If she had, then Christine might well have had very decided objections to marry a man she had never seen and certainly not one chosen for her by her stepmother.
As he thought about it, he knew that he had been a fool. He accepted the arrangements that had been made with such speed by Nadine Lydford because it had seemed too late for him to be able to do anything about it.
He had therefore sent his carriage to London, as she had requested, to pick up a girl who would already have left her school before he had received his own instructions.
Now he realised that the whole idea that had sprung from Nadine’s fertile imagination would be an insult to any girl who was sensitive and doubtless romantic.
Just as he was perceptive enough to realise that Nadine resented her stepdaughter, he suspec
