“Is it now too much to hope,” Mr. Blake asked her, “that you are free to dance the second set with me, Miss Allard? I had already spoken for the opening set with Miss Jones before I saw you.”

“Miss Allard is to dance the second set with me,” Viscount Sinclair said.

Frances had a brief moment in which to decide whether she would brawl openly with him or let the matter go. She glanced at him and saw that one of his eyebrows was cocked. Perhaps, she thought during that one moment, he would be quite happy if she took the first course. There was an open challenge in that eyebrow.

“Yes.” She smiled into his eyes. “Lord Sinclair most particularly asked for it while escorting me here in the carriage.”

“Ah,” Mr. Blake said. “The third set, then, perhaps, Miss Allard?”

“I shall look forward to it,” she told him.

The first set was being announced, she realized then, by the Master of Ceremonies, and the orchestra sat poised to play. All annoyance, all embarrassment, fled as she turned her attention to the dance floor. She was excited even though she did not expect to dance much herself. She would at least be dancing the second and third sets, and that was more than she had expected.

But she was not to miss the opening set of vigorous country dances after all. Mr. Blake had gone to claim his partner and Viscount Sinclair had led his sister onto the floor and Frances had found a vacant seat. But Mr. Gillray, Mr. Huckerby’s brother-in-law, to whom she had been introduced after the Christmas concert at school, came and asked her if she would dance with him, and so she had all the pleasure of participating in the ball right from the first moment.

And a very definite pleasure it was too. She found herself smiling and then laughing through some of the more intricate turns and twirls, the steps fresh in her memory as she was always the one who partnered Mr. Huckerby when he taught the girls. Amy Marshall, farther down the line, was openly enjoying herself too. Viscount Sinclair watched her with an indulgent smile on his face though he once caught Frances’s eye and held it for a long moment.

And she was to dance the next set with him. She did not know whether to be glad or sorry. He was easily the most handsome and distinguished gentleman present, and just the thought of dancing with him again made her want to swoon. But the farther she stayed away from him, the better for her peace of mind, she knew. Her precious peace.

Her contentment.

But, heaven help her, that old magic was weaving its web about her again with every passing moment.

She did want to dance with him again—she desperately wanted it.

Just one more time.

Mr. Algernon Abbotsford was presented to Amy after the first set was over, and he very properly asked Lucius’s permission to lead her out into the second set. Having granted that permission, Lucius was free to turn his attention to his own partner, who was conversing with a lady he did not know.

Truth to tell, his attention had not been far from her ever since their arrival. And if he had ever deceived himself into thinking that he had not been looking forward to this evening with almost as much eagerness as Amy and that he had not taken pains with his appearance because he was to see Frances Allard again, then he was finally being forced into facing the rather lowering truth.

Damnation!

And if she truly believed that she was a woman made for placid contentment, then she was even more given to self-deceit than he. A woman less designed to dwindle into old age as a spinster schoolteacher he could not imagine. Her cheeks, her eyes, her whole demeanor, glowed with a passionate enjoyment of the occasion even though this was a mere Bath assembly.

He knew, as no one else did, how easily and totally her love of dancing could be converted to sexual passion.

Not that he intended to effect quite that conversion tonight!

“Ma’am?” he said now, bowing before her. “This is my dance, I believe?”

Her eyes swept up to meet his, and he knew she remembered that they were the exact words he had used in that cold, dingy Assembly Room at the inn before they waltzed and then made love.

He was not really sure why he felt compelled tonight to remind her of that occasion. Sheer devilry, perhaps? Or perhaps he felt the need to confront her, to force her out into the open, to . . . Well, he did not know what it was he was up to. He rarely thought about the motives for what he did and said. He had always been a man of impulse and action.

“I believe it is, my lord,” she said, setting her hand in his. “Thank you.”

“It is not, alas, a waltz,” he told her as he led her onto the floor. “There are to be none tonight. I have inquired.”

“I have heard,” she said, “that the waltz is not often danced in Bath.”

“It is a damnable crime of omission,” he said. “But if it were to be danced here, Frances, we would dance it together.”

“Yes,” she agreed, and turned her head to look into his eyes.

Something fleeting and wordless passed between them at that moment. Desire, yearning, knowledge—he was not sure which. Perhaps all three. Certainly there was full carnal awareness there.

They were a severe annoyance to each other, he and Frances Allard. They were as much inclined to quarrel as to be civil with each other. But there was a spark of something, which had been ignited during the day preceding their waltz three months ago and fanned to full flame during and after their waltz. That spark had still not quite been extinguished even three months later.

And, by Jove, he would no longer pretend to himself that he regretted having seen her again, that he ought to have avoided her, that he wished her to the devil. He was not good at this game of self-deception, even if she was.

He was deuced happy to be with her once more.

This was to be another country dance, but it was slower and more stately than the first. He escorted her to the long line of ladies and took his place opposite her in the line of gentlemen. She looked startlingly foreign in comparison with the other ladies, he thought—dark and vivid and lovely. A rose among thorns. No—unfair. More like a rare orchid among roses.

And roses suddenly seemed bland.

He could not remember the last time he had danced two sets in a row at any ball. Even one set was often more than he could stomach. Whoever had decreed that dancing was to be a favored mode of enjoyment for an evening ought to have been deported to the colonies as a mortal threat to the sanity of the male of the species, he had always thought. If he wanted to get close to a woman—and he frequently did—there were far more direct ways of going about it than cavorting with her about a ballroom floor in company with a large gathering of other persons similarly inclined.

But waltzing with Frances Allard after Christmas had been a sexual experience in itself. More than that, it had been exciting and exhilarating. And now he was to dance with her again, and everything in his being was focused upon her, tall and very slender in her silver muslin, her sleek, dark hair gleaming in the light of the candles overhead, her eyes glowing with the anticipation of pleasure.

Tomorrow or the next day or the next he was going to have to get back to London and turn his mind to duty, he supposed—perish the thought. But first there was tonight, and by God he was going to enjoy every passing moment for what it was worth.

The music began, the gentlemen bowed, and the ladies curtsied. The lines advanced toward each other, each gentleman clasped his partner’s right hand just above the level of their heads, and turned once about with her before the lines returned to their places.

The orchestra played on, and the dancers tramped out the stately measures of the set, their dancing shoes beating out a rhythmic tattoo on the polished floor. They moved about each other, Lucius and Frances, sometimes face-to-face, sometimes back-to-back. They clasped hands, advanced down the room and back with the lines, wove in and out about other couples, came together again, twirled down between the lines from the head of the set to its foot when their turn came, their arms linked, their hands joined between them.

They did it all without exchanging another word with each other, though there were frequent opportunities for snatches of conversation. Yet he scarcely removed his eyes from hers the whole time, and he held her gaze with the power of his will. His senses were raw with his awareness of her—the sheen of silver ribbon and dark hair as they caught the light, the whisper of muslin as she moved, the slender warmth of her hand in his, the familiar fragrance of her that must come from soap rather than a heavier perfume, he believed.

But one thing more than any other became blazingly clear to him as they danced. She might have rejected him three months ago, but it was not because of indifference, by Jove. He supposed he had known it even at the time, but he was certain of it now.