Had Claudia ever done that?

Had she?

I am not yet betrothed to Portia Hunt.

Not yet. But you soon will be.

She got wearily to her feet and began to undress.

Although the Earl of Edgecombe rose early the following morning for his usual visit to the Pump Room to drink the waters, it was obvious to Lucius that he was weary from his exertions of the night before. He was certainly in no state to travel all the way to London. Yet he still insisted that when his grandchildren returned there, he would go with them rather than go home to

Barclay Court

. He wanted to see his friend Godsworthy again. He wanted to witness the progress of the courtship between Lucius and Portia Hunt—though he did not mention her by name.

He wanted, Lucius knew, though he did not say as much, to be part of the excitement that would surround their betrothal and planned wedding.

Lucius was desperate to leave Bath even though only London and Portia and marriage awaited him. He had behaved badly after the assembly—and even during it, by Jove. He had gone out of his way to remind her of the first time they had danced together and to arouse her out of her controlled enjoyment of the evening. And then, in the carriage, when as her escort he was supposed to be protecting her from harm . . .

Well, he had been unable to deny himself the indulgence of that one last kiss. That was the trouble with him—he was not accustomed to exercising self-control, to thinking before he acted. Heaven knew where that embrace would have led if she had not put a firm stop to it.

And yet the very fact that she was always so sensible and controlled when he knew that passion throbbed just behind the facade and occasionally burst through for tantalizingly brief moments—that very fact irritated him almost beyond endurance.

They did not leave Bath the day after the assembly, then. Neither did they leave the next day since Amy, who had gone shopping with Mrs. Abbotsford and her daughter the day before, had been invited to join them and young Algernon Abbotsford on an excursion to some village not far from Bristol and begged permission to be allowed to go with such tragic certainty that she would be denied the treat that Lucius could not resist giving in to her.

One day longer was neither here nor there, he supposed.

His grandfather too went off to visit a friend during the afternoon, leaving Lucius with altogether too much time on his hands and too many unwelcome thoughts to weigh on his mind.

Dash it all, when had the promise he had made his grandfather come to be seen as a definite commitment to marry Portia Hunt? Had he ever stated aloud to anyone that she was going to be the one? But then, if not Portia, who? He had committed himself to choosing a bride—an eligible bride.

There could be no less appealing prospect.

The perfect and perfectly eligible bride!

The word perfect and all its derivatives should be stricken from the English language together with the word pleasant. The world would be a better place without them.

He sat with a book and brooded and fumed and schemed and despaired and cursed his lot in life for a whole hour before snapping the book shut—he had not read a single page—and striding out of the sitting room. He set out on a brisk walk down into the center of the city, along by the river, over the Pulteney Bridge, and along

Great Pulteney Street

. By the time he reached the end of it, he had stopped even pretending to himself that he had come walking for the benefit of his health, that his direction had been random, but that since he had come this way he might as well take a solitary turn about Sydney Gardens.

He was not a man much given to aimless or solitary walking. He favored far more vigorous exercise for his health. Besides, it was not a day that invited a pleasure stroll. It was gray and blustery and chilly. He might have spared a pitying thought for Amy, who had set out on the excursion with such exuberant hopes, except that he was quite sure the presence of young Algernon in the party would render her totally oblivious to inclement weather.

No, he was not out for a pleasure stroll. Here he was turning onto Sutton Street instead of crossing the road to Sydney Gardens, eyeing the school on the corner with Daniel Street, and remembering that it was Saturday and there would be no classes today—a fact that did not necessarily mean that she would be free, of course. It was a boarding school. Someone had to look after the girls and entertain them even at the weekends.

What the devil was he doing here?

He stood for a moment frowning at the front door, wondering if it would be more cowardly to knock or to turn tail and flee. He was not by nature a ditherer—or a coward. Or a thinker, for that matter.

He stepped up to the door, raised the brass door knocker, and let it fall against the door.

