There would have been nothing left for him to do but find a gun somewhere and blow his brains out.

He felt suddenly irritated again and intensely annoyed with Miss Frances Allard, almost as if she had seen him and had not recognized him.

Perhaps, he thought, gritting his teeth, she had been brought into his life by a malevolent fate in order to keep him humble—this schoolteacher who had preferred her teaching job to him.

Mrs. Reynolds and Mrs. Abbotsford were taking their leave. Lucius touched the brim of his hat to them and looked closely at his grandfather.

“I think that is definitely enough for one afternoon, sir,” he said. “It is time to go home for tea.”

“Perhaps Amy would like to stay out longer,” the earl suggested.

But Amy smiled cheerfully at him and took one of his arms while her other was still linked through Lucius’s.

“I am very happy to go home for tea with you, Grandpapa,” she said. “It has been a wonderfully exciting afternoon, has it not? We must have spoken with a dozen people or more. And we have been invited to a soiree tomorrow evening. I will have much to say when I write to Mama and Caroline and Emily tonight. I do not know what I am going to wear.”

“I believe,” Lucius said with an exaggerated sigh, “I can predict another shopping expedition to

Milsom Street

tomorrow.”

“You may purchase a ready-made gown with my purse, child,” the earl said. “And all the trimmings to go with it. But do trust to Lucius’s good taste when you make your choices. It is impeccable.”

As they walked, Lucius found himself grappling with a memory of Frances Allard sealing the edges of a beef pie with the pad of her thumb, pricking the lid so that the steam would not blow it off, and then bending over the hot oven to set it inside.

Why he should still feel rather like the beef filling lying beneath the unpricked lid in the middle of the hot oven was a mystery to him—not to mention a severe annoyance.

Why had she chosen today of all days to bring a class up onto the Crescent?

Or, perhaps more to the point, why the devil had he chosen today of all days to stroll there with his grandfather and sister?

It felt damnably unmanly to have had his composure shaken by a one-night lover three months after the event.

“Oh, Luce,” Amy said, squeezing his arm, “is not Bath a wonderful place to be?”

“It is absolutely not fair,” Susanna Osbourne declared, “that I spent only an hour outside playing games with the junior girls and have acquired lobster cheeks and a cherry nose and freckles to boot while Frances spent a whole afternoon walking with the middle class and looks bronze and beautiful. It is not even summer yet.”

“Bronze is not considered any more becoming for a lady than lobster,” Miss Martin said, looking up from the tatting with which she kept her hands busy. “You teach the girls that they must guard their complexions against the sunlight at all costs, do you not, Susanna? I have no sympathy, then, if you were too busy having fun with your class to guard your own—and I could see whenever I glanced out the window at you that you were having fun. You were actually participating in the games yourself. As for Frances—well, she is the exception to all rules as far as looks and complexions are concerned. It is her Italian heritage. We poor English mortals must simply endure the unfairness of it.”

But despite the words themselves, her eyes twinkled as she looked across the room at her youngest teacher, who was sitting forward in her chair, her slippered feet propped on a stool, her slim arms clasped about her knees, her face bright and noticeably sunburned.

“Besides,” Anne Jewell said as she mended a tear down the back of a small boy’s shirt, “you do not look like any lobster I have ever seen, Susanna. You look rosy and youthful and healthy and prettier than ever. Though your nose would shine like a beacon in the dark, I suppose.”

They all laughed at poor Susanna, who touched the offending organ gingerly and wrinkled it as she smiled and then joined in the laughter.

They were sitting, the four of them, in Miss Martin’s sitting room as they often did in the evenings after the girls had been sent to their dormitories under Matron’s care and David had been put to bed.

“Did your walk prove thoroughly educational, Frances?” Miss Martin asked, her eyes still twinkling. “Did the girls acquire as much material for writing assignments as you hoped?”

