And as if depression and grief were not enough, there was her nervousness every time the carriage wheels slithered on the slushy road surface—and they did so almost constantly during the first few miles until Lucius Marshall slid his hand beneath her lap robe, drew her right hand free of her muff, and held it firmly in his, lacing his fingers with hers.

She could have wept at his warm, assured touch.

“Peters is not the most subservient of retainers,” he said, “but he is the finest driver of my acquaintance. I would, and do, trust him with my life.”

“I think,” she said, “that the feeling of slithering then sliding backward right off the road and finding myself submerged in a snowbank will live in my nightmares for a long time.”

“But if it had not happened to you,” he said, “you would not have met me.”

He was looking down at her, she knew, but she would not turn her head to see his expression. He had said the same thing on that very first day—was it only the day before yesterday?—but he had been being nastily ironic on that occasion.

“No,” she said. “I would not, would I? How dreadful that would have been.”

“There, you see?” He chuckled. “You forgot your nervousness for a moment in order to be spiteful. Or do you mean it?”

She laughed too despite herself.

Her nervousness largely disappeared after that, and so did the tension there had been between them ever since he walked into the kitchen this morning. They continued to hold hands, and after a while she realized that her shoulder was resting against the heavy capes of his greatcoat. She could feel the warmth and strength of his arm beneath them.

She would have her classes write an essay—no, a story—within the next few days, she thought. Not the dull topic of how they spent Christmas that they might expect, but something more creative—“Imagine that as you returned alone to school after Christmas, you ran into a snowstorm and were stranded at a deserted inn with one other person. Write the story . . .”

Marjorie Phillips would dip her quill pen in the inkwell and bend over her paper without further ado and would not straighten up again until she had scribbled a dozen pages of closely packed writing. Joy Denton would do almost as well. Sarah Ponds would put up her hand and remind Miss Allard that she had not left the school before Christmas and therefore did not return to it after Christmas. The rest of the class would sit with furrowed brows and inactive or even nonexistent imaginations, wondering if she would notice if they wrote large, widely stretched words on widely spaced lines and made their stories one page long.

Frances smiled fondly at the thought. All the girls were very precious to her.

But her thoughts were not easily diverted during that long day of travel.

They stopped a few times for changes of horse, and once for almost a full hour to dine, but for the rest of the time they sat together in the carriage, not talking a great deal, their hands clasped, their thighs and arms touching, her head sometimes tipped sideways to rest on his shoulder. Once she dozed off and, when she woke up again, she found that he had laid his cheek against the top of her head and was himself asleep.

Again she felt like weeping. Her chest was tight and sore from the necessity of holding back her tears.

It was sometime after that, when it seemed to her that they must surely not be very far from Bath, that he set one arm right about her shoulders, turned her to him, lifted her chin in the cleft between his thumb and forefinger, and kissed her.

His mouth felt shockingly warm in contrast to the chill of the air. She heard herself utter a low moan, and she wrapped her arm about his neck and kissed him back with all the yearning she felt.

“Frances,” he murmured after a long, long while. “Frances, what the devil am I going to do about you?”

She drew away from him, sat back in her seat, and eyed him warily.

“I think,” he said, “we ought to ask ourselves if it is really necessary to say good-bye to each other when we arrive in Bath.”

His words were so exactly what she had been dreaming of hearing all day that her heart lurched with painful hope.

“I teach school there,” she said. “You have your own life elsewhere.”

“Forget about teaching,” he said. “Come with me instead.” There was a reckless intensity in his eyes.

“Come with you?” She frowned, and her heart raced enough to make her breathless. “Where?”

“Wherever we choose to go,” he said. “The whole world is out there. Come with me.”

She set her shoulders across the corner of the seat, trying to put a little more distance between them, trying to think clearly.

The whole world is out there.

It was reckless.

“I do not even know anything about you beyond your name,” she said.

And yet a part of her, that equally reckless part of herself that had waltzed and then lain with him last night, heedless of the consequences, wanted to shout out yes, yes, yes, and go off with him wherever he chose to take her—to the ends of the earth if need be. Preferably there, in fact.

