As the Duke closed the door behind him, she sprang up and ran across towards him to fold both hands over his arm.
“Monseigneur, I am no longer a nobody!” she announced. “It is wonderful to find that I have a mother – and even more wonderful to realise that I am no longer just Amé, that I had a father and that I am not entirely ignoble.”
“Were you afraid of that?” the Duke asked with a faint smile, looking down at her aristocratic features and the proud way that she carried her head.
“Sometimes I was terribly afraid,” Amé confessed. “I used to lie awake at night and make up stories about who I might be – the daughter of a great Prince or of some adventurer who had reasons for not acknowledging me. Then there used to come a sharp fear into my heart that I might really be nobody but the da
