Simply Unforgettable (22 page)

Claudia had granted her leave of absence before Frances had even formed the words to ask for something so inconvenient, assuring her that she would find a temporary replacement to carry on with her teaching duties. Anne had hugged her wordlessly. Susanna had helped pack her bags. Mr. Huckerby had offered to conduct her choir practices while she was gone. Each of her classes urged her to hurry back.

Frances had actually dissolved into tears after sharing the contents of the letter with her friends.

“They are just
great
-aunts,” she had said. “I have not seen a great deal of them during my life and I write to them only once a month. But now that it seems likely that I may lose one of them, I realize what an anchor they have always been to my existence and how much I rely on their love and support. With my father gone, they are all I have of my very own. And I do love them.”

It was of them she had thought with most distress after Lady Fontbridge had made her threat more than three years ago. It was largely because of them that she had made the promise to leave London and never return. She could not have borne it if they had been told. So much of their world would have been destroyed.

“Of course you do,” Claudia had said briskly. “Stay as long as you need to, Frances. We will all miss you, of course, including the girls, but no one in this life is quite indispensable. It can sometimes be a humbling realization.”

And so here she was, in London again and sick with anxiety. Great-Aunt Gertrude had never enjoyed robust health, and she tended to coddle herself by staying too far away from fresh air and too close to the nearest fire. But Frances had never thought of actually losing her.

When the carriage finally rocked to a halt outside a respectable-looking house on Portman Street, she waited impatiently for Thomas to open the door and set down the steps and then hurried up to the house door, which opened even before she reached it, and into a tiled hall, where she fell into Great-Aunt Martha's open arms.

“Frances, my love,” her aunt cried, beaming with happiness, “you
did
come! I hardly dared hope you would be able to get away. And how lovely you look, as usual!”

“Aunt Martha!” Frances hugged her back. “How is Aunt Gertrude?” She was almost afraid to ask. But the first thing she had noticed—with enormous relief—was that her great-aunt was not wearing black.

“A little better today despite the damp weather,” Aunt Martha said. “She has even got up from her bed and come down to the sitting room. What a delightful surprise
this
is going to be for her. I have not breathed a word about your coming. And indeed, I can scarcely believe that you have come only because I asked. I do hope Miss Martin has not dismissed you permanently?”

“She has granted me a leave of absence,” Frances said. “Aunt Gertrude is actually getting better, then? She is not—”

“Oh, my poor love,” Aunt Martha said, taking her arm and leading her in the direction of the staircase. “You did not imagine the worst, did you? She never was dangerously ill, but she has been dragged down by a chill she has been unable to shake off, and she has been in dreadfully low spirits as a result. We both have. It seemed to me—very selfishly, my love—that seeing you would be just the tonic we both needed.”

Great-Aunt Gertrude was not on her deathbed, then? It was the best of good news. At the same time Frances thought ruefully of all the trouble she had put Claudia to by leaving the school so abruptly for a few weeks in the middle of a term—and of all the disruption to her classes and choirs and music pupils.

It was enormously touching, though, to know that her presence meant so much to her aunts. She would never take them for granted again, she vowed. And it really was lovely to see Great-Aunt Martha again. Frances felt a rush of tears to her eyes and blinked them away.

There was great jubilation when she appeared in the sitting room, which was hot and stuffy with a fire roaring in the hearth. Great-Aunt Gertrude sat huddled close to it, a heavy woolen shawl about her shoulders and a lap robe over her knees, but both were cast aside the moment she set eyes upon her great-niece, and she got to her feet with surprising alacrity and came hurrying toward her. They met and hugged tightly in the middle of the room while Great-Aunt Martha fluttered about them, telling excitedly of the secret she had kept to herself for all of four days lest dear Frances not be able to come and Gertrude be plunged into even deeper gloom with disappointment.

Later, as she sat with a cup of tea in her hand and a plate of cakes—Aunt Martha had put three on it though she had asked for only one—on her knee, Frances felt warm and happy and pleasantly tired. It was obvious that Aunt Gertrude was not in the best of health, but neither was she dangerously ill. Frances even felt a twinge of guilt about having come here, but she had not come under false pretenses, and it seemed that she really had been a tonic for her aunts' spirits. They were chattering merrily and seemed not even to have noticed that the fire had died down considerably.

She would spend a week or so with them and enjoy herself without guilt, Frances thought rather sleepily, and then she would go back to school and work doubly hard until the end of the term. There would be all the extra work of preparing for the year-end prize-giving and concert.

