“I doubt that,” the Duke answered briefly, “but as it happens, I need your help. I was about to ask Hugo to find me a chaperone.”
“A chaperone!” Isabella exclaimed.
Hugo stood staring at his cousin, a look of enquiry on his long face.
“Yes, a chaperone,” the Duke explained. “I have brought with me to Paris a young lady and, if she is to stay here, we must, of course, be chaperoned conventionally by the presence of a married woman.”
“Then it was a pair of sparkling eyes that delayed you! I told you so, Hugo, but you would not believe me.”
“In this case you were wrong,” the Duke said. “I was delayed by Chartres but my responsibility towards what you term ‘a pair of sparkling eyes’ had begun before our coach was waylaid.”
“Who is she, where did you find her and what is she like?” Isabel
