“Yes, indeed.” She was still smiling. “This evening is going to be a very busy one, with classes to prepare for tomorrow and everyone clamoring to share their Christmas stories with me.”

“And you will be happy to be back at work.” It was not really a question.

“Oh, yes, indeed,” she assured him. “Holidays are always welcome and always pleasant, but I enjoy teaching, and I have good friends at the school.”

“Friends are always important,” he said.

“Oh, yes, indeed,” she agreed brightly.

And so their last few minutes together were frittered away in bright, stilted, meaningless chatter as they avoided touching or looking into each other’s eyes.

The carriage turned onto Sydney Place and passed Sydney Gardens before turning onto Sutton Street and then onto Daniel Street, where Peters drew it in ahead of another carriage, which was disgorging a few passengers, including a young girl, and a mound of baggage outside the two tall, stately houses that together comprised Miss Martin’s school.

“Hannah Swan,” Frances murmured. “One of the junior girls.” As if he might be interested.

He reached into one of his pockets and drew out a visiting card. He folded it in two, pressed it into her palm, closed her fingers about it, and raised her hand to his lips.

“You may prefer it if I remain in here unseen,” he said. “This is good-bye after all, then, Frances. But if you should have need of me, you will find me at the address in London written on that card. I will come immediately.”

Her eyes had been fixed on the button that held his greatcoat closed at the neck. But now she raised them to gaze into his—hard, intense hazel eyes. There was no mistaking his meaning, of course. His jaw too looked hard and very square.

“Good-bye, Lucius,” she said.

By that time Peters had the door open and was setting down the steps.

“If they had any more baggage in that there coach,” he said conversationally, jerking his head in its direction, “the springs would be dragging on the road. You are staying in there, are you, then, guv? Too lazy to stretch your legs? Right you are, then. Give me your hand, miss, and mind this puddle.”

She turned quickly and descended hastily to the pavement. Within a moment she was swallowed up in the bustle surrounding the other carriage as baggage was lifted down from the roof and sorted and carried inside.

She put her head down and hurried past without a backward glance.

Although there was a great deal of commotion in the hallway inside the school doors with Hannah Swan standing there and both her parents taking their farewell of her and admonishing her with all sorts of last-minute advice, Mr. Keeble, the elderly porter, found time to greet Frances with a bow and wink at her and inform her in a quiet aside that some teachers would go to any lengths to avoid returning to school one moment sooner than they must. And Claudia Martin patted her on the arm, welcomed her back, told her she was glad to see her safe, and promised that they would talk later.

But she was not to avoid a more effusive welcome, Frances found. Even before she reached the head of the stairs she met two more junior girls on their way down to claim Hannah, and they chattered and giggled at her for a whole minute without stopping, telling her something about Christmas that she could scarcely comprehend. And no sooner had she arrived upstairs in her room, shut the door behind her, undone the ribbons of her bonnet with her left hand and tossed it onto the bed, and blown out air from her puffed cheeks than the door burst open again after the merest tap of a knock and Susanna Osbourne came hurrying in to catch up Frances in an exuberant hug.

“Oh, you wretch!” she cried. “You have given Anne and me two sleepless nights, and even Miss Martin was worried, though she would insist that you are far too sensible to have risked putting yourself in any danger. We pictured you frozen into an icicle in some snowbank. It is such a relief to see you back safe.”

Susanna was the youngest of the four resident teachers at the school. Small, auburn-haired, green-eyed, exquisitely pretty, and vivacious, she looked far too young to be a teacher—and in truth she was still only a junior teacher, promoted two years before after six years as a pupil at Miss Martin’s school. But despite her small stature and youthful looks, she had succeeded at the difficult task of winning the respect and obedience of girls who had once been her fellow pupils.

Frances hugged her in return and laughed. But before she could say anything, she was caught up in another hug by Anne Jewell, one of the other teachers.

“I assured Susanna, just as Claudia did, that you are far too sensible to have left your great-aunts’ house in such inclement weather,” she said. “I am glad we were both right, Frances. Though of course I did worry.”

Anne was loved by staff and pupils alike. Fair-haired, blue-eyed, and lovely, she was also even-tempered, approachable, and sympathetic to even the lowliest, least intelligent and well-favored pupils—especially to them, in fact. If she had favorites, they tended to be among the charity girls, who made up half the school’s population. But there were always those few girls of more elevated social status who lost no opportunity to remark upon the fact that Miss Jewell—with a significant emphasis on the Miss—had a young son living with her at the school.

