by Mary Balogh
“That is a rule imposed by men because they are afraid of losing to women,” she said.
“Ha!”
They swung higher and higher until the ropes of their swings creaked in protest and the wind whipped at her skirts and the brim of her bonnet and fairly took her breath away on the forward descent and ascent. With every upward swing Frances could see more and more of the gardens below. With every downward swoop she was aware of tree branches rushing by only a few feet away.
“Wheeee!” she cried on one descent.
“The exact word I was searching for,” he called, passing her in the opposite direction.
They were both laughing then and swinging and whooping like a pair of exuberant children until by unspoken assent they gradually slowed and then sat side by side, their swings gently swaying.
“One problem,” he said. “There was no sky to kick.”
“What?” She turned to him, wide-eyed. “You did not feel it? That means you did not swing high enough to touch it. I did and I win.”
“You, Frances Allard,” he said, “are lying through your teeth.”
He had said those exact words before, and the occasion rushed to her mind with startling clarity. They had been lying in bed, and she had just told him she was not cold and he had replied that it was a pity as he might have offered to warm her up.
I am frozen, she had said then.
You lie through your teeth, ma’am, he had answered her, but I like your spirit. Now, I suppose I need to think of some way of warming you . . .
What was she doing here? she wondered suddenly. Why was she doing this again—frolicking with him, wagering against him, laughing with him?
Just a few minutes ago, it seemed, she had been trying to get Rhiannon Jones to feel the melody with her right hand and allow the passion of it to rise above the accompaniment with the left.
“Frances—” he began.
But at that exact moment a large drop of moisture splattered against one of her cheeks and she saw a few more darken the fabric of her cloak. He held out a hand, palm up, and they both looked up.
“Damnation!” he exclaimed. “We are about to get rained upon, and you did not bring an umbrella even though I advised you to do so. We are going to have to make a dash for the pavilion.”
He took her by the hand without a by-your-leave, and a moment later they were running toward the pavilion a short distance away down the hill while the heavens gave every indication that they were about to open in earnest at any moment. By the time they reached shelter, they were both breathless and laughing again.
The pavilion had been built more as a sun shelter than as a refuge from the rain. It was walled on three sides, with a roof that jutted out in front a couple of feet beyond the side walls. Fortunately for them, the wind was blowing from behind and the inside of the shelter remained dry. They sat on the wide bench against the inside wall and watched as the expected deluge arrived. It came down in sheets, drumming against the thin roof, forming a curtain across the front opening, almost obliterating the view of lawns and trees beyond. It felt like sitting behind a massive waterfall.
“One can only hope,” she said, “that this is not about to set in for the day.”
But their laughter had faded, and their solitude seemed far more pronounced here than it had out in the deserted gardens.
He took one of her hands in his and held it in both his own while she looked away and tried not to react to the warmth of his touch.
“Frances,” he said, “I think you had better come to London with me.”
She tried to remove her hand then, but he held it in a firm clasp.
“That was fate,” he said. “And it was speaking loudly and clearly. It was so insistent a fate that it threw us together again this week when we had missed the chance it presented to us after Christmas. Forgive me for saying this, but I have known many women, Frances, and I have not mourned the departure of a single one of them from my life. Until you, that is. I have never before known one for only two days and still been obsessed with her three months later.”
“I suppose,” she said bitterly, “it is because I said no to you and you are not accustomed to women who deny you what you want.”
“I have considered that as a distinct possibility,” he admitted. “But injured pride, if that was all that was involved, would actually have sent me dashing off in the opposite direction to find another woman to bolster my sagging confidence in my own charms. I could never grovel before any woman simply because she had thwarted my will. I would be off in pursuit of more easy prey instead.”
“Of which there is doubtless plenty,” she said tartly.
“Quite so,” he said. “I am young, you see, Frances, and have all my hair and all my teeth, tolerably white. I am also wealthy and titled, with the prospect of vastly more in the future. It is an irresistible combination for many women. But all that is beside the point under present circumstances. I am groveling before you, you see.”
“Nonsense!” Her heart was hammering against her ribs. She would have been able to hear it, she was sure, if the sound of the rain against the roof had not been almost deafening. “You want to get me into bed, that is all.”
Her cheeks grew hot at the bold vulgarity of her own words.
“If that were all it was,” he said, “I would have been satisfied long ago, Frances. I have had you in bed. One bedding is often enough to satisfy simple lust. Yet I am not satisfied.”
She grew hotter. But she could hardly reprove him for his very direct words. She had led the way.
“You need to be in London,” he said. “Bath becomes suffocating after a week or two.”
“You find it so only because you are idle here,” she said. “I am not.”
“Even apart from the fact that you could be with me if you were in London,” he said, “you need to be there for your singing, Frances. You are wasting your talent by teaching music when you should be performing it. If you were in London, I could introduce you to the right people and you would acquire the exposure you need and the audience you deserve.”
