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  “I am delighted to hear it. What have you done?”

  “We went out to luncheon with those nice people you introduced us to,” Carolyn replied. “Then we watched the polo and your son played brilliantly.”

  “I thought you went shopping,” the Marquis queried.

  “Oh, we did that in the morning,” Carolyn explained. “I have bought a glorious, glorious gown for your party and if you don’t like it, I shall just sit in a corner and cry.”

  The Marquis laughed.

  “I am sure that is something that will not happen and you will undoubtedly be the belle of my ball.”

  “I do hope so,” Carolyn smiled, “but, as my s – my stepmother said, there is a lot of competition in London.”

  She stumbled over the word ‘stepmother’, caught her sister’s eye and looked embarrassed.

  It was difficult when she was excited to remember that Amalita was not the same age as she was.

  When they were alone, they were just girls together, enjoying excitements that they had never known before.

  Amalita had most certainly bought the most beautiful gowns for Carolyn that she could have ever imagined.

  Very obedient to the Marquis’s wishes, she took back the black gown and changed it for two others in different colours.

  The shop was very obliging and she soon realised that it was not the Marquis who had the reputation for buying expensive presents for women but the Earl.

  It was not so much what the shop assistants said but what they implied.

  She wondered what her mother would have said about ladies accepting expensive gifts from a man they were not married to.

  To her surprise she learnt that the Earl was dining at home tonight when Carolyn and she were expecting to be alone with the Marquis.

  ‘Perhaps,’ Carolyn surmised when she heard of it, ‘he feels as we do that he must go to bed early so as to be at his best tomorrow.’

  Amalita thought that the Earl considered himself to be always at his best whatever he was doing.

  At the same time like Carolyn she had been impressed at how brilliant he was on the polo ground.

  It had been difficult to watch any other player and he looked so handsome and rode so well.

  Whatever she might feel, she well knew that her father would have approved of him.

  The door opened and the Earl walked in, looking, as he always did, magnificent in his evening clothes.

  “Ah, here you are now, David,” his father exclaimed. “I have been wondering why we are to be honoured with your presence this evening.”

  “That is easy to answer,” the Earl replied. “I have not had a better invitation.”

  “That I don’t believe.” The Marquis smiled. “I saw a pile of letters for you this morning and thought that they must have had to put on extra postmen to deliver them all to the house.”

  The Earl sat down beside Carolyn.

  “Did you enjoy the polo?” he asked her.

  “I was just telling his Lordship that you played really brilliantly,” she replied. “In fact it was little wonder that your team beat the others by five goals.”

  “It was very satisfying,” the Earl said, “and now I am expecting you to win by five goals tomorrow evening at my father’s ball!”

  Carolyn laughed.

  “It will be too terrible after what everybody has said if I am a flop.”

  “There is no chance of that,” the Marquis interposed.

  He was looking benignly at his son as he and Carolyn were talking together.

  Amalita realised how very happy it would make him if what he hoped for came true.

  The dinner was simply delicious and the Earl himself was unexpectedly entertaining throughout the meal.

  He told them stories of his many adventures abroad.

  Although he did not say so, Amalita guessed that he went on clandestine missions that somehow concerned the Prime Minister.

  In fact she was sure that she was right when, after one story of his adventures in Turkey, the Marquis remarked,

  “I heard that Benjamin Disraeli sent for you only the other morning. What did he want?”

  “Need you ask?” the Earl replied.

  “And you have agreed to do what he requested?”

  The Earl shook his head.

  “No, I refused. I so like being in London at this time of the year and, as you saw this afternoon, I enjoyed my game of polo enormously.”

  The Marquis frowned, but he did not say anything.

  Watching the father and son, Amalita thought that the Marquis was very ambitious for the Earl.

  As she already knew, he was so terrified that he would ruin his life by being too involved with Lady Hermione.

  She wondered what the beautiful audacious lady was doing this evening since the Earl was not with her.

  However, seeing how rapturously Carolyn listened to his stories, she thought that perhaps, when she had least expected it, the tide had turned.

  After dinner was over they sat for a little while talking in the drawing room.

  Then the Marquis suggested,

  “I think we would all be wise to go early to bed. I am looking forward to tomorrow’s Festivities as much as you are and I for one most certainly need my beauty sleep.”

  “You are very wise,” Amalita said. “Come along then, Carolyn. We shall be late tomorrow and, like his Lordship, we will not be able to go to bed until the very last of the guests have left, of course reluctantly.”

  “I want you both to shine like stars!” the Marquis said.

  “We will certainly do our best to please you,” Amalita promised.

  Carolyn made the Marquis a graceful curtsey and he said,

  “I am glad you have had a happy day. I want this to be a very memorable visit for you and your stepmother.”

  “That is what it has been so far,” Carolyn answered. “I am keeping a diary but I have now run out of adjectives to describe how wonderful everything is.”

