The Earl put down his glass.

“Shall I approach you in another way?” he said after a moment, “and tell you how very desirable I find you and how much I would like to look after you and do everything within my power to make you happy.”

“That you can do now.”

“How?”

He had the feeling, as he spoke, that her reply would not be what he wished to hear.

“By leaving me alone,” Thalia said. “You are well aware that you have blackmailed me into coming here tonight simply because I could not upset my mother. That is something that must not happen again.”

She saw an expression that she thought was one of annoyance on the Earl’s face and could not resist adding,

“As for your house, your carriage, your horses and your jewels, I am certain that Mademoiselle Genevieve will accept all those and a great deal more with pleasure!”

“I am not interested in Genevieve, but in you!”

“For which you obviously think that I should be flattered and grateful. I am neither! When I think it over, I shall find your proposition, my Lord – insulting!”

“It was not meant to be that.”

Thalia made a little gesture with her hands.

“How can you expect me to think – anything else?”

The Earl did not reply and after a moment she said,

“I know exactly what you are thinking, my Lord. You are wondering how anyone so inferior and so unimportant as an underpaid milliner, can refuse the Earl of Hellington. Well, I am not only refusing you but making it very clear that I consider, despite your intelligence, that you are a very bad judge of character.”

If she had tried, she could not have said anything to annoy the Earl more.

If there was one thing he had always prided himself on it was that he could sum up a man the moment he talked to him.

He did not require references for his servants and, when people came to him with an appeal for help, he could tell the moment he met them whether or not they were genuine.

Now that this chit of a girl with no background and nothing to distinguish her except her beauty from thousands of women like her should consider that he had insulted her and at the same time accuse him of bad judgement in making his offer in the first place, almost took his breath away.

“Now listen to me, Thalia – ” he began, only to be interrupted as Thalia replied,

“I have listened to you, my Lord, and really there is nothing more to say on the subject. If you want the truth, I find it extremely boring to go on discussing it.”

As she spoke, she picked up her bag and rose to her feet, looking, although she was unaware of it, alluring and at the same time, very young and untouched in the candlelight.