Perhaps she would try to visit her aunts in the country for another week during the summer. They needed her, she had just realized—and really she needed them too.

“Some friends of yours came calling on me a few days ago, Frances,” Great-Aunt Martha said, beaming at her. “Poor Gertrude was still in bed that day and did not meet them, but we will certainly invite them back.”

“Oh?” Frances looked inquiringly at her, a little flutter of alarm in the pit of her stomach. Someone who knew her was already aware that she was returning to London?

“The Earl of Edgecombe called on me,” Aunt Martha said. “His late wife and I used to be bosom bows when we were girls, you know, and I always did like him exceedingly. It was most obliging of him to call.”

Frances felt as if her stomach performed a complete somersault. Ah, yes, of course. She remembered then that he had said he once knew Great-Aunt Martha. She had not even
thought
of the possibility . . .

But her aunt had spoken of
friends
calling on her.

Plural.

“And he brought his grandson and one of his granddaughters with him,” Aunt Martha continued. “Viscount Sinclair and Miss Amy Marshall. They are delightful young people. And they were all full of praises for your singing, Frances, after hearing you in Bath. I do not wonder at it, of course.”

“I only wonder that you have not done more of it and become famous,” Great-Aunt Gertrude said.

Frances's heart had plunged and lodged somewhere in the soles of her shoes. This was the stuff of her worst nightmares. She must somehow dissuade her aunts from inviting them all back here. She could not bear to see them again.

She could not bear to see
him
.

Gracious heaven, why had he come here? Just because his grandfather had wished to?

“And you accompanied them to an assembly at the Upper Rooms,” Aunt Martha continued, looking at her niece with a beaming smile. “It did my heart good, my love, to hear that you have started enjoying yourself again. We have always thought that you are too young and lovely to bury yourself inside a school and have no chance to meet suitable beaux.”

“Oh,” Frances said with a forced smile, finishing off her tea and setting the cup and saucer down on a table beside her, “I am really quite happy as I am, Aunt Martha. And I am not entirely without beaux.”

She had been to the theater with Mr. Blake and his sister and brother-in-law one evening during the past month and to dine with them on another. She had been to two services at Bath Abbey with Mr. Blake alone, and both times they had strolled back to the school by a long, circuitous route. What was between them could not exactly be called a courtship, she supposed, but she was very thankful that it could not. She far preferred a mild friendship that might—or might not—blossom into something warmer with time.

“What I would like to know,” Aunt Martha said, leaning forward in her chair, her eyes still twinkling, “is whether you danced with Viscount Sinclair, Frances.”

Annoyingly, Frances could feel herself blushing.

“Yes, I did,” she said. “He was very obliging. The earl had invited me to accompany them to the assembly at Miss Marshall's urging, and the viscount was kind enough to dance with me after he had first led his sister out.”

“You did not tell me, Martha,” Aunt Gertrude said, “and I did not think to ask—is Viscount Sinclair both young and handsome, by any chance?”

“And charming too,” Aunt Martha said, and the elderly ladies exchanged a knowing smirk. “Now, was it one set or two you danced together, Frances, my love?”

“Two,” Frances said, horrified by the turn the conversation was taking. “But—”

“Two.”
Aunt Martha clapped her hands together and looked enraptured. “I
knew
it. I knew as surely as I know my own name that he admired you.”

“Frances! How splendid!” Aunt Gertrude leaned forward and forgot about her shawl again. It slipped unheeded from her shoulders to the cushion behind her. The lap robe was already pooled at her feet. “Viscountess Sinclair! I
like
it.”

They were teasing her, of course. They were both chuckling merrily.

“Alas, I am afraid you are quite mistaken,” Frances said, trying to keep her tone light and the smile on her face. “Viscount Sinclair is to marry Miss Portia Hunt.”

“Balderston's girl?” Aunt Martha said. “What a shame! Though I suppose it is no such thing for the lady herself. He is
very
handsome, Gertrude. But all may not be lost. No mention was made of any betrothal while they were here, and I have not seen any announcement in the papers since we came here, though I read them all quite conscientiously each morning. And he was pointedly interested in you, Frances, though he did not say so openly, of course. Without him I doubt I would have thought of inviting you here as a tonic for Gertrude's spirits.”

“What?”
Frances stared at her, aghast.

“It was he who suggested it.” Aunt Martha smiled smugly. “And though it was exceedingly kind of him to show such solicitude for two old ladies, something told me at the time that there was a young man with an ulterior motive. He wished to see you again himself, Frances.”

