Simply Unforgettable

did in Bath? I have longed to hear it again.”

“And I love to sing it, my lord.” She smiled warmly at him.

She was sitting at some remove from the fireplace, since Great-Aunt Gertrude always liked to keep the fire built high. The earl turned his attention to Great-Aunt Martha, who sat close to him, and Great-Aunt Gertrude invited Amy to sit on the stool by her feet and tell her all about her exciting experiences in Bath and what she had done in London since then. Viscount Sinclair, who had been standing behind his grandfather’s chair, one arm leaning on the back of it, came to sit on the sofa beside Frances.

“You are in good looks tonight,” he said.

“Thank you.” She had tried her best all evening to ignore him—rather akin, she thought ruefully, to trying to ignore the incoming tide when one was seated on the beach in its direct path.

“I trust,” he said, “Miss Martin’s school was not left in a state of chaos and incipient collapse when you came here.”

“It is no thanks to you that it was not,” she said sharply.

“Ah.”

It was all he said in acknowledgment of the fact that she knew his role in bringing her here.

“I trust,” she said, “Miss Hunt is in good health. And good looks.”

“I really do not give a tinker’s damn,” he said softly, prompting her to look fully at him for the first time. Fortunately, he had spoken quietly enough that she was the only one to have heard his shocking words.

“Why did you do this?” she asked him. “Why did you persuade my great-aunt to send for me?”

“She needed you, Frances,” he said. “So did your other aunt, who was actually bedridden the last time I was here.”

“I am being asked to believe, then,” she said, “that your motive was purely altruistic?”

“What do you think?” He smiled at her, a rather wolfish smile that had her insides turning over.

“And why did you come here the first time anyway?” she asked. “Just to visit two elderly ladies out of the kindness of your heart?”

“You are angry with me,” he said instead of answering. And instead of smiling now, he was looking at her with intense eyes and compressed lips and hard, square jaw.

“Yes, I am angry,” she admitted. “I do not like being manipulated, Lord Sinclair. I do not like having someone else thinking he knows better than I what makes me happy.”

“Contented,” he said.

“Contented, then,” she conceded.

“I do know better than you what will make you happy,” he said.

“I think not, Lord Sinclair.”

“I could accomplish it,” he said, “within a month. Less. I could bring you professional happiness. And personal happiness in such abundance that your cup would run over with it, Frances.”

She felt a yearning so profound that she had to break eye contact with him and look down hastily at her hands.

“My chances for either kind of happiness were ruined more than three years ago, Lord Sinclair,” she said.

“Were they?” he said as softly as before. “Three years?”

She ignored the question.

“I have cultivated contentment since then,” she said. “And incredibly I have found it and discovered that it is superior to anything else I have ever experienced. Don’t ruin that too for me.”

There was a lengthy silence while the earl and Great-Aunt Martha laughed together over something one of them had said, and Amy’s voice prattled on happily to Great-Aunt Gertrude.

“I believe I already have,” Viscount Sinclair said at last. “Or shaken it, anyway. Because I do not believe it ever was contentment, Frances, but only a sort of deadness from which you awakened when I hauled you out of that fossil of a carriage, spitting fire and brimstone at me.”

She looked up at him, very aware that they were not alone together in the room, that her great-aunts were only a few feet away and were very probably observing them surreptitiously and with great interest. She was quite unable therefore to allow any of the emotions she felt to show on her face.

“You are to be married,” she said.

“I am,” he agreed. “But one important question remains unanswered. Who is to be the bride?”

She drew breath to say something else, but her attention was drawn to the fact that the earl was getting to his feet with the obvious intention of bringing the visit to an end.

Viscount Sinclair rose too without another word and proceeded to thank the aunts for their hospitality. Amy hugged Frances and assured her that she would somehow persuade her mama to allow her to come downstairs when Mrs. Melford and Miss Driscoll and Miss Allard came for dinner.

“After all,” she said naively, “you are my special friend. Besides, I would not miss hearing you sing again for worlds. I may not perform music with any great flair, Miss Allard, but I can recognize when someone else does.”

The earl bowed over Frances’s hand again.