He had, she thought, turned pale while she spoke. Certainly his expression had grown hard and shuttered. He turned abruptly to stare down into the unlit coals in the fireplace.

“And you, Frances,” he said after long moments of uncomfortable silence, “do not know the meaning of the word trust. I have no quarrel with your choosing to teach rather than sing. Why should I? You are free to choose your own course in life. But I do need to understand your reason for doing so—and there is a reason beyond simple preference or even simple poverty. I have no real quarrel with your refusal to come to London with me after Christmas or to marry me when I asked you a little over a month ago. I do not consider myself God’s gift to women, and I do not expect every woman to fall head over ears in love with me—even those who have bedded with me. But I need to understand the reason for your refusal, since I do not believe it is aversion or even indifference. You will not trust me with your reasons. You will not trust me with yourself.”

She was too angry to feel renewed regret that she had not been more open with him yesterday.

“I do not have to,” she cried. “I am under no compulsion to confide in you or any man. Why should I? You are nothing to me. And I am certain of only one thing in this life, and that is that I may trust myself. I will not let myself down.”

He turned to look at her, all signs of humor and mockery wiped from his face.

“Are you sure of that?” he asked her. “Are you sure you have not already done so?”

She understood suddenly—she supposed she had known it all along—why she had been able to contemplate a future with Mr. Blake but not with Lucius Marshall. Beyond a full confession about her past, including what had happened just after Christmas, she would not have had to share anything of her deepest self with Mr. Blake—not ever. Some instinct told her that. Courtesy and gentility and certain shared interests and friends would have taken them through life together quite contentedly. With Lucius she would have to share her very soul—and he his. Nothing else would ever do between them—she had been wrong yesterday about open books. As a very young woman she might have risked opening up to him—indeed she would have welcomed such a prospect. Young people tended to dream of the sort of love and passion that would burn hot and bright throughout a lifetime and even beyond the grave.

Although she was only twenty-three she shrank from the prospect of such a relationship now—and yearned toward it too.

She remembered their night together with sudden, unbidden clarity and closed her eyes.

“I will come to escort you to the music room in twenty minutes’ time,” he said. “It is a concert I have arranged for you, Frances. There will be other performers, but you will be last, as is only fitting. No one would wish to have to follow you. I will leave you alone to compose yourself.”

He crossed the room with long strides, not looking at her. But he paused with his hand on the doorknob.

“If you ask it of me when I return,” he said, “or even now, I will take you home to

Portman Street

. I will find some excuse to make to the guests in the music room. I am endlessly inventive when I need to be.”

He waited, as if for her answer, but she made none. He let himself quietly out of the room and closed the door behind him.

It was a miracle beyond hoping for, Frances supposed, that there would be no one in the music room and ballroom who would recognize her. Strangely, the realization made her feel almost calm—resigned to her fate. There was nothing she could do about it now. She could leave the house, of course—she could do it without even waiting for Lucius’s return. But she knew she would not do that.

The Earl of Edgecombe would be disappointed.

Her great-aunts would be upset and humiliated.

And somewhere deep within her there was a more selfish reason for staying.

A lifelong dream was being painfully reborn.

He had not answered her question about the size of the audience. But he had not needed to. She knew that it must be large. Why else would the panels between the music room and the ballroom have been removed? Even the music room itself was a fair-sized room and must be capable of seating a few dozen people. But it was not large enough for tonight’s audience.

And one member of that large audience was to be Lord Heath. How proud her father would be if he could know that!

The artist in her, the performer who had grown up dreaming of singing in public, yearned to sing tonight regardless of the consequences.

A painter, after all, did not paint a canvas and then cover it with a sheet so that no one would see it. A writer did not write a book and set it on a shelf beneath other books so that no one would ever read it. A householder, as the biblical story would have it, did not light a lamp and set it beneath a basket so that it would give no light to those within the house.

She had not even realized fully during her years of teaching how much she had repressed her natural instinct to sing so that others would hear.

He taught me to reach for the stars and settle for nothing less.

Papa!

Well, tonight she would sing, both for him and for herself.

And tomorrow she would make arrangements to return to Bath.

Lucius’s intention when he left the music room was to creep off to his own room to sulk in private for twenty minutes—or to storm at the four walls in righteous fury. But he had the niggling suspicion that his thoughts would be more than a little disturbing if he went somewhere where he would have nothing else to do but allow them to rattle about in his head and clamor accusingly at him.

A meddler.

A tyrant.

A bully.

You do not manipulate someone you care for or go out of your way to make her miserable.

Damnation!

His next instinct was to stalk off to the music room and shoo everyone out of the house. There must be a dozen and one other entertainments for them to take themselves off to, after all—there always were during the Season. But though he was frequently impulsive and even reckless, he was almost never bad-mannered—not on such a colossal scale, anyway. Besides, this was not his house. And his grandfather had looked forward so much to this evening.

What he actually ended up doing was going to the music room to see who had come and to make himself agreeable. And it looked, he thought as soon as he walked into the room, as if everyone he had asked had come—and that was actually a vast number of people. The music room was crowded. So was the ballroom, though admittedly many people had not yet taken their seats but were milling about making a great deal of noise.

He greeted Baron Heath and his wife and showed them to the seats in the front row that had been reserved for them. He exchanged pleasantries with a number of friends and acquaintances. He made a point of welcoming Lady Lyle and assured her that she was going to particularly enjoy the concert. When she looked slightly mystified, he smiled at her and told her that she would see what he meant soon enough.

He made his way toward Portia Hunt and the Balderstons and realized with something of a grimace that this was the first time he had given them a thought all evening. The Marquess of Godsworthy, he noticed, was in conversation with his grandfather.

“This is very pleasant,” Lady Balderston said. “A concert at Marshall House is an unusual treat.”

“It will be the best treat, ma’am,” Lucius assured her.

“Caroline told me that the schoolteacher from Bath is to sing,” Portia said. “Is it wise, Lucius? The audience here is likely to be far superior in taste to what she is accustomed to.”

“Miss Allard was not born a schoolteacher, Portia,” he told her. “Nor was she born in Bath. She grew up here in London as a matter of fact and had the best of singing masters.”

“One can only hope,” she said, “that those seated at the back will be able to hear her. Forgive me, Lucius, but your mama is busy with the guests. Is she aware that Amy is here?”

“There is not much concerning her daughters of which my mother is unaware,” he said. “Amy is a member of this family, and this is a family evening that has been opened up to our friends.”

He nodded amiably and walked away before he could start feeling irritable again. He already felt a number of negative things without adding irritability to the list.

The other entertainers had already arrived, and more and more of the members of the audience were taking their seats. There was nothing worse than concerts that started late. It was time to fetch Frances.

She would have his head on a platter when she saw the size of the audience, he thought as he made his way back up to the drawing room. For some reason that escaped his understanding she had given up her dream three years ago and was more than reluctant to take it up again.