“I would like to show you my horses,” the Prince replied, “and many other things as well.”
Again there was something alarming in the way he spoke, but to Ula’s relief the music came to an end and he was forced to follow her as she moved quickly towards the Duchess.
When she reached the Dowager, who was talking to several elderly gentlemen, Ula curtseyed and said,
“I thank Your Highness.”
“You will dance with me again.”
It was a statement rather than a question.
“I am afraid that will be impossible,” Ula said quickly. “Your Highness will realise that, as the ball is given in my honour, my programme is already full.”
There was an expression in his half-closed eyes which made her feel embarrassed and increased her dislike of him even more.
“I shall not forget you, Miss Forde,” he said and, taking the hand she held out to him, raised it to his lips.
Because Ula was wearing attractive mittens of fine lace rather than gloves, she could feel his lips, thick, warm and sensuous on her skin. She felt herself, as if touched by a reptile, shiver with revulsion.
Then, after what seemed a long time, he released her and to her relief she found the Marquis was at her side.
“Why were you dancing with the Prince?” he asked sharply in a voice that only she could hear.
“I-I could not – help it,” she answered, “but – please don’t let him come – near me – again. There is something horrible about him that – frightens me!”
She looked up at the Marquis as she spoke and saw an expression of anger in his eyes.
“That creature should not have come here in the first place,” he said. “He is certainly not the sort of man you should associate with.”
Then, before he could say anything more, her partner for the next dance, a young man in the Household Cavalry, came to her side.
As they danced the quadrille it was a relief to know that she need not be held close in the arms of a man she had disliked on sight.
At the same time, for the rest of the evening, she was aware that the Prince was watching her. It made her feel self-conscious and as if she could not escape from his scrutiny any more than she could from her uncle’s, her aunt’s and Sarah’s.
The ball did not end until three o’clock in the morning when, despite protests from the guests who wished to go on dancing, the Marquis ordered the band to play the National Anthem.
“It was such a wonderful party, how can we bear it to come to an end?” a very lovely lady glittering with a profusion of rubies in her dark hair said to the Marquis.
“You may not need your beauty sleep, Georgina,” the Marquis replied, “but my grandmother is growing old and late nights are not good for her.”
The lady called Georgina pouted her lips provocatively.
The way she looked at the Marquis told Ula that she was enamoured of him. In fact, she was only one of the many beautiful women she had noticed who all the evening had been fawning on him, putting their hands on his arm and lifting their lovely faces to his with what appeared to be an invitation in their eyes.
‘And is it surprising that they find him irresistible, when he is so handsome and also so very kind?’ Ula mused.
“A wonderful party, Drogo!” the Duchess said when the last guest had gone and she moved slowly across the hall towards the staircase.
“You are not too tired?” the Marquis asked.
“I am very tired,” the Duchess replied, “but elated by the huge success that Ula enjoyed. Everybody, with the exception of three of our guests, told me how beautiful she was and your men-friends all averred that she eclipsed any beauty they had ever seen.”
“I really cannot believe that,” Ula protested. “But I am so glad that, after all the trouble you have taken, I did not let you down.”
She was looking at the Marquis as she spoke, then added almost as if she wished to make sure,
“You – you were not – disappointed?”
“No, of course not,” he said quite sincerely. “You were exactly what I wanted.”
She knew that he was thinking of the frustrated expression on her cousin Sarah’s face when she had said goodnight to him.
Ula was standing near enough for her to hear Sarah say,
“I am very hurt that you left The Hall after you had called the other day without seeing me.”
“It was what I heard, rather than saw, which made me leave,” the Marquis replied.
For a moment Lady Sarah did not understand. Until, as if she guessed the meaning of the words, she stiffened and there was a puzzled expression of concern on her beautiful face.
Then she turned away and went quickly to join her father and mother who were just leaving the ballroom.
Ula went to bed feeling as if the dance music was still playing in her heart and the beauty of the scene was still floating in front of her eyes.
Because she wanted to think only of happy things, she deliberately forced herself not to remember the hostility of her aunt and uncle and Sarah.
She thought instead of the flattering words that her partners had said to her and most of all the approval in the Marquis’s eyes.
Then just before she fell asleep she remembered how much she disliked Prince Hasin, and felt herself shiver.
*
Although the Duchess and Ula slept late, the Marquis was up early and as usual went riding in the Park.
He met a number of his friends and they all combined to tell him that the ball he had given last night was the best they could ever remember and it would be impossible for anyone to rival, let alone eclipse it.
“You are very flattering,” the Marquis said.
“I cannot think how you do it, Raventhorpe,” one of the gentlemen on horseback remarked, “and it’s no use our trying to beat you when you produce for our delectation an angel who only for you would have dropped out of the sky!”
There was a roar of laughter at this.
Then somebody else said,
“The Prince Regent always hits the nail on the head. Miss Forde does look exactly like an angel and the proper place for her would be a shrine in your hall at Raven, where we can all light pink candles in front of her!”
There was more laughter, but as the gentlemen rode off, the Marquis was thinking with satisfaction that it was he who had first thought that Ula looked like an angel when he had given her a lift in his phaeton to help her escape from Chessington Hall.
He, like Ula, had been well aware last night that the Earl and Countess had been furious at Ula’s success.
They had found it difficult to realise that the radiantly beautiful girl who attracted everybody’s attention was the wretched child they had ill-treated to the point where she could bear their cruelty no longer.
He was sure that they were wondering how he had met her and by what supernatural means she had been transformed overnight into being the most talked-of and admired young woman in the whole of the
Beau Monde
.
The Marquis congratulated himself, feeling he had pulled off a coup that was even more satisfactory than winning a classic race.
He had known it was with the greatest difficulty that the Earl had refrained from asking him searching questions as to how he had met Ula.
