“Perhaps, ma’am,” Lucius said, smiling his most charming smile, “you should say in your letter that the idea was all yours.”

“And was it not?” Her eyes twinkled at him.

And what the deuce had that been all about? Lucius wondered during what remained of the visit and after they had taken their leave. Why would he have pounced upon a slim opportunity of enticing Frances to London?

Did he really want to see her again?

But for what purpose? Had she not made herself clear enough the last time he saw her? Had he not suffered enough rejection and humiliation at her hands?

What the deuce was he hoping to accomplish?

Just yesterday he had gone to

Berkeley Square

to talk marriage settlements with Balderston—and found him from home.

He had not returned this morning.

Would he go back there tomorrow?

Very probably Frances would not even come.

And if she did, so what? She would be coming to see her ailing great-aunt, not him.

But if she did come, he thought, clamping his teeth together as Amy prattled away to their grandfather beside her on the carriage seat and presumably to him too, he would certainly make it a point to see her.

No one had yet written the end beneath their story. It was not finished.

Deuce take it, it was not finished.

Not in his mind, anyway.

That is the trouble with you. You really cannot take no for an answer, can you, Lord Sinclair?

Yes, of course he could. He did it all the time. But how could he accept a no when he had never been quite convinced that she had not desperately wanted to say yes?

Then why the devil had she not?

The outskirts of London were not attractive in the best of circumstances. They looked downright ugly in the rain and with a swirling wind blowing rubbish across open spaces and into soggy piles against the curbs next to the pavements.

Frances ached in every limb, having made the journey from Bath all in one day in the dubious comfort and at the very plodding speed of her great-aunts’ carriage, with Thomas up on the box. She had a bit of a headache. She felt slightly damp even though all the windows were firmly shut. She was also chilly.

But really she was not thinking much about either the view beyond the windows or her physical discomforts—or even about being back in London. She was not coming here either to enjoy herself or to mingle with society, after all. No one would even know she had been here.

She was coming because Great-Aunt Gertrude was dying. Not that Great-Aunt Martha had announced the fact in such stark words, it was true, but the conclusion was inescapable. She had begged Frances to come if she possibly could even though she knew it was the middle of a school term. And though she had added that she was sure dear Frances would not be able to get away before the end of term and that she must not distress herself if she really could not, she had sent an inescapable sign that her great-niece’s presence in London was an urgent necessity. Instead of sending the letter by post, she had sent it with Thomas and the ancient private carriage—“for your comfort if you should be able to get away,” she had added in a postscript.

Claudia had granted her leave of absence before Frances had even formed the words to ask for something so inconvenient, assuring her that she would find a temporary replacement to carry on with her teaching duties. Anne had hugged her wordlessly. Susanna had helped pack her bags. Mr. Huckerby had offered to conduct her choir practices while she was gone. Each of her classes urged her to hurry back.

Frances had actually dissolved into tears after sharing the contents of the letter with her friends.

“They are just great-aunts,” she had said. “I have not seen a great deal of them during my life and I write to them only once a month. But now that it seems likely that I may lose one of them, I realize what an anchor they have always been to my existence and how much I rely on their love and support. With my father gone, they are all I have of my very own. And I do love them.”

It was of them she had thought with most distress after Lady Fontbridge had made her threat more than three years ago. It was largely because of them that she had made the promise to leave London and never return. She could not have borne it if they had been told. So much of their world would have been destroyed.

“Of course you do,” Claudia had said briskly. “Stay as long as you need to, Frances. We will all miss you, of course, including the girls, but no one in this life is quite indispensable. It can sometimes be a humbling realization.”

And so here she was, in London again and sick with anxiety. Great-Aunt Gertrude had never enjoyed robust health, and she tended to coddle herself by staying too far away from fresh air and too close to the nearest fire. But Frances had never thought of actually losing her.