Frances chuckled. “They were marvelously attentive,” she said. “I do wonder, though, how much detail their minds retained of the architecture of the Circus and the Crescent and the Upper Assembly Rooms. I do not doubt they could describe down to the minutest detail every person of fashion we passed—especially if that person happened to be male and below the age of one-and-twenty. I was very proud of them all when we were crossing the Pulteney Bridge on the way back here, though. There was a group of young bucks swaggering there and making a few pointed remarks. One of them was even impertinent enough to make use of a quizzing glass. The girls all stuck their noses in the air and walked on past as if the young men were invisible.”

Anne and Susanna laughed with her.

“Oh, good girls,” Miss Martin said approvingly, bending her head to her work again.

“Of course,” Frances added, “they did rather spoil the effect after we had crossed

Laura Place

and were safely out of earshot by buzzing and giggling over those very young men the whole length of

Great Pulteney Street

. I suppose that is what they will remember most about the outing.”

“But of course,” Anne said. “Would you expect anything different, Frances? They are all either fourteen or fifteen years old. They were acting their age.”

“Quite right, Anne,” Miss Martin said. “Adults are very foolish when they admonish unruly children to act their age. In nine cases out of ten that is exactly what the children are doing.”

“What are you going to wear tomorrow evening, Frances?” Anne asked.

“My ivory silk, I suppose,” Frances said. “It is the best I have.”

“Oh, but of course.” Susanna grinned mischievously at her as she got to her feet to pour them all a second cup of tea. “Frances has a beau.”

“Frances,” Miss Martin said, looking up from her work once more, “has been invited to Mrs. Reynolds’s soiree quite independently of Mr. Blake, Susanna. She was invited on account of her voice, which is like an angel’s. Betsy Reynolds undoubtedly told her mother about it, and Mrs. Reynolds very wisely added Frances to the list of guests who will entertain the company with their superior talent.”

But Susanna could not resist teasing further.

“It is Mr. Blake who is to escort her, though,” she said. “I think Frances has a beau. What do you think, Anne?”

Anne smiled from one to the other of them, her needle suspended above her work.

“I believe Frances has an admirer and would-be beau,” she said. “I also believe Frances has not yet decided if she will accept him in that latter capacity.”

“I think she had better decide against it,” Miss Martin added. “I have a strong objection to losing my French and music teacher. Though in a good—a very good cause—I suppose I could be persuaded to make the sacrifice.”

Mr. Aubrey Blake was the physician who attended the pupils at Miss Martin’s school whenever one of them needed his medical services. He was a serious, conscientious, handsome man in his middle thirties who had begun to show an interest in Frances during the past month or so. He had met her shopping on Milsom Street one Saturday afternoon and had insisted upon escorting her all the way back to the school and upon carrying her purchases himself, small and lightweight though they were.

Her three friends had collapsed in mirth afterward when Frances had told them how she had almost expired of embarrassment lest he somehow discover that that light bundle contained new stockings.

And then when she had taken one of the day pupils home early one day because the girl had a fever and waited until Mr. Blake had been summoned so that she could carry word of the girl’s condition back with her, he had insisted upon walking her all the way to the school doors.

Now he had got word of the fact that she had been invited to sing at the Reynolds soiree, and since he was an invited guest himself, he had called at the school, had Keeble summon Frances to the visitors’ sitting room after very correctly asking permission of Miss Martin, and asked to be allowed the honor of being her escort for the evening.

She would have had a hard time saying no if she had wished to do so. Actually, though, she had been relieved. Since the outing was to be in the evening, she knew that Claudia would have insisted upon sending one of the maids with her. It would have been a dreadful inconvenience. Besides, walking in on an evening party alone would have required a great deal of fortitude.

“I do not believe a teacher has time for a beau,” she said now. “And even if this teacher did, I am not at all sure she would choose Mr. Blake. He is perhaps a trifle too earnest for her taste. However, he is handsome and he is a perfect gentleman and he has a perfectly respectable profession, and if she decides that she does want him as a beau, she will be sure to inform her dearest friends and warn her employer of her impending departure into the world of idle marital bliss.”

She laughed as she lifted her cup to her lips.

“Well, I would not settle for a mere physician,” Susanna said, sitting down again and clasping her knees as before. “He would have to be a duke or no one at all if he were to attract me. Except a prince, maybe.”