“I will call at fifteen minutes past nine,” the Earl replied.

“Don’t knock on the door,” Thalia instructed him. “Just wait outside – until I can join you.”

He smiled in acknowledgement of her instructions. Then, as if she was extremely anxious to be rid of him, she moved to the door and stepped into the small passage outside to open the front door.

“Nine-fifteen,” the Earl said. “I am prepared to wait quite patiently, Miss Carver, if you are unexpectedly delayed.”

Thalia did not answer but merely closed the door and the Earl had the feeling that if she had been able to act naturally she would have slammed it.

He was smiling as he walked away.

He thought that he had won what had been quite a skirmish, not a battle, that would come later, but definitely a trial of strength in which, as was to be expected, he was the conqueror.

*

When the Earl had gone, Thalia had stood for a moment in the passage composing herself before she went upstairs.

She was so incensed with the Earl that she felt her mother might easily be aware of the vibrations of anger that she was sure she was sending out almost like sparks of fire.

How dare he follow her here! How dare a man she had seen only once, twice if one counted his coming to the shop to buy a bonnet for some woman he fancied, force himself upon her in such a ungentlemanly manner?

And to blackmail her into dining with him, when she knew that it was something she should not do and would doubtless give her mother a heart attack if she ever learned of it!

‘What can I do?’ Thalia asked herself.

She had an uncomfortable feeling that, if she refused to join him when he came to fetch her, he might easily knock on the door until either she or Hannah opened it, and make a scene if she refused to join him.

‘It’s impossible! He is behaving in a most ungentlemanly manner!’ she stormed.

Then she realised that it was because he was not treating her as a lady.

She supposed that this was the type of difficulty shop assistants often encountered and, perhaps for the first time, she understood a little of her mother’s apprehension that she should pretend to belong to a class inferior to her own.

She took several deep breaths as if to calm herself and then walked slowly up the stairs.

Lady Caversham watched her enter the room.

“Who was it, dearest?” she asked. “Hannah said that there was somebody at the door who wished to see you.”

There was a note in her mother’s voice that told Thalia that she was already worried and a little nervous.