‘How can I?’ Mistral cried. ‘Please, please, spare me this, Aunt Emilie, it is too humiliating.’

‘Stuff and nonsense,’ Emilie replied. ‘Men are always pleased when they think a pretty woman is running after them.’

‘But I have no wish to run after the Prince,’ Mistral said with a pathetic effort at defiance. ‘It makes me embarrassed, Aunt Emilie, when you throw us together so obviously. People must talk because they know that he is the only man to whom I may speak. They must be laughing at me.’

‘I want people to talk,’ Emilie said. If they laugh it is of no consequence. Stop making absurd excuses, Mistral, and do as you are told. Write to him.’

Mistral knew then that any appeal that she might make to her Aunt was hopeless even before she formulated the words. Her face was very pale as she picked up the pencil.

‘What am I to say?’ she asked.

‘Must I even tell you that?’ Aunt Emilie questioned savagely. ‘You seem to have no ideas of your own. Very well then, I will tell you what to say. Write this,

“I have something of import to tell Your Serene Highness. Could you most graciously spare a moment to come to our table?

Mistral.”

Mistral wrote down the words as they were dictated, then she raised her eyes to her aunt’s face.

‘But I have nothing to say to him.’

‘Then you had best think of something,’ Emilie remarked grimly.

‘But what is there to tell him about?’ Mistral asked wildly as she watched Emilie fold the note and hand it to the waiter with instructions to take it to the Prince’s table.

‘You would do well to decide that and quickly,’ Emilie replied and her voice was like steel.

It was as if she were caught in a trap from which there was no escape, Mistral thought, and was ashamed of her own weakness in obeying Aunt Emilie.

She was frightened, it was true, but nothing could be worse than knowing instinctively that she had betrayed her own code of decency in writing to the Prince, in coercing him to her side by making a false appeal to his chivalry.

Inexperienced though she was in the ways of the world, she was sure that ladies did not do such things. They did not deliberately seek a man out and force their company upon him, especially when he was of such social importance as Prince Nikolai.