Simply Unforgettable

after, Frances. It takes two to make a happy marriage, and so far we seem to have a total of one willing partner. But I do need to know why—why you have spurned me, why you rejected an opportunity last evening with Heath that many musicians with half your talent would kill for. Deuce take it, what happened in your past? What skeleton are you hiding in your wardrobe?”

She almost noticeably slumped into her corner.

“You are right,” she said. “You deserve an explanation. Perhaps I would have offered it in Sydney Gardens if I had realized that you were really serious in your offer and not merely acting from romantic impulse. I ought to have told you when you took me walking in Hyde Park—but I did not. I intended to write to you from Bath. But now I will have to say it in person.”

“From Bath?” he said. “Why not from London?”

“Because,” she said with a sigh, “I was afraid you would come to confront me after reading the letter. I was afraid that you would not see sense.”

She looked up at him, and he held her gaze. A smile tugged at the corners of her lips.

“Do you never see sense?” she asked him.

“There is a fine line between sense and nonsense,” he said. “I have not yet worked out exactly where you belong on the line, Frances. Tell me about the skeleton in the wardrobe.”

“Oh,” she said, “there are enough to fill a whole mansionful of wardrobes. It is not one single thing, but a whole host of things. I made a mess of my life after my father died, that is all. But I was fortunate enough to be able to break free and build a new life for myself. It is what I am going back to now. It is a life that cannot include you.”

“Because I am a viscount, I suppose,” he said irritably, “and heir to an earldom. Because I live much of my life in London and mingle with the ton.”

“Yes,” she said. “Precisely.”

“I am also Lucius Marshall,” he said, and had the satisfaction of seeing her eyes brighten with tears before she looked down at her hands.

The carriage had lumbered around a bend in the road, and the evening sunlight slanted through the window beside him to shine on her hair.

“Tell me about Lady Lyle,” he said. “You lived with her for a couple of years but almost bit my head off when I told you last evening that I had invited her to hear you sing. Then she dropped a word in Portia’s fertile ear. She could only have meant mischief.”

“She was very fond of my father,” she said. “I believe she was in love with him. Perhaps—no, probably—she was his mistress. She sponsored my come-out and was attentive to me in other ways too. When he died, she invited me to live with her and it seemed natural to me to go there. I do not believe she meant me harm. But he left enormous debts behind him, some of them to her. I was quite destitute, though I did have hopes of making an advantageous marriage.”

“To Fontbridge,” he said.

She nodded.

Fontbridge was something of a milksop, a mother’s boy. It was hard to picture Frances in love with him. But then it was notoriously difficult to understand anything she did. Besides, that had been several years ago. And Fontbridge was good-looking in the sort of way that might bring out the maternal instinct in some women.

“I was uncomfortable about being totally dependent upon Lady Lyle,” she said. “I was very grateful and very happy when she brought me to the attention of a man who was willing to sponsor and manage my singing career. And he was very complimentary and very sure that he could bring me fame and fortune. I signed a contract with him. It seemed like a dream come true. I could have my singing career, I could pay off all my father’s debts, and I could marry Charles and live happily ever after. I was a very naive girl, you must understand. I had lived a very sheltered life.”

“Who?” he asked. “Who was this sponsor?”

“George Ralston,” she said.

“Dash it all, Frances!” he exclaimed. “The man makes a career of preying upon helpless, foolish women. Did you know no better? But of course you did not. Did Lady Lyle know no better?”

“She had told me,” she said, “that singing would enable me to pay off my father’s debts to her and my own for the expenses I had incurred while living with her. I felt honor bound—though that was only later. At first I was so ecstatic just at the thought of finally singing as I had always dreamed of doing that the money and the debts were quite secondary considerations.”

“And so,” he said, “you sang at orgies.”

“At parties,” she said. “I was soon disappointed. I could not choose either the places at which I sang or the songs or even the clothes I wore—my contract stated that George Ralston had total control over such matters. And the audiences were almost exclusively men. If the parties were also orgies I did not know, though I daresay they were. I received a few offers through my agent—none of them marriage offers, you will understand—and he tried to persuade me that they came from wealthy and influential men who could further my career even faster than he could. Soon, he kept telling me, I would be singing at large concert halls and would have the artistic freedom to sing whatever I wished to sing.”

“Good Lord, Frances.” He made a grab for one of her hands and held it tightly when she would have withdrawn it. “Is this the terrible past you have been keeping from me? What an idiot you are, my love.”

“I still moved in society,” she said. “I still went to ton parties. But word was beginning to leak out. Charles heard of where I was singing and for whom. He confronted me with it and commanded me to stop and we had a terrible quarrel. But even before that I had decided I could never marry him. He could not break away from beneath his mother’s thumb, and I knew his character was essentially weak. And he told me that it would be out of the question for me to sing in public after I had become his countess.”

“What an ass,” Lucius said.