  She turned to the Earl and said,

  “I am sure that you are going to dream of how you managed to make that last goal and I shall certainly write about that.”

  “I am so honoured that I am to be included,” the Earl replied.

  Watching them Amalita felt that there was still that cynical slightly mocking look in his eyes.

  Because it annoyed her, she walked towards the door without saying ‘goodnight’.

  Then she went to the hall without waiting for Carolyn to join her.

  When they were alone upstairs, Carolyn put her arms around her sister’s shoulders and said,

  “It is so marvellous being in London and it is all due to you, Amalita. How could you be so clever as to have brought us here?”

  She spoke in a whisper, but Amalita said quickly,

  “Be careful!”

  She was thinking as she spoke that despite his good humour, the Earl had, during the evening, looked at her penetratingly.

  It was as if he suspected something about her.

  She could not remember doing or saying anything that he might think strange.

  At the same time she was sure that her intuition was right.

  If he was not suspicious, then he was at least curious and that too could be dangerous.

  The maid was waiting in her room to help her undress.

  When she had left, Amalita pulled back the curtains and looked up at the stars.

  “Thank you, thank you,” she said beneath her breath.

  She felt absolutely sure that her father had heard her.

  How else could everything have gone so smoothly and the Marquis be so kind to her and Carolyn?

  “Thank you, Papa,” she said again.

  She then closed the curtains and got into bed.

  There was a small candelabrum of four candles on the table beside her bed.

  Beside it was the Bible that her mother had given her.

  She had promised when she was really quite small to read one verse or at l
east one line every night before she went to bed.

  Because she felt that the Holy Book spoke to her, she would open it at random.

  Then, with closed eyes, she would put her finger on the page.

  Doing so now, she read,

  “Ask, and it shall be given you, seek, and ye shall find.

  Knock and it shall be opened unto you.”

  The words somehow seemed appropriate and Amalita hoped that it would be true.

  Then, as she put the Bible down and was just about to blow out the candles, the door opened.

  She looked up in some surprise, thinking that it must be Carolyn, who wanted her for some reason

  To her astonishment, however, it was the Earl.

  He closed the door behind him and advanced towards the bed.

  “What – is the – matter? What has – happened?” she asked nervously.

  As he drew nearer, she could see that he was wearing the kind of long frogged dressing gown that her father had always worn and it had made him look very Military.

  As the Earl came nearer still, she asked him again,

  “What is – it? Why are – you here?”

  “You forgot to say ‘goodnight’ to me,” he replied. “So I have to find out if you were just ignoring me or giving me an invitation.”

  Amalita stared at him in sheer astonishment.

  “I-I don’t – know what – you are saying,” she said. “Please – go away. You have – no right – to come into my room.”

  The Earl sat down beside her on the bed.

  He was in the light and she was partly shadowed by the curtain that fell from a canopy over her head.

  He was able to see how really lovely she looked with her dark hair falling almost to her waist.

  Her neck and arms were dazzlingly white against the darkness of it.

  The Earl looked at her in admiration for a moment or two without speaking.

  Then at last he said,

  “You are so very lovely, so lovely that I cannot allow you to try and avoid me as you have been doing.”

  “I have not been avoiding you,” Amalita contradicted him and then she added, “that may – not be – quite true, but you – should not – be here and if – you do want to – talk to me – we can talk tomorrow.”

  The Earl smiled.

  “It is far easier when we are alone and unlikely to be disturbed and I think I can perhaps make you happy.”

  “I really don‘t – know what you are – talking about,” Amalita said. “Please – please – go away. You know you should – not be in – my room.”

  “Who is to know and who is to say it is wrong?” the Earl replied.

  “I – am saying – that,” Amalita persisted, “and I never thought – I never – imagined that you would – come into my – bedroom like this.”

  “I was just thinking about you,” the Earl said, “and I thought that now that you are a widow, perhaps you feel lonely at night. I also thought, maybe mistakenly, that you have a great deal to learn about love.”

  For a moment Amalita could think of nothing to say.

  Her eyes seemed to fill her face.

  Then, as the Earl bent forward, she thought that he was going to touch her.

  She gave a little scream.

  “Go away! Go – away at – once!” she cried. “How can you come here and talk to me like that. It is wrong – you know it – is very wrong!”

  The Earl moved a little closer.

  “It is nothing of the sort,” he said. “And I only think, Amalita, that it would be very exciting to kiss you and I am quite sure that it would make you less lonely than you are at the moment.”

  “I am not lonely – I am not!” Amalita retorted. “And of course – you are not to – kiss me! Go away, go away at once.”

  The Earl then put out his arms, and now she struggled against him, turning her face from him.

  She was not quite certain what he intended.

  But she felt helpless and had no idea what she could do about it.

