After an early morning visit to the Pump Room to drink the waters and a rest afterward at home with the morning papers, the Earl of Edgecombe was quite ready for an afternoon airing with his grandchildren on the Royal Crescent. Fashionable people strolled there each day, weather permitting, to exchange any gossip that had accumulated since the morning, to see and to be seen. It served much the same function as Hyde Park in London at the fashionable hour, though admittedly on a smaller scale.

Strolling along the cobbled street of the widely curving Crescent and then down into the meadow below was not exactly vigorous exercise, and Lucius missed his clubs and activities and acquaintances in London, but really he was quite resigned to spending a week or so here with just a few early morning rides up into the hills as an outlet for his excess energy. It was good to see his grandfather in good spirits and slightly better health than he had enjoyed at Christmas. And Amy, now leaning upon Lucius’s arm, positively sparkled with enjoyment at the change of scene, free as she was of the stricter social restrictions that London had imposed upon a young lady who was not yet out.

They were in conversation with Mrs. Reynolds and Mrs. Abbotsford when Lucius, half bored but politely smiling, looked up toward the Crescent and became idly aware of a crocodile of schoolgirls, all uniformly clad in dark blue, making its way along Brock Street, presumably having just admired the architecture of the Circus and coming to do the same for its companion piece, the Royal Crescent. A lady, probably a teacher, marched along at its head, setting a brisk pace and looking rather like a duck cleaving the waters for its two straight lines of ducklings following along behind.

. . . probably a teacher.

He squinted his eyes in order to look more closely at the woman. But the group was still too far away for him to clearly distinguish the features of any of its members. Besides, it would be just too much of a coincidence . . .

“And Mr. Reynolds has agreed to take a house there for the summer,” Mrs. Reynolds was saying. “Our dear Betsy will be with us, of course. A month by the sea in July will be just the thing for all of us.”

“Sea bathing is said to be excellent for the health, ma’am,” the earl said.

Mrs. Reynolds uttered what sounded like a genteel shriek. “Sea bathing, my lord?” she cried. “Oh, never say so. One cannot imagine anything more shocking to tender sensibilities. I shall be very careful not to allow Betsy within half a mile of any bathing machines.”

“But I could not agree with you more, Lord Edgecombe,” Mrs. Abbotsford said. “When we spent a few days at Lyme Regis two summers ago, both Rose and Algernon—my daughter and my son, you will understand—bathed in the sea, and they were never more healthy than they were for the rest of that holiday. The ladies were kept quite separate from the gentlemen, Barbara, and so there was no impropriety.”

Lucius exchanged an amused smirk with his grandfather.

“Now before I forget, Lord Edgecombe,” Mrs. Reynolds said, “I must beg you . . .”

The crocodile had reached the corner of

Brock Street

and the Crescent, and the teacher stopped it in order to point out the wide sweep of magnificent architecture before their eyes. One slim arm pointed. One slender hand gesticulated.

She had her back to Lucius. Over a fawn-colored dress she wore a short brown spencer. Her bonnet too was brown. It was impossible from where he stood to see either her face or her hair.

But his mouth nevertheless turned suddenly dry.

He was in no doubt at all of her identity.

Coincidences, it seemed, did happen.

“And you will come too, I trust, Lord Sinclair?” Mrs. Reynolds was saying.

“Oh, do say yes. Do say yes, Luce,” Amy said, squeezing his arm and gazing up at him imploringly. “Then I can go too.”

“I beg your pardon?” He started and looked from one to the other of the ladies, with blank eyes. What the devil were they talking about? “I do beg your pardon, ma’am. I fear I was wool-gathering.”

“Lord Edgecombe has graciously agreed to attend my little soiree tomorrow evening,” Mrs. Reynolds explained. “It will be nothing to compare with the London squeezes to which you are accustomed, of course, but the company will be genteel, and there will be musical entertainment of a superior quality in the drawing room, and there will be a card room for those who do not appreciate music—Mr. Reynolds always insists upon it. I do hope you will agree to join us and bring Miss Amy Marshall with you.”