When the carriage finally rocked to a halt outside a respectable-looking house on Portman Street, she waited impatiently for Thomas to open the door and set down the steps and then hurried up to the house door, which opened even before she reached it, and into a tiled hall, where she fell into Great-Aunt Martha’s open arms.

“Frances, my love,” her aunt cried, beaming with happiness, “you did come! I hardly dared hope you would be able to get away. And how lovely you look, as usual!”

“Aunt Martha!” Frances hugged her back. “How is Aunt Gertrude?” She was almost afraid to ask. But the first thing she had noticed—with enormous relief—was that her great-aunt was not wearing black.

“A little better today despite the damp weather,” Aunt Martha said. “She has even got up from her bed and come down to the sitting room. What a delightful surprise this is going to be for her. I have not breathed a word about your coming. And indeed, I can scarcely believe that you have come only because I asked. I do hope Miss Martin has not dismissed you permanently?”

“She has granted me a leave of absence,” Frances said. “Aunt Gertrude is actually getting better, then? She is not—”

“Oh, my poor love,” Aunt Martha said, taking her arm and leading her in the direction of the staircase. “You did not imagine the worst, did you? She never was dangerously ill, but she has been dragged down by a chill she has been unable to shake off, and she has been in dreadfully low spirits as a result. We both have. It seemed to me—very selfishly, my love—that seeing you would be just the tonic we both needed.”

Great-Aunt Gertrude was not on her deathbed, then? It was the best of good news. At the same time Frances thought ruefully of all the trouble she had put Claudia to by leaving the school so abruptly for a few weeks in the middle of a term—and of all the disruption to her classes and choirs and music pupils.

It was enormously touching, though, to know that her presence meant so much to her aunts. She would never take them for granted again, she vowed. And it really was lovely to see Great-Aunt Martha again. Frances felt a rush of tears to her eyes and blinked them away.

There was great jubilation when she appeared in the sitting room, which was hot and stuffy with a fire roaring in the hearth. Great-Aunt Gertrude sat huddled close to it, a heavy woolen shawl about her shoulders and a lap robe over her knees, but both were cast aside the moment she set eyes upon her great-niece, and she got to her feet with surprising alacrity and came hurrying toward her. They met and hugged tightly in the middle of the room while Great-Aunt Martha fluttered about them, telling excitedly of the secret she had kept to herself for all of four days lest dear Frances not be able to come and Gertrude be plunged into even deeper gloom with disappointment.

Later, as she sat with a cup of tea in her hand and a plate of cakes—Aunt Martha had put three on it though she had asked for only one—on her knee, Frances felt warm and happy and pleasantly tired. It was obvious that Aunt Gertrude was not in the best of health, but neither was she dangerously ill. Frances even felt a twinge of guilt about having come here, but she had not come under false pretenses, and it seemed that she really had been a tonic for her aunts’ spirits. They were chattering merrily and seemed not even to have noticed that the fire had died down considerably.

She would spend a week or so with them and enjoy herself without guilt, Frances thought rather sleepily, and then she would go back to school and work doubly hard until the end of the term. There would be all the extra work of preparing for the year-end prize-giving and concert.

Perhaps she would try to visit her aunts in the country for another week during the summer. They needed her, she had just realized—and really she needed them too.

“Some friends of yours came calling on me a few days ago, Frances,” Great-Aunt Martha said, beaming at her. “Poor Gertrude was still in bed that day and did not meet them, but we will certainly invite them back.”

“Oh?” Frances looked inquiringly at her, a little flutter of alarm in the pit of her stomach. Someone who knew her was already aware that she was returning to London?

“The Earl of Edgecombe called on me,” Aunt Martha said. “His late wife and I used to be bosom bows when we were girls, you know, and I always did like him exceedingly. It was most obliging of him to call.”

Frances felt as if her stomach performed a complete somersault. Ah, yes, of course. She remembered then that he had said he once knew Great-Aunt Martha. She had not even thought of the possibility . . .

But her aunt had spoken of friends calling on her.