Simply Unforgettable

She had been battling a bruised heart ever since.

Despite all the women I have known . . .

Of which number she was one insignificant unit. If she had gone with him to London when he had asked, how soon would he have tired of her? Long before now, she was sure.

But, she thought, her coming here this afternoon had nothing whatsoever to do with him. She squared her shoulders and donned her best social manner as she was ushered into a cozy sitting room at the front of the house. The Earl of Edgecombe was rising from a chair by the fire, a welcoming smile on his thin, rather wan face, and Miss Marshall was hurrying toward her, both hands outstretched, her cheeks flushed, her face eagerly smiling.

“Miss Allard,” she said when Frances set her hands in hers, “I am so delighted that you were able to come. Do take the seat beside Grandpapa if you will. The tea tray will be sent up immediately.”

“Thank you.” Frances smiled warmly at the girl, who was clearly on her best behavior and half elated, half anxious lest she make some mistake. She was pretty, with her brother’s brown hair and hazel eyes, though her face was heart-shaped, with rounded cheeks and a pointed little chin.

The earl smiled kindly at Frances and reached out his right hand for hers as she approached. He carried it to his lips.

“Miss Allard,” he said, “you do us a great honor. I hope I have not taken you away from anything very important at your school.”

“I am sure,” she said, taking the chair next to his, “that the junior choir was quite delighted to discover that there was to be no practice this afternoon, my lord.”

“And so,” he said, “you conduct a choir and you teach music, including pianoforte lessons. But how much do you sing, Miss Allard?”

“Last evening,” she told him as he took his seat again and Viscount Sinclair took another chair and Miss Marshall fluttered about while the tea things were brought in by a maid and the butler, “was the first time I have performed outside a school setting in several years. It was a good thing for my nerves that the audience was not larger.”

“And it was a tragedy for the musical world,” he said, “that the audience was so small. You do not only have a good voice, Miss Allard, or even a superior voice. You have a great voice, definitely one of the loveliest I have ever heard in almost eighty years of listening. No—not one of. It is the loveliest.”

Frances would not have been human if she had not felt a glow of pleasure at such lavish and apparently sincere praise.

“Thank you, my lord.” She could feel herself flushing.

A plate of dainty sandwiches was set on a table close to where Miss Marshall sat behind the tea tray, together with scones spread with clotted cream and strawberry jam. There was also a plate of fancy cakes. The girl poured the tea into exquisitely fine china cups and brought one to each of them before offering the sandwiches.

“But you must have been told all this before,” the earl said. “Many times, I suppose.”

Yes. Sometimes by people whose opinion she could respect. Ultimately, after her father’s death, by people who had promised fame and fortune while caring not one iota for her artist’s soul. But—for a variety of reasons of which youthful vanity was not the least—she had believed them and allowed them to act for her and almost ruined herself in the process. And then she had lost Charles because of her singing and finally had behaved very badly. Much really had been ruined—all her girlhood dreams, for example. Sometimes, even though only three years had passed since she had seen the advertisement for the teaching position at Miss Martin’s and applied for it and been sent to Bath by Mr. Hatchard for an interview with Claudia—sometimes it was hard to believe that all those things had happened to her and not someone else. Until last night she had not sung in public for three long years.

“People have always been kind,” she said.

“Kind.” He laughed gruffly as he took one small sandwich from the plate. “It is not kindness to be in the presence of greatness and pay homage to it, Miss Allard. I wish we were in London. I would invite the ton to spend an evening at my home and have you sing to them. I am not a renowned patron of the arts, but I would not need to be. Your talent would speak for itself, and your career as a singer would be assured. I am convinced of it. You could travel the world and enthrall audiences wherever you went.”

Frances licked her lips and toyed with the food on her plate.

“But we are not in London, sir,” Viscount Sinclair said, “and Miss Allard appears to be quite contented with her life as it is. Am I not right, ma’am?”

She lifted her eyes to his and realized how like his grandfather he was. He had the same square-jawed face, though the earl’s had slackened with age and was characterized by a smiling kindliness, whereas the viscount’s looked arrogant and stubborn and even harsh. He was gazing at her with intense eyes and one raised eyebrow. And his tone of voice had been clipped, though perhaps she was the only one who noticed.

“I like to sing for my own pleasure,” she said, “and for the pleasure of others. But I do not crave fame. When one is a teacher, one owes good service, of course, to one’s employer and to the parents of one’s pupils as well as to the pupils themselves, but one nevertheless has a great deal of professional freedom. I am not sure the same could be said of a singer—or any other type of performer, for that matter. One would need a manager, to whom one would be no more than a marketable commodity. All that would be important would be money and fame and image and exposure to the right people and . . . Well, I believe it would be hard to hang on to one’s integrity and one’s own vision of what art is under such circumstances.”

She spoke from bitter experience.

They were both looking attentively at her, Viscount Sinclair with mockery in every line of his body.

He had called her prim. It was foolish to allow such a description to hurt. She was prim. It was nothing to be ashamed of. It was something she had deliberately cultivated. His hand, she noticed, was playing with the edge of his plate—that strong, capable-looking hand that had chopped wood and peeled potatoes and sculpted a snowman’s head and rested against the small of her back as they waltzed and caressed her body . . .

Miss Marshall got up to offer the scones.