by Mary Balogh
And indeed she had not done so—not until last evening. And in the meantime she had promised never to see him again. She had done worse than that . . .
She was honor bound, then, not to answer the letter.
She was developing a nasty history, she thought, of not offering the explanations that ought to be made. And besides that, the two years following her father’s death had been fraught with errors and misjudgments on her part—the result of having been the pampered, adored daughter of a man who had sheltered her and guided her and made most of her decisions for her.
She closed her eyes and pushed her plate away. She had made it a practice not to think of those two years. She had done well since. She had taken charge of her own life, and she was proud of what she had made of it. But of course it was impossible to put something entirely from mind simply by the power of one’s will—especially when that something was as prominent as two misspent years of one’s life. She had often wished she could go back and do things differently at the end. She still wished it.
Well, she thought, opening her eyes and staring down at the white tablecloth, she was back. And it was too late to creep out of London as she had crept in, unseen. All the people she had particularly wanted to avoid—Charles, the Countess of Fontbridge, Lady Lyle—had actually seen her. She did not doubt that George Ralston knew by now too that she was here.
If it was too late to creep away unseen, then perhaps she should stop even stepping lightly.
Perhaps she could do things differently after all, even if her actions were belated.
An hour later she was on her way alone and on foot to call upon the Countess of Fontbridge. It was not the fashionable time to make social calls, but then this was no social occasion.
When she was admitted to the earl’s house on Grosvenor Square, she asked if the countess was at home and entrusted to the butler’s care a short letter she had written to Charles, with the instructions that it was to be placed into his own hands. She was left standing in the tiled hall, but she did not really expect that the countess would refuse to admit her. A few minutes later she was shown into a small sitting room on the floor above.
No greetings were exchanged. The countess was standing before a small desk, her head at an arrogant tilt, her hands clasped at her waist. She did not offer her visitor a chair.
“So you have seen fit to break your word, Mademoiselle Halard,” she said. “I suppose you have come here this morning with some explanation. None is acceptable. It is to be hoped that when you decided to return to London, you also came prepared to take the consequences.”
“I came because one of my great-aunts was ill, ma’am,” Frances said. “When I agreed to sing at Marshall House last evening at the request of the Earl of Edgecombe, I was quite unaware that other guests were being invited to listen to me. My great-aunt is better and the concert is over. I will be returning to Bath without further delay. But I did not come here to offer an excuse. I ought not to have made the agreement I did with you more than three years ago. I did so because I was angry on Charles’s behalf that you controlled his life so ruthlessly that you thought you could buy off the woman he wished to marry. I did so with bitter cynicism. By that time I had no intention of marrying him. I had even told him so.”
“There were to be consequences of your breaking our agreement,” the countess reminded her.
“Yes, there were.” They still greatly troubled Frances, but she would not be ruled by fear any longer. Perhaps Lord Sinclair had done her a favor after all in bringing her here under false pretenses. Perhaps all this had needed to happen. “And you may proceed to implement them if you choose, ma’am. I am in no position to stop you, am I? But I do wonder why you would bother. I made a promise to you three years ago that I fully intended to keep. But forever is too long a time for any agreement. Your purpose was to separate me from your son. That it was accomplished even before you paid me such a handsome sum is neither here nor there. My purpose was to pay off some troublesome debts. It was done and is forgotten about. I will be returning to Bath soon and remaining there to teach. But I will not promise never to come back here. I will no longer give you or anyone else that hold over me.”
The Countess of Fontbridge bent a hard, narrow-eyed gaze on her, but before she could say more—if she intended doing so—Frances turned and left the room.
She felt slightly dizzy as she descended the stairs and stepped out onto the pavement and into the fresh air—and vastly relieved that Charles had not made an appearance. He must be from home.
For a moment she was tempted to turn her steps homeward. She had lived through more emotional turmoil during the past twenty-four hours—less!—than she had experienced in the three years before this past Christmas, she was sure. But there was no point in stopping now.
A short while later she was being ushered into a far more opulent sitting room than the one she had just left. And Lady Lyle was not standing with an unwelcoming pose to receive her. Rather, she was reclining on a sofa, petting a small dog in her lap with one hand and looking somewhat amused.
“Well, Françoise,” she said by way of greeting, in the low, velvet voice that sounded so familiar, “you find yourself unable to ignore me after all, do you? Am I to feel honored, child? You are in reasonable good looks, though those clothes are shockingly provincial and your gown last evening was no better. And your hair! It is enough to make one weep.”
“I am a schoolteacher, ma’am,” Frances reminded her.
Lady Lyle shushed the lapdog, which had been yapping at the advent of a stranger into its territory.
“So it is said, Françoise,” Lady Lyle said. “How amusing that you have been in Bath all this time and as a teacher. What an excruciatingly boring life it must have been.”
“I enjoy teaching,” Frances said. “I like everything about it.”
Lady Lyle laughed again and made a dismissive gesture with one hand.
“George Ralston will be interested to know that you are back,” she said. “He will forgive you and restore you to favor, Françoise, though it was very naughty of you to disappear without a word. I have already written to him and interceded on your behalf.”
“I am going back to Bath,” Frances told her.
