Simply Unforgettable

She did not dare answer her own question.

She tried not even to ask it. She tried to concentrate on the concert, to give the girls the attention they deserved. Unwittingly, she gave them even more than usual, and they performed for her even better than they usually did.

But finally the last prize had been presented and the last applause had died away, and there was nothing left to do but go out into the hall with the girls and the other teachers to mingle with the guests while trays of biscuits and lemonade were handed around.

Great-Aunt Martha and Great-Aunt Gertrude were there waiting to hug Frances and exclaim over the loveliness of all the music. Amy was right behind them. Lord Tait bowed to her and Lady Tait smiled with something more than just graciousness in her manner. The Earl of Edgecombe, looking a little more stooped than usual, took both her hands in his, squeezed them, and told her that she appeared to be just as good a teacher as she was a singer —and that was saying something.

Lucius remained in the background and was in no hurry to come forward, it seemed. But Frances, glancing at him, felt as if her knees might buckle under her. His eyes were positively devouring her.

“Frances,” he said at last, reaching for her hand and carrying it to his lips when she offered it, “I have said good-bye to you for the last time. I positively refuse to say it ever again. If you try to insist, I shall go off on my own without a word to sulk.”

She could feel the color rising in her cheeks. Her great-aunts were listening. So were his grandfather and sisters and brother-in-law. So were Anne and David, who had come up behind her.

“Lucius!” she said softly.

He would not let her hand go. His eyes were definitely smiling now.

“The final impediment has been removed,” he said as Susanna approached from behind him. “We have the blessing of every member of my family. I have not asked your great-aunts, but I would wager we have their blessing too.”

“Lucius!”

She was beginning to feel horribly embarrassed. People were beginning to look. A number of the girls were beginning to nudge one another and titter. There was their teacher, Miss Allard, in the middle of the hall, her hand held close to the heart of a handsome, fashionable gentleman who was laughing down into her face, the expression on his own suggesting that it was more than just amusement he was feeling.

Claudia had noticed and was coming their way.

Frances looked at him in mute appeal.

And then her daring, impulsive, annoying, wonderful Lucius did surely the most reckless thing he had ever done in his life. He risked everything.

“Frances,” he said without even trying to lower his voice or make the moment in any way private, “my dearest love, will you do me the great honor of marrying me?”

There were gasps and squeals and shushing noises and sighs. Someone sniveled—either Amy or one of the aunts.

It was the sort of marriage proposal, a distant part of Frances’s brain thought, that no woman would ever even dream of receiving. It was the sort of marriage proposal every woman deserved.

She bit her lip.

And then smiled radiantly.

“Oh, yes, Lucius,” she said. “Yes, of course I will.”

She had been wrong. The last applause of the evening had not yet died away. Her cheeks flamed as everyone within hearing distance clapped again.

Viscount Sinclair, lowering his head as if to kiss the back of Miss Allard’s hand, kissed her briefly and hard on the lips instead.

And then they were claimed by family and friends and squealing girls.

“And now,” Claudia said at last with a sigh that was belied by warmly smiling eyes, “I suppose I am going to have to accept your resignation after all, Frances. But I always did say I would be prepared to do so in a good cause, did I not?”

The wedding of Miss Frances Allard and Viscount Sinclair was solemnized at Bath Abbey one month after the very public marriage proposal and acceptance.

The viscountess—soon to become the dowager viscountess—had wanted the nuptials to take place in London at St. George’s on Hanover Square. Mrs. Melford had wanted them to be held in the village church at Mickledean in Somersetshire.

But much as her great-aunts were Frances’s family, her friends at the school were at least as dear to her. And though Anne was planning to spend part of the summer in Cornwall, neither Susanna nor Claudia could leave Bath, as there were nine charity girls to care for at the school.

It was inconceivable to Frances that all three of her closest friends should not attend her wedding.

And Lucius put up no argument.

“Provided you are there, my love,” he said, “I would be quite happy to marry in a barn on the farthest Hebridean island.”

And so Frances was able to dress for her wedding in her own familiar room at the school—the very last day it would be hers—and say her own private farewells to her fellow teachers before they left for the church and she descended to the visitors’ sitting room where Baron Clifton, her cousin of some remove, was waiting to escort her to the church and give her away.