Even Frances and Susanna did not know the full story behind David Jewell’s existence, though Claudia Martin doubtless did. They were firm friends, all four of them, but even friends were entitled to some secrets. And as for David, he had a nursemaid all to himself as well as several unofficial teachers and was adored by the girls and spoiled by the staff. He was a sweet child nonetheless, and he had great artistic talent and potential, according to Mr. Upton, the art master.

“Well,” Frances said, “I am quite safe, as you see, though I am two days late and dread to think how much work will be facing me for the rest of today. I did, of course, remain with my great-aunts until early this morning and so you need not have worried at all. They sent me back here in their own carriage.”

And friends were sometimes entitled to lie to one another.

She could not bear to tell the truth. She could not bear the look of sympathy she knew she would see in their eyes when she came to the end of her story.

“Work or no work,” Anne said firmly, “you are going to have tea with us, Frances, and relax after what I am sure has been a trying day. I do not suppose the roads were at their best, and you would have had nothing but your own company to distract your mind from a contemplation of them. But no matter. You are safe now, and Claudia has ordered tea to be served in her sitting room in ten minutes’ time. Susanna and I have decided to be utterly selfless and not fight you for the chair by the fire.”

They both laughed, and Frances smiled brightly.

“I will certainly not argue that point,” she said. “And tea will be very welcome. Give me ten minutes to comb my hair and wash my hands and face?”

Anne opened the door.

“All the girls have now arrived,” she said. “Hannah Swan was last, as usual. Matron has them all firmly under her wing. So we can relax for a whole hour.”

“We want to hear everything about your Christmas,” Susanna said. “Every last detail. Including a description of every gentleman you met.”

“No, only the handsome ones, Susanna,” Anne said. “And the unmarried ones. We are not interested in the others.”

“Ah. In that case an hour may be just long enough—if I talk fast,” Frances said.

They went on their way, laughing merrily.

Frances sat down abruptly on the bed. Her legs would not have supported her if they had stayed one minute longer, she was sure. She shut her eyes tightly. She felt very close to hysteria, though she knew she had far too much pride to give in to it. What she wanted to do more than anything else on this earth was burrow beneath the covers of the bed and lie there, curled into a ball, for the rest of her life.

If she were to look out through her window, she knew, the street below would be empty.

He was gone.

Forever.

By her own choosing.

He would have taken her with him. Or he would have stayed in Bath.

She clenched both fists in her lap and fought panic, the foolish urge to rush back downstairs and outside in the hope of somehow catching up to his carriage before it disappeared forever.

It was hopeless—hopeless. He was not only Lucius Marshall, gentleman. He was also Viscount Sinclair. He lived most of the time in London. She could never return there, and she could never move in high circles again—even if he had ever asked her to. He would not have done so, of course. He would have made her his mistress for a while, until he tired of her. And that would have happened. What had been between them during the past couple of days was no grand romance, after all.

She was in no doubt that she had done the right thing.

But doing the right thing had never seemed bleaker.

This is good-bye after all, then, Frances.

She swallowed once, and then again.

And then she heard the echo of his final words.

But if you should have need of me, you will find me at the address in London written on that card. I will come immediately.

She opened her eyes, realizing that her right hand was still clenched about the card he had placed there. She opened her hand and looked down at it, still folded in two, the partially opened sides facing away from her.

It was over. They had said good-bye. He would come again with assistance if she should need it—if she discovered that she was with child, that was.

But it was over.

Very deliberately she folded the card once more, tore it across and across again, and as many more times as she could before dropping the pieces into the back of the fireplace. She recognized the rashness of what she did. But she had sent him away. She could never now appeal to him for aid.

“Good-bye, Lucius,” she said softly before turning determinedly to the washstand and pouring cold water into the bowl.

Ten minutes, Anne and Susanna had said. She would look presentable by the time she arrived in Claudia Martin’s sitting room. And she would be smiling.

And she would be armed to the teeth with amusing anecdotes about Christmas.

No one was going to know the truth.

No one was even going to suspect.

Lucius spent the following week at Cleve Abbey and then removed to London even earlier than he had planned, too restless to remain alone in the country with his own thoughts—or, more to the point, with his own emotions.

The latter consisted predominantly of anger, which manifested itself in irritability. Being the rejected rather than the rejecter was a new experience for him in his dealings with women. It was also, he supposed, a humbling experience and therefore good for the soul. But the soul be damned! The very idea that anything good might come of his experience only added to his ill humor.

