“And it was a tragedy for the musical world,” he said, “that the audience was so small. You do not only have a good voice, Miss Allard, or even a superior voice. You have a great voice, definitely one of the loveliest I have ever heard in almost eighty years of listening. No—not one of. It is the loveliest.”

Frances would not have been human if she had not felt a glow of pleasure at such lavish and apparently sincere praise.

“Thank you, my lord.” She could feel herself flushing.

A plate of dainty sandwiches was set on a table close to where Miss Marshall sat behind the tea tray, together with scones spread with clotted cream and strawberry jam. There was also a plate of fancy cakes. The girl poured the tea into exquisitely fine china cups and brought one to each of them before offering the sandwiches.

“But you must have been told all this before,” the earl said. “Many times, I suppose.”

Yes. Sometimes by people whose opinion she could respect. Ultimately, after her father’s death, by people who had promised fame and fortune while caring not one iota for her artist’s soul. But—for a variety of reasons of which youthful vanity was not the least—she had believed them and allowed them to act for her and almost ruined herself in the process. And then she had lost Charles because of her singing and finally had behaved very badly. Much really had been ruined—all her girlhood dreams, for example. Sometimes, even though only three years had passed since she had seen the advertisement for the teaching position at Miss Martin’s and applied for it and been sent to Bath by Mr. Hatchard for an interview with Claudia—sometimes it was hard to believe that all those things had happened to her and not someone else. Until last night she had not sung in public for three long years.

“People have always been kind,” she said.

“Kind.” He laughed gruffly as he took one small sandwich from the plate. “It is not kindness to be in the presence of greatness and pay homage to it, Miss Allard. I wish we were in London. I would invite the ton to spend an evening at my home and have you sing to them. I am not a renowned patron of the arts, but I would not need to be. Your talent would speak for itself, and your career as a singer would be assured. I am convinced of it. You could travel the world and enthrall audiences wherever you went.”

Frances licked her lips and toyed with the food on her plate.

“But we are not in London, sir,” Viscount Sinclair said, “and Miss Allard appears to be quite contented with her life as it is. Am I not right, ma’am?”

She lifted her eyes to his and realized how like his grandfather he was. He had the same square-jawed face, though the earl’s had slackened with age and was characterized by a smiling kindliness, whereas the viscount’s looked arrogant and stubborn and even harsh. He was gazing at her with intense eyes and one raised eyebrow. And his tone of voice had been clipped, though perhaps she was the only one who noticed.

“I like to sing for my own pleasure,” she said, “and for the pleasure of others. But I do not crave fame. When one is a teacher, one owes good service, of course, to one’s employer and to the parents of one’s pupils as well as to the pupils themselves, but one nevertheless has a great deal of professional freedom. I am not sure the same could be said of a singer—or any other type of performer, for that matter. One would need a manager, to whom one would be no more than a marketable commodity. All that would be important would be money and fame and image and exposure to the right people and . . . Well, I believe it would be hard to hang on to one’s integrity and one’s own vision of what art is under such circumstances.”

She spoke from bitter experience.

They were both looking attentively at her, Viscount Sinclair with mockery in every line of his body.

He had called her prim. It was foolish to allow such a description to hurt. She was prim. It was nothing to be ashamed of. It was something she had deliberately cultivated. His hand, she noticed, was playing with the edge of his plate—that strong, capable-looking hand that had chopped wood and peeled potatoes and sculpted a snowman’s head and rested against the small of her back as they waltzed and caressed her body . . .

Miss Marshall got up to offer the scones.

“Not, surely,” the earl said, “if one had a manager who shared one’s artistic vision, Miss Allard. But what of your family? Did they never encourage you? Who are they, if I might be permitted to ask? I have never heard of any Allards.”

“My father was French,” she said. “He escaped the Reign of Terror when I was still a baby and brought me to England. My mother was already deceased. He died five years ago.”

“I am sorry to hear that,” he replied. “You must have been very young to be left alone. Did you have other family here in England?”