She snatched her hand from his and stood up abruptly, suddenly panic-stricken. He wanted to prostitute her talent, then, just as George Ralston had done? And be his mistress on the side, no doubt? Even though he was about to marry someone else? She felt suddenly bilious. What had she expected? She took one step closer to the outdoors and then stopped. There had been no easing of the cloudburst yet.
“I hated London when I lived there,” she said, “and vowed that I would never go back there. And I do not need anyone to introduce me to the right people. I am happy as I am. Can you not understand that?”
“Contented,” he said. “You have admitted before, Frances, that you are contented. And I say again that you are not a woman made for contentment. You were made for glorious, passionate happiness. Oh, and for unhappiness too, of course. The challenge of living is to reach for the one and learn from the other, if only the strength to endure. Come with me.”
“I will not,” she said. “Oh, I absolutely will not. You think that happiness and sexual passion are one and the same, Lord Sinclair, and that the latter is something to be indulged at all costs. There is more to life than physical gratification.”
“For once we are in total agreement,” he said. “You still believe I am trying to persuade you to be my mistress, Frances, do you not?”
“I do,” she said, turning to look down at him. “And if you say otherwise you lie—or you deceive yourself. I am an independent woman here. I am not wealthy, but I am beholden to no one. I have a freedom many women can only dream of. I will not give that up to become your toy until you tire of me.”
“My toy?” he said. “Are you not listening? I want to help you share your talent with the world and be happy and fulfilled as a result. Rid yourself of the notion that I am a simple, unprincipled rake. I want you in bed, yes. Of course I do. But more than that, I want you.”
She shook her head slowly. She w
anted the issue to remain simple. She wanted nothing that would tempt her, as she had been tempted for a few moments back in December. She wanted nothing to shake her resolve to be sensible.
“Do you not understand even now?” he asked her. “I am asking you to be my wife, Frances.”
Her mouth opened to reply even before he had finished speaking. She stared at him and closed it again with a clacking of teeth.
“What?” she said.
“I have discovered,” he said, “that I do not want to live without you. I happen to be currently in need of a wife. My grandfather is dying, I am his heir, and I have promised to do my duty and take a bride while he is still living, it is to be hoped. Only today has it occurred to me that you are perfectly eligible, Frances. Your father presumably had some connection with the French court, and you have family ties with Baron Clifton. There will be some who will feel, of course, that I ought to ally myself with someone of more obviously equal or superior rank and fortune to my own, but I have never paid too much heed to what others think, especially where my own comfort and happiness are concerned. And my grandfather, whose contrary opinion is the only one that does matter to me, is inordinately fond of you—and he honors and respects your talent. He will be won over in a moment when it becomes clear to him that I will have no one but you. And my mother and sisters will be won over—they love me and want my happiness when all is said and done. Marry me, Frances. I do not much like the look of this stone floor, but I will go down on one knee before you if you wish. It is something you will be able to boast of to our grandchildren.”
He flashed a grin at her.
She could not seem to draw sufficient air into her lungs. It was not that there was not enough inside the pavilion. There seemed to be far too much of it, in fact. Her legs were shaking, but if she had tried to return to her seat on the bench, she would have staggered and fallen, she was sure. She stood where she was.
He wanted to marry her?
“You are to marry Miss Hunt,” she said.
He made an impatient gesture with one hand.
“That is the general expectation,” he admitted. “We saw a fair amount of each other while we were growing up, as her family often visited my grandparents and we often visited them. And, of course, our families embarrassed us horribly—or me, anyway—by referring openly to their hopes that we would make a match of it one day and by teasing us mercilessly if we so much as exchanged a glance. And my mother holds firmly to the notion that Portia has been waiting for me to the advanced age of three-and-twenty. But I have never spoken a word to her of any intention to marry her, nor she to me. I am under no obligation whatsoever to offer for her.”
“Perhaps,” she said, “she would disagree with you.”
“She has no grounds for doing so,” he said. “I have made my own choice and it is you. Marry me, Frances.”
She closed her eyes. They were words the romantic, unrealistic part of her had dreamed for three months of hearing. She had even enacted scenes similar to this in her imagination. But if she could ever have expected to hear them in reality, she would have dreaded them. Her heart, she thought, would finally break in all earnest.
When she opened her eyes she was feeling dizzy and somehow staggered back to her seat. He took first one and then both of her hands in his own—they were warm and large enough to encompass her own. He lowered his head and held both of them against his lips.
“I cannot go back to London,” she said.
“Then we will live at Cleve Abbey,” he said. “We will raise a large, riotous family there, Frances, and live happily ever after. You may sing for all our neighbors.”
“You know you could not live in the country indefinitely,” she told him. “You will have to take your place in the House of Lords when you inherit the earldom. I cannot go back to London or polite society.”
“Cannot?” he asked. “Or will not?”
“Both,” she said. “There is nothing in the life you offer me that attracts me.”
“Not even my person?” he asked her, lowering her hands.
She shook her head.
“I do not believe you,” he said.
She looked up at him with a flash of anger.