  Then, as his lips touched her cheek, she asserted,

  “You are – frightening me – there is – no one to help me – please – please leave me alone.”

  For a moment the Earl was still.

  Then, to her surprise, he took her chin in his fingers and turned her face up to his.

  “Are you really frightened?” he asked her.

  He looked down at her, his eyes searching her face.

  He was aware then that her lips were trembling and she was in fact desperately afraid.

  “So you really are frightened,” he said as if to confirm it to himself.

  “I am very very frightened,” Amalita said in a small voice. “Y-you are – so big and so powerful – and I just don’t know how to – fight you. I only – know that my dear Papa would be extremely shocked at your being – here in my bedroom.”

  The Earl released her and sat up.

  Then, with his eyes still on her face, he rose from the bed.

  “I have never forced myself on any woman who did not want me,” he said, “and my only excuse is that I did not realise that you were different.”

  He walked to the door as he spoke, letting himself out without looking back.

  It had all happened so quickly.

  Amalita could hardly recognise that he had come and said such strange things to her and then left.

  “How – could he have – dared to – come to my room in that – way?” she asked aloud.

  At the same time she felt weak and, for some reason that she could not understand, felt like crying.

  She lay trembling in the bed for some seconds before she told herself that it was her own fault.

  She should have locked her door.

  But just how could she have imagined for one moment that in a private house any man would come into a lady’s room without being invited.

  Then, as the thought came to her, she recalled what the Earl had said when he first came in.

  Could he really have thought only because she had not bade him ‘goodnight’ that she was inviting him to come to her room?

  Was that the way that Lady Hermione and the other women she had met in London behaved?

  At the luncheon party she had attended today, some of the women, who were all known as ‘beauties’, had flirted openly with the gentlemen beside them.

  She was quite certain that her mother would have been exceedingly shocked at their behaviour as well as the Earl coming into her bedroom in his father’s house.

  He had wanted to kiss her and teach her about love – whatever that might mean.

  She was suddenly still.

  Had he really thought and had he really believed that he could behave with her in the same way that he behaved with Lady Hermione?

  Although Amalita was indeed very innocent, she just knew that Lady Hermione was very intimate with the Earl.

  She thought, although it shocked her, that it must be in the same way that Yvette was intimate with her father.

  ‘How dare he even think that I would behave in that shameless manner!’ she stormed to herself,

  Then, suddenly, she remembered that the Earl thought she was a widow and not a young and untouched girl like Carolyn

  As she reasoned it out in her mind, she knew that not for one moment would he have contemplated going into Carolyn’s bedroom.

  But she was different because she was pretending to be five years older than she actually was and wearing her mother’s Wedding ring.

  It took her a little time to puzzle it out, but now she could see the picture only too clearly.

  Her father had taught her to analyse her feelings and those of other people.

  She could well understand that the whole episode was basically her fault for having deceived the Earl in the first place.

  It still seemed to her extraordinary.

  He imagined that he could walk into the bedroom of any woman he fancied, confident that she would welcome him with ope
n arms.

  But the fact definitely remained that as a supposedly experienced married woman she was to be treated in a very different way from any other unmarried girl.

  ‘It – was really all my fault,’ Amalita told herself.

  She remembered her mother saying once when she was a small girl,

  “It is always a mistake to lie. Telling lies makes you feel guilty and things can happen that are not foreseen, but are directly the result of the untruth.”

  This was something that she had not foreseen.

  She had acted an untruth so as to deceive the Marquis.

  She felt almost as if, because of the way that he had behaved, she and Carolyn should leave the house.

  If they did so, she would then have to explain to the Marquis the reason why they were going.

  After all his kindness, he would be upset and hurt.

  ‘I – cannot do – that,’ she thought. ‘I shall – have to – stay.’

  Then she wondered how she could meet the Earl and how embarrassing it would be after what had occurred.

  She jumped out of bed and went to the window.

  Once again she was looking up at the stars.

  “What – shall I do – Papa?” she asked. “Please tell me – what I should do. It is all – such a big muddle.”

  She felt like crying because she had been feeling so happy when she had come to bed.

  Then the Earl had spoilt it all.

  Now she felt that her father was guiding her.

  She knew at once that the only thing she could do was to behave as if it had not happened.

  The house was a very large one and she could manage to avoid him and never in any circumstances be alone with him again.

  Then she wondered if he was piqued at her behaviour and would insist on her and Carolyn leaving.

  That might be even more disastrous if the Marquis started asking questions.

  Once again she felt as if her father was speaking to her and he was telling her that whatever else he might be, the Earl was a gentleman.

  He would certainly not speak to anyone of what had happened.

  She was sure that he would not embarrass her more than she was already.

  Finally, feeling a little comforted, Amalita pulled the curtains and went back to bed.

  She blew out the candles, but it was a long time before she finally fell asleep.

  *