Every night when she was alone she found herself crying helplessly for the Earl, wondering if he had forgotten her already and whether somebody like Lady Adelaide or Genevieve had taken her place in his affections.

She was certain that she had done the right thing in running away without telling him where she was going or who she was.

Although it was an agony to think that there were only a few hours’ fast driving between them, she could not have borne the knowledge that the Earl might believe that he must behave in an honourable manner and offer her marriage.

It was not just marriage she wanted from him, but something very different and to have trapped him, for that was what it would have amounted to, into losing his freedom would, she told herself with a wry smile, have been definitely ‘unsporting’.

‘He will forget me – of course he will forget me,’ she kept saying to herself, ‘but I will never, never forget him!’

She faced the fact that she would never love anybody else and therefore it was unlikely that she would ever marry.

It did not trouble her particularly except that it was hard to think of the Earl without crying and she was well aware that in some ways she was de trop in her own home.

Always before, she and her father had been so close and she had never wanted other companions of her own age, being utterly content to be with him.

Now something was missing between them, something she recognised as being as much his fault as hers, if fault was the right word.

His experiences in America, the tremendous effort he had to make in an entirely different world from his own, had changed Sir Denzil from the light-hearted rather irresponsible man he had been into a much older and wiser person.

He still retained his gift of laughter and joie de vivre, but he was content as he had never been before with his home, his estate and his wife who adored him.

In the past he had talked to Thalia of subjects that interested him and which were outside his immediate home life.

Now she realised almost in surprise that her father was middle-aged and wanted to settle down.

“Eldon was right,” he said several times to his wife and daughter, “as soon as people have begun to accept me, I shall take my rightful place in County affairs. Perhaps, who knows, one day the King might appoint me to be Lord Lieutenant!”

“I hope so, darling,” Lady Caversham smiled, “and how handsome you will look in your special uniform.”

“I shall have to ‘play myself in’,” Sir Denzil said. “There are a great number of charitable boards I must sit on first and I must join the Yeomanry, which I should have done years ago.”

He paused before he added to please his wife,