“You are late!” the Earl said without any more formal acknowledgement of her presence. “I was just beginning to wonder if I should have to remind you that I was outside by knocking on the door.”

“I was afraid you might do that. That is why I am here.”

“Your mother is not aware that you have left the house?”

“No.”

He stood looking at her and Thalia said suddenly,

“You have won your bet, my Lord, or perhaps it was just a challenge you set yourself. Now may I go back? There is no point in you giving me dinner for, as you can well see, I am unable even to dress the part.”

“You look charming!” the Earl said in a voice that was impersonal. “But if you are afraid of who might see you, we are going somewhere very quiet, where I can talk to you as I wish to do.”

Thalia did not reply and he added,

“My carriage is waiting in Curzon Street. I think this is the quickest way to join it.”

He put his hand under her elbow as he spoke and started to move in the direction he wished to go and Thalia feeling that there was no point in arguing any further, went with him.

Many of the shops in Shepherd’s Market were still open and there were a few customers mostly chatting with the shopkeepers rather than buying.

But otherwise the place seemed almost deserted and Thalia had the feeling that she was walking in a dream as they came from the shadows of the archway into the bright gaslights of Curzon Street.

There was a closed carriage waiting embellished with the Earl’s crest and drawn by two horses with a coachman and a footman in attendance.

She stepped inside and, as the Earl joined her, she thought for a moment that she had moved back into the past.

It was her father’s carriage she was riding in and there was no tragedy, no years of worry and privation, no heart-searching as to where the next meal would come from.

She was for the moment so deep in thought that she did not realise that the Earl, leaning back comfortably in the corner of the carriage, was watching her with a look of amusement until he quizzed her,

“What are you thinking about so seriously?”

“Myself,” Thalia answered. “Forgive me for being inattentive, but for the moment I find it an absorbing subject.”

It struck the Earl that any other woman would have told him that she had been thinking about him.

“At least you are honest, Miss Carver,” he said. “Most people think incessantly about themselves, but are not frank enough to say so.”

“I always tell the truth if it is possible,” Thalia replied. “It’s so much less of a struggle. I am ashamed tonight that I am deceiving my mother, who I love very deeply, by being here with you.”