But Susanna could not resist teasing further.

“It is Mr. Blake who is to escort her, though,” she said. “I think Frances has a beau. What do you think, Anne?”

Anne smiled from one to the other of them, her needle suspended above her work.

“I believe Frances has an admirer and would-be beau,” she said. “I also believe Frances has not yet decided if she will accept him in that latter capacity.”

“I think she had better decide against it,” Miss Martin added. “I have a strong objection to losing my French and music teacher. Though in a good—a very good cause—I suppose I could be persuaded to make the sacrifice.”

Mr. Aubrey Blake was the physician who attended the pupils at Miss Martin’s school whenever one of them needed his medical services. He was a serious, conscientious, handsome man in his middle thirties who had begun to show an interest in Frances during the past month or so. He had met her shopping on Milsom Street one Saturday afternoon and had insisted upon escorting her all the way back to the school and upon carrying her purchases himself, small and lightweight though they were.

Her three friends had collapsed in mirth afterward when Frances had told them how she had almost expired of embarrassment lest he somehow discover that that light bundle contained new stockings.

And then when she had taken one of the day pupils home early one day because the girl had a fever and waited until Mr. Blake had been summoned so that she could carry word of the girl’s condition back with her, he had insisted upon walking her all the way to the school doors.

Now he had got word of the fact that she had been invited to sing at the Reynolds soiree, and since he was an invited guest himself, he had called at the school, had Keeble summon Frances to the visitors’ sitting room after very correctly asking permission of Miss Martin, and asked to be allowed the honor of being her escort for the evening.

She would have had a hard time saying no if she had wished to do so. Actually, though, she had been relieved. Since the outing was to be in the evening, she knew that Claudia would have insisted upon sending one of the maids with her. It would have been a dreadful inconvenience. Besides, walking in on an evening party alone would have required a great deal of fortitude.

“I do not believe a teacher has time for a beau,” she said now. “And even if this teacher did, I am not at all sure she would choose Mr. Blake. He is perhaps a trifle too earnest for her taste. However, he is handsome and he is a perfect gentleman and he has a perfectly respectable profession, and if she decides that she does want him as a beau, she will be sure to inform her dearest friends and warn her employer of her impending departure into the world of idle marital bliss.”

She laughed as she lifted her cup to her lips.

“Well, I would not settle for a mere physician,” Susanna said, sitting down again and clasping her knees as before. “He would have to be a duke or no one at all if he were to attract me. Except a prince, maybe.”

Susanna had come to the school at the age of twelve as a charity pupil. She had lied about her age before that, saying she was fifteen in an attempt to acquire employment as a lady’s maid, but two days after she had been rejected in that capacity she had been found by Mr. Hatchard, Miss Martin’s London agent, and offered a position as pupil at the school. Two years ago Miss Martin had given her employment as a junior teacher. What her background was before the age of twelve Frances did not know.

“Oh, not a duke, Susanna,” Miss Martin said firmly.

Frances and Anne exchanged amused glances. Susanna rested her forehead on her knees to hide her own smile. They all knew about Miss Martin’s aversion to dukes. She had once been employed by the Duke of Bewcastle as governess to his sister, Lady Freyja Bedwyn. Like a string of governesses before her, Miss Martin had resigned after a very short time, having discovered that the job—or rather her pupil—was impossible. But unlike the others, she had refused to accept either the money payment the duke had offered or the recommendation to another post. Instead she had marched down the driveway of Lindsey Hall, taking her triumph and her personal possessions with her.

After she had opened the school and struggled to keep it going, she had been offered the financial assistance of an anonymous benefactor. But before she had accepted, Miss Martin had made Mr. Hatchard swear on a Bible that the benefactor was not the Duke of Bewcastle.

“He will have to be a prince,” she added now. “I flatly refuse to attend your wedding if the groom is a duke.”

Anne had finished her mending. She folded the shirt, picked up her scissors, needle, and thread, and got to her feet.

“It is time I looked in on David,” she said, “to make sure he is still sleeping peacefully. He ought to sleep well, though, after all the running he did in the meadows this afternoon. Thank you for the tea, Claudia. Good night, all.”

But the others had risen too. Days at the school began early and ran late and were extraordinarily busy between times. Very rarely did they talk late into the night.

Frances thought about the following evening as she got ready for bed. The singing was something she looked forward to with eager anticipation, though she had not done any public singing in three years. She would be nervous when the time came, of course, but that would be natural. She would not let it affect her performance.

She was, however, a little nervous about another aspect of the evening. Mr. Blake really would become her suitor with a little encouragement. He had not said so, but her woman’s intuition told her she was not wrong. He was perfectly eligible even though he must be at least ten years older than she. He was also good-looking, intelligent, amiable, and well respected.

