Not that he was making any comparison between Portia and the devil. Good Lord, she would be the quintessentially perfect bride. He could not do better if he hunted the length and breadth of the country for the next five years. He did not have five years, though. He had promised to be married long before this year was out.

He was almost looking forward to her arrival in town.

But something else was different about this spring too. He was anxious about his grandfather’s health and pounced upon every letter that came from

Barclay Court

. And one of those letters, delivered a week or so before the Balderstons were expected, brought word that the earl had made arrangements to remove to Bath for a couple of weeks or so in order to take a course of the spa waters. They had always been beneficial to his health in the past, he explained, and he intended to see if they would have a similar effect again. He had taken a house on

Brock Street

rather than stay at a hotel.

Lady Sinclair, genuinely concerned though she was about her father-in-law’s health, could not possibly leave London at that particular moment. Emily was soon to be presented at court and there were a thousand and one details to be attended to before the great day dawned. And Caroline, two years older than Emily, could not leave London, as she was entering her third Season, still unmarried, though it was fully expected that Sir Henry Cobham would come to the point within the month and apply for her hand. Amy was too young to go to Bath alone to care for her grandfather even though she expressed her willingness to do so.

That left Lucius. It was desirable that he stay in town, of course. But he was deeply concerned about his grandfather and felt the need to assure himself firsthand that his health had not seriously deteriorated since Christmas. It would not hurt to be away from London for a week or two, anyway. He would be back by the time the Season swung into full action.

There would be more than enough time to go courting after he returned.

By that time almost three months had passed since Christmas, and he had more or less forgotten about Frances Allard except for the occasional nostalgic memory of their one night together. Even so, he was not quite insensible of the fact that in going to Bath he would also be putting himself in close proximity to her again. He did not dwell upon the thought, though. He was unlikely to see her, and he would certainly not make any active attempt to do so. She was firmly in his past and would remain there. And indeed she had occupied a very tiny corner of his past.

He was somewhat disconcerted, then, when his traveling carriage came within sight of Bath in the valley below the road from London, all white and sparkling in the spring sunshine, by the power of the memories that assaulted him. He remembered so plainly the pain he had suffered the last time he had been on this road—being driven in the opposite direction—that he felt the pang of it even now. He remembered the almost overwhelming urge he had felt to turn back and beg her to come with him—on his knees if necessary.

The very thought that he might have done such an embarrassing and humiliating thing was enough to give him the shudders. He certainly had no wish to set eyes again on the woman who had brought him so abjectly low.

Amy, his youngest sister, was traveling with him. She was at the awkward age of seventeen. She had been released from the schoolroom after Christmas so that she could accompany the rest of the family to London in the early spring, but any excited expectations that fact had aroused in her bosom had soon been dashed. Their mother had been quite firm in her refusal to allow her to make her come-out this year, since it was Emily’s turn and Caroline was still unmarried too. Poor Amy had been less than delighted at the prospect of being excluded from almost all the dizzying array of activities that would soon brighten her sisters’ days and had jumped at the chance of accompanying her brother to Bath.

Listening to her exclamations of delight at the scene spread before her and pointing out to her some of the more prominent landmarks of Bath diverted Lucius’s attention. In fact, her company had enlivened the whole of the journey. He was rather enjoying his close contacts with his family again, if the truth were told, and was beginning to wonder why it had seemed important to him for so long to maintain a distance from them.

It was because he was no longer a thoughtless young man, he supposed. It was because he had finished sowing his wild oats and was beginning to realize the value of love connections.

He pulled a face in the carriage. Could he really have descended to such depths of dullness?

She had never written to him, though he had watched for a letter until well into February. She being Frances Allard. He was suddenly thinking about her again—quite unwillingly.

There was little possibility of seeing her, though, even accidentally. She lived at the school across the river, all the way down by Sydney Gardens, and would be busy with her teaching duties. He would be staying on upper-class

Brock Street

and would be mingling with other genteel guests and residents of the city. Their paths were very unlikely to cross.

He stopped thinking about her altogether after their arrival on

Brock Street

in order to focus the whole of his attention on his grandfather. He was looking frail, but he was his usual cheerful self and insisted that the Bath air and the Bath waters had already done him some good. He sat listening with twinkling eyes to Amy’s enthusiastic account of their journey and the amusing anecdote she told of stopping at one posting inn and being mistaken for Lucius’s wife. She had been addressed as my lady.

Lucius took Amy for a short walk to see the

Royal Crescent

at the other end of

Brock Street

after tea while their grandfather rested. He listened with amused indulgence while she exclaimed with delight and declared that the Crescent was the most magnificent architectural sight she had ever seen.

But later that same evening after dinner while his grandfather sat reading by the fire and Amy was seated at a small escritoire writing a letter to their mother and sisters, Lucius stood looking out the window of the sitting room at the stately architecture of the circular street known as the Circus not many yards distant. He found himself thinking that in all probability, if she was still at Miss Martin’s school, Frances was no more than a mile or so away. The thought annoyed him—not so much that she was only a mile or so distant, but that he was thinking about it at all. And about her.

He turned firmly away from the window.

“Feeling maudlin, Lucius?” his grandfather asked, lowering his book to his lap.

“Me, sir?” Lucius rested a hand lightly on Amy’s shoulder as she wrote. “Not at all. I am delighted to be here with you. I was glad to see you eat a good dinner and come to spend an hour with Amy and me in here.”

“I thought,” his grandfather said, regarding him with twinkling eyes from beneath his bushy white eyebrows, “that perhaps you were pining for the sight of a certain pair of fine eyes.”

So brown they were almost black. Wide, expressive eyes that could spark with anger or dance with merriment or deepen with passion.

“Pining, sir?” he said, raising his eyebrows. “Me?”

“You are talking of Miss Hunt, Grandpapa, are you not?” Amy said while she dipped her quill pen in the silver ink holder. “She has the bluest eyes I have ever seen. Some people might call them fine, but I prefer eyes that can laugh even if they are the most nondescript shade of gray. And Miss Hunt never laughs—it is undignified and unladylike to do so, I daresay. I do hope Luce does not marry her.”

“I daresay Lucius will make the right choice when the time comes,” their grandfather said. “But it would be strange indeed if he did not admire Miss Hunt’s blue eyes and blond hair and flawless complexion, Amy. And she is a refined lady. I would be proud to call her granddaughter.”

Lucius squeezed his sister’s shoulder and took the chair on the other side of the hearth. His grandfather was quite right. Portia was a beauty. She was also elegant and refined and perfect. Rumor had it—in other words, his mother had informed him—that she had turned down numerous eligible suitors during the past few years.

She was waiting for him.

He concentrated his mind upon her considerable charms and felt the noose tighten about his neck again.

The following day was cold and blustery and not conducive to any prolonged outing, but the day after that was one of those perfect spring days that entice people to step outdoors to take the air and remind them that summer is coming in the not too distant future. The sun beamed down from a cloudless sky, the air was fresh and really quite warm, and there was the merest of gentle breezes.