“Yes, yes, you are quite right and we cannot stay long,” the Duke agreed.
He managed, however, to drink several more glasses of champagne and to have reached an effusively benign mood before the Earl escorted them to their carriage and stood waiting on the steps until they drove away.
As Louise held his hand when they said ‘goodbye’, there was a look in her eyes that might have made him apprehensive.
It told him all too clearly that her passion for him was not spent and that having failed to make trouble she would undoubtedly try to inveigle him back into her clutches in a very different way when they met again.
But, as the carriage disappeared down the drive, the Earl knew with a feeling of inexpressible relief that she no longer menaced him and the fear of what had seemed to haunt hi
