Simply Unforgettable

“You become offensive,” she said. “I have given you no permission to speak so freely to me, Lord Sinclair.”

“Perhaps that is so,” he said. “You have given me only your body.”

She inhaled sharply. But she let the breath out slowly again and refrained from answering him.

He had not noticed the passing landmarks of the journey. He realized suddenly, though, that they were approaching the Upper Assembly Rooms. It was just as well. Good Lord, he had not intended to quarrel with her. He might not have done so if she had not irritated him by opening the conversation with her bright, inane comment on the weather.

As if they were no more than polite strangers.

The sooner he left Bath and got back to the serious business of getting himself married, the better it would be for everyone. And Portia Hunt was in London waiting for him. So were her mama and his and all their family members.

Bath, London. London, Bath . . . Devil take it, it was like the choice between the devil and the deep blue sea!

Where had the familiar life gone that had given him perfect contentment for the past ten years or so?

But as he descended from the carriage and turned to hand Frances down, he did catch himself out.

Contentment?

He had been contented for the past ten years?

Contented?

A dozen times during the past three days Frances had been on the brink of writing to Miss Amy Marshall with some excuse not to attend the assembly. There was too much schoolwork to be done—classes to prepare and papers to mark—and there were extra music lessons with individual girls to be fitted in, and practices with the junior and senior choirs and the madrigal group.

Her life as a teacher occupied most of her waking hours.

But her friends, who ought to have supported such a responsible attitude, had not cooperated on this occasion.

“You must go and enjoy yourself for Miss Marshall’s sake,” Claudia had said. “You said she needed a female chaperone, and it may be too late to find another. And you must go for the Earl of Edgecombe’s sake too. He sounds like a courtly gentleman even if he is an aristocrat.”

“And you must go and enjoy yourself for our sakes,” Anne had said with a sigh. “You are actually going to attend one of the assemblies at the Upper Rooms, Frances—as the invited guest of an earl and a viscount. We will want to enjoy it vicariously through you. We will want to hear every single detail the morning after.”

“And perhaps,” Susanna had added, the usual twinkle of mischief in her eyes, “Viscount Sinclair will realize that he ought not to have let you go after Christmas, Frances, and will begin a determined courtship of you. Perhaps he will sweep you off your feet and put poor Mr. Blake to rout.” But she had also rushed up to hug Frances, all teasing at an end. “Do enjoy yourself. Just enjoy yourself.”

Anne had come to Frances’s room, though, while she was getting ready for the evening and asked her if it really was going to be painful for her to be in company with Viscount Sinclair for a whole evening.

“Perhaps,” she had said, “I ought not to have said that about your going to enjoy the evening for our sakes. How selfish of me!”

But by then it had been too late to avoid going, and Frances had assured her that going to tea at Brock Street really had cured her of any foolish infatuation she may have felt for the man after Christmas.

That had been just before Susanna and Claudia had also come to her room and just before Viscount Sinclair was due to arrive, and they had all gone downstairs with her to wait in the visitors’ sitting room. And then, of course, Anne had noticed that part of the ribbon at her hem had come unstitched and Susanna had dashed upstairs for needle and thread and pins, and all had been laughing panic while Anne had stitched.

It had not occurred to any of them to move from the hallway into the sitting room or to Mr. Keeble not to open the door when the viscount had knocked on it.

It had all been rather embarrassing and rather funny. And then he had offered to go back outside to wait and the situation had seemed funnier still. And, of course, it really was rather exciting to be going to an assembly. Perhaps even to dance there.

Perhaps with him.

He had mentioned their dancing together when he had brought her home after tea that afternoon.

But she was no longer feeling so cheerful as she descended from the carriage outside the Upper Rooms. Gracious heavens, he had called her a coward. And a passionate woman.

You are fairly bursting at the seams with passion, Frances—not all of it sexual, I might add.

He had referred openly to the night they had spent together. He had reminded her that he knew her in the biblical sense.

He had accused her of hiding behind her contentment, too cowardly to reach for happiness.

It was not cowardice. It was a hard-won good sense.

If only, she thought as she stepped ahead of him through the doors into the Upper Rooms, he did not look so devastatingly handsome tonight in his black tailed evening coat and pantaloons with a silver embroidered waistcoat and white linen and expertly tied neckcloth. Or so suffocatingly male with his square-jawed, handsome face and intense hazel eyes.

And then she forgot some of her agitation at the realization that she was actually here. She was attending a