What could be good about losing a bedfellow one had only just begun to enjoy?

That Frances Allard had been quite right in ending their budding affair did nothing to alleviate his irritability either. When he had made his offer to take her to London with him, he had not stopped to consider in what capacity he would take her there. But it could not have been as a wife, could it? Devil take it, he had just promised to wed an eligible bride before the summer was out, and he did not imagine that either his grandfather or his mother would consider a schoolteacher from Bath in any way eligible.

He had always been impulsive, even reckless. But this time part of him realized that if she had taken him up on any of his suggestions, he would have found himself in an awkward position indeed. He had not only promised his grandfather, he had also pledged himself to turn over a new leaf, to become a responsible, respectable man, perish the thought. He was going to court a wife during the spring, not indulge his fancy with a new mistress.

And that was what Frances would have been if she had come with him. There was no point in denying it. He could not have kept her long. Part of turning over a new leaf involved committing himself to one woman for the rest of his life—the woman he would marry.

It was time to say good-bye, Frances had told him. They had enjoyed a pleasant day or two together, but it was time to get back to normal life.

Pleasant!

That particular choice of word still rankled for a while even after he had arrived in London and immersed himself in the familiar daily round of his clubs and other typically masculine pursuits with his numerous friends and acquaintances.

His lovemaking had been pleasant. It was almost enough to make a man weep and tear his hair and lose all confidence in himself as a lover.

She had done him a favor by saying no. She really had.

Which fact made ill humor cling to him like an unwanted headache.

But it was not in his nature to brood indefinitely. And there was plenty to occupy his mind, in addition to the familiar pleasures of town life.

There was the fact that he was now living at Marshall House on

Cavendish Square

, for example, and that soon his mother and sisters were there too. There was all the novelty of being part of a family again for an extended period of time and being involved in all their hopes and fears and anxieties over the coming Season—in which he was pledged to play an active role this year. Emily was to make her come-out and needed to be properly outfitted for it and her presentation to the queen. And he needed to court a bride.

And there was the fact that Portia Hunt was expected to arrive in town immediately after Easter. His mother reminded him—as if he could have forgotten—at breakfast one morning after reading a letter from Lady Balderston.

“I will write back to her this morning,” his mother informed him, “and tell her that you are already in town too, Lucius, and living at Marshall House this year and planning to escort your sisters to a number of ton events.”

In effect, his mother would be announcing to Portia’s mama that he was poised to take a bride at last. Why would someone of Viscount Sinclair’s reputation be planning to attend balls and routs and Venetian breakfasts and such like events, after all, if he were not seriously in search of a leg shackle?

The Balderstons and Portia—as well as the Marquess of Godsworthy, her grandfather—would come to London, then, fully expecting that a betrothal was imminent. Lucius did not doubt it. It was how society worked. A great deal could be said and arranged—especially by women—without a direct word ever being spoken. The direct word would come from him when he finally made his call on Balderston to discuss marriage settlements and then made his formal offer to Portia herself.

The mere thought of what awaited him was enough to make him break out in a cold sweat.

However, he might be pleasantly surprised when he saw Portia again. It struck him that it must be two years or so since he had actually held any sort of conversation with her. Perhaps seeing her again would help him focus his mind on duty and the inevitable future. After all, a man must eventually marry. And if he must, and if the time happened to be now, he might as well marry someone eminently eligible and someone he had known most of his life. Better the devil you know . . .

Not that he was making any comparison between Portia and the devil. Good Lord, she would be the quintessentially perfect bride. He could not do better if he hunted the length and breadth of the country for the next five years. He did not have five years, though. He had promised to be married long before this year was out.

He was almost looking forward to her arrival in town.

But something else was different about this spring too. He was anxious about his grandfather’s health and pounced upon every letter that came from

Barclay Court

. And one of those letters, delivered a week or so before the Balderstons were expected, brought word that the earl had made arrangements to remove to Bath for a couple of weeks or so in order to take a course of the spa waters. They had always been beneficial to his health in the past, he explained, and he intended to see if they would have a similar effect again. He had taken a house on

Brock Street

rather than stay at a hotel.

Lady Sinclair, genuinely concerned though she was about her father-in-law’s health, could not possibly leave London at that particular moment. Emily was soon to be presented at court and there were a thousand and one details to be attended to before the great day dawned. And Caroline, two years older than Emily, could not leave London, as she was entering her third Season, still unmarried, though it was fully expected that Sir Henry Cobham would come to the point within the month and apply for her hand. Amy was too young to go to Bath alone to care for her grandfather even though she expressed her willingness to do so.

