Simply Unforgettable

“Leave my father out of this!” She suddenly felt cold about the heart and sat down abruptly on the closest chair. She had had a ghastly thought. “The panels that divide the music room from the ballroom had been removed yesterday. Your sister drew your attention to the fact and reminded you to have them put back in place. Has it been done?”

“Actually no,” he said. He strolled to the fireplace and stood with his back to it, watching her.

“Why not?”

Dear God, the combined rooms would make a sizable concert hall. Surely that was not—

“You are going to be magnificent tonight, Frances,” he told her. His hands were clasped at his back. He was looking at her with an intensity that might have disconcerted her under other circumstances.

Yes, that was the intention, she realized. The panels between the two rooms had been removed deliberately because the audience was expected to be too large for the music room alone. And they had done it—he had done it—without consulting her.

Just as he had brought her to London by trickery, without consulting her wishes.

“I ought to walk out of here right now,” she said. “I would if doing so would not make my great-aunts appear foolish.”

“And if it would not disappoint my grandfather,” he said.

“Yes.”

She glared at him. He stared back, tight-jawed.

“Frances,” he said after a few moments of hostile silence, “what are you afraid of? Failing? It will not happen, I promise you.”

“You are nothing but a meddler,” she said bitterly. “An arrogant meddler, who is forever convinced that only he knows what I ought to be doing with my life. You knew I did not wish to return to London, yet you maneuvered matters so that I would come anyway. You knew I did not want to sing before any large audience, especially here, but you have gathered a large audience anyway and made it next to impossible for me to refuse to sing before it. You knew I did not wish to see you again, but you totally ignored my wishes. I think you really do imagine that you care for me, but you are wrong. You do not manipulate someone you care for or go out of your way to make her miserable. You care for no one but yourself. You are a tyrant, Lord Sinclair—the worst type of bully.”

He had, she thought, turned pale while she spoke. Certainly his expression had grown hard and shuttered. He turned abruptly to stare down into the unlit coals in the fireplace.

“And you, Frances,” he said after long moments of uncomfortable silence, “do not know the meaning of the word trust. I have no quarrel with your choosing to teach rather than sing. Why should I? You are free to choose your own course in life. But I do need to understand your reason for doing so—and there is a reason beyond simple preference or even simple poverty. I have no real quarrel with your refusal to come to London with me after Christmas or to marry me when I asked you a little over a month ago. I do not consider myself God’s gift to women, and I do not expect every woman to fall head over ears in love with me—even those who have bedded with me. But I need to understand the reason for your refusal, since I do not believe it is aversion or even indifference. You will not trust me with your reasons. You will not trust me with yourself.”

She was too angry to feel renewed regret that she had not been more open with him yesterday.

“I do not have to,” she cried. “I am under no compulsion to confide in you or any man. Why should I? You are nothing to me. And I am certain of only one thing in this life, and that is that I may trust myself. I will not let myself down.”

He turned to look at her, all signs of humor and mockery wiped from his face.

“Are you sure of that?” he asked her. “Are you sure you have not already done so?”

She understood suddenly—she supposed she had known it all along—why she had been able to contemplate a future with Mr. Blake but not with Lucius Marshall. Beyond a full confession about her past, including what had happened just after Christmas, she would not have had to share anything of her deepest self with Mr. Blake—not ever. Some instinct told her that. Courtesy and gentility and certain shared interests and friends would have taken them through life together quite contentedly. With Lucius she would have to share her very soul—and he his. Nothing else would ever do between them—she had been wrong yesterday about open books. As a very young woman she might have risked opening up to him—indeed she would have welcomed such a prospect. Young people tended to dream of the sort of love and passion that would burn hot and bright throughout a lifetime and even beyond the grave.

Although she was only twenty-three she shrank from the prospect of such a relationship now—and yearned toward it too.

She remembered their night together with sudden, unbidden clarity and closed her eyes.

“I will come to escort you to the music room in twenty minutes’ time,” he said. “It is a concert I have arranged for you, Frances. There will be other performers, but you will be last, as is only fitting. No one would wish to have to follow you. I will leave you alone to compose yourself.”

He crossed the room with long strides, not looking at her. But he paused with his hand on the doorknob.

“If you ask it of me when I return,” he said, “or even now, I will take you home to

Portman Street

. I will find some excuse to make to the guests in the music room. I am endlessly inventive when I need to be.”

He waited, as if for her answer, but she made none. He let himself quietly out of the room and closed the door behind him.

It was a miracle beyond hoping for, Frances supposed, that there would be no one in the music room and ballroom who would recognize her. Strangely, the realization made her feel almost calm—resigned to her fate. There was nothing she could do about it now. She could leave the house, of course—she could do it without even waiting for Lucius’s return. But she knew she would not do that.