Like Miss Martin’s, her posture was stiff and straight as any ramrod. She continued to gaze out the window like a queen looking for subjects on whom to confer a royal wave.

“Why are you angry?” he asked her.

“Angry?” She turned to look at him again, her nostrils flared, her eyes flashing. “I am not angry. Why should I be? You are a mere courier, are you not, Lord Sinclair, sent to bring me to the Earl of Edgecombe’s house? It was kind of him to invite me and I am pleased to come.”

She sounded it!

“Despite all the women I have known,” he said, “I have never yet come close to fathoming the female mind. You were given the chance to prolong and advance our relationship three months ago, but you rejected it—quite emphatically, if memory serves me correctly. And yet now, Frances, your whole demeanor tells me that you think you have a grievance against me. Is it possible that I somehow hurt you?”

Color flamed in her cheeks and light flashed from her dark eyes—and she grabbed for the strap again as the carriage passed through the diamond-shaped Laura Place and circled the fountain in the middle of the road.

“What absurdity is this?” she cried. “How could you possibly have hurt me?”

“I do believe men and women sometimes react differently to the sort of . . . liaison in which you and I became involved,” he said. “Men are able to enjoy the moment and let it go, while women are more inclined to find their hearts engaged. It was certainly never my intention to hurt you.”

But, devil take it, he thought irritably, he had not exactly let the moment go, had he?

“And you most certainly did not,” she said with hot indignation as the carriage rumbled onto the shop-lined Pulteney Bridge to cross the river. “How presumptuous of you, Lord Sinclair! How . . . arrogant of you to imagine that you broke my heart!”

“Frances,” he said, “we shared a bed and a great deal more for one whole night. You make yourself ridiculous when you call me Lord Sinclair in that prim schoolteacher’s voice as if I were some distant stranger.”

“With the exception of that one night, which ought not to have happened and which I have regretted ever since,” she said, “I am prim. And I am a schoolteacher and proud of it. It is what I choose to be—for the rest of my life.”

She turned her head sharply away again.

“That balding gentleman who would have relinquished you to my grandfather and me without a fight last evening is not your betrothed, then?” he asked.

He heard her draw in a sharp, indignant breath.

“What Mr. Blake is—or is not—to me is absolutely none of your business, my lord,” she said.

He glowered at the back of her bonnet. She really was prim and shrewish and prickly and a mass of contradictions. He did not know why the devil she had stuck in his memory and in his emotions the way she had. The sooner he removed her from both the happier he would be.

Perhaps if he tried very hard he could contrive to fall in love with Portia Hunt this spring. But, good Lord, even if it were possible—and he very much doubted it was—Portia would be horrified!

“Why the devil do you choose to be a teacher when you ought to be singing professionally?” he asked abruptly. Because he had arrived in the drawing room doorway only as she was finishing her song last evening, it was still difficult to believe that Frances and that singer could be one and the same person.

“I would ask you to watch your language, Lord Sinclair,” she said.

He surprised himself—and her, it seemed—by emitting a short bark of laughter.

“I believe,” he said, “you may have just provided the answer to my question. You did not tell me after Christmas that you could sing like that.”

“Why would I have told you such a thing?” she asked, looking around at him. “Ought I to have said, ‘Oh, by the way, Mr. Marshall, I sing in a way that might just impress you a little.’ Or ought I to have woken you up one morning with a particularly strident aria?”

He chuckled at the mental image of her waking him thus on the second morning, as she lay tucked up in his arms in her bed.

He did not know if she was having the same thought, but however it was, her eyes suddenly lit with merriment, her lips twitched, and she could not prevent a gurgle of laughter from escaping them.

“I wonder,” he said, “if I would have found it arousing.”

The prim schoolteacher made an instant reappearance, and she sat back on her seat and directed her eyes forward.

For a moment—damnation!—he had been entranced by her all over again.

“My grandfather has been very much looking forward to meeting you again,” he said after a few moments of silence. “And my sister is beside herself with excitement. She is not yet out, you see, and does not often have a chance to entertain and even play hostess.”

“Then she may play it for me,” she said. “I am accustomed to young ladies and their uncertainties and exuberances. I will be a very undemanding guest.”

Conversation lapsed between them then as the carriage began its slow climb uphill.

She set her hand in his when he offered it to help her alight from the carriage after it had stopped on Brock Street—their first touch since he had pressed his card into her palm outside the school three months ago. He felt again the slenderness of her hand, the long, slim artist’s fingers. Even through her glove and his own he felt the shock of familiarity.

She preceded him inside the house while his grandfather’s butler held the door open.

Lucius glowered at her back and went after her.

The carriage ride had been a horrible ordeal for Frances, bringing to mind as it did the last time she had ridden in the same vehicle with Lucius Marshall, Viscount Sinclair. He had held her hand then. For a large part of the journey he had had his arms right about her. They had kissed. They had dozed in each other’s arms.

Today she had been horribly aware of him physically. She had been very careful not to touch him—until she could no longer avoid doing so when he offered a hand to help her alight outside the house on

Brock Street

.

As they entered the house and were preceded upstairs by the butler after he had taken her bonnet and gloves and spencer, she felt bruised and humiliated.

Is it possible that I somehow hurt you?

She still seethed at the arrogance of it.

Men are able to enjoy the moment and let it go, while women are more inclined to find their hearts engaged.

How mortifyingly true that seemed to be! His whole manner and conversation had demonstrated that he had not suffered one iota as a result of what had happened between them.

He had enjoyed the moment and let it go.

She had been battling a bruised heart ever since.

Despite all the women I have known . . .

Of which number she was one insignificant unit. If she had gone with him to London when he had asked, how soon would he have tired of her? Long before now, she was sure.

But, she thought, her coming here this afternoon had nothing whatsoever to do with him. She squared her shoulders and donned her best social manner as she was ushered into a cozy sitting room at the front of the house. The Earl of Edgecombe was rising from a chair by the fire, a welcoming smile on his thin, rather wan face, and Miss Marshall was hurrying toward her, both hands outstretched, her cheeks flushed, her face eagerly smiling.

“Miss Allard,” she said when Frances set her hands in hers, “I am so delighted that you were able to come. Do take the seat beside Grandpapa if you will. The tea tray will be sent up immediately.”

“Thank you.” Frances smiled warmly at the girl, who was clearly on her best behavior and half elated, half anxious lest she make some mistake. She was pretty, with her brother’s brown hair and hazel eyes, though her face was heart-shaped, with rounded cheeks and a pointed little chin.

The earl smiled kindly at Frances and reached out his right hand for hers as she approached. He carried it to his lips.

“Miss Allard,” he said, “you do us a great honor. I hope I have not taken you away from anything very important at your school.”

“I am sure,” she said, taking the chair next to his, “that the junior choir was quite delighted to discover that there was to be no practice this afternoon, my lord.”

“And so,” he said, “you conduct a choir and you teach music, including pianoforte lessons. But how much do you sing, Miss Allard?”

“Last evening,” she told him as he took his seat again and Viscount Sinclair took another chair and Miss Marshall fluttered about while the tea things were brought in by a maid and the butler, “was the first time I have performed outside a school setting in several years. It was a good thing for my nerves that the audience was not larger.”