“I should be honored, ma’am,” Lucius said, making her a bow. “So, it would seem, will Amy.”

Good Lord! A soiree. In Bath. What was life coming to?

His sister was almost jumping up and down with excitement at his side. A soiree in Bath might not rate highly on most people’s social calendar—and it would surely rate at the very bottom of his—but it was vastly enticing to a girl who was excluded from almost all the social events that her mother and sisters were preparing to attend in London all spring.

He might have smiled down at her with fond amusement if at least half of his attention had not been directed elsewhere—and if his heart had not started to pound in his chest just as if someone had taken a hammer to it.

Damnation, but he had not wanted this to happen. He had not wanted to set eyes on her again. He gazed upward again, nevertheless, for one more glance at the woman who had sent him away three months ago with the proverbial flea in his ear and had then proceeded to set up shop in his memory and refuse to go away for a good long while afterward.

The well-disciplined double line of girls was making its way along the Crescent and stopping again at the halfway point. Again the teacher spoke, facing the buildings and describing bold half circles with both arms as she explained something to her apparently attentive class.

She had not once turned to face the meadow. But she did not need to do so. Lucius knew. Some things did not need the full evidence of one’s eyes.

“Two titled gentlemen among your guests,” Mrs. Abbotsford was saying. “You will be the envy of every hostess in Bath, Barbara, and your party will be assured of success. Not that it would not have been anyway, of course.”

“I quite agree with you, ma’am,” the earl said. “Mrs. Reynolds already has a reputation as an excellent hostess. I always look forward to receiving one of her invitations whenever I am in Bath.”

The teacher turned around. So did all her girls, and she proceeded to indicate with a wide sweep of her arm the splendid view down over the city and across to the hills beyond.

Frances!

He was still too far away to see her face clearly, but he was quite close enough to know that it was filled with warm animation. She was absorbed in her task of instructing the group of girls, and she was enjoying herself.

She was not, he noticed, looking either haggard or heartbroken.

Devil take it, had he expected that she would—no doubt as a result of having pined away over him to a shadow of her former self?

She was also, it seemed, quite unself-conscious about the presence of other persons in the vicinity. She did not glance at any of the fashionable people strolling on the Crescent or in the meadow below it. Even so, after one long look, Lucius tipped the brim of his hat lower, as if to ward off the bright rays of the sun and half turned as if to admire the view behind him.

“Bath never ceases to astonish me with its loveliness,” he said stupidly.

Mrs. Reynolds and Mrs. Abbotsford, both of whom were residents of the city, were quite happy to take up the theme with voluble enthusiasm, and Amy told them how very much she had enjoyed shopping on

Milsom Street

the afternoon before, when her brother had bought her the bonnet she was now wearing.

The two ladies admired it with effusive compliments.

When Lucius next turned his head to look, the schoolgirls had completed their walk about the Crescent and were making their brisk way down the hill past the Marlborough Buildings.

Goddamn it, he thought profanely, had he actually been hiding from her? From a mere schoolteacher, who had wanted to boil him in oil one day, who had slept with him the next, and who had passed judgment on his lovemaking the day after that by calling it pleasant before saying a very firm and final good-bye to him?

Had he really been hiding behind his hat like a groveling coward?

He felt decidedly shaken, if the truth were known. He wondered what would have happened if he had been standing up on the street rather than down here in the meadow and they had come face-to-face. He wondered if he would have stuttered and stammered and otherwise made a prize ass of himself or if he would have gazed coolly at her, raised his eyebrows, and pretended to search for her name in his memory.

Lord, he hoped it would have been the latter.

And then, as the girls disappeared into

Marlborough Lane

, he found himself wondering how she would have behaved. Would she have blushed and lost her composure? Would she have raised her eyebrows and pretended to have half forgotten him?

Damnation! Perhaps she had forgotten him.

It was a very good thing they had not come face-to-face. His self-esteem might well have suffered a blow from which it would never recover. His grandfather and Amy and these two ladies would have witnessed his humiliation. So would the crocodile of schoolgirls, their eyes avidly drinking in the scene so that they could titter and giggle over it in their dormitory for the next week or month or so.