That left Lucius. It was desirable that he stay in town, of course. But he was deeply concerned about his grandfather and felt the need to assure himself firsthand that his health had not seriously deteriorated since Christmas. It would not hurt to be away from London for a week or two, anyway. He would be back by the time the Season swung into full action.

There would be more than enough time to go courting after he returned.

By that time almost three months had passed since Christmas, and he had more or less forgotten about Frances Allard except for the occasional nostalgic memory of their one night together. Even so, he was not quite insensible of the fact that in going to Bath he would also be putting himself in close proximity to her again. He did not dwell upon the thought, though. He was unlikely to see her, and he would certainly not make any active attempt to do so. She was firmly in his past and would remain there. And indeed she had occupied a very tiny corner of his past.

He was somewhat disconcerted, then, when his traveling carriage came within sight of Bath in the valley below the road from London, all white and sparkling in the spring sunshine, by the power of the memories that assaulted him. He remembered so plainly the pain he had suffered the last time he had been on this road—being driven in the opposite direction—that he felt the pang of it even now. He remembered the almost overwhelming urge he had felt to turn back and beg her to come with him—on his knees if necessary.

The very thought that he might have done such an embarrassing and humiliating thing was enough to give him the shudders. He certainly had no wish to set eyes again on the woman who had brought him so abjectly low.

Amy, his youngest sister, was traveling with him. She was at the awkward age of seventeen. She had been released from the schoolroom after Christmas so that she could accompany the rest of the family to London in the early spring, but any excited expectations that fact had aroused in her bosom had soon been dashed. Their mother had been quite firm in her refusal to allow her to make her come-out this year, since it was Emily’s turn and Caroline was still unmarried too. Poor Amy had been less than delighted at the prospect of being excluded from almost all the dizzying array of activities that would soon brighten her sisters’ days and had jumped at the chance of accompanying her brother to Bath.

Listening to her exclamations of delight at the scene spread before her and pointing out to her some of the more prominent landmarks of Bath diverted Lucius’s attention. In fact, her company had enlivened the whole of the journey. He was rather enjoying his close contacts with his family again, if the truth were told, and was beginning to wonder why it had seemed important to him for so long to maintain a distance from them.

It was because he was no longer a thoughtless young man, he supposed. It was because he had finished sowing his wild oats and was beginning to realize the value of love connections.

He pulled a face in the carriage. Could he really have descended to such depths of dullness?

She had never written to him, though he had watched for a letter until well into February. She being Frances Allard. He was suddenly thinking about her again—quite unwillingly.

There was little possibility of seeing her, though, even accidentally. She lived at the school across the river, all the way down by Sydney Gardens, and would be busy with her teaching duties. He would be staying on upper-class

Brock Street

and would be mingling with other genteel guests and residents of the city. Their paths were very unlikely to cross.

He stopped thinking about her altogether after their arrival on

Brock Street

in order to focus the whole of his attention on his grandfather. He was looking frail, but he was his usual cheerful self and insisted that the Bath air and the Bath waters had already done him some good. He sat listening with twinkling eyes to Amy’s enthusiastic account of their journey and the amusing anecdote she told of stopping at one posting inn and being mistaken for Lucius’s wife. She had been addressed as my lady.

Lucius took Amy for a short walk to see the

Royal Crescent

at the other end of

Brock Street

after tea while their grandfather rested. He listened with amused indulgence while she exclaimed with delight and declared that the Crescent was the most magnificent architectural sight she had ever seen.

But later that same evening after dinner while his grandfather sat reading by the fire and Amy was seated at a small escritoire writing a letter to their mother and sisters, Lucius stood looking out the window of the sitting room at the stately architecture of the circular street known as the Circus not many yards distant. He found himself thinking that in all probability, if she was still at Miss Martin’s school, Frances was no more than a mile or so away. The thought annoyed him—not so much that she was only a mile or so distant, but that he was thinking about it at all. And about her.

He turned firmly away from the window.

“Feeling maudlin, Lucius?” his grandfather asked, lowering his book to his lap.

“Me, sir?” Lucius rested a hand lightly on Amy’s shoulder as she wrote. “Not at all. I am delighted to be here with you. I was glad to see you eat a good dinner and come to spend an hour with Amy and me in here.”

