Simply Unforgettable

“But it would be no different with you,” she said, looking sharply up at him and squinting a moment before the carriage moved around another bend and set her face in shadow again. “If it had been possible for me to take up Lord Heath’s offer—if I were not still under contract with George Ralston, that is—and if he could have arranged for me to sing at prestigious concerts in England and on the Continent, you would not still have wanted me as your wife. A viscountess does not do such things.”

“Devil take it, Frances.”

But he was too exasperated to be able to think of words to speak. He caught her up in his arms instead, pressed his mouth to hers, and held her tight until she relaxed and kissed him back.

“You always presume to know me so well,” he said when he finally lifted his head. “I am frequently an impulsive, ramshackle fellow, Frances, but I would have to be a raving lunatic to be asking you to marry me and then arranging for Heath to hear you sing if I thought having the singing career you ought to have and marriage to me were mutually exclusive activities. Damn it, you have made a great deal out of nothing.”

“It never did feel like nothing,” she said bitterly, pulling away from him and retreating to her corner again. “My father’s debts were larger than I thought, I had signed a contract I could never get out of, and Lady Lyle became less pleasant when I started to complain.”

“A contract,” Lucius said. “How old were you, Frances?”

“Nineteen,” she said. “Does that fact make a difference?”

“Of course it does,” he said. “It is not worth the paper it is written on. You were a minor.”

“Oh,” she said. “I did not realize that mattered.” She pressed both hands to her face for a moment and shook her head. “Things kept going from bad to worse. And then the worst thing of all happened. After I had quarreled with Charles, the Countess of Fontbridge came to see me. She had not heard of the quarrel, but she was determined to separate us. She offered me money—a large sum—if I would agree to leave London without another word to Charles and never come back again.”

“And you took the money?” He looked at her incredulously—and also with something of a grin.

“I did,” she said. “I was so angry. But I also had no choice but to promise—at least, I thought I had no choice. And then I thought—why not? Why not take her money even though I had no intention of marrying her son anyway? So I did. I needed money to set myself free, and so I rationalized my decision. I gave it all to Lady Lyle, and then I packed a valise and left the house while she was at an evening party. I had no plans, but the next day I saw the advertisement for the teaching job at Miss Martin’s, and the day after that her London agent agreed to send me down to Bath for an interview. I needed to leave, Lucius, and I did leave. There was nothing for me in London. I thought I was tied to a contract that I found quite abhorrent, scandal was about to break around me, and either Lady Lyle or Lady Fontbridge could have unleashed it in a moment. I left, hoping almost against hope that I would have a chance to start again, to build a better life for myself. And incredibly it worked. I have been happy ever since. Until I met you.”

“Ah, my love.” He took her hand again, but this time she succeeded in pulling it away.

“No, you do not understand,” she said just as the carriage made a sharp turn into the cobbled stable yard of a small country inn, where Peters was already standing beside the curricle. “You do not understand why I had to give my promise to the Countess of Fontbridge. She knew something that Lady Lyle had told her, something I did not even know myself. Lady Lyle wanted to make sure that I did not marry Charles, I suppose, and stop singing and paying her large sums of money for debts she had quite possibly fabricated. But my only thought was that my great-aunts must never discover the truth. It would have hurt them unbearably, I believed.”

She seemed not to have noticed that the carriage had stopped. With one raised hand Lucius stopped Peters from opening the door.

“I am not who you think I am,” she said.

“Neither Francoise Halard nor Frances Allard?” he asked softly.

“I am not French at all or English either,” she said. “My mother was Italian, and so was my father as far as I know. I do not, in fact, know who he was—or is.”

He stared at her profile as she spread her hands across her lap and looked down at them.

“She was a singer,” she told him. “My father fell in love with her and married her even though she was already with child by someone else. After she died, a year after my birth, he brought me back to England with him and brought me up as his daughter. He never breathed a word of the truth to me—I heard it for the first time just over three years ago.”

“Are you sure, then,” he asked, “that it is true?”

She smiled at her hands. “I suppose part of me always wondered if perhaps it was a malicious invention,” she said. “But my great-aunts confirmed it just today. I told them the truth before I left, only to discover that my father had done so when he first arrived in England with me. They have always known.”

She was weeping, he realized when a spot of moisture fell onto her lap and darkened the fabric of her dress. He handed her a handkerchief, and she took it and pressed it to her eyes.

“So you see,” she said, “I cannot marry anyone of high rank. I cannot marry you. And before you rush in to contradict me, Lucius, stop and think. You have made a promise to your grandfather and indeed to your whole family. I have met them, and I have seen you with them. I know you are fond of them. More than that, I know you love them. And I know that your impetuosity is more often than not motivated by love. You are a far more precious person than I think you realize. For your family’s sake you cannot marry me.”

And then—absurdly—he wanted to weep. Was it true? Was he perhaps not quite the wastrel he sometimes believed himself to be?

I know that your impetuosity is more often than not motivated by love.

“It is almost dark,” he said, “and if this inn does not offer a decent beef pie for dinner I am going to be mightily out of sorts. I suppose you are ready for a cup of tea?”

She blew her nose then and looked about her as if realizing for the first time that they were not still rattling along the highway.