“Well,” Frances said, “I am quite safe, as you see, though I am two days late and dread to think how much work will be facing me for the rest of today. I did, of course, remain with my great-aunts until early this morning and so you need not have worried at all. They sent me back here in their own carriage.”

And friends were sometimes entitled to lie to one another.

She could not bear to tell the truth. She could not bear the look of sympathy she knew she would see in their eyes when she came to the end of her story.

“Work or no work,” Anne said firmly, “you are going to have tea with us, Frances, and relax after what I am sure has been a trying day. I do not suppose the roads were at their best, and you would have had nothing but your own company to distract your mind from a contemplation of them. But no matter. You are safe now, and Claudia has ordered tea to be served in her sitting room in ten minutes’ time. Susanna and I have decided to be utterly selfless and not fight you for the chair by the fire.”

They both laughed, and Frances smiled brightly.

“I will certainly not argue that point,” she said. “And tea will be very welcome. Give me ten minutes to comb my hair and wash my hands and face?”

Anne opened the door.

“All the girls have now arrived,” she said. “Hannah Swan was last, as usual. Matron has them all firmly under her wing. So we can relax for a whole hour.”

“We want to hear everything about your Christmas,” Susanna said. “Every last detail. Including a description of every gentleman you met.”

“No, only the handsome ones, Susanna,” Anne said. “And the unmarried ones. We are not interested in the others.”

“Ah. In that case an hour may be just long enough—if I talk fast,” Frances said.

They went on their way, laughing merrily.

Frances sat down abruptly on the bed. Her legs would not have supported her if they had stayed one minute longer, she was sure. She shut her eyes tightly. She felt very close to hysteria, though she knew she had far too much pride to give in to it. What she wanted to do more than anything else on this earth was burrow beneath the covers of the bed and lie there, curled into a ball, for the rest of her life.

If she were to look out through her window, she knew, the street below would be empty.

He was gone.

Forever.

By her own choosing.

He would have taken her with him. Or he would have stayed in Bath.

She clenched both fists in her lap and fought panic, the foolish urge to rush back downstairs and outside in the hope of somehow catching up to his carriage before it disappeared forever.

It was hopeless—hopeless. He was not only Lucius Marshall, gentleman. He was also Viscount Sinclair. He lived most of the time in London. She could never return there, and she could never move in high circles again—even if he had ever asked her to. He would not have done so, of course. He would have made her his mistress for a while, until he tired of her. And that would have happened. What had been between them during the past couple of days was no grand romance, after all.

She was in no doubt that she had done the right thing.

But doing the right thing had never seemed bleaker.

This is good-bye after all, then, Frances.

She swallowed once, and then again.

And then she heard the echo of his final words.

But if you should have need of me, you will find me at the address in London written on that card. I will come immediately.

She opened her eyes, realizing that her right hand was still clenched about the card he had placed there. She opened her hand and looked down at it, still folded in two, the partially opened sides facing away from her.

It was over. They had said good-bye. He would come again with assistance if she should need it—if she discovered that she was with child, that was.

But it was over.

Very deliberately she folded the card once more, tore it across and across again, and as many more times as she could before dropping the pieces into the back of the fireplace. She recognized the rashness of what she did. But she had sent him away. She could never now appeal to him for aid.

“Good-bye, Lucius,” she said softly before turning determinedly to the washstand and pouring cold water into the bowl.

Ten minutes, Anne and Susanna had said. She would look presentable by the time she arrived in Claudia Martin’s sitting room. And she would be smiling.

And she would be armed to the teeth with amusing anecdotes about Christmas.

No one was going to know the truth.

No one was even going to suspect.

Lucius spent the following week at Cleve Abbey and then removed to London even earlier than he had planned, too restless to remain alone in the country with his own thoughts—or, more to the point, with his own emotions.

The latter consisted predominantly of anger, which manifested itself in irritability. Being the rejected rather than the rejecter was a new experience for him in his dealings with women. It was also, he supposed, a humbling experience and therefore good for the soul. But the soul be damned! The very idea that anything good might come of his experience only added to his ill humor.

What could be good about losing a bedfellow one had only just begun to enjoy?

That Frances Allard had been quite right in ending their budding affair did nothing to alleviate his irritability either. When he had made his offer to take her to London with him, he had not stopped to consider in what capacity he would take her there. But it could not have been as a wife, could it? Devil take it, he had just promised to wed an eligible bride before the summer was out, and he did not imagine that either his grandfather or his mother would consider a schoolteacher from Bath in any way eligible.

He had always been impulsive, even reckless. But this time part of him realized that if she had taken him up on any of his suggestions, he would have found himself in an awkward position indeed. He had not only promised his grandfather, he had also pledged himself to turn over a new leaf, to become a responsible, respectable man, perish the thought. He was going to court a wife during the spring, not indulge his fancy with a new mistress.

And that was what Frances would have been if she had come with him. There was no point in denying it. He could not have kept her long. Part of turning over a new leaf involved committing himself to one woman for the rest of his life—the woman he would marry.

It was time to say good-bye, Frances had told him. They had enjoyed a pleasant day or two together, but it was time to get back to normal life.

Pleasant!

That particular choice of word still rankled for a while even after he had arrived in London and immersed himself in the familiar daily round of his clubs and other typically masculine pursuits with his numerous friends and acquaintances.

His lovemaking had been pleasant. It was almost enough to make a man weep and tear his hair and lose all confidence in himself as a lover.

She had done him a favor by saying no. She really had.

Which fact made ill humor cling to him like an unwanted headache.

But it was not in his nature to brood indefinitely. And there was plenty to occupy his mind, in addition to the familiar pleasures of town life.

There was the fact that he was now living at Marshall House on

Cavendish Square

, for example, and that soon his mother and sisters were there too. There was all the novelty of being part of a family again for an extended period of time and being involved in all their hopes and fears and anxieties over the coming Season—in which he was pledged to play an active role this year. Emily was to make her come-out and needed to be properly outfitted for it and her presentation to the queen. And he needed to court a bride.

And there was the fact that Portia Hunt was expected to arrive in town immediately after Easter. His mother reminded him—as if he could have forgotten—at breakfast one morning after reading a letter from Lady Balderston.

“I will write back to her this morning,” his mother informed him, “and tell her that you are already in town too, Lucius, and living at Marshall House this year and planning to escort your sisters to a number of ton events.”

In effect, his mother would be announcing to Portia’s mama that he was poised to take a bride at last. Why would someone of Viscount Sinclair’s reputation be planning to attend balls and routs and Venetian breakfasts and such like events, after all, if he were not seriously in search of a leg shackle?

The Balderstons and Portia—as well as the Marquess of Godsworthy, her grandfather—would come to London, then, fully expecting that a betrothal was imminent. Lucius did not doubt it. It was how society worked. A great deal could be said and arranged—especially by women—without a direct word ever being spoken. The direct word would come from him when he finally made his call on Balderston to discuss marriage settlements and then made his formal offer to Portia herself.

The mere thought of what awaited him was enough to make him break out in a cold sweat.

However, he might be pleasantly surprised when he saw Portia again. It struck him that it must be two years or so since he had actually held any sort of conversation with her. Perhaps seeing her again would help him focus his mind on duty and the inevitable future. After all, a man must eventually marry. And if he must, and if the time happened to be now, he might as well marry someone eminently eligible and someone he had known most of his life. Better the devil you know . . .