‘It’s something I will never be able to say to any man,’ Salrina sighed to herself.
She went into the sitting room to look at the portrait of her mother hanging on one wall.
“What am I to do with myself, Mama?” she asked, feeling that if she listened she might hear her mother answer her question.
The door opened and, because there were tears in her eyes and she thought Nanny might see them, she turned hastily away from the painting to walk towards the mantelpiece.
Then, when Nanny did not speak, she turned to see what she wanted and was suddenly very still.
It was not Nanny who had come into the room as she had thought.
It was the Earl.
For a moment, because he was always so vividly in her thoughts, she felt that she must be imagining him, that he had materialised out of her mind an
