Mary Balogh - Simply Unforgettable

“Come with you?” She frowned, and her heart raced enough to make her breathless. “Where?”

“Wherever we choose to go,” he said. “The whole world is out there. Come with me.”

She set her shoulders across the corner of the seat, trying to put a little more distance between them, trying to think clearly.

The whole world is out there.

It was reckless.

“I do not even know anything about you beyond your name,” she said.

And yet a part of her, that equally reckless part of herself that had waltzed and then lain with him last night, heedless of the consequences, wanted to shout out yes, yes, yes, and go off with him wherever he chose to take her—to the ends of the earth if need be. Preferably there, in fact.

“You do not even know my name in its entirety.” He made her a half-bow with a flourish of one hand. “Lucius Marshall, Viscount Sinclair, at your service, Frances. My home is Cleve Abbey in Hampshire, but I spend most of my time in London. Come there with me. I am vastly wealthy. I will clothe you in satin and deck you with jewels. You will never want for anything. You will never need to teach another class in your life.”

Viscount Sinclair . . . Cleve Abbey . . . London . . . wealth . . . satin and jewels.

She sat staring at him aghast, while her initial euphoria drained away and with it the romantic dream that had fogged her mind since last night—or perhaps even before then.

He was not just an almost anonymous gentleman with whom she could perhaps have disappeared into the obscurity of a happily-ever-after—though even that was a childish and impossible dream. No one was anonymous or even almost so. Whoever he had turned out to be, he would have had a family and a history and a life somewhere. He was no fairy-tale prince. And there was no such thing as happily-ever-after.

But the reality was so much worse than anything she could have anticipated or guessed at. He was Viscount Sinclair of Cleve Abbey, and he was vastly wealthy . . .

“Viscount Sinclair,” she said.

“But also Lucius Marshall,” he said. “The two persons are one and the same.”

Yes.

And no.

An impossible dream died and she saw him for what he was—an impulsive, reckless aristocrat, who was accustomed to having his own way regardless of cold reality—especially where women were concerned.

But perhaps reality had never been cold for him.

“Forget about having to work,” he urged her. “Come with me to London.”

“Perhaps,” she said, “I enjoy teaching.”

“And perhaps,” he said, “convicts enjoy their prison cells.”

His words angered her and she frowned. She was reminded that this was the same man as the one who had so angered her just two days ago with his arrogant, high-handed behavior.

“I find that comparison insulting,” she said.

But he caught her hands in his and pressed his lips first to one palm and then to the other.

“I absolutely refuse to quarrel with you,” he said. “Come with me. Why should we do what neither of us wishes to do? Why not do what we want ? I cannot say good-bye to you yet, Frances. And I know you feel as I do.”

“But you will be able to say it next week or next month or next year?” she asked him.

He looked sharply up into her face, his eyebrows raised.

“Is that why you hesitate?” he asked. “You think I would make you my mistress?”

She knew he would.

“Is it marriage you offer, then?” she asked, unable to keep the bitterness from her voice.

He stared at her for what seemed a long while, his expression fathomless.

“In truth,” he said at last, “I do not know what it is I offer, Frances. I just cannot bear to say good-bye, that is all. Come to London with me and I will find you lodgings and a respectable woman to live with you as a companion. We may—”

She closed her eyes briefly and shut out the sound of his voice. It was clear he had not thought this through at all. But of course, he did not need to. He was not the one being asked to throw away all that had given anchor and meaning to life for three years. His own life would remain much the same as usual, she supposed, except that he would have a new mistress—and of course it was as a mistress that he wanted her. He had looked somewhat stunned when she had mentioned marriage, as if it were something he had never heard of.

“I will not come with you,” she said.

Even as she spoke the words, though, she knew that she might still have been tempted if it were not for one fact—London was the one place on this earth she could never go back to. She had promised . . .

There was something else too. When he spoke of clothing her in satin and decking her in jewels, he sounded so much like other men she had once encountered that she could not avoid seeing with blinding clarity the sordidness of the future that would be awaiting her if she gave in to this longing to grasp at anything that would save her from having to say good-bye to him.

The thought of never seeing him again was almost unbearable.

He squeezed her hands painfully. “I will remain in Bath with you, then,” he said.

For a moment her heart leaped with gladness at his willingness to be the one making the sacrifice—but only for a moment. It would not work. He was Viscount Sinclair of Cleve Abbey. He was a wealthy, fashionable aristocrat. He lived much of his life in London. What would Bath have to offer him that would keep him there indefinitely? If he stayed, they would be merely postponing the inevitable. Nothing could ever come of any relationship between them. And no relationship satisfying to him could exist between them in Bath. No sexual relationship anyway—and no other type would satisfy him. Good heavens, she was a teacher!

There simply was no future for them. Some realities were that stark, and all one could do was accept them.

She shook her head, her eyes on her hands still clasped in his.

“No,” she said. “I would rather you did not stay.”

“Why the devil not!” he exclaimed, his voice louder and more irritable—the voice of a man unaccustomed to being denied what he had set his heart on.

She tried to withdraw her hands, but he held on, squeezing her fingers and hurting them.

“The last couple of days were very pleasant,” she said. “At least, yesterday was. But it is time to get back to normal life, Mr. Marshall—Viscount Sinclair. It is time for both of us. I will never be your mistress and you will never marry me—or I you for that matter. There would be no point, then, in trying to prolong what was merely a pleasant interlude in both our lives.”

“Pleasant,” he said, sounding more than irritable now. He sounded downright thunderous. “We spent a day in close company with each other and a night in bed together, and it was pleasant, Frances?”

“Yes.” She kept her voice steady. “It was. But it was not something that can ever be repeated. It is time to say good-bye.”

He stared at her for a long time before releasing her hands. His eyes had flattened, she noticed, so that she could no longer read any of his thoughts or feelings in them. His expression had changed in other ways too. His mouth had lifted at the corners, but not really in a smile. One eyebrow had risen. He had retreated behind a mask of cynical mockery. It felt as if he had already gone away.

“Well, Miss Allard,” he said, “it seems that I was right about you at the start. It is not often I am rejected by a woman. It is not often my lovemaking is damned with such faint praise as to be called pleasant . You have no wish for any continuation of our acquaintance, then? Very well. I shall grant your wish, ma’am.”