A little less than three hours later she was on her way back to Bath. It was already afternoon. It would certainly have been wiser to wait until morning, as her aunts had tried to convince her, but once the decision had been made she had been almost desperate to be back in Bath, back to the sane, busy routine of school life, back with her friends.

It was almost certain that she would have to stop somewhere on the road for the night, but she was not penniless. She could afford one night at an inn.

It was not just a desperation to be in Bath that drove her to such an abrupt departure, though. It was also a desperation to leave London, to leave him before he could come with more excuses to speak with her—and she very much feared that he would come despite his protestations to the contrary last evening.

She could not bear to see him again.

She wanted her heart to have a chance to begin mending.

Her great-aunts had been disappointed, of course. What about Baron Heath? they asked her. What about her singing career? What about Lord Sinclair? He was surely in love with their dear Frances. They had both come to that conclusion last evening.

But finally they had accepted her decision and assured her they felt well blessed that she had come all the way to London just to see them and had stayed for almost a whole week.

They had insisted upon sending her back in their traveling carriage.

And finally, after lengthy, tearful farewells and tight hugs Frances was on her way.

This was a little like the way it had all begun after Christmas, she thought as the London streets gradually gave place to countryside and she tried to find a comfortable position in the carriage—she felt weary right through to the marrow of her bones. It was fitting perhaps that this was how it would all end.

But this time there was no snow.

And this time there was no Lucius Marshall coming along behind her in a faster carriage.

She shed a very few tears of self-pity and grief and then dried them firmly with her handkerchief and blew her nose.

If he had many more dealings with Frances Allard, Lucius decided, he might well find that he had ground his teeth down to stumps.

He had arrived at the house on Portman Street, all prepared to shake the living daylights out of her, only to find that she had flown from there a scant half hour before. He had then had to spend all of ten minutes with her rather tearful great-aunts, who declared that he ought to have come sooner and persuaded their dear Frances to stay longer. But she had decided that she had been away from her classes long enough and must return to them immediately even though she could not possibly expect to reach Bath today.

“You sent her in your carriage, then, ma’am?” he had asked, addressing Mrs. Melford.

“Of course,” she had told him. “We certainly would not allow her to travel in the discomfort of a stagecoach, Lord Sinclair. She is our niece—and our heir.”

He had taken his leave soon after. And that, of course, ought to have been that.

End of story.

Good-bye.

The end.

But he had left the drawing room at Marshall House with such a flourish of high drama—totally unplanned and unrehearsed—that it would seem anticlimactic now to creep back there with the announcement that he had abandoned his plan to offer Frances Allard marriage because she had left town.

Offer her marriage indeed after she had refused him once and shown no sign of changing her mind since!

He really did appear to be suffering from an incurable case of insanity.

After walking back to Marshall House, he took the stairs two at a time up to his room—at least, that was his intention. But he met a veritable wall of people at the top of the first flight—they must have been watching for him at the drawing room window and had come to intercept him.

He half expected to see Portia among them, but neither she nor Lady Balderston was there. All the rest of them were, though, except his grandfather—even Amy.

“Well, Luce?” that young lady called out when he was still six stairs below them. “Did she say yes? Did she?”

“Amy,” their mother said sharply, “hold your tongue. Lucius, whatever have you done?”

“I have been out on a wild-goose chase,” he said. “She was not there. She is on her way back to Bath.”

“I have never been more mortified in my life,” his mother said. “Portia will not have you now, you know. Lady Balderston will not allow it, and neither will Lord Balderston, I daresay, when he hears what has happened. And even if they would, I do not believe she will. She behaved with great dignity after you had left and even advised Emily on the gown she ought to wear to the Lawson ball tomorrow evening. But you humiliated her in front of most of your family.”

“Did I, Mama?” He came up to the top stair and Tait stepped to one side to give him room. He also managed to favor his brother-in-law with a private smirk. “How? By suggesting that she is a gossip? I ought to have been more tactful, perhaps, but I spoke nothing but the truth.”

“I quite agree,” Emily said. “As if I am not perfectly capable of choosing my own gown!”

“I have never liked Lady Lyle,” Margaret added. “She always has a half-smile on her face. I do not trust it.”

“Oh, do be quiet,” the viscountess said. “You are being quite deliberately obtuse, Lucius. You know very well that Portia has been expecting a marriage offer from you every day for the past month and more. We have all expected it.”

