Simply Unforgettable

I shall invite you to sing for me. I hope you will agree to do it.”

“I would be delighted, my lord,” she said.

“Lucius will take you home now,” he said. “Good night, Miss Allard.”

“Good night, my lord,” she said. “Good night, Amy.”

She was back inside the carriage with Viscount Sinclair again a minute later, and it was proceeding on its way. The journey would take ten minutes, she estimated. She had ten minutes left.

How foolish to feel panic at the thought.

“Tell me you enjoyed yourself tonight,” he said abruptly after the first minute or so had passed in silence.

“Oh, I did,” she assured him. “It was very—”

“If you say pleasant,” he said, “I shall throttle you, Frances.”

“—delightful,” she said, and smiled in the darkness.

“Tell me you found it delightful because I was there,” he said. “Tell me you would not have enjoyed it nearly as much if I had not been.”

The inside of the carriage was very dark. She could not see his face when she turned her head to look at him.

“I will tell you no such thing,” she said indignantly. “The very idea! The arrogance of it! Of course I would have enjoyed the evening just as much—better!—if you had not been there.”

“Liar!” he said softly.

“You appear to be under the delusion, Lord Sinclair,” she said, “that you are God’s gift to women.”

“A cliche unworthy of you,” he said. “Tell me you have regretted rejecting me after Christmas.”

“I have not!” she cried.

“Not even one tiny little bit?” he asked.

“Not even half that much,” she said.

“A quarter, then?” He laughed softly. “You are a terrible liar, Frances.”

“And you,” she said, “are more conceited than any man I have ever met in my life.”

“Is it conceited of me,” he asked her, “to have met someone and felt an overwhelming attraction to her, to have felt her equal attraction to me, to have consummated that attraction, and then to believe that she must have felt some twinge of regret at saying good-bye to me, especially when she did not need to do so?”

“It was better to suffer that little twinge,” she said tartly, “than to become your mistress.”

“Aha!” he said. “So you do admit to some twinge, do you?”

She bit her lip but did not answer him.

“I never did say that making you my mistress was my intention,” he said.

“But you would not say that your intention was marriage either,” she said. “Pardon me, Lord Sinclair, but I am unaware of any other relationship that would have been possible between us if I had gone away with you.”

“Courtship?” he suggested. “We needed more time together, Frances. We were not nearly finished with each other.”

“You speak from the perspective of the idle rich,” she said. “I need to work for my living. And my work is here.”

“I offered to stay here,” he reminded her, “but you would have none of it. And I offered to take you to London with me and find you somewhere to live and some decent female to stay with you for respectability.”

“And you would have paid all the expenses, I suppose,” she said.

“Yes, of course.” She knew from the tone of his voice that his eyebrows had arched arrogantly above his eyes.

“I would have been a kept woman,” she cried. “Can you not see that? I would have been your mistress no matter what other name you might have attempted to put upon our connection.”

“Lord!” he exclaimed. “You would argue that black is white, Frances, if I dared to suggest otherwise. But arguing gives me a headache, and I avoid headaches at all costs. There is no discussing any matter sensibly with you, is there? You must always have the last word.”

She turned toward him again to make some retort, but he turned to her first, set one arm about her shoulders, held her chin firm with the other hand, and kissed her hard on the mouth.

The shock of it caused her mind to shatter into incoherence.

“Mmm.” Her hand came up to his shoulder to push him away.

“Don’t fight me,” he murmured fiercely against her lips. “Don’t fight me, Frances.”

And because his very touch had destroyed all rational thought processes for the moment, she gave up her instinctive resistance to his embrace. She slid her fingers up into his hair instead and kissed him back with all the ardor she had been suppressing for three long months.

He parted her lips with his own, and his tongue came deep into her mouth, filling her with warmth and longing and raw need. For a while she gave in to pure sensation and turned in order to set both arms about him and press