“
This
was all Viscount Sinclair's idea?” Aunt Gertrude asked, looking quite charmed. “I like him already, Martha, though I have never yet clapped eyes on him. He sounds like a young man who knows what he wants and how to get it. We must invite him here to dine one evening—with his sister and the Earl of Edgecombe, of course. We came to London to see something of society after so long, did we not, yet after almost three weeks we have seen nobody—at least,
I
have not. But it is time I did. I already feel worlds better than I felt even an hour ago. Oh, Frances, dearest, I am only just realizing that you are actually
here
.”

Frances stared mutely at them.

This was
his
doing?

He
was the one who had suggested luring her here?

Why?

He was not betrothed yet?

“But here we are rattling on,” Aunt Martha said, getting to her feet, “and you are so tired from your journey, Frances, that you are really looking quite pale. Come, my love. I will take you to your room, where you must rest until dinnertime. We will talk again this evening.”

Frances bent to kiss Aunt Gertrude's cheek and allowed herself to be led from the room and up to a pleasant bedchamber on the floor above, which had obviously been prepared for her in the hope that she would come.

She lay down on the bed when she was alone, and stared up at the canopy over her head.

He had been here, in this very house.

He had suggested that she be sent for. Perhaps he had even suggested that Great-Aunt Gertrude's condition be exaggerated so that she would be more sure to leave her duties behind. It would be just like him to do something so devious and high-handed.

How dared he!

Could he not take no for an answer? Could he not leave well enough alone?

Was it possible that he still wished to marry her? But when he had offered her marriage there in Sydney Gardens, he had done so entirely from impulse. That had been perfectly obvious to her. Surely when he had thought about it afterward he would have admitted to himself that he had had a narrow escape from doing something quite indiscreet.

After a whole month she was still raw with the pain of having seen him again, danced with him again, touched him, kissed him, talked with him, quarreled with him—and refused a marriage offer from him!

She was still deeply, hopelessly, in love with him.

She had been since just after Christmas, of course, and the feeling stubbornly refused to go away.

Perhaps because
he
stubbornly refused to go away.

And now he had contrived to see her again, using her great-aunts in a despicably devious plot to lure her to London.

Why?

He was the most irritating, provoking, overbearing man she had ever known. She deliberately set her mind to thinking of all she most disliked about him. She tried to visualize him as he had been on the road that first day when she had bristled with hostility toward him—and he had returned the compliment.

But instead she saw him turning suddenly to hurl a snowball at her and then engaging in a high-spirited, laughter-filled fight before bearing her backward into the snow, his hands on her wrists . . .

Frances sighed deeply and despite herself drifted off to sleep.

18

Lord Balderston had borne his lady and daughter off to the
country for a few days to help celebrate the birthday of some distant relative. It was with some sense of temporary reprieve, then, that Lucius went riding in the park early one morning in the thoroughly congenial company of three male friends. The fact that a fine rain was drizzling down from a gray sky did not in any way dampen his spirits. Indeed, it added the advantage of an almost deserted Rotten Row so that they could gallop their horses along it without endangering other, more sober-minded riders. As he returned home to change for breakfast, he did not even have to hold the usual inner debate with himself about what he ought to do after he had eaten. He could not go to the house on Berkeley Square even if he wished to do so.

Only his grandfather and Amy were up, the others being still in bed after a late night at some ball he had not even felt constrained to attend. He rubbed his hands together with satisfaction and viewed the array of hot foods set out on the sideboard. He was ravenous.

But Amy was clearly bursting to tell him something and could not wait until he had made his selection and taken his place at the table.

“Luce,” she said, “guess what?”

“Give me a clue,” he said. “No, let me guess. You have had ten hours of sleep and are now overflowing with energy and ideas on how to use it—with me as your slave.”

“No, silly!” she said. “Grandpapa has just had an invitation to dine at Mrs. Melford's tomorrow evening, and I am invited too. Mama will not say no, will she? You simply must speak up for me—you and Grandpapa both.”

“I don't suppose she will,” he said guardedly, “provided it is a private dinner.”

“Oh, and you are invited too,” she said.

That was what he had been afraid of. One visit had been amusing, but . . .

“Miss Allard has come up from Bath,” she said.

Ah!

Well!

“She has, has she?” he asked briskly. “And I am expected to give up an evening to dine with Mrs. Melford and her sister merely because Miss Allard is there too?”

Merely!

“It would be the courteous thing to do, Lucius,” his grandfather said, “since you are the one who suggested she be summoned.”