All of two minutes must have passed without any response, leading Lucius to the conclusion that the porter did not actually live in the hall, within one foot of the front door, but only occupied it when he was expecting someone. But it was he who eventually opened the door and peered out. His expression immediately turned both sour and suspicious.

“Ask Miss Allard if she will grant me a few minutes of her time,” Lucius said briskly, stepping over the threshold without an invitation.

“She is giving a lesson in the music room,” the porter told him.

“And?” Lucius raised his eyebrows.

The man turned and walked away, his boot heels squeaking on the hard floor.

“You had better go and wait in there,” he said ungraciously, nodding his head in the direction of the visitors’ sitting room.

When he was alone inside the room, Lucius stood at the window looking out on the meadows beyond

Daniel Street

and wishing he were anywhere else on earth but where he actually was. He was not in the habit of pursuing unwilling females, especially when the world was so full of willing ones. But it was too late to run away now.

He could hear the distant sounds of girlish laughter and a pianoforte playing—and then not playing. Across the meadow a group of girls, presumably from the school, was playing some organized game. The teacher supervising them looked like the auburn-haired one—Miss Osbourne. He had not noticed them when he arrived—which said something about his preoccupation. They were probably all shrieking their heads off.

When the door opened behind him, he half expected to turn and see Miss Martin again. But it was Frances herself, looking white to the very lips, who stepped inside. She closed the door behind her back.

“What are you doing here?” Her voice was actually shaking, but whether from shock or anger or some other emotion it was hard to say.

He knew something at that moment with ghastly clarity.

He was not going to be able to let her go this time.

It was that simple.

“I came to see you,” he said.

“Why?” Two spots of color had appeared in her cheeks. Her eyes had turned hard.

“Because there is something still to be said between us,” he said, “and I do not like to leave things unsaid when they should be spoken.”

“There is nothing else to be said between us, Lord Sinclair,” she said. “Nothing whatsoever.”

“There you are wrong, Frances,” he said. “Come out with me. Come walking in Sydney Gardens.”

“I am in the middle of giving a music lesson,” she told him.

“Dismiss the girl early,”he said. “She will be ecstatic. Do you have other lessons to follow this one?”

She compressed her lips for a moment before answering. “No,” she admitted.

“Then come walking with me,” he said.

“Have you noticed the weather today?” she asked him. “It is going to rain.”

“But it is not raining yet,” he said. “It may not rain all day—just as it did not snow all over Christmas. Bring an umbrella. You cannot claim to be English, Frances, and yet fear stepping outdoors lest it rain. You would be housebound all your life.”

“I do not want anything more to do with you,” she told him.

“If I thought you truly meant that,” he said, “I would be gone in a flash. But I think you lie. Or if you do not do so quite consciously, then I believe you deceive yourself.”

“You are a betrothed man,” she said. “Miss Portia Hunt—”

“I am not betrothed yet,” he told her.

“But you soon will be.”

“The future,” he said, “is just a theory, Frances. It is not fact. How can any of us know what we will be doing soon? Now, at this precise moment, I am not a betrothed man. And you and I have unfinished business.”

“We do not—”

“You are such a coward, Frances.” He was beginning to feel frustrated, angry. Was she really going to refuse to come? And why the devil was he pressing her when she was so clearly reluctant to have any more dealings with him?

But he knew—he knew beyond any doubt—that her attraction to him was just as powerful as his to her.

“It is not cowardly,” she said, “to avoid inevitable and pointless pain.”

“I cause you pain, then?” His incipient anger disappeared in a moment. She had finally admitted to more than just a twinge.

But she would not answer him. She clasped her hands at her waist and looked composed and pale again. She gazed very steadily into his eyes.

“Give me one more hour of your life,” he said. “It is not a great deal to ask, is it?”

There was an almost imperceptible slumping of her shoulders and he knew that she would not deny him.

“One hour, then,” she said. “I will go and dismiss Rhiannon Jones and let Miss Martin know that I am going out for a while.”