A couple of minutes later he was on his way to Miss Martin’s school again.

There had been letters from his mother and Caroline this morning. Prominent in the news they had both been eager to impart was the fact that the Marquess of Godsworthy had arrived in town for the Season with Lord and Lady Balderston—and with Portia, of course. His mother had called upon the two ladies with Caroline and Emily. Miss Hunt was in good looks, they had reported. Lady Balderston had asked about him and said she looked forward to seeing him in the near future.

Portia Hunt was always in good looks, and so that was no news. He could not remember ever seeing her with the proverbial hair out of place—not even when she was a child.

The carriage drew to a halt outside the school doors, and Lucius descended to the pavement, feeling rather as if he were up to something clandestine—he was about to escort another woman to a ball.

A strange scene met his eyes when the porter answered the door to his knock. Frances Allard was standing in the middle of the hallway, wearing a dress of silver-shot gray muslin with a silver silk sash beneath her bosom and two rows of the same silk ribbon about the hem. Another lady was kneeling on the floor beside her, a needle and thread in her hand while she stitched up a part of the ribbon that must have pulled loose from the dress. A third lady was bending toward the second, a few pins cupped in the open palm of her hand. Miss Martin was draping a paisley shawl about Frances’s shoulders and smoothing it into place.

The two seamstresses turned identically flushed and laughing faces his way as he stepped inside. Frances bit into her lower lip, looking faintly embarrassed, but then she laughed too.

“Oh, dear,” she said.

The vivid loveliness of her merry expression smote him like a fist to the abdomen and fairly robbed him of breath for a moment.

“Another gentleman who chooses to arrive five minutes before his appointed time,” Miss Martin said severely.

“I do beg your pardon.” Lucius raised his eyebrows. “Should I perhaps go back outside and wait on the pavement until the five minutes have expired?”

They all dissolved into laughter again—even Miss Martin smirked.

“No, no, I am ready,” Frances said as the thread was snapped free and the ribbon about her hem pulled into place. “You have met Miss Martin, Lord Sinclair. May I present my fellow teachers, Miss Jewell and Miss Osbourne?”

She indicated the two seamstresses, both of whom were young and pretty. They were both looking at him with frank interest.

“Miss Jewell?” He bowed to the fair-haired, blue-eyed teacher. “Miss Osbourne?” He bowed to the auburn-haired little beauty.

They both curtsied in return.

A night out for one of their number, he suddenly realized, must be a momentous occasion for all of them. He felt that he was being given an unwilling glimpse into another, alien world, in which life for women was not a constant and idle round of parties and balls and routs. Yet these teachers were all young and all personable. Even the stiff-mannered, dour Miss Martin was not an antidote.

But why the devil had Frances chosen to be one of them? She did not need to be.

The porter, silent and glowering, as if he resented the intrusion of any male except himself into this hallowed female domain, held the door open, and Lucius followed Frances out onto the pavement and handed her into the carriage.

“The weather has stayed fine for the occasion,” she said brightly as the carriage rocked into motion.

“Would you have canceled if it had rained, then?” he asked.

“No, of course not.” She clung with both hands to the ends of her shawl.

“You were, then,” he said, “merely making polite conversation?”

“I am sorry if I bore you,” she said, an edge of annoyance in her voice. “Perhaps I ought to have remained silent. I shall do so for the rest of the journey.”

“What do you usually do for entertainment?” he asked her after she had suited action—or rather inaction—to words for a minute or so. “You and those other teachers? You live in Bath yet you have never been to an assembly. Do you put the girls to bed each night and then sit together conversing over the clacking of your knitting needles?”

“If we do, Lord Sinclair,” she said, “you need not concern yourself about us. We are quite happy.”

“You said that once before,” he told her. “And then you changed the word to contented. Is contentment enough, then, Frances?”

He thought she was not going to answer him. He watched her in the faint light of dusk. She was not wearing a bonnet tonight. Her dark hair was sleek over her head and dressed in curls at the back of her neck. They were not elaborate curls, but they were certainly more becoming than the usual knot. She looked elegant and lovely. She was going to make every other woman in the Upper Rooms look overfussy.