“And so I did,” Lucius admitted. “I hope her arrival has had the desired effect.”

“Mrs. Melford declares that Miss Driscoll made something of a miraculous recovery within an hour of the arrival of their great-niece,” his grandfather told him. “It was an inspired suggestion of yours, Lucius. May I send back an acceptance for you as well as for Amy and myself?”

Lucius stood with a still-empty plate in his hand and an appetite that seemed somehow to have fled. When he had watched Frances run away from the pavilion in Sydney Gardens after refusing to marry him or give him a thoroughly satisfying reason for doing so, he had thought that if he never saw her again it would be rather too soon.

Yet he had undeniably maneuvered matters so that she would come to London to see her great-aunts.

And was he now going to stay away from her?

“Yes, please do, sir,” he said with as much carelessness as he could summon.

“I shall look forward to it of all things,” Amy said, turning her attention back to her own breakfast. “Will not you, Luce?”

“Of all things,” he said dryly as he scooped fried potatoes onto his plate and moved on to the sausages.

He would probably do something asinine like count down the hours until he would see her again. Like a love-struck mooncalf.

But would Frances? Look forward to it of all things, that was?

 

Frances was beginning to think—and hope—that her great-aunts had forgotten about their plan to invite the Earl of Edgecombe to come to dinner with Viscount Sinclair and Amy Marshall. Two days passed and nothing more was said about it.

She enjoyed those days. Her aunts—not only Great-Aunt Gertrude, but Great-Aunt Martha too—visibly improved in both health and spirits during that time. And so did she, she felt. It was good to be with them again, to be fussed over, to be the apple of their eye, to have the feeling of being part of a family. She really had been very depressed during the last month, and indeed she had not been in the best of spirits since Christmas.

She would stay for a week, she had decided. And she would not worry about being back in London. She was not planning to go out anywhere, after all, and the world was unlikely to come calling.

She was mistaken about the plan for dinner, though, as she discovered late in the afternoon of that second day, only a few hours before the guests were due to arrive. Her aunts had kept it a secret until the last moment, they explained, thinking to delight her with the surprise when they finally informed her.

They also begged her, with identical beams of sheer delight, to put on her prettiest gown and to allow Hattie, their own personal maid, to dress her hair suitably for evening.

It was bad enough to know that Lucius was going to be here within a couple of hours, Frances thought as she scurried upstairs to get ready. But far worse was the fact that her great-aunts seemed determined to play
matchmaker
. How excruciatingly embarrassing if he or any of the others should notice!

She had brought her cream silk to London with her. Not that she had expected to have occasion to wear it. But any lady must go prepared for a variety of circumstances when she traveled. She wore it for dinner, and she did not have the heart to send Hattie away and disappoint her aunts. And so by the time she descended to the sitting room a mere ten minutes before the guests were due to arrive, she was wearing her hair in a mass of soft curls at the back, with an elaborate arrangement of fine braids crisscrossing the smoothly brushed hair over the crown of her head.

She looked very fine, she had admitted to Hattie when the coiffure was complete. But that very fact embarrassed her. What if he thought she had done it for him? What if his grandfather and Amy thought it?

They came one minute early—Frances had, of course, been watching the clock on the mantel in the sitting room.

Amy came into the room first, all youthful high spirits as she curtsied first to Aunt Martha and then to Aunt Gertrude and smiled warmly at each of them. She stretched out both hands to Frances and looked as delighted to see her as if they were long-lost sisters—alarming thought.

“Miss Allard!” she exclaimed. “I am
so
glad to see you again. And you have made Miss Driscoll all better, as Luce predicted you would.”

The Earl of Edgecombe came next, all bent frailty and twinkling eyes as he made his bow to the older ladies and then reached out his right hand to Frances.

“By fair means or foul, ma'am,” he said, beaming genially at her, “I mean to hear you sing again before I die.”

“I hope, my lord,” she said, setting her hand in his and watching him carry it to his lips, “you are not planning to do that anytime soon.”

He chuckled and patted her hand before releasing it.

And then came Lucius, bringing up the rear, looking quite impossibly handsome in his black evening clothes with dull gold embroidered waistcoat and white linen and lace. He was smiling charmingly at the aunts and then turning to make a formal bow to Frances.

She curtsied.

The aunts smirked and looked charmed.

“Miss Allard?” he said.

“Lord Sinclair.”

Drawing air into her lungs was taking a conscious effort.

