Love in Hiding by Barbara Cartland

Author:Barbara Cartland
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781788671897
Published: 2019-05-18T00:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER SEVEN

Gretna awoke to find Maria peeping round the bedroom door at her.

“You have slept late, dearest! I had not the heart to waken you until now. But we have a luncheon party for twenty. If you don’t rise now, you will be late and that would never do for, of course, the Prince is coming.”

Gretna looked at the clock on the mantelshelf with dismay. It seemed that she had but closed her eyes for two minutes, having been awake until dawn. And yet now it was nearly luncheontime.

She did not wish to explain that she had lain sleepless, tossing and turning from the time they had returned from Carlton House, thinking over what had happened and going over again and again in her mind all that the Marquis had said to her.

“I am sorry, Maria,” she apologised. “I will rise – immediately.”

“You must wear your prettiest gown,” Maria advised her with a smile. “An old friend of yours is visiting us today.”

She went from the room before Gretna had time to question her further.

An old friend?

She wondered who that could be for she knew no one in London save the Marquis and she was quite certain that he would never cross the threshold of the house so long as Maria occupied it.

She felt again that leaden feeling that had been hers last night when she realised that she had with one blow severed all connection between them. He would no longer search for her, no longer wish to claim kinship now that he knew who the friend was whom she had sought so assiduously now that he was aware of her address.

She put her hands up to her eyes for a moment as if not only to blot out the sunshine, which seemed for a moment to dazzle her eyes in which there was a suspicion of tears, but also to shut out the memory of the expression on the Marquis’s face as she had last seen it.

It had only been a fleeting glance and yet, in that quick second, she had seen the darkening of his eyes, the tightening of his lips and she had known that his reaction to her words had been exactly what she had expected.

Maria was her friend – she was also the woman he had denounced so violently and so vehemently at Stade Hall.

She should be glad to be rid of him, she told herself, and wished that she did not feel so empty and as if something had gone from the whole joy of living.

“It is because I am tired,” she said aloud and looked in the mirror expecting to find telltale lines under her eyes and an unusual pallor.

Instead her face looked back at her fresh and young and curiously untroubled and almost petulantly she turned away from her own reflection.

It took her longer to dress than she had anticipated. The new gown which Maria had bought for her required a last minute alteration and she was obliged to stand while the maid did it on her.

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