Frances did not quite look at him.

“I must go,” she said. “I have been here ten minutes longer than I intended to be. Poor Thomas will be tired of waiting for me.”

“Poor Thomas is probably sipping his ale by now,” Viscount Sinclair said, “if he is capable of driving that carriage at a pace faster than a sedate crawl, that is. I sent him away.”

“You did what?” She raised her eyes to his and glared indignantly at him. “Now I will have to walk home.”

He clucked his tongue. “It is such a long way,” he said, “especially on a sunny, warm day like this.”

He did not understand. She might be seen if she wandered the streets of fashionable Mayfair.

“Luce,” his sister said severely, “Miss Allard did not bring a maid with her.”

“I will escort her,” he said.

“I do not need a maid,” Frances said. “I am not a girl. And I would not put you to such trouble, Lord Sinclair.”

“It will be no trouble at all,” he said. “I need the exercise.”

What else could she say with Miss Marshall present? He knew very well that she would not make a scene. There was a gleam in his eyes that was beginning to look familiar.

For someone whom she had twice rejected—she, a mere schoolteacher—he was being remarkably persistent. But she had known from the start that he was a determined, sometimes belligerent man. And she had learned since that he was impulsive and reckless and not easily persuaded to give up what he had set his mind on.

For some reason he had set his mind on getting her to agree to some sort of relationship with him. Whether it was still marriage she did not know. But it did not matter anyway. She had said no once, and she must continue to say it.

She walked silently beside him down the long, curving stairway to the great hall and the front doors. She must just hope that the streets between

Cavendish Square

and

Portman Street

would be deserted this late in the afternoon.

Lucius had been invited to take tea at

Berkeley Square

with the Balderstons and Portia and the Balderston cousins. But though he might have felt honor bound to attend the garden party since he had said long ago that he would, he felt no such compunction after the plans were changed. He sent a polite excuse and remained at home.

He had been pacing the hallway outside the ballroom—and occasionally standing stock still—since a few minutes after Frances’s arrival, which he had observed from an upper window. He could hardly believe what he had heard. He had thought her magnificent at the Reynolds’ soiree, but what he had not realized there was that her voice had been on a leash because of the relatively small size of the drawing room.

This afternoon it had been unleashed, though she had kept perfect control over it nevertheless.

Heath’s hair was going to do more than stand on end. He would be fortunate indeed if it did not fly right off his head.

But Lucius had not arranged to walk her back to

Portman Street

only to talk about her singing or quarrel with her. Devil take it, he was in love with the woman and yet he knew so little about her. Not knowing a woman had never seemed important to him before. Women were strange, contrary, irrational, oversensitive people anyway, and he had always been contented to keep his distance from his mother and sisters and never even to try to know or understand the women he bedded. It had never really occurred to him until he thought about it now that he did not know Portia either, although he had been acquainted with her most of his life. It had not seemed to matter—and still did not.

It mattered with Frances.

“This is not the way back to

Portman Street

,” she said as he drew her hand through his arm and set out from

Cavendish Square

with her.

“There are any number of ways of getting there,” he said, “some faster and more direct than others. You are not going to tell me, are you, Frances, that you have so little physical stamina that we must take the shortest route.”

“It has nothing to do with stamina,” she said. “My great-aunts are expecting me back for tea.”

“No, they are not,” he said. “I sent back a message with Thomas, informing them that I was taking you for a walk in the park before bringing you home. They will be charmed. They like me.”

“You what?” She turned an indignant face on him and drew her hand free before he could clamp it to his side. “You had no business sending any message at all, Lord Sinclair. You had no business sending my carriage away. I have no wish to walk in the park. And how conceited of you to believe that my aunts like you. How do you know they do?”

“You look lovely when you are angry,” he said. “You lose the cool, classical madonna look and become the passionate Italian beauty that you are deep down.”

“I am English,” she said curtly. “And I do not wish to go to the park.”