Sarah’s obvious frustration because he did not go near her during the whole evening had pleased him as much as if he had won a large sum of money at the card tables.
One look at her petulant face, when she was not deliberately smiling with what he was sure was an effort, told him he had had a very lucky escape. Never would he endanger his freedom and risk his comfortable way of living by marrying anybody.
There were cousins who could succeed to the Marquisate and, if he did not have a son, why should that worry him, after he was dead?
‘I will never marry,’ he vowed, ‘and never again will I be fool enough to be deceived by a woman!’
The cynical lines on his face were even more deeply pronounced than usual as he rode back to Berkeley Square. He found, as he expected, that he was to breakfast alone, there being no sign of either of the ladies.
He was quite content, but he would have been even more pleased with himself if he had known of the scene that was taking place two streets away.
It was in the imposing residence the Earl had bought, gambling on his daughter being the outstanding success she had undoubtedly been up until last night.
*
The Earl had come down to breakfast first in a bad mood.
He had drunk too much of the Marquis’s excellent champagne and even more of his superb claret with the result that his right foot in which he suffered from gout was paining him.
He was helping himself to a dish of sweetbreads and fresh mushrooms, when to his surprise his daughter Sarah joined him.
“You are very early, my dear!” he remarked.
“I could not sleep, Papa.”
Sarah certainly looked very pale, the Earl thought, and with her hair hanging down her back and wearing an unattractive robe in which she usually rested in the afternoon, she did not look as beautiful as usual.
“You should have slept until luncheon time,” he said gruffly.
“How can I sleep when I can think only about the way Ula was disporting herself last night? And how can she afford a gown which must have cost far more than any gown you have ever bought me!”
Her voice rose a little shrilly and the Earl replied,
“I suppose all those rumours we heard about her being chaperoned by the Duchess because she knew her mother are true? Anyway we will be able to find out more.”
“How when she ran away did she get to the Duchess?” Sarah asked. “Unless, and this is a possibility, Papa, the Marquis took her there.”
She sat down at the table as she went on,
“If you think that was what happened, she must have appealed to him somehow to take her away in his phaeton and that was why he left.”
“If you remember,” the Earl muttered heavily, “the footmen said, and there is no reason why they should lie, that he walked out of the anteroom while you were in the drawing room and went straight to the stables.”
As the Earl spoke, Sarah sat bolt upright in her chair.
“Did you say the servants said he came out of the anteroom?”
“That is what Henry told me,” the Earl replied, “and I see no reason why the boy, stupid though he is, should not tell the truth.”
“I distinctly gave instructions to Bateson that the Marquis should be put in the library until I was ready to see him,” Sarah said.
She thought for a moment and then went on,
“Olive and I were talking in the drawing room. You don’t suppose, Papa, that if the Marquis was in the anteroom, he overheard what we said?”
“Was there any reason why your conversation should upset him?”
“Every reason!” Sarah gasped.
Then she gave a little scream.
“I am sure now that is why he left. Oh, my God, Papa, you will have to do something! You will have to prevent him from puffing up Ula, which is what he is doing just to punish me!”
“I don’t know what you are talking about,” her father protested.
“But I do!” Sarah went on. “I don’t believe for a moment the story that the Duchess of Wrexham loved Aunt Louise so much that she wanted to help her daughter.”
She screamed the next words,
“It’s the Marquis who is at the bottom of this! The Marquis who is having his revenge on me!”
“If that is true,” the Earl said, who was finding it difficult to follow his daughter’s train of thought, “I will wring your neck for losing the richest and most important son-in-law I am ever likely to acquire!”
“I will not have Ula taking my place as the most beautiful girl in England!” Sarah cried. “I will not have her wearing better gowns than I possess and having a better ball than you ever gave me, with every man who has hitherto admired me, now admiring her!”
Her voice rose again to a scream as she carried on,
“I will not have it, Papa! Do you hear me?
I will not have it
!”
Then as the Earl stared at her, as if he was not quite certain what all the commotion was about, Sarah burst into tears.
*
The Duchess and Ula sat down to luncheon alone together.
“I thought it would be a mistake after such a late party, dear child, for us to accept any of the many invitations we had for today,” the Duchess said.
“You are quite right,” Ula agreed, “and I think, ma’am, you ought to rest this afternoon.”
“And what will you do?”
“I shall read a book,” Ula replied. “When I first saw his Lordship’s library, I knew that there were at least two or three hundred books I wanted to read and the sooner I get started, the better!”
The Duchess laughed.
“You are far too lovely, my dear, for there to be any need for you to be a ‘bluestocking’.”
“I have no wish to be that. At the same time Papa always said that a pretty face is a good introduction, but a man wants something more if he is to enjoy the company of one woman for the rest of his life.”
“So you are talking about marriage.” The Duchess smiled. “How many proposals did you receive last night?”
“You will hardly believe it,” Ula said, “and I feel quite certain by this morning they will have changed their minds, but there were no fewer than three young gentlemen who said they intended to ask if they could pay their addresses to me.”
The Duchess laughed.
“It is what I expected.”
“I cannot believe it possible that any man could imagine he wants to marry a woman he has danced with only once.”
“Most women don’t look like you, my dear,” the Duchess said, “and I am sure the men in question were all frightened that somebody else might steal a march on them by getting there first.”
Ula was silent for a moment.
Then she said,
“It is strange – but each one began by saying, ‘are you in love?’ When I shook my head they said, ‘then if you are not in love with the noble Marquis, I have a chance’.”
The Duchess smiled and then she said insistently,
“I do beg of you, my dear, not to fall in love with Drogo.”
Ula’s eyes opened wider than usual as she answered,
“Why do you think that I should presume to do anything so foolish?”