Simply Unforgettable (28 page)

Suddenly he felt grim again. And she looked tight-lipped.

“Orgies,” she said softly.

“Lady Lyle did not use that exact word,” he said. “She was speaking to Portia and so would have felt obliged to temper her language. But that is what she meant.”

She turned her head to look out the window. She was not wearing a bonnet—it was lying on the seat opposite. Her profile, he could see, looked as if it were carved out of marble. It was about that color too.

“I do not have to justify myself to you, Lord Sinclair, when you take that tone with me,” she said. “Or even when you do not, for that matter. You may get out of my aunts' carriage and go back to town.”

He heaved an audible sigh of exasperation.

“I cannot do it, though, you see,” he told her. “I cannot simply go away, Frances. Not until our story has been ended. I remember reading a book as a boy—an ancient tome from my grandfather's library. I became totally immersed in the story and let two perfectly decent summer days go by outdoors while I remained indoors and lapped up its contents. And then the story came to an abrupt halt—the last who-knows-how-many pages were missing. I was left feeling as if I were hanging over the edge of a cliff by my fingernails with no hope of rescue. And no one I questioned had ever read the infernal thing. When I hurled the book across the library, it sailed through a window, taking a large pane of glass with it, and I lost my allowance for at least the next six months. But I have never forgotten my wrath and frustration. They have been rekindled lately. I like stories to have neat endings.”

“We are not living within the pages of a book,” she said.

“And therefore the story can end however we wish it to end,” he said. “I no longer demand a happily-ever-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.

“But it would be no different with you,” she said, looking sharply up at him and squinting a moment before the carriage moved around another bend and set her face in shadow again. “If it had been possible for me to take up Lord Heath's offer—if I were not still under contract with George Ralston, that is—and if he could have arranged for me to sing at prestigious concerts in England and on the Continent, you would not still have wanted me as your wife. A viscountess does not do such things.”

“Devil take it, Frances.”

But he was too exasperated to be able to think of words to speak. He caught her up in his arms instead, pressed his mouth to hers, and held her tight until she relaxed and kissed him back.

“You always presume to know me so well,” he said when he finally lifted his head. “I am frequently an impulsive, ramshackle fellow, Frances, but I would have to be a raving lunatic to be asking you to marry me and then arranging for Heath to hear you sing if I thought having the singing career you
ought
to have and marriage to me were mutually exclusive activities. Damn it, you have made a great deal out of nothing.”

“It never did feel like nothing,” she said bitterly, pulling away from him and retreating to her corner again. “My father's debts were larger than I thought, I had signed a contract I could never get out of, and Lady Lyle became less pleasant when I started to complain.”

“A contract,” Lucius said. “How old were you, Frances?”

“Nineteen,” she said. “Does that fact make a difference?”

“
Of course
it does,” he said. “It is not worth the paper it is written on. You were a
minor
.”

“Oh,” she said. “I did not realize that mattered.” She pressed both hands to her face for a moment and shook her head. “Things kept going from bad to worse. And then the worst thing of all happened. After I had quarreled with Charles, the Countess of Fontbridge came to see me. She had not heard of the quarrel, but she was determined to separate us. She offered me money—a large sum—if I would agree to leave London without another word to Charles and never come back again.”

“And you took the money?” He looked at her incredulously—and also with something of a grin.

“I did,” she said. “I was so angry. But I also had no choice but to promise—at least, I
thought
I had no choice. And then I thought—why not? Why not take her money even though I had no intention of marrying her son anyway? So I did. I needed money to set myself free, and so I rationalized my decision. I gave it all to Lady Lyle, and then I packed a valise and left the house while she was at an evening party. I had no plans, but the next day I saw the advertisement for the teaching job at Miss Martin's, and the day after that her London agent agreed to send me down to Bath for an interview. I needed to leave, Lucius, and I did leave. There was nothing for me in London. I thought I was tied to a contract that I found quite abhorrent, scandal was about to break around me, and either Lady Lyle or Lady Fontbridge could have unleashed it in a moment. I left, hoping almost against hope that I would have a chance to start again, to build a better life for myself. And incredibly it worked. I have been happy ever since. Until I met you.”

“Ah, my love.” He took her hand again, but this time she succeeded in pulling it away.

“No, you do not understand,” she said just as the carriage made a sharp turn into the cobbled stable yard of a small country inn, where Peters was already standing beside the curricle. “You do not understand why I had to give my promise to the Countess of Fontbridge. She knew something that Lady Lyle had told her, something I did not even know myself. Lady Lyle wanted to make sure that I did not marry Charles, I suppose, and stop singing and paying her large sums of money for debts she had quite possibly fabricated. But my only thought was that my great-aunts must never discover the truth. It would have hurt them unbearably, I believed.”

She seemed not to have noticed that the carriage had stopped. With one raised hand Lucius stopped Peters from opening the door.

“I am not who you think I am,” she said.

“Neither Françoise Halard nor Frances Allard?” he asked softly.

“I am not French at all or English either,” she said. “My mother was Italian, and so was my father as far as I know. I do not, in fact, know who he was—or is.”

He stared at her profile as she spread her hands across her lap and looked down at them.

“She was a singer,” she told him. “My father fell in love with her and married her even though she was already with child by someone else. After she died, a year after my birth, he brought me back to England with him and brought me up as his daughter. He never breathed a word of the truth to me—I heard it for the first time just over three years ago.”

“Are you sure, then,” he asked, “that it is true?”

She smiled at her hands. “I suppose part of me always wondered if perhaps it was a malicious invention,” she said. “But my great-aunts confirmed it just today. I told them the truth before I left, only to discover that my father had done so when he first arrived in England with me. They have always known.”

She was weeping, he realized when a spot of moisture fell onto her lap and darkened the fabric of her dress. He handed her a handkerchief, and she took it and pressed it to her eyes.

“So you see,” she said, “I cannot marry anyone of high rank. I cannot marry you. And before you rush in to contradict me, Lucius, stop and
think
. You have made a promise to your grandfather and indeed to your whole family. I have met them, and I have seen you with them. I know you are fond of them. More than that, I know you
love
them. And I know that your impetuosity is more often than not motivated by love. You are a far more precious person than I think you realize. For your family's sake you cannot marry me.”

And then—absurdly—
he
wanted to weep. Was it true? Was he perhaps not quite the wastrel he sometimes believed himself to be?

I know that your impetuosity is more often than not motivated by love.

“It is almost dark,” he said, “and if this inn does not offer a decent beef pie for dinner I am going to be mightily out of sorts. I suppose you are ready for a cup of tea?”