“Because it is I who am escorting you?” he asked. “Or because you are not—forgive me—dressed in the first stare of fashion?”

“I care nothing for fashion,” she said.

“Then you are very different from any other lady I have ever known,” he said. “Or any gentleman, for that matter. We will not take the paths that will be frequented by the fashionable multitude at this hour, Frances. I am too selfish to share you. We will take some shady path and talk. And if you were dressed in rags you would still look more beautiful to me than any other woman I have ever known.”

“You mock me, Lord Sinclair,” she said, but she fell into step beside him again, her hands clasped firmly at her back. “I do not believe you take life very seriously at all.”

“Sometimes it is more amusing not to,” he said. “But there are certain things I take very seriously, Frances. I am serious at the moment. I have a hankering to know exactly what it is that I have lost since you will not have me.”

That silenced her. She looked up at him with uncomprehending eyes and then dipped her head sharply as two people approached them and then passed with murmured greetings.

“I know a number of facts about you,” he said. “I know that your mother was Italian and your father some sort of French nobleman. I know that you are related to Baron Clifton. I know you grew up in London and left it two years after your father’s death in order to teach music and French and writing at Miss Martin’s school in Bath. I know that you are a very good cook. I know you have one of the loveliest soprano voices—perhaps even the loveliest—of our generation. I know other things about your character. I know that you are devoted to duty and can be stubborn and sometimes downright belligerent and also amiable and affectionate to those you love. I know you are sexually passionate. I even know you biblically. But I do not really know you at all, do I?”

“You do not need to,” she said firmly as they reached a side gate into Hyde Park and entered it and turned onto a narrow, shaded path that ran parallel to the street outside though thick trees hid it from view. “No one can be a totally open book to another person even if there is the intimacy of a close relationship between them.”

“And there is no such intimacy between us?” he asked.

“No. Absolutely not.”

He wondered how much of a fool he was making of himself. He tried to imagine their roles reversed. What if she had pursued him and twice he had told her quite clearly that he did not want her? How would he feel if she came after him again anyway, maneuvered matters so that she could get him alone, and then demanded to know who he was?

It was an uncomfortable picture.

But what if the signs he had given her were mixed? What if, while his lips had said no, his whole being had said yes?

“Tell me about your childhood,” he said.

Good Lord, had he taken leave of his senses? He had never been interested in anyone’s childhood!

She sighed aloud and for a few moments he thought she was going to keep silent.

“Why not?” she said eventually, as if to herself. “We are taking a very long way home and might as well have something to talk about.”

He looked down at her. She was dressed in cream-colored muslin, with a plain straw bonnet. She looked quite unfashionable. Yet she looked neat and pretty and adorable. Bars of sunlight and shade danced over her as they walked.

“That is the spirit,” he said.

For the first time a smile played about her lips as she glanced up at him.

“It would serve you right,” she said, “if I talked for the next several hours without pausing for breath about every single detail I can remember of my childhood.”

“It would,” he agreed. “But the thing is, Frances, that I doubt I would be bored.”

She shook her head.

“It was a happy, secure childhood,” she said. “I never knew my mother and so did not miss her. My father was all in all to me, though I was surrounded with nurses and governesses and other servants. I had everything money could buy. But unlike many privileged children, I was not emotionally neglected. My father played with me, read to me, took me about with him, spent hours of every day with me. He encouraged me to read and learn and make music and do and be all I was capable of doing and being. He taught me to reach for the stars and settle for nothing less.”

He could have asked her why she had forgotten that particular lesson, but he did not want to argue with her again or cause her to turn silent again.

“You lived in London?” he asked her.

“Most of the time,” she said. “I loved it here. There was always somewhere new to go, some other church to admire or museum or art gallery to wander about or market to explore. There was so much history to absorb and so many people to observe. And there were always shops and libraries and tearooms and parks to be taken to. And the river to sail on.”