by Mary Balogh
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?
Had he really been hiding behind his hat like a groveling coward?
He felt decidedly shaken, if the truth were known. He wondered what would have happened if he had been standing up on the street rather than down here in the meadow and they had come face-to-face. He wondered if he would have stuttered and stammered and otherwise made a prize ass of himself or if he would have gazed coolly at her, raised his eyebrows, and pretended to search for her name in his memory.
Lord, he hoped it would have been the latter.
And then, as the girls disappeared into Marlborough Lane, he found himself wondering how she would have behaved. Would she have blushed and lost her composure? Would she have raised her eyebrows and pretended to have half forgotten him?
Damnation! Perhaps she had forgotten him.
It was a very good thing they had not come face-to-face. His self-esteem might well have suffered a blow from which it would never recover. His grandfather and Amy and these two ladies would have witnessed his humiliation. So would the crocodile of schoolgirls, their eyes avidly drinking in the scene so that they could titter and giggle over it in their dormitory for the next week or month or so.
There would have been nothing left for him to do but find a gun somewhere and blow his brains out.
He felt suddenly irritated again and intensely annoyed with Miss Frances Allard, almost as if she had seen him and had not recognized him.
Perhaps, he thought, gritting his teeth, she had been brought into his life by a malevolent fate in order to keep him humble—this schoolteacher who had preferred her teaching job to him.
Mrs. Reynolds and Mrs. Abbotsford were taking their leave. Lucius touched the brim of his hat to them and looked closely at his grandfather.
“I think that is definitely enough for one afternoon, sir,” he said. “It is time to go home for tea.”
“Perhaps Amy would like to stay out longer,” the earl suggested.
But Amy smiled cheerfully at him and took one of his arms while her other was still linked through Lucius’s.
“I am very happy to go home for tea with you, Grandpapa,” she said. “It has been a wonderfully exciting afternoon, has it not? We must have spoken with a dozen people or more. And we have been invited to a soiree tomorrow evening. I will have much to say when I write to Mama and Caroline and Emily tonight. I do not know what I am going to wear.”
“I believe,” Lucius said with an exaggerated sigh, “I can predict another shopping expedition to Milsom Street tomorrow.”
“You may purchase a ready-made gown with my purse, child,” the earl said. “And all the trimmings to go with it. But do trust to Lucius’s good taste when you make your choices. It is impeccable.”
As they walked, Lucius found himself grappling with a memory of Frances Allard sealing the edges of a beef pie with the pad of her thumb, pricking the lid so that the steam would not blow it off, and then bending over the hot oven to set it inside.
Why he should still feel rather like the beef filling lying beneath the unpricked lid in the middle of the hot oven was a mystery to him—not to mention a severe annoyance.
Why had she chosen today of all days to bring a class up onto the Crescent?
Or, perhaps more to the point, why the devil had he chosen today of all days to stroll
there with his grandfather and sister?
It felt damnably unmanly to have had his composure shaken by a one-night lover three months after the event.
“Oh, Luce,” Amy said, squeezing his arm, “is not Bath a wonderful place to be?”
“It is absolutely not fair,” Susanna Osbourne declared, “that I spent only an hour outside playing games with the junior girls and have acquired lobster cheeks and a cherry nose and freckles to boot while Frances spent a whole afternoon walking with the middle class and looks bronze and beautiful. It is not even summer yet.”
“Bronze is not considered any more becoming for a lady than lobster,” Miss Martin said, looking up from the tatting with which she kept her hands busy. “You teach the girls that they must guard their complexions against the sunlight at all costs, do you not, Susanna? I have no sympathy, then, if you were too busy having fun with your class to guard your own—and I could see whenever I glanced out the window at you that you were having fun. You were actually participating in the games yourself. As for Frances—well, she is the exception to all rules as far as looks and complexions are concerned. It is her Italian heritage. We poor English mortals must simply endure the unfairness of it.”
But despite the words themselves, her eyes twinkled as she looked across the room at her youngest teacher, who was sitting forward in her chair, her slippered feet propped on a stool, her slim arms clasped about her knees, her face bright and noticeably sunburned.
“Besides,” Anne Jewell said as she mended a tear down the back of a small boy’s shirt, “you do not look like any lobster I have ever seen, Susanna. You look rosy and youthful and healthy and prettier than ever. Though your nose would shine like a beacon in the dark, I suppose.”
They all laughed at poor Susanna, who touched the offending organ gingerly and wrinkled it as she smiled and then joined in the laughter.
They were sitting, the four of them, in Miss Martin’s sitting room as they often did in the evenings after the girls had been sent to their dormitories under Matron’s care and David had been put to bed.
“Did your walk prove thoroughly educational, Frances?” Miss Martin asked, her eyes still twinkling. “Did the girls acquire as much material for writing assignments as you hoped?”
Frances chuckled. “They were marvelously attentive,” she said. “I do wonder, though, how much detail their minds retained of the architecture of the Circus and the Crescent and the Upper Assembly Rooms. I do not doubt they could describe down to the minutest detail every person of fashion we passed—especially if that person happened to be male and below the age of one-and-twenty. I was very proud of them all when we were crossing the Pulteney Bridge on the way back here, though. There was a group of young bucks swaggering there and making a few pointed remarks. One of them was even impertinent enough to make use of a quizzing glass. The girls all stuck their noses in the air and walked on past as if the young men were invisible.”
Anne and Susanna laughed with her.
“Oh, good girls,” Miss Martin said approvingly, bending her head to her work again.
“Of course,” Frances added, “they did rather spoil the effect after we had crossed Laura Place and were safely out of earshot by buzzing and giggling over those very young men the whole length of Great Pulteney Street. I suppose that is what they will remember most about the outing.”
“But of course,” Anne said. “Would you expect anything different, Frances? They are all either fourteen or fifteen years old. They were acting their age.”
“Quite right, Anne,” Miss Martin said. “Adults are very foolish when they admonish unruly children to act their age. In nine cases out of ten that is exactly what the children are doing.”
“What are you going to wear tomorrow evening, Frances?” Anne asked.
“My ivory silk, I suppose,” Frances said. “It is the best I have.”
“Oh, but of course.” Susanna grinned mischievously at her as she got to her feet to pour them all a second cup of tea. “Frances has a beau.”
“Frances,” Miss Martin said, looking up from her work once more, “has been invited to Mrs. Reynolds’s soiree quite independently of Mr. Blake, Susanna. She was invited on account of her voice, which is like an angel’s. Betsy Reynolds undoubtedly told her mother about it, and Mrs. Reynolds very wisely added Frances to the list of guests who will entertain the company with their superior talent.”
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.