“Nonsense, child,” Lady Lyle said. “Oh, do sit down. It gives me a stiff neck to have to look up at you. You have no intention whatsoever of leaving. You have been doing some careful scheming and have won the favor of the Earl of Edgecombe and Viscount Sinclair, who were in Bath recently, I understand. And you have secured the interest of Lord Heath through their sponsorship. I give you full credit. It has taken you a few years but you have done it. And I must say that your voice has actually improved. That was an impressive performance last night. But your schemes will get you no farther, you know. Even apart from the fact that you are not free to accept the patronage of Baron Heath, there is the fact that you are about to lose your influential friends, Françoise. One word in the ear of a certain young lady who is about to be affianced to Sinclair and in those of her mama and papa, and your only recourse is to look elsewhere for the furtherance of your career. Oh, and by the way, child, that word was dropped into those ears last evening. Nothing too, too damning, I assure you, but it does not need to be with that young lady. She is very proper, and she has very firm control over poor Sinclair.”
Even just yesterday Frances might have cringed. But something had snapped in her this morning, and she felt as if she were alive again after a long, deathlike sleep. She had thought herself free in the new life she had built for herself, but she had not been free at all. Her past needed to be dealt with before she could call herself free.
She had not sat down.
“I am not in your debt, Lady Lyle,” she said, “though I have a feeling that you are about to claim that I am so that you can have the old hold over me. I never was in debt to you except perhaps for my board while I lived here—at your insistence after Papa died. But I paid that debt many times over. I am
not bound to George Ralston either, though I am sure he would soon be assuring me that I am his slave for life if I were to stay in London long enough to hear him.”
“Slave!” Lady Lyle looked amused again. “Poor George! And after all he did for you, Françoise. You were well on your way to being famous.”
“I believe notorious would be a more appropriate word,” Frances said. “You may say whatever you wish to Miss Hunt or to Lord Sinclair and even to Lord Heath. It does not matter to me. I am going back to Bath—by choice. It is where my home is and my profession and my friends.”
“Oh, poor Françoise,” Lady Lyle said, pushing the dog to the floor and moving into an upright sitting position before patting the sofa cushion beside her. “Have you not punished yourself enough? Come and sit here and let us be done with this foolish wrangling with each other. We were always fond of each other, were we not? And I adored your papa. You still desperately want your career in singing. There is no point in denying it. It was perfectly evident last evening. Well, you can have it back, you silly child. You never needed to throw it away and then scheme to get it back by your own efforts. We will have a word with Ralston and—”
“I am leaving now,” Frances said. “I have other things to do this morning.”
“Ah,” Lady Lyle said, “you sound just like your papa. He was stubborn too and so very proud. But handsome and charming and quite, quite irresistible.”
Frances turned to leave.
“Ralston will not be pleased, Françoise,” Lady Lyle said. “Neither am I. And I do know where to find you now. I daresay it will be no trouble at all to discover the name and direction of the school at which you teach and the identity of the head of the board of governors or the headmistress or whoever it is who employs you. Bath is not a large place, and I daresay there are not many girls’ schools there.”
For a moment Frances felt as if icy fingers had reached out to grasp her. But she was no longer the girl she had been three years ago to cringe beneath every threat.
“Miss Martin’s school is on Daniel Street,” she said curtly without turning. “Good day to you, ma’am.”
She held her poise until she was back out on the street, but then her shoulders sagged. It was all very well to have hurled defiance in the teeth of both the Countess of Fontbridge and Lady Lyle this morning, but the euphoria of doing so had given her a false sense of security. In reality her world was threatening to come crashing down about her ears. The Countess of Fontbridge now knew where she lived and worked. So did Lady Lyle. Both ladies, she knew, were very capable of spite. If either one of them chose to make life difficult for her there, she would have to leave. Not that she had kept any secrets from Claudia. But it was imperative that the teachers at a respectable girls’ school be above reproach. She would not be able to stay if any breath of scandal concerning her got to the ears of the parents of her pupils—or to those of Claudia’s unknown benefactor.
And it was all Viscount Sinclair’s fault! Without his interference she would not have come to London and all this would not have happened.
No, that was unfair.
She did think about calling at Marshall House, but to what purpose? It would be most improper to go there and ask to speak to Viscount Sinclair.
It would be better to write to him. He had been a nuisance and a bother to her for some time, but he did deserve, perhaps, to be given a full, truthful explanation for her refusal to marry him.
Besides, she was dreadfully in love with him. She needed to make him understand.
She would not write to him from here in London, though, she decided as she walked home. As like as not he would rush impulsively over to Portman Street again and try to persuade her into doing what he would know deep down was not possible.
Anyway, it had been very evident last evening that his betrothal to Miss Hunt was imminent.
She would wait until she was back in Bath and then write to him.
A last good-bye.
She smiled wanly at the thought.
That left only her great-aunts to consider.
It had not been just cynicism that had led her into making Lady Fontbridge the promise to go away without another word to Charles and to stay away forever. It had also been fear—not so much for herself as for her great-aunts. She could not bear to think of them being hurt—they had often told her that she was like a daughter to each of them, that she was the person they loved most of all in the world besides each other.
The countess might yet decide to be spiteful.
Her great-aunts were both up, she discovered when she arrived home. They were sitting out in the little summer house in the back garden, enjoying the fine weather.
Frances made a decision as she went to join them there.
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.
23
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 anticlimact
ic 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.”