She added that he had attracted her and she had known how gay and fantastic her life would be with him. Yet her British middle-class respectability had made her force the Duc into marriage because she wanted a ring on her finger rather than diamonds around her neck.
“You had the diamonds too,” Gardenia reminded her.
“Nothing to what I could have easily had. Oh, dear! I hate to think of all my sapphires and emeralds being left behind!”
“I don’t think it matters so much as being free,” Gardenia remarked.
She had realised before that it was urgent that her aunt should be taken out of France and now the revelations that she had just listened to made it clear that if Aunt Lily was not shot as a traitor, she would be imprisoned for years, perhaps for the rest of her life.
The Duchesse seeme
