I shall come to escort you. . . .

Perhaps we will get to dance together again . . .

Life was so terribly unfair. Just last evening she had been feeling happy again. And now . . .

Now it seemed that everything about her—every part of her body, her head, her emotions—was in a seething turmoil.

She read attentively through one four-page essay before realizing that she had not absorbed a single word.

It would be well, she told herself severely, to remember that she was a teacher. It was her primary and only really important role in life.

She was a teacher.

She started to read from the beginning again.

Lucius frowned at his image in the looking glass a few moments after he had dismissed his valet. He always took pains to look his best. It was, after all, part of being a gentleman always to look fashionable and well groomed, especially when one was known as something of a Corinthian. But why the devil had he made poor Jeffreys discard three perfectly respectably tied neckcloths before he had been satisfied with the fourth?

Was he turning into some sort of dandy?

He was going to an assembly in Bath, for the love of God, not to a ball at Carlton House! He would be fortunate if there were a dozen people below the age of fifty there. It was very probably going to be one long snore of an evening. And yet here he was, going to more than usual trouble over his appearance.

He could hardly believe that he, Lucius Marshall, Viscount Sinclair, was actually going to attend such an insipid gathering. He rarely attended balls or routs even in London, though he would have to do so this spring, of course. He could treat this evening as something in the nature of a rehearsal for things to come.

His frown became a grimace, and he turned away from the glass.

Amy was already dressed and pacing the sitting room floor, he found when he went downstairs, even though she and their grandfather were not scheduled to walk across to the Upper Rooms for half an hour yet. She had been in a fever of excitement all day, quite unable to settle to anything.

“Well, you look remarkably pretty this evening,” he said after she had caught up the sides of her skirt and pirouetted before him and he had looked her over critically from head to toe. He approved of her pale blue muslin dress—he had helped pick it out two days ago—and her carefully curled and coifed hair. Her maid had had the good sense not to try to make her look older than her years. Although she did not have either Caroline’s height and elegance or Emily’s dimples and natural curls, she might yet turn out to be the prettiest of the three, he thought. Margaret, of course, had been a beauty in her day and was still handsome now that she was in her thirties and the mother of three.

“Will I do, then?” Amy looked at him, flushed and bright-eyed.

“Very well indeed,” he said. “If you are mobbed by all the gentlemen tonight, I shall have to beat them off with my quizzing glass.”

“Oh, Luce.” She laughed in obvious delight. “I hope you will not look quite so fierce when you stand beside me or no one will muster the courage to ask me to dance at all. You do look splendid, though.”

“Thank you, ma’am.” He made her a mock bow. “You will walk slowly when you leave the house with Grandpapa, Amy? You will not gallop along in your excitement and force him to keep up with you?”

She sobered instantly. “Of course I will not,” she said. “I think the waters really must be doing him some good, do not you, Luce? He has looked quite well lately.”

“He has,” he agreed, though they both knew that he would never actually be well again.

“I just can’t wait to go,” she said, clasping her hands to her bosom, “or to see Miss Allard again. She is exceedingly amiable and treats me like a grown-up. And she is lovely too, even though she does not dress in the first stare of fashion. I admire her lovely dark hair and eyes. Oh, when will Grandpapa be ready?”

“At exactly the time he said he would be,” Lucius told her, striding over to the window. “You know how punctual he always is. And if I am to be punctual, I must be on my way. I see Peters has the carriage outside.”

A couple of minutes later he was on his way to Miss Martin’s school again.

There had been letters from his mother and Caroline this morning. Prominent in the news they had both been eager to impart was the fact that the Marquess of Godsworthy had arrived in town for the Season with Lord and Lady Balderston—and with Portia, of course. His mother had called upon the two ladies with Caroline and Emily. Miss Hunt was in good looks, they had reported. Lady Balderston had asked about him and said she looked forward to seeing him in the near future.

Portia Hunt was always in good looks, and so that was no news. He could not remember ever seeing her with the proverbial hair out of place—not even when she was a child.

The carriage drew to a halt outside the school doors, and Lucius descended to the pavement, feeling rather as if he were up to something clandestine—he was about to escort another woman to a ball.

A strange scene met his eyes when the porter answered the door to his knock. Frances Allard was standing in the middle of the hallway, wearing a dress of silver-shot gray muslin with a silver silk sash beneath her bosom and two rows of the same silk ribbon about the hem. Another lady was kneeling on the floor beside her, a needle and thread in her hand while she stitched up a part of the ribbon that must have pulled loose from the dress. A third lady was bending toward the second, a few pins cupped in the open palm of her hand. Miss Martin was draping a paisley shawl about Frances’s shoulders and smoothing it into place.

The two seamstresses turned identically flushed and laughing faces his way as he stepped inside. Frances bit into her lower lip, looking faintly embarrassed, but then she laughed too.

“Oh, dear,” she said.

The vivid loveliness of her merry expression smote him like a fist to the abdomen and fairly robbed him of breath for a moment.

