He did not give her a chance to reply. He jumped out of the carriage and turned to hand her down.

“I was beginning to think, guv,” Peters said, “that I was going to be up until the wee hours of the morning waiting to attract old Thomas’s attention so that he would turn in here rather than crawling on past.”

Lucius ignored the witticism.

“It does matter,” she said. “It really does, Lucius.”

“It most certainly does not.” He looked at her in obvious exasperation. “Good Lord, Frances, if only you had told me all this when we were in Sydney Gardens, marooned by the rain, we could have been married by now and proceeding to live happily ever after.”

“We could not.” But all was pain about her heart. “You never stop to think, Lucius.”

They could not immediately continue the discussion. They were in the public dining room, there being no private parlors at the inn. There was only one other group there, and they were at the far side of the room, deep in conversation. But the landlord had arrived with their food—roast beef and vegetables. Frances wished she had ordered only bread and butter and tea.

Lucius was looking handsome and elegant. He had changed for dinner, and he was freshly shaved. That latter activity had been performed in her full view while she sat on the large bed in their shared room, her arms clasped about her knees. He had been shirtless.

The scene had felt almost suffocatingly domestic. And she had been able to see all the rippling muscles of his arms and shoulders and back. He really did have a splendid physique. Not that her perusal of him had been entirely scientific. She had been terribly aware of him sexually.

She had been very aware too of the fact that they would be spending the night together in that room—and in that bed. It had not occurred to her to be in any way horrified.

“It matters to you,” Lucius asked, picking up his knife and fork and cutting into his beef, “that Allard—or Halard, I suppose—was not your real father?”

“It mattered very much at first,” she said, “and I was inclined not to believe it. But it did not seem to me the sort of thing Lady Lyle would have invented. She was greedy and occasionally spiteful, but I did not believe her to be wicked. Eventually, once I had recovered from the first shock, I realized that the love he had always lavished upon me was even more precious than I had always thought it since I was not even his flesh and blood. But it mattered in other ways. I was an imposter in society. I could not have married Charles even if I had still loved him. And this is not even all in the past tense. I cannot marry you.”

She put a forkful of food into her mouth and then found the effort of chewing it almost beyond her powers.

“Are you really so naive, Frances?” he asked. “Numerous members of the ton do not have the parents they profess to have. Have you not heard it said that once a woman has presented her husband with an heir and a spare she can proceed to enjoy life in any manner she chooses provided she is discreet? There are many women of good ton who do so with great enthusiasm and present their husbands with an array of hopeful offspring that he did nothing to beget. What did your great-aunts have to say on the matter?”

“They told me,” she said, “that I was a tiny, big-eyed child when they first saw me and they fell in love with me on sight. They told me that when my father told them the truth about me, it simply made no difference to them. My father was their beloved nephew, and he acknowledged me as his own. And so it never occurred to them not to acknowledge me as their great-niece. They told me I was the apple of their eye.”

“When I called there this afternoon,” he said, “they also told me that you are their heir.”

“Oh,” she said, setting down her knife and fork with something of a clatter and giving up even the pretense of eating.

“You are not going to weep again, are you, Frances?” he asked her. “If I had known, I would have brought a dozen clean handkerchiefs with me, but I did not know. Don’t cry, my love.”

“Oh, I am not,” she said. “But three years ago when the Countess of Fontbridge came to me with her threats, it was of them I thought. I could not bear to have them know how they had been deceived all those years. And I suppose I could not bear the thought of losing their love. But when I went out to the summer house today to tell them the truth, they looked at me in dismay because I knew. And then they hugged me and kissed me and called me a goose for having doubted them for one moment.”

“You see?” he said, his plate already almost empty. “They agree with me, Frances—about your being a goose. It never pays to give in to threats and blackmail. I’ll go and find Lady Fontbridge and plant her a facer, if you wish—or I would if it were not ungentlemanly to do such violence to a lady.”

“Oh, Lucius.” She laughed. “I called on her this morning and told her that though I was leaving for Bath I would no longer consider myself bound by the promise I made more than three years ago—except the one not to marry Charles because I had not intended to marry him anyway. And I called on Lady Lyle and told her that I no longer considered myself in her debt or under obligation to George Ralston. When she threatened to pursue me to Bath with her vicious gossip, I told her the name of the school and where to find it.”

His fork remained suspended halfway to his mouth. He grinned at her and made her heart turn right over in her bosom, she was sure.

“Bravo, my love!” he said.

She sighed. “Lucius,” she said, “that is the third or fourth time you have called me that in the last hour or so. You must stop. You really must. You need to set your mind to fulfilling the promise you made your grandfather. If Miss Hunt is no longer a candidate, you will need to find someone else.”

“I have found her,” he said.

She sighed again. “Your bride must be someone acceptable to your family,” she said. “You know she must. You made the promise as soon as you knew the Earl of Edgecombe was failing in health. Do you know why you made that promise? Because it was the dutiful thing to? Yes. I believe duty means much to you. Because you love him, and your mother and your sisters too? Yes. You bound yourself to marrying and settling down and having a family of your own, Lucius, because you love the family that nurtured you and felt that you owed them that stability in your life.”

“You are very ready to assign all sorts of sentimental motives to me today,” he said. His plate was empty. He set down his knife and fork and picked up his glass of wine. “But if there is some truth in what you say, Frances, there is truth in this too. I will marry for love. I have decided that, and that puts you in an awkward position. For I love you. And so I cannot settle for anyone else. And yet I have a certain promise to keep before the summer is out.”

The landlord arrived to clear away their plates. A maid behind him carried in two dishes of steaming pudding. Frances waved hers away and asked for tea.

“Your father acknowledged you from the moment of your birth, did he not?” Lucius asked as soon as they were alone again. “He was married to your mother? He gave you his name?”

“Yes,” she said, “of course.”

“Then you are legitimate,” he said. “In the eyes of the church and the law you are Frances Allard—or perhaps Françoise Halard.”

“But no high stickler, knowing the truth, would want to marry me,” she said.

“Good Lord, Frances,” he said, “why would you want to marry a high stickler? It sounds like a dreadfully dreary fate. Marry me instead.”

“We are arguing in circles,” she said.

He looked up from his pudding to smile at her.

“It has only now struck me,” he said, “that you never did make suet pudding and custard to follow the beef pie, Frances. But I will say this. That pie was so satisfying that the pudding would surely have gone to waste if you had made it.”

She loved him so very, very much, she thought, gazing across the table at him. She must have fallen in love with him—

“I believe,” he said, “I fell in love with you after tasting the first mouthful of that pie, Frances. Or perhaps it was when I walked into the kitchen and found you rolling out the pastry and you slapped at my hand when I stole a piece. Or perhaps it was when I lifted you out of your carriage and deposited you on the road and you gave it as your opinion that I ought to be boiled in oil. Yes, I think it must have been then. No woman had ever spoken such endearing words to me before.”

She continued to gaze at him.

“I must know something, Frances,” he said. “Please, I must know. Do you love me?”

“That has nothing to do with anything,” she said, shaking her head slowly.