Everyone seemed remarkably pleased with everyone else despite the fact that they were an ill-assorted group. They proceeded in to dinner almost immediately, the earl with a great-aunt on each arm and Viscount Sinclair with Frances on his right arm and Amy on his left. And the conversation remained lively throughout the meal and in the sitting room afterward.

Soon, Frances thought, the evening would be over and her ordeal at an end. The courtesies would have been observed and in five days' time she could retreat to Bath and her normal life.

It was a strangely dreary prospect, considering the fact that she really did like teaching—and that she loved all her pupils and had genuine friends at the school.

“I daresay Miss Marshall could entertain us at the pianoforte if only there were one in this house,” Great-Aunt Martha said. “And I know that Frances could with her voice. But I will not suggest that she sing unaccompanied, much as I know she would acquit herself well if she did.”

“She has always had perfect pitch,” Great-Aunt Gertrude explained.

“I am very thankful there
is
no instrument,” Amy said, laughing merrily. “And I daresay Grandpapa and Luce are glad of it too. Anyone who ever says I play competently is being excessively kind to me.”

“I will not pretend that I am not disappointed to be unable to hear Miss Allard sing again,” the earl said, “but all things happen for a purpose, I firmly believe. There
is
a pianoforte at Marshall House, you see, and a superior one too. It will be my greatest pleasure to entertain you three ladies to dinner one evening later in the week. And afterward, Miss Allard, you may sing for your supper.” His eyes twinkled kindly at her from beneath his white eyebrows. “If you will, that is. It will not be a condition of your coming to dine. But
will
you sing for me there?”

As had happened in Bath, then, this encounter was to be prolonged, was it? She was to see them all yet again?

Frances glanced at her great-aunts. They were beaming back at her, both of them looking utterly happy. How could she say no and deny them a little more pleasure? And really, deep down, did she even want to say no?

“Very well, then,” she said. “I will come and sing, my lord, just for you and my aunts. Thank you. It will be my pleasure.”

“Splendid!” He rubbed his hands together. “Caroline will accompany you. I shall ask her tomorrow morning. You must come one afternoon and discuss your choice of music with her and practice a little.”

“Thank you,” she said. “That would be a good idea.”

“Will you grant one more request?” he asked. “Whatever else you choose to sing, will you also sing what you did in Bath? I have longed to hear it again.”

“And I love to sing it, my lord.” She smiled warmly at him.

She was sitting at some remove from the fireplace, since Great-Aunt Gertrude always liked to keep the fire built high. The earl turned his attention to Great-Aunt Martha, who sat close to him, and Great-Aunt Gertrude invited Amy to sit on the stool by her feet and tell her all about her exciting experiences in Bath and what she had done in London since then. Viscount Sinclair, who had been standing behind his grandfather's chair, one arm leaning on the back of it, came to sit on the sofa beside Frances.

“You are in good looks tonight,” he said.

“Thank you.” She had tried her best all evening to ignore him—rather akin, she thought ruefully, to trying to ignore the incoming tide when one was seated on the beach in its direct path.

“I trust,” he said, “Miss Martin's school was not left in a state of chaos and incipient collapse when you came here.”

“It is no thanks to you that it was not,” she said sharply.

“Ah.”

It was all he said in acknowledgment of the fact that she knew his role in bringing her here.

“I trust,” she said, “Miss Hunt is in good health.
And
good looks.”

“I really do not give a tinker's damn,” he said softly, prompting her to look fully at him for the first time. Fortunately, he had spoken quietly enough that she was the only one to have heard his shocking words.

“Why did you do this?” she asked him. “Why did you persuade my great-aunt to send for me?”

“She needed you, Frances,” he said. “So did your other aunt, who was actually bedridden the last time I was here.”

“I am being asked to believe, then,” she said, “that your motive was purely altruistic?”

“What do
you
think?” He smiled at her, a rather wolfish smile that had her insides turning over.

“And why did you come here the first time anyway?” she asked. “Just to visit two elderly ladies out of the kindness of your heart?”

“You are angry with me,” he said instead of answering. And instead of smiling now, he was looking at her with intense eyes and compressed lips and hard, square jaw.

“Yes, I am angry,” she admitted. “I do not like being manipulated, Lord Sinclair. I do not like having someone else thinking he knows better than I what makes me happy.”

“Contented,” he said.

“Contented, then,” she conceded.

“I
do
know better than you what will make you
happy,
” he said.

“I think not, Lord Sinclair.”

“I could accomplish it,” he said, “within a month. Less. I could bring you professional happiness. And personal happiness in such abundance that your cup would run over with it, Frances.”