fool and yet conscious all the time of some inner excitement that she had not known before. She had danced with him, she had sat with him, this man whom she had first seen through a carriage window and had not been able to forget.
The room was filling up again, people were coming back from supper and now with a sense of relief Cornelia saw her aunt moving towards her. Perhaps it was time to go home. She wanted to be alone, she wanted to think.
“What have you done with Drogo?” Lily asked as she reached Cornelia’s side with the Spanish Ambassador resplendent with decorations walking beside her.
“The Duke went downstairs,” Cornelia replied.
“You are a very naughty girl to have had supper with him tête-à-tête,” Lily admonished her. “I don’t know what people will think of me as a chaperone to allow such a thing. There were places kept for you at the Royal supper table, but you ignored them. We shall have to be careful, Your Excellency, or my husband’s niece will gain a reputation for being fast!”
“If Miss Bedlington does anything wrong, you have only to plead for her and so she will be forgiven instantly,” the Ambassador suggested.
“Your Excellency is always so flattering,” Lily smiled.
There was no further mention of the Duke then, but when they drove home an hour later, Cornelia remembered his message.
“The Duke of Roehampton asked if he might call on me tomorrow afternoon,” she said. “I told him that he should ask you, as I had no idea of your plans, but he said that he would come at three o’clock.”
“Then you must be there to receive him,” Lily said and to Cornelia’s surprise there was something like a note of relief in her aunt’s voice.
“What is all this? What’s all this?” Lord Bedlington asked.
He had appeared to be dozing in the corner of the carriage. Now he sat up and turned to look at his wife. He could see her clearly in the light of the street lamps.
“I told you I would not have Roehampton in the house,” he growled.
“He is coming to see Cornelia, George, not me.”
“Why should he do that? Never set eyes on the girl until tonight.”
“I know, dear, but we can hardly refuse to let him see her if he wants to.”
“If you are up to your old monkey tricks – ” Lord Bedlington began, only to receive an indignant shush from his wife.
“Really, George, not in front of Cornelia!”
There was so much righteous indignation in Lily’s voice that her husband subsided into his corner of the carriage.
Cornelia wondered about it when she was in bed but somehow it was extremely difficult to remember anything except for the feeling of the Duke’s arm on her waist and the firmness of his hand clasping hers.
He wanted her to like England. She could remember that too and, as she fell fast asleep, she was thinking that after all she was glad she had come for she had met him and he was English and a very important part of the England that he wanted her to like.
While Cornelia slept, Lily and George Bedlington were arguing.
He had come into Lily’s bedroom soon after she had gone upstairs and dismissed her maid, who was only too glad of the opportunity to go off to bed.
“What is it, George?” she asked irritably. “I wanted Dobson to brush my hair and it is much too late at night for conversation.”
“I have never known you come home so early from a ball before,” her husband retorted.
“Well, I cannot say that I enjoyed having to stand about with all those old women,” Lily pouted, watching her reflection as she did so and telling herself that she did not look a day over twenty-five. “It is beastly of you, George, and well you know it, to make me chaperone this niece of yours. It is just refined cruelty.”
“That is just what I want to talk to you about,” Lord Bedlington said heavily. “What is all this about Roehampton coming here? I told you I have forbidden him from the house.”
“Really, George, you are being very dense,” Lily said. “You forbade him to see me for quite ridiculous and unjust reasons. Of course if it amuses you to be so jealous and make a fool of yourself, there is nothing I can possibly do to stop you, but I really cannot allow you to jeopardise Cornelia’s chances just because of petty prejudice and some horrible indecent suspicions that you cannot justify in the very slightest!”
“I am not going to argue about that all over again,” George Bedlington said. “I may be a fool in many ways, Lily, but I am not such a damn fool as all that. I have told you what I think about you and young Roehampton and that’s all there is to it.”
“Very well, George, if that is what you feel about it there is nothing more to be said, but where Cornelia is concerned it is a different story.”
“What is happening that is just what I want to know? Cornelia does not know this young jackanapes, so why should he come and call on her.”
“Now, George, really, for an intelligent man you are being dense. Don’t you understand that with Cornelia’s fortune she can easily take her pick of the eligible young gentlemen in London?”
“Who says so?” George Bedlington asked.
“I say so,” Lily replied, “and you know I am right. Her fortune is there, isn’t it?”
“Of course it is there. I don’t have all the facts and figures as yet but she is worth three-quarters of a million if she’s worth a penny.”
Then, don’t you see, George,” Lily replied in the voice of one speaking to a backward child, “that with a fortune like that she can take her choice?”
“You don’t mean Roehampton is after her money?” he asked indignantly.
“And why not? You know Emily is always complaining about how hard up they are and what is wrong, I should like to know, with having a niece who is a Duchess? For Heaven’s sake, George, leave things to me and don’t try to interfere.”
“Well, it all seems damned peculiar to me,” he said, scratching his greying hair. “One moment Roehampton’s after you, getting you talked about and trying to make a cuckold of me and the next minute you tell me he is trying to marry my niece? Are there not any other women in the world except those who belong to me?”
“Now, George, don’t worry your head about all this.”
Lily rose from the table as she spoke. With her golden hair streaming over her shoulders and the full curved grace of her figure showing through her thin wrapper, she walked across the room to her husband.
“Don’t be cross and don’t be difficult, George,” she coaxed, putting up her hand to pat his cheek with a gesture that was peculiarly her own.
For a moment he glared at her, remembering his anger a few days earlier when he found out that she had been lying and then her beauty weakened him