“I thought,” his grandfather said, regarding him with twinkling eyes from beneath his bushy white eyebrows, “that perhaps you were pining for the sight of a certain pair of fine eyes.”

So brown they were almost black. Wide, expressive eyes that could spark with anger or dance with merriment or deepen with passion.

“Pining, sir?” he said, raising his eyebrows. “Me?”

“You are talking of Miss Hunt, Grandpapa, are you not?” Amy said while she dipped her quill pen in the silver ink holder. “She has the bluest eyes I have ever seen. Some people might call them fine, but I prefer eyes that can laugh even if they are the most nondescript shade of gray. And Miss Hunt never laughs—it is undignified and unladylike to do so, I daresay. I do hope Luce does not marry her.”

“I daresay Lucius will make the right choice when the time comes,” their grandfather said. “But it would be strange indeed if he did not admire Miss Hunt’s blue eyes and blond hair and flawless complexion, Amy. And she is a refined lady. I would be proud to call her granddaughter.”

Lucius squeezed his sister’s shoulder and took the chair on the other side of the hearth. His grandfather was quite right. Portia was a beauty. She was also elegant and refined and perfect. Rumor had it—in other words, his mother had informed him—that she had turned down numerous eligible suitors during the past few years.

She was waiting for him.

He concentrated his mind upon her considerable charms and felt the noose tighten about his neck again.

The following day was cold and blustery and not conducive to any prolonged outing, but the day after that was one of those perfect spring days that entice people to step outdoors to take the air and remind them that summer is coming in the not too distant future. The sun beamed down from a cloudless sky, the air was fresh and really quite warm, and there was the merest of gentle breezes.

After an early morning visit to the Pump Room to drink the waters and a rest afterward at home with the morning papers, the Earl of Edgecombe was quite ready for an afternoon airing with his grandchildren on the Royal Crescent. Fashionable people strolled there each day, weather permitting, to exchange any gossip that had accumulated since the morning, to see and to be seen. It served much the same function as Hyde Park in London at the fashionable hour, though admittedly on a smaller scale.

Strolling along the cobbled street of the widely curving Crescent and then down into the meadow below was not exactly vigorous exercise, and Lucius missed his clubs and activities and acquaintances in London, but really he was quite resigned to spending a week or so here with just a few early morning rides up into the hills as an outlet for his excess energy. It was good to see his grandfather in good spirits and slightly better health than he had enjoyed at Christmas. And Amy, now leaning upon Lucius’s arm, positively sparkled with enjoyment at the change of scene, free as she was of the stricter social restrictions that London had imposed upon a young lady who was not yet out.

They were in conversation with Mrs. Reynolds and Mrs. Abbotsford when Lucius, half bored but politely smiling, looked up toward the Crescent and became idly aware of a crocodile of schoolgirls, all uniformly clad in dark blue, making its way along Brock Street, presumably having just admired the architecture of the Circus and coming to do the same for its companion piece, the Royal Crescent. A lady, probably a teacher, marched along at its head, setting a brisk pace and looking rather like a duck cleaving the waters for its two straight lines of ducklings following along behind.

. . . probably a teacher.

He squinted his eyes in order to look more closely at the woman. But the group was still too far away for him to clearly distinguish the features of any of its members. Besides, it would be just too much of a coincidence . . .

“And Mr. Reynolds has agreed to take a house there for the summer,” Mrs. Reynolds was saying. “Our dear Betsy will be with us, of course. A month by the sea in July will be just the thing for all of us.”

“Sea bathing is said to be excellent for the health, ma’am,” the earl said.

Mrs. Reynolds uttered what sounded like a genteel shriek. “Sea bathing, my lord?” she cried. “Oh, never say so. One cannot imagine anything more shocking to tender sensibilities. I shall be very careful not to allow Betsy within half a mile of any bathing machines.”

“But I could not agree with you more, Lord Edgecombe,” Mrs. Abbotsford said. “When we spent a few days at Lyme Regis two summers ago, both Rose and Algernon—my daughter and my son, you will understand—bathed in the sea, and they were never more healthy than they were for the rest of that holiday. The ladies were kept quite separate from the gentlemen, Barbara, and so there was no impropriety.”

Lucius exchanged an amused smirk with his grandfather.

“Now before I forget, Lord Edgecombe,” Mrs. Reynolds said, “I must beg you . . .”

