Lucius felt a touch of anger, but he quelled it.

“Come,” he said, “and bring Lady Heath. You may listen and judge for yourself whether her singing voice does not equal her beauty.”

But a singer needed an audience, Lucius believed. How could Frances sing as she had in Bath with only his family and hers and the Heaths looking on? Yet even in Bath the audience had been modest in size.

The music room in Marshall House would seat thirty people in some comfort. If the panels between it and the ballroom were removed, there would be room for many more, and the size of the combined rooms would give range for the power of a great voice.

And a concert needed more than one performer . . .

His schemes became more grandiose by the hour.

“I am thinking of inviting a few people to join us in the music room after dinner on the evening Miss Allard comes here with her great-aunts to dine, sir,” he told his grandfather at tea three days before the said dinner. “Including Baron Heath and his wife.”

“Ah, a good idea, Lucius,” the earl said. “I should have thought of it for myself—and of Heath. He can do something for her. I do not imagine Miss Allard will have any objection.”

She well might, Lucius suspected. He knew her better than his grandfather did. But he held his peace.

“I have the distinct impression,” the viscountess said, “that it is this Miss Allard rather than Mrs. Melford and Miss Driscoll who is to be the guest of honor at our table. It is extraordinary when one remembers that she is a schoolteacher.”

“You will see, Louisa,” the earl told her, “that it is she who is extraordinary.”

Caroline meanwhile had uttered a muffled shriek at Lucius’s words.

“And I am expected to accompany Miss Allard before an audience that includes Baron Heath?” she said. “When is she coming here to practice, Luce?”

“The afternoon after tomorrow,” he said. “You had better not mention Lord Heath to her, though, Caroline, or any other guests. You will only make her nervous.”

“Make her nervous!” Her voice had risen almost to a squeak. “How about me?”

“When she begins to sing,” Amy said kindly, “no one will even notice your playing, Caroline.”

“Well, thank you for that,” Caroline said before laughing suddenly.

Amy laughed with her. “I did not mean it quite the way it sounded,” she said. “Your playing is quite superior—far better than mine.”

“Which is not much of a compliment, Amy, when one really thinks about it,” Emily said dryly.

“And you, Father,” the viscountess said firmly, “are looking tired. Lucius will help you to your room, and you will lie down until dinnertime.”

“Yes, ma’am,” the earl said with a twinkle in his eye—and a slight gray tinge to his complexion.

No one had voiced any objection to the idea of making the musical part of the evening into a full-blown concert, though, Lucius thought as he climbed the stairs slowly, his grandfather leaning heavily on his arm. Not that he had used those words exactly, of course, to describe his plans. But any small—or large—gathering of people for the purpose of listening to a few musical performances could be loosely defined as a concert.

He had three days during which to gather a respectably sized audience to do Frances Allard’s talent justice—at the height of the Season, when every day brought a flood of invitations to every ton household. But it could be done, by Jove, and he would do it. Her feet were going to be set firmly on the road to success and fame that evening. He had no doubt of it.

And it would be all his doing.

That might prove small comfort in the years ahead, of course.

But all was not yet lost on the personal front. He was not married yet, or even betrothed—not officially anyway. The Balderstons were back in town, but he had contrived to avoid them for all of twenty-four hours.

He had never been a man to give up lightly on what he badly wanted. And new leaf or no new leaf, he had not changed in that particular.

He desperately wanted Frances Allard.

Marshall House was a grand mansion on

Cavendish Square

in the heart of Mayfair, Frances discovered on the afternoon of the day before she was to dine there. She might have expected as much, of course, since it was the town house of the Earl of Edgecombe. But she felt apprehensive and strangely conspicuous as she bowed her head and hurried inside after Thomas had handed her down from the ancient carriage outside the doors.

She was very aware that she really was back in London.

She saw no one within, though, except for a few servants and the young lady who awaited her in the room to which she was shown and introduced herself as Miss Caroline Marshall. She was tall and poised and pretty and bore little resemblance to her brother.

Of him there was no sign.

The room was massive and gorgeously decorated, with its high ceiling painted with a scene from mythology and gilded friezes and crystal chandeliers and mirrored walls and a gleaming wood floor. It fairly took Frances’s breath away. This was where she was to sing for the earl and her aunts tomorrow evening?

It was very clearly not the family drawing room.

Miss Marshall offered an explanation that partly reassured her, though.

“The pianoforte in here is superior to the one in the drawing room,” she explained, “and my grandfather insists that nothing but the best is good enough for you, Miss Allard. I cannot understand why the panels have been removed, though. This is the music room and the ballroom combined. Tomorrow evening they will have been replaced, I do not doubt, and your voice will not have to fill such a vast space. But really this is not good enough. You ought to be able to practice in the space you will be singing in.”

How glorious it would be, though, Frances thought wistfully as her eyes feasted upon the opulent splendor of the double chamber, to rise to the challenge of singing to an audience that filled this vast space. She had once dreamed of singing in just such a place.

As she warmed up her voice with scales and exercises she had learned as a girl, she fit her voice to the room, well aware though she was that tomorrow evening she would have to make an adjustment to a smaller space.

“Oh, goodness,” Miss Marshall said even before they began to practice either of the pieces they had chosen for the occasion, “the combined room is not too big for you after all, is it? How extraordinary!”

They practiced in earnest then, and Frances reveled in the chance just to sing. She did sing at school, of course, but not often or at great length—or to the full power of her voice. The purpose of the school and her role as teacher there, after all, was to draw music out of her pupils, not to indulge her desire to create music of her own. It was a noble purpose, she had always thought. It was a joy to help young people realize their full potential.

She still did think so, but, oh, it felt good to indulge in a whole selfish hour of singing.

“Now I know what Amy meant,” Miss Marshall said when they were finished and she was folding the sheets of music neatly on the stand, “when she assured me that no one would notice my accompaniment once you had started to sing. I have never heard a lovelier voice, Miss Allard.”

“Well, thank you.” Frances smiled warmly at her. “But you are a very accomplished pianist, you know, and need never fear an audience. You have no cause to feel nervous about tomorrow evening, though, do you, when there will be only your family and my great-aunts to hear us. My aunts are quite unthreatening, I do assure you.”

She drew on her bonnet and tied the ribbons beneath her chin, taking one last awed look about the ballroom, which would be hidden from view behind panels tomorrow evening. But when Miss Marshall spoke next, it was not to her, she realized.

“How long have you been standing there?” she asked. “I thought you were escorting Miss Hunt to Muriel Hemmings’s garden party.”

She was speaking, of course, to Viscount Sinclair, who was lounging in the doorway of the music room as if he had been there for some time.

“Some cousins arrived from the country,” he said, “and the garden party had to be abandoned in favor of entertaining them.”

“Well, you might have made your presence known, Luce,” his sister said crossly. “Were you listening?”

“I was,” he admitted. “But if you hit one wrong note, Caroline, I did not hear it. I am certain that Miss Allard did not.”

“You must give the order for the panels to be put back between the rooms,” she said. “It has been most inconvenient to practice in this space. Miss Allard’s voice is more than up to it, though, I might add.”

“Yes,” he said, pushing himself away from the doorjamb in order to stand upright, “I noticed that too.”