“That is the trouble with you,” she said. “You really cannot take no for an answer, can you, Lord Sinclair? You cannot believe that any woman in her right mind would prefer the sort of life I lead here to the sort of life you offer me, or that she would prefer relative solitude here to a life in the beau monde with you.”
Both his eyebrows arched upward. But he looked rather as if she had struck him across the face.
“No!” He frowned. “This is not good enough, Frances. What is so abhorrent about life in London or life as the Viscountess Sinclair that you would reject me in order to avoid them? I cannot believe you are so averse to me personally. I have seen you, I have felt you, I have known you when your guard is down, and that woman responds to me with a warmth and a passion that match my own. What is it?”
“I am not eligible,” she said. “Not to be the Viscountess Sinclair. Not to be acceptable to your grandfather or your mother or the ton. And I am not going to say any more about it.”
There was no point in saying more—in pouring out the whole sorry story of her life. He was an impulsive man, she knew. She doubted he had really thought out all the implications of what he was doing this morning. He liked to get what he wanted, and for some reason he wanted her. He would not listen if she told him all. He would brush everything aside and try to insist anyway that she marry him.
It simply could not happen—for her sake and for his.
And for the sake of his grandfather, whom she liked and respected.
Good sense must rule the day as it had ruled the last three years of her life—with a few notable exceptions.
And so she lost her chance for joy. Fate had singled her out quite markedly, both after Christmas and this week—he was quite right about that—and she rejected fate, setting against it the power of her own free will. What else, after all, was free will for?
She would not destroy her hard-won new life and his into the bargain.
“I do not like society,” she said as if that were explanation enough for refusing an offer that was hugely advantageous to herself and that he knew was emotionally appealing to her. “It is artificial and vicious and not what I would choose as the environment in which to live the rest of my life. It is what I deliberately left behind me more than three years ago in order to come here.”
“If I had been there then,” he said fiercely, his eyes blazing into hers, “and if you had known me then, if I had asked you then what I have asked you now, would you have made the same choice, Frances?”
“Hypothetical questions are like the future you spoke of earlier,” she said. “They are a meaningless figment of the imagination. They have no reality. I did not meet you then.”
“No is your final answer, then,” he said. It was not really a question.
“Yes,” she said, “it is.”
“Good God!” He released her hands. “One of us must be mad, Frances, and I fear it may be me. Can you look me in the eye, then, and swear to me that you have no feelings for me?”
“Nothing is ever as simple as that,” she said. “But I will not swear either way. I do not have to. I have said no. That is all that needs saying.”
“By Jove, you are right.” It was he who got to his feet this time. “I beg your pardon, ma’am, for causing you such distress.”
His voice was tight with hostility.
She suddenly realized that they were surrounded by silence again except for the sounds of water dripping off the roof onto the soaked ground. The rain had stopped as suddenly as it had begun.
“But there is still a part of me, Frances,” he added, “that could cheerfully throttle you.”
She closed her eyes and set a hand over her mouth as if to stop the outpouring of words she would regret. She was assailed with such a yearning to
hurl herself into his arms and throw good sense to the winds that she felt physically sick again.
Thoughts whirled through her head in a chaotic jumble.
Perhaps she should be more like him and simply act instead of always thinking.
But she would not do it. She could not.
She got to her feet, stepped past him, and looked up at the sky. It still looked full of rain, and indeed there was still a fine drizzle falling.
“The hour is at an end, Lord Sinclair,” she said. “I am going back to the school now. You need not accompany me.”
“Damn you, Frances,” he said softly.
They were the last words he said to her—the last words of his she would ever hear, she thought as she hurried down the path, heedless of the fact that it was very wet and muddy and even slippery in places.
He had wanted her to marry him.
And she had said no.
Because, for a whole host of reasons, a marriage between them simply could not work.
And because love was simply not enough.
She was mad, she thought. She was mad, mad, mad.
He had asked her to marry him.
No, it was not madness. It was sanity—cold, comfortless, merciless sanity.
She was half running by the time she came to the gates and emerged from the gardens onto Sydney Place. And she was half sobbing too, though she tried to tell herself that it was only because she was out of breath from hurrying to get back to school before the rain came down heavily once more.
Lucius had wanted to marry her, and she had been forced to say no.
16
Actually participating in all the busy rituals of the spring Season—attending balls and routs and Venetian breakfasts and concerts and theater performances, riding in Hyde Park during the morning and tooling a curricle about it during the fashionable hour of the afternoon, being drawn into a thousand and one other frivolous activities—actually participating in it all did help to distract one’s thoughts from past humiliations and one’s spirits from taking up permanent residence in the soles of one’s boots, Lucius found over the coming month, especially when one also spent a large portion of one’s nights at White’s or one of the other gentlemen’s clubs and one’s mornings at Jackson’s boxing saloon or Tattersall’s horse auction or one of the other places where gentlemen tended to congregate in significant numbers and one could forget about being on one’s best social behavior.