“Only my two great-aunts have ever had anything to do with me,” she said. “They are my grandmother’s sisters, daughters of a former Baron Clifton.”

“Of Wimford Grange?” He raised his eyebrows. “And one of these ladies is Mrs. Melford, is she? She was once a particular friend of my late wife’s. They made their come-out together. And so you are her great-niece. Wimford Grange is no farther than twenty miles from my home at

Barclay Court

. Both are in Somerset.”

And that fact, of course, would explain why she and Lucius Marshall had been traveling the same road after Christmas. She did not look at him, and he made no comment.

“I have not seen Mrs. Melford for a few years,” the earl said. “But I wonder why the present Clifton has not helped you to a career in singing.”

“He is really quite a distant cousin, my lord,” Frances said. She had not even set eyes on him last Christmas.

“I suppose so,” he agreed. “But I probably embarrass you with all this talk of your family and your talent. Let us talk of something different. The concept of a school for girls is an interesting one when most people would have us believe that education is wasted on the female half of our population or that the little education girls require can best be learned from private governesses. You would disagree with both opinions, I assume?”

His eyes were twinkling beneath his white brows. He was effectively changing the subject and choosing one that was sure to provoke some response in her. It did, of course, and they had a lively discussion of the merits of sending girls away from home to be educated, and of instructing them in such subjects as mathematics and history. It was a topic too in which Miss Marshall was pleased to participate. She had always thought it would be great fun to go to school, she told Frances, but she had inherited her sisters’ governess and remained at home instead.

“Not that I did not have a good education from her, Miss Allard,” she said, “but I do think it would have been marvelous to have had pianoforte lessons from you and to have sung in one of your choirs. The girls at your school are very fortunate.”

Frances could almost feel mockery emanating from the direction of Viscount Sinclair’s chair even though she kept her eyes away from him and he did not participate a great deal in the conversation.

“Well, thank you,” Frances said, smiling at the girl. “But they are fortunate in their other teachers too. Miss Martin makes a point of choosing only the best. Though I suppose I aggrandize myself by saying that, do I not?”

“I would have liked it,” Miss Marshall said, “and to have had friends among girls my own age.”

The conversation came back to music eventually but no longer concerned Frances personally. They compared favorite composers and pieces of music and favorite solo instruments. The earl told them of performances by famed musicians he had heard years ago, in Vienna and Paris and Rome.

“The Continent was still open to young bucks making the Grand Tour in my day,” he said. “And, ah, we had a time of it, Miss Allard. The French, and particularly Napoléon Bonaparte, have much to answer for. Lucius was deprived of that treat, as was his father before him.”

“You need to get my grandfather onto this topic when you have an hour or three to spare, Miss Allard,” Viscount Sinclair said. They were mocking words, and yet it seemed to her that they were affectionately spoken. Perhaps he had some finer feelings.

“You saw Paris?” she asked the earl. “What was it like?”

The Earl of Edgecombe was indeed only too ready to talk about the past. He entertained them so well with stories of his travels and the places and people he had seen that Frances looked up in surprise when Viscount Sinclair got to his feet and announced that it was time to return Miss Allard to the school.

At some time during the past hour she had relaxed and started actively to enjoy herself. Perhaps Anne had been right last evening. Perhaps she was setting to rest a few ghosts today. She had seen the other side of Viscount Sinclair’s nature today—the arrogant, mocking, less pleasant side that she had seen when she first met him and had largely forgotten the next day and the next. It was as well to be reminded of what exactly she had walked away from.

She could not have been happy with such a man. Though he was also, of course, a man who had come to Bath in order to care for his grandfather and who had brought his young sister with him.

Ah, life was confusing sometimes. People would be so much easier to like or dislike if there were only one facet to their natures.

The earl and Miss Marshall rose with her. The earl took her hand in his and raised it to his lips once more.

“This has been an honor and a pleasure, Miss Allard,” he said. “I do hope I have the chance of hearing you sing again before I die. I believe it will become one of my dearest wishes, in fact.”