“Then you have all been wrong,” he said. “I promised to choose a bride this spring, not Portia Hunt.”

Amy clapped her hands.

“I am glad, Luce,” Caroline said. “I have not liked Portia’s attitude this spring. I have not liked her.”

“And you believe Miss Allard is a suitable choice?” his mother asked, frowning.

“I cannot see why not,” he said, “except that she has refused me more than once.”

“What?” That was Emily.

“Is she mad?” That was Margaret.

Tait grimaced.

“Oh, no, Luce,” Amy said. “No! She would not do that.”

“Oh, do be quiet, all of you,” Lady Sinclair said. “You will be waking your grandfather.”

“He is still sleeping?” Lucius asked.

“He has overtaxed his strength, I am afraid,” his mother said. “He is not at all the thing today. And now this. He will be very upset, Lucius. He has had his heart set on your marrying Portia. Are you sure you did not act with more than usual impulsiveness this afternoon? Perhaps if you were to call at Berkeley Square and apologize—”

“I’ll not do it,” Lucius said. “And while I am standing here talking, I am wasting valuable time. Pardon me, but I have to change my clothes. My curricle should be at the door within half an hour.”

“Where are you going?” His mother looked pained.

“After Frances, of course,” he said, heading for the next flight of stairs. “Where else?”

Amy, he could hear, whooped with delight before being shushed by their mother.

Frances was aching in every limb. It was impossible to find a comfortable position on the hard seat of the carriage. And whenever she did think that perhaps she had found one, the vehicle was sure to bounce over a hard rut or else jar through a pothole and she was reminded that if the carriage had ever been well sprung it was no longer so.

Even so she found herself near to dozing as evening approached. Soon it would be dusk and they would be forced to stop, she knew. She had refused her great-aunts’ offer of a maid to accompany her for respectability. She did not mind being alone. They would not stop at a busy or fashionable posting inn, and her serviceable clothes would prevent her hosts and fellow guests from being too scandalized.

Tomorrow she would be back at the school. There would be little rest, of course. She would have to find out exactly what the temporary teacher had been doing with her classes and she would have to prepare to take over the next day. It would not be easy. She had never before taken even as much as a day off work. But she welcomed the thought of being busy again.

And every passing day would push the glorious wonder of last evening’s concert and the terrible moment of saying a final good-bye to Lucius farther and farther back in memory until finally a whole day would pass when she would not think of either the height or the depth of emotion the last week had brought her.

She was dreaming of being inside a block of snow hiding from Charles. She was dreaming that she was singing and holding a high note when a snowball collided with her mouth and she saw Lucius grinning broadly and applauding with enthusiasm. She was dreaming that the senior madrigal choir was singing for Lord Heath but everyone was flat and singing at a different tempo while she flapped her arms in an ineffectual attempt to restore order.

She dreamed a dozen other meaningless, disjointed, vivid dreams before starting awake as the carriage swayed and tipped, seemingly out of control.

Frances grabbed for the worn leather strap above her head and waited for disaster to strike. There were the sounds of thundering hooves and yelling voices, and then horses came into view—traveling in the same direction as her own carriage was taking. They were pulling a gentleman’s curricle, Frances could see, her eyes widening in indignation. A curricle on the road to Bath? And traveling at such a breakneck speed? It was thundering past on what seemed to be a particularly narrow stretch of road. What if there was something coming the other way?

She pressed her face to the window and peered up at the driver on his high perch. He was very smartly clad in a long buff riding coat with several capes and a tall hat set at a slight angle.

Frances, eyes wide as saucers, was not quite sure she recognized him. He was up high and almost past her line of vision. But the groom up behind him was neither. He was looking utterly contemptuous and yelling something, presumably at Thomas, that she mercifully could not hear. Just the expression on his face told her that it was not complimentary, though.

She had not been mistaken, then. If the man was Peters, the driver was certain to be Viscount Sinclair.

Why was she somehow not surprised?

She leaned back in her seat after the light vehicle was past. She closed her eyes, caught between fury and a totally inappropriate hilarity.

He talked about banishing the word pleasant from the English language. But it seemed that he had already totally obliterated the word good-bye from his own personal vocabulary.

She did not relinquish her hold on the strap. When Thomas pulled the carriage to an abrupt halt she was ready for the resulting jars and jolts that might have catapulted her across to the seat opposite and flattened her nose against its backrest had she been unprepared.