“You do not even know my name in its entirety.” He made her a half-bow with a flourish of one hand. “Lucius Marshall, Viscount Sinclair, at your service, Frances. My home is Cleve Abbey in Hampshire, but I spend most of my time in London. Come there with me. I am vastly wealthy. I will clothe you in satin and deck you with jewels. You will never want for anything. You will never need to teach another class in your life.”

Viscount Sinclair . . . Cleve Abbey . . . London . . . wealth . . . satin and jewels.

She sat staring at him aghast, while her initial euphoria drained away and with it the romantic dream that had fogged her mind since last night—or perhaps even before then.

He was not just an almost anonymous gentleman with whom she could perhaps have disappeared into the obscurity of a happily-ever-after—though even that was a childish and impossible dream. No one was anonymous or even almost so. Whoever he had turned out to be, he would have had a family and a history and a life somewhere. He was no fairy-tale prince. And there was no such thing as happily-ever-after.

But the reality was so much worse than anything she could have anticipated or guessed at. He was Viscount Sinclair of Cleve Abbey, and he was vastly wealthy . . .

“Viscount Sinclair,” she said.

“But also Lucius Marshall,” he said. “The two persons are one and the same.”

Yes.

And no.

An impossible dream died and she saw him for what he was—an impulsive, reckless aristocrat, who was accustomed to having his own way regardless of cold reality—especially where women were concerned.

But perhaps reality had never been cold for him.

“Forget about having to work,” he urged her. “Come with me to London.”

“Perhaps,” she said, “I enjoy teaching.”

“And perhaps,” he said, “convicts enjoy their prison cells.”

His words angered her and she frowned. She was reminded that this was the same man as the one who had so angered her just two days ago with his arrogant, high-handed behavior.

“I find that comparison insulting,” she said.

But he caught her hands in his and pressed his lips first to one palm and then to the other.

“I absolutely refuse to quarrel with you,” he said. “Come with me. Why should we do what neither of us wishes to do? Why not do what we want? I cannot say good-bye to you yet, Frances. And I know you feel as I do.”

“But you will be able to say it next week or next month or next year?” she asked him.

He looked sharply up into her face, his eyebrows raised.

“Is that why you hesitate?” he asked. “You think I would make you my mistress?”

She knew he would.

“Is it marriage you offer, then?” she asked, unable to keep the bitterness from her voice.

He stared at her for what seemed a long while, his expression fathomless.

“In truth,” he said at last, “I do not know what it is I offer, Frances. I just cannot bear to say good-bye, that is all. Come to London with me and I will find you lodgings and a respectable woman to live with you as a companion. We may—”

She closed her eyes briefly and shut out the sound of his voice. It was clear he had not thought this through at all. But of course, he did not need to. He was not the one being asked to throw away all that had given anchor and meaning to life for three years. His own life would remain much the same as usual, she supposed, except that he would have a new mistress—and of course it was as a mistress that he wanted her. He had looked somewhat stunned when she had mentioned marriage, as if it were something he had never heard of.

“I will not come with you,” she said.

Even as she spoke the words, though, she knew that she might still have been tempted if it were not for one fact—London was the one place on this earth she could never go back to. She had promised . . .

There was something else too. When he spoke of clothing her in satin and decking her in jewels, he sounded so much like other men she had once encountered that she could not avoid seeing with blinding clarity the sordidness of the future that would be awaiting her if she gave in to this longing to grasp at anything that would save her from having to say good-bye to him.

The thought of never seeing him again was almost unbearable.

He squeezed her hands painfully. “I will remain in Bath with you, then,” he said.

For a moment her heart leaped with gladness at his willingness to be the one making the sacrifice—but only for a moment. It would not work. He was Viscount Sinclair of Cleve Abbey. He was a wealthy, fashionable aristocrat. He lived much of his life in London. What would Bath have to offer him that would keep him there indefinitely? If he stayed, they would be merely postponing the inevitable. Nothing could ever come of any relationship between them. And no relationship satisfying to him could exist between them in Bath. No sexual relationship anyway—and no other type would satisfy him. Good heavens, she was a teacher!