Her prospects of marrying were not bountiful. She would be foolish not to encourage him. She enjoyed teaching, and her salary was sufficient to cover all her most basic needs. The school provided her with a home and friendship. But she was only twenty-three years old, and her life had once been very different. She could not pretend to herself that she would be perfectly happy to remain as she was for the rest of her life.

She had needs, basic human needs that were very hard to ignore.

Mr. Blake might be her only chance of attracting a decent husband. Of course, matters were not quite that simple. There would be details from her past to explain to him, some of them not reflecting well on her. He might not be at all willing to pursue his interest in her once all had been told. On the other hand, perhaps he might. She would not know if she did not put the matter to the test.

She blew out her candle when she was ready for bed, drew back the curtains as she always did, and lay on her back, staring out into the darkness and picking out a few stars.

She had wept when she had learned that she was not with child. Tears of relief—of course!—and tears of sadness.

In three months she had not fully recovered her spirits. It was because she had lain with him, she told herself, because she had given him her virginity. Of course it was difficult to recover, to forget him. It would be strange if it were not.

But when she was being strictly truthful with herself, she knew that it was more than that. Most of the time when she remembered Lucius Marshall, it was as much other things about him she recalled as it was that. She thought of him peeling potatoes and shoveling snow and drying dishes and lifting his jug-eared snowman’s head onto the hollowed-out shoulders and waltzing and . . . Well, of course, her thoughts always did come back to what had followed that waltz.

She even remembered him angry and contemptuous and arrogant and standing toe-to-toe with her on a snowy road after hauling her unceremoniously out of her carriage.

Staring out at one particular star and wondering how many thousands or millions of miles away it was, she admitted to herself that if it were not for Lucius Marshall she would be able to see her way more clearly in this matter of Mr. Blake—and of course there would be less to confess. But she was all too painfully aware of the differences between the two men and—more to the point—the differences in her reactions to them.

With Mr. Blake there was no magic.

But then Mr. Blake was a steady, dependable man who could perhaps offer her a decent future. And she did not know for certain that there would never be any magic if he should choose to court her, did she?

She should encourage him, she decided, closing her eyes.

She would encourage him, in fact.

She was going to start being more sensible.

Her eyes opened again and focused on the star.

“Lucius,” she whispered, “you might as well be as far away as that star for all the good pining for you has done me. But this is the end. I am not going to think about you ever again.”

It was an eminently sensible decision.

Frances lay awake half the night contemplating it.

It was Miss Martin herself rather than Keeble who came to Frances’s room the following evening five minutes before Mr. Blake was due, to inform her that he had already arrived.

“Fortunately,” Frances said while Miss Martin looked her over, “I have so few chances to wear the ivory silk that not many people would know it is several years old.”

“And it is of such a classic design,” Miss Martin said, looking assessingly at its high waistline and short sleeves and modestly scooped neckline, “that it does not look out of fashion at all. It will do. So will your hair, though you have dressed it as severely as ever. There is no way, of course, that you can hide your great beauty. If I were given to personal vanity, I would be mortally envious. No, jealous.”

Frances laughed and reached for her brown cloak.

“No, no,” Miss Martin said, “you must wear my paisley shawl, Frances. That is why I am carrying it over my arm. And one more thing before you go. I was not serious last evening. Of course, I would hate to lose any of my teachers. We are a good team and I have grown inordinately fond of the three of you who live at the school with me. But if you should really develop an attachment to Mr. Blake—”

“Oh, Claudia,” Frances said, laughing again and catching her up in a quick hug, “what a goose you are. He is accompanying me to a party at which I am not even a full-fledged guest. That is all.”

“Hmm,” Miss Martin said. “You have not yet seen the look in his eye this evening, Frances.”

But Frances did see it a few minutes later when she went downstairs and found him pacing the hall while a darkly frowning Keeble stood guarding his domain with his habitual suspicion for the whole of the male world once it stepped over the threshold. Mr. Blake looked very distinguished indeed in his black evening cloak with his black silk hat in one hand. And when he looked up to watch her descend the stairs, there was a gleam of approval and something more in his eyes.

“As always, Miss Allard,” he said, “you look remarkably elegant.”

“Thank you,” she said.

He had a carriage waiting at the door, and within a very short time they had arrived at the Reynolds house on

Queen Anne Square

. It felt strange to Frances after so long to be going to a party again. She was once more very thankful for the escort of Mr. Blake. The house seemed already to be filled with guests for all that Bath was reputed to be no longer the fashionable place to be. Mrs. Reynolds was very proudly letting each arriving guest know that the Earl of Edgecombe was in attendance with his two grandchildren.