“Another gentleman who chooses to arrive five minutes before his appointed time,” Miss Martin said severely.

“I do beg your pardon.” Lucius raised his eyebrows. “Should I perhaps go back outside and wait on the pavement until the five minutes have expired?”

They all dissolved into laughter again—even Miss Martin smirked.

“No, no, I am ready,” Frances said as the thread was snapped free and the ribbon about her hem pulled into place. “You have met Miss Martin, Lord Sinclair. May I present my fellow teachers, Miss Jewell and Miss Osbourne?”

She indicated the two seamstresses, both of whom were young and pretty. They were both looking at him with frank interest.

“Miss Jewell?” He bowed to the fair-haired, blue-eyed teacher. “Miss Osbourne?” He bowed to the auburn-haired little beauty.

They both curtsied in return.

A night out for one of their number, he suddenly realized, must be a momentous occasion for all of them. He felt that he was being given an unwilling glimpse into another, alien world, in which life for women was not a constant and idle round of parties and balls and routs. Yet these teachers were all young and all personable. Even the stiff-mannered, dour Miss Martin was not an antidote.

But why the devil had Frances chosen to be one of them? She did not need to be.

The porter, silent and glowering, as if he resented the intrusion of any male except himself into this hallowed female domain, held the door open, and Lucius followed Frances out onto the pavement and handed her into the carriage.

“The weather has stayed fine for the occasion,” she said brightly as the carriage rocked into motion.

“Would you have canceled if it had rained, then?” he asked.

“No, of course not.” She clung with both hands to the ends of her shawl.

“You were, then,” he said, “merely making polite conversation?”

“I am sorry if I bore you,” she said, an edge of annoyance in her voice. “Perhaps I ought to have remained silent. I shall do so for the rest of the journey.”

“What do you usually do for entertainment?” he asked her after she had suited action—or rather inaction—to words for a minute or so. “You and those other teachers? You live in Bath yet you have never been to an assembly. Do you put the girls to bed each night and then sit together conversing over the clacking of your knitting needles?”

“If we do, Lord Sinclair,” she said, “you need not concern yourself about us. We are quite happy.”

“You said that once before,” he told her. “And then you changed the word to contented. Is contentment enough, then, Frances?”

He thought she was not going to answer him. He watched her in the faint light of dusk. She was not wearing a bonnet tonight. Her dark hair was sleek over her head and dressed in curls at the back of her neck. They were not elaborate curls, but they were certainly more becoming than the usual knot. She looked elegant and lovely. She was going to make every other woman in the Upper Rooms look overfussy.

“Yes, it is,” she said. “Happiness must always find its balance in unhappiness and excitement in depression. Contentment is more easily maintained and brings with it tranquillity of mind and peace of soul.”

“Good Lord!” he said. “Could anything be more of a complete bore? I think you are a coward, Frances.”

She turned wide, indignant eyes on him.

“A coward?” she said. “I suppose it was cowardly of me not to throw away my career, my security, my future, and my friends and go off to London with you.”

“Very cowardly,” he said.

“If cowardliness means being sane,” she said, “then, yes, by your definition I am a coward, Lord Sinclair, and make no apology for the fact.”

“You might have been happy,” he said. “You might have taken a chance on life. And I would soon enough have discovered your talent, you know. You might have sung for larger audiences than you will ever find here. You cannot tell me that with your voice you have never dreamed of fame.”

“And fortune,” she said sharply. “The two inevitably go together, I believe, Lord Sinclair. I suppose you would have made me happy. I suppose you would have sponsored my singing career and have made sure that I met all the right people.”

“Why not?” he asked. “I would not have chosen to keep your talent all to myself.”

“And so,” she said, her voice trembling with some emotion that he thought must be anger, “a woman is quite incapable of knowing her own mind and finding the contentment, even happiness, she wants of life without the aid and intervention of some man. Is that what you are saying, Lord Sinclair?”

“I was unaware,” he said, “that we were speaking of men and women in general. I was speaking of you. And I know you quite well enough to understand that you were not made for contentment. How absurd of you to believe that you were. You are fairly bursting at the seams with passion, Frances—not all of it sexual, I might add.”

“How dare you!” she cried. “You do not know me at all.”

“I beg your pardon,” he said. “I certainly know you in the biblical sense—and one night was quite enough for me to draw certain conclusions about your capacity for sexual passion. I have spoken with you—and quarreled with you—on several occasions, this evening included. I have laughed and played with you. And, perhaps most significant of all, I have heard you sing. I know you quite well.”

“Singing has nothing to do with—”

“Ah, but it does,” he said. “Anyone who uses an extraordinary talent to the full, forgetting very self in the process, has no choice but to pour out himself or herself. There is no hiding on such occasions, whether the product is a painting or a poem or a song. When you sang at the Reynolds soiree, you revealed far more than just a lovely voice, Frances. You revealed yourself, and only a dolt would have failed to see you for the deeply passionate woman that you are.”