The crocodile had reached the corner of

Brock Street

and the Crescent, and the teacher stopped it in order to point out the wide sweep of magnificent architecture before their eyes. One slim arm pointed. One slender hand gesticulated.

She had her back to Lucius. Over a fawn-colored dress she wore a short brown spencer. Her bonnet too was brown. It was impossible from where he stood to see either her face or her hair.

But his mouth nevertheless turned suddenly dry.

He was in no doubt at all of her identity.

Coincidences, it seemed, did happen.

“And you will come too, I trust, Lord Sinclair?” Mrs. Reynolds was saying.

“Oh, do say yes. Do say yes, Luce,” Amy said, squeezing his arm and gazing up at him imploringly. “Then I can go too.”

“I beg your pardon?” He started and looked from one to the other of the ladies, with blank eyes. What the devil were they talking about? “I do beg your pardon, ma’am. I fear I was wool-gathering.”

“Lord Edgecombe has graciously agreed to attend my little soiree tomorrow evening,” Mrs. Reynolds explained. “It will be nothing to compare with the London squeezes to which you are accustomed, of course, but the company will be genteel, and there will be musical entertainment of a superior quality in the drawing room, and there will be a card room for those who do not appreciate music—Mr. Reynolds always insists upon it. I do hope you will agree to join us and bring Miss Amy Marshall with you.”

“I should be honored, ma’am,” Lucius said, making her a bow. “So, it would seem, will Amy.”

Good Lord! A soiree. In Bath. What was life coming to?

His sister was almost jumping up and down with excitement at his side. A soiree in Bath might not rate highly on most people’s social calendar—and it would surely rate at the very bottom of his—but it was vastly enticing to a girl who was excluded from almost all the social events that her mother and sisters were preparing to attend in London all spring.

He might have smiled down at her with fond amusement if at least half of his attention had not been directed elsewhere—and if his heart had not started to pound in his chest just as if someone had taken a hammer to it.

Damnation, but he had not wanted this to happen. He had not wanted to set eyes on her again. He gazed upward again, nevertheless, for one more glance at the woman who had sent him away three months ago with the proverbial flea in his ear and had then proceeded to set up shop in his memory and refuse to go away for a good long while afterward.

The well-disciplined double line of girls was making its way along the Crescent and stopping again at the halfway point. Again the teacher spoke, facing the buildings and describing bold half circles with both arms as she explained something to her apparently attentive class.

She had not once turned to face the meadow. But she did not need to do so. Lucius knew. Some things did not need the full evidence of one’s eyes.

“Two titled gentlemen among your guests,” Mrs. Abbotsford was saying. “You will be the envy of every hostess in Bath, Barbara, and your party will be assured of success. Not that it would not have been anyway, of course.”

“I quite agree with you, ma’am,” the earl said. “Mrs. Reynolds already has a reputation as an excellent hostess. I always look forward to receiving one of her invitations whenever I am in Bath.”

The teacher turned around. So did all her girls, and she proceeded to indicate with a wide sweep of her arm the splendid view down over the city and across to the hills beyond.

Frances!

He was still too far away to see her face clearly, but he was quite close enough to know that it was filled with warm animation. She was absorbed in her task of instructing the group of girls, and she was enjoying herself.

She was not, he noticed, looking either haggard or heartbroken.

Devil take it, had he expected that she would—no doubt as a result of having pined away over him to a shadow of her former self?

She was also, it seemed, quite unself-conscious about the presence of other persons in the vicinity. She did not glance at any of the fashionable people strolling on the Crescent or in the meadow below it. Even so, after one long look, Lucius tipped the brim of his hat lower, as if to ward off the bright rays of the sun and half turned as if to admire the view behind him.

“Bath never ceases to astonish me with its loveliness,” he said stupidly.

Mrs. Reynolds and Mrs. Abbotsford, both of whom were residents of the city, were quite happy to take up the theme with voluble enthusiasm, and Amy told them how very much she had enjoyed shopping on

Milsom Street

the afternoon before, when her brother had bought her the bonnet she was now wearing.

The two ladies admired it with effusive compliments.

When Lucius next turned his head to look, the schoolgirls had completed their walk about the Crescent and were making their brisk way down the hill past the Marlborough Buildings.

Goddamn it, he thought profanely, had he actually been hiding from her? From a mere schoolteacher, who had wanted to boil him in oil one day, who had slept with him the next, and who had passed judgment on his lovemaking the day after that by calling it pleasant before saying a very firm and final good-bye to him?