“Yes, it is,” she said. “Happiness must always find its balance in unhappiness and excitement in depression. Contentment is more easily maintained and brings with it tranquillity of mind and peace of soul.”

“Good Lord!” he said. “Could anything be more of a complete bore? I think you are a coward, Frances.”

She turned wide, indignant eyes on him.

“A coward?” she said. “I suppose it was cowardly of me not to throw away my career, my security, my future, and my friends and go off to London with you.”

“Very cowardly,” he said.

“If cowardliness means being sane,” she said, “then, yes, by your definition I am a coward, Lord Sinclair, and make no apology for the fact.”

“You might have been happy,” he said. “You might have taken a chance on life. And I would soon enough have discovered your talent, you know. You might have sung for larger audiences than you will ever find here. You cannot tell me that with your voice you have never dreamed of fame.”

“And fortune,” she said sharply. “The two inevitably go together, I believe, Lord Sinclair. I suppose you would have made me happy. I suppose you would have sponsored my singing career and have made sure that I met all the right people.”

“Why not?” he asked. “I would not have chosen to keep your talent all to myself.”

“And so,” she said, her voice trembling with some emotion that he thought must be anger, “a woman is quite incapable of knowing her own mind and finding the contentment, even happiness, she wants of life without the aid and intervention of some man. Is that what you are saying, Lord Sinclair?”

“I was unaware,” he said, “that we were speaking of men and women in general. I was speaking of you. And I know you quite well enough to understand that you were not made for contentment. How absurd of you to believe that you were. You are fairly bursting at the seams with passion, Frances—not all of it sexual, I might add.”

“How dare you!” she cried. “You do not know me at all.”

“I beg your pardon,” he said. “I certainly know you in the biblical sense—and one night was quite enough for me to draw certain conclusions about your capacity for sexual passion. I have spoken with you—and quarreled with you—on several occasions, this evening included. I have laughed and played with you. And, perhaps most significant of all, I have heard you sing. I know you quite well.”

“Singing has nothing to do with—”

“Ah, but it does,” he said. “Anyone who uses an extraordinary talent to the full, forgetting very self in the process, has no choice but to pour out himself or herself. There is no hiding on such occasions, whether the product is a painting or a poem or a song. When you sang at the Reynolds soiree, you revealed far more than just a lovely voice, Frances. You revealed yourself, and only a dolt would have failed to see you for the deeply passionate woman that you are.”

It was strange. He had not consciously thought these things before. But he knew that he spoke the truth.

“I am quite contented as I am,” she said stubbornly, setting her hands palm down on her lap and staring down at her spread fingers.

“Ah, yes,” he said, “very much the coward, Frances. You give up the discussion and fall back upon platitudes because your case is unarguable. And you lie through your teeth.”

“You become offensive,” she said. “I have given you no permission to speak so freely to me, Lord Sinclair.”

“Perhaps that is so,” he said. “You have given me only your body.”

She inhaled sharply. But she let the breath out slowly again and refrained from answering him.

He had not noticed the passing landmarks of the journey. He realized suddenly, though, that they were approaching the Upper Assembly Rooms. It was just as well. Good Lord, he had not intended to quarrel with her. He might not have done so if she had not irritated him by opening the conversation with her bright, inane comment on the weather.

As if they were no more than polite strangers.

The sooner he left Bath and got back to the serious business of getting himself married, the better it would be for everyone. And Portia Hunt was in London waiting for him. So were her mama and his and all their family members.

Bath, London. London, Bath . . . Devil take it, it was like the choice between the devil and the deep blue sea!

Where had the familiar life gone that had given him perfect contentment for the past ten years or so?

But as he descended from the carriage and turned to hand Frances down, he did catch himself out.

Contentment?

He had been contented for the past ten years?

Contented?

A dozen times during the past three days Frances had been on the brink of writing to Miss Amy Marshall with some excuse not to attend the assembly. There was too much schoolwork to be done—classes to prepare and papers to mark—and there were extra music lessons with individual girls to be fitted in, and practices with the junior and senior choirs and the madrigal group.