In letting him kiss her and hold her in his arms she had brought down the curtain on what she knew would always be the most wonderful experience in her life.
Sitting by her father’s bedside, she now admitted to herself that what she felt for the Duke was love, the same love that had made her mother run away from Bath and from her rich and distinguished fiancé with an actor.
But the love of Annabel Winslow, a Lady of Quality, for a distinguished young actor was different from the love of a daughter of an actor for a noble Duke.
Even if he wished it, which Shimona was sure he did not, they could never marry. It would be the same mésalliance that Alister McCraig had made in marrying Kitty Varden.
‘I love him – but our love must never be spoilt or defamed,’ Shimona told herself.
Even in h
