Valencia felt that she would never even hold his interest for long.
“I love him! I love him!” she whispered in the darkness.
They were words of despair.
Strangely enough, although she had expected to lie awake for hours thinking, she slept from sheer emotional exhaustion.
*
Valencia was awoken by the maid calling her as she had been told to do at six o’clock.
After a late night the Duchess had ordered her breakfast at nine-thirty.
Valencia thought that the Earl must have been aware of this and that was why he intended to collect her long before his grandmother was awake.
She wrote the note as he had instructed her and then dressed herself carefully in one of her beautiful new gowns.
There was a coat trimmed with white braid to wear over it and she thought that it completed one of
