Mary Balogh - Simply Unforgettable

His grandfather lay with closed eyes for a long time. Lucius even thought that he might have drifted off to sleep. There was a slight gray tinge to his skin, and it looked parchment thin. Lucius felt rather like weeping—for the second time in one day. He stroked the hand he still held between his own.

“Lucius, my boy,” his grandfather said at last, his eyes still closed, “your marriage to Miss Allard has my blessing. You may tell her so.”

“Perhaps you can do that yourself, sir,” Lucius said. “There is a prize-giving and concert at the school at the end of the school year. All of her choirs will be singing, and some of her individual music pupils will be performing too. I thought we might attend.”

“We’ll do it,” his grandfather said. “But now I will rest, Lucius.”

He was snoring lightly even before Lucius could tuck his hand beneath the blankets.

Lady Sinclair and her daughters were surprisingly easy to persuade.

Lucius’s mother was so pleased to have him living at Marshall House and behaving responsibly—most of the time—and showing concern and kindness for his grandfather and a willingness to escort his sisters on various outings that she was sure she would be delighted with any bride he chose since she had quite reconciled herself to the idea that he might never be finished sowing his wild oats. And if Miss Allard’s birth was of questionable legitimacy—well, so was that of a large segment of the ton . Genteel people simply did not talk of such matters.

A week later Lucius learned that she had made a point of speaking with the Countess of Fontbridge at Almack’s the evening before when she had taken Emily there. She had deliberately brought the conversation around to Frances Allard and had talked quite openly about her birth and connections but had also given it as her opinion that a young lady of such modesty and gentility and astonishing talent could only be a desirable friend to cultivate and perhaps—who could know for sure?—even more than a friend to the family in time.

Oh, and did Lady Fontbridge know that Miss Allard was heir to both Mrs. Melford and Miss Driscoll, great-aunts of Baron Clifton? With both of whom ladies, by the way, she had such a close and loving relationship that there were no secrets between them whatsoever?

“I have never heard Mama talk like it before,” Emily said proudly. “She quite outdid any of the tabbies in sweetness and venom, Luce. One could tell from the stiff, haughty look on the countess’s face that she understood very well indeed.”

“Emily,” their mother said sharply, “do watch your tongue. Your mother a tabby, indeed!”

But everyone gathered about the breakfast table only laughed.

Margaret, who at Christmas time had been volubly in favor of Portia as her brother’s bride, had married Tait for love and now gave it as her opinion that if Miss Allard was the woman Lucius loved, then she was not going to say anything to dissuade him. Besides, Tait had warned her long ago that Lucius would slit his throat rather than marry Portia when the time came.

Caroline, who was still living with her head in the clouds following her betrothal, could only applaud her brother’s choice of someone with whom he was so obviously enamored. Besides, she still felt somewhat awed by Miss Allard’s singing talent and thought that she would like very much to have her as a sister-in-law.

Emily had been severely disillusioned with Portia since seeing more of her than usual this spring. She did not think Portia at all right for Luce. Miss Allard, on the other hand, was perfect, as witness the fact that she had had the backbone to return to Bath to teach even though Luce had gone after her to try to persuade her to come back to London.

Amy was simply ecstatic.

A week or so after her meeting with the Countess of Fontbridge at Almack’s, the viscountess ran into Lady Lyle at a garden party to which she had taken both Caroline and Emily, and had a very similar sort of conversation with her about Frances—if conversation was the word, since Lady Sinclair did most of the talking and Lady Lyle listened with her habitual half-smile playing about her lips.

“But she was listening,” Caroline reported afterward.

Lucius was not allowing his mother to fight all his battles, however. He encountered George Ralston at Jackson’s boxing saloon one morning. Normally the two would have ignored each other, not because of any particular hostility between them but because they moved in totally different crowds. But on this particular morning Lucius took exception to the fall of Ralston’s cravat and told him so—to the mystified surprise of his friends. And then, quizzing glass to his eye, Lucius noticed a splash of mud on one of Ralston’s top boots and wondered audibly that anyone could keep such a slovenly valet unless he were basically slovenly himself.

He then, as if the thought had just struck him, invited Ralston to spar with him.

By now his friends’ reaction had progressed from surprise to amazement.

It was not a friendly sparring bout. Ralston was incensed at the insults to which he had been subjected by one of society’s most respected Corinthians, and Lucius was more than ready to give him satisfaction.

By the time Gentleman Jackson himself put a stop to the bout after six rounds of a planned ten, Lucius had shiny cheekbones and shinier knuckles and ribs that would remind him of the bout for several days to come, while Ralston had one eye reduced to a puffy slit, a cut over the other eye, a nose that glowed red and looked suspiciously as if it might be broken, and bruises about his arms and torso that would turn blacker by day’s end and keep their owner awake and stiff for many days and nights to come.

“Thank you,” Lucius said at the end of it all. “This has been a pleasure, Ralston. I must remember to tell Miss Frances Allard the next time I talk with her that I ran into you and spent a pleasant hour, ah, conversing with you. But perhaps you remember her as Mademoiselle Françoise Allard. Lord Heath is eager to sponsor her singing career—had you heard? She may well take him up on the offer since she is quite free to do so. You met her, I believe, when she was still a minor? A long time ago. Perhaps you do not even remember her after all. Ah, you have a tooth loose, do you? If I were you, I would not wiggle it, old chap. It might settle back into place if you leave it alone. Good day to you.”

“And what the devil was that all about?” one of the more obtuse of his friends asked him when they were out of earshot of Ralston.

“So that is the way the wind blows, is it, Sinclair?” a more astute friend asked with a grin.

It was indeed.

The two months until the end-of-year concert at Miss Martin’s school in Bath seemed interminable. And of course they were fraught with anxiety for Lucius since there was no assurance that Frances would be pleased to see him again or that she would have him even though he would be arriving armed with the blessing of every single member of his family.

One never knew with Frances.

In fact, just thinking about her stubbornness could arouse severe irritation in him.

He was just going to have to kidnap her and elope with her if she said no again. It was as simple as that.

Or go down on his knees and plead.

Or sink into a romantic decline.

But he would not think of failing. His grandfather, who was ready to try the Bath waters again, and Amy, who was mortally tired of London, were going with him. So were Tait and Margaret, who would not miss the action for worlds, they said. At least Tait said that. Margaret was far more genteel and declared her eagerness to see Bath again, since she had not been there in five years.