Robert took his mouth from hers and looked down at her.

‘You are so beautiful,’ he said, his voice low and hoarse with emotion. Tomorrow I am going back to England and I shall take you with me. I am going to take you to Cheveron, to my home. We will be married there, or here before we leave if you prefer it.’

‘I am afraid on this question you will have to ask my permission,’ a voice said from the doorway.

Robert looked up. And as Mistral blushingly extricated herself from his arms, he rose slowly to his feet.

‘Your Imperial Highness!’ he exclaimed in astonishment.

The Grand Duke came further into the room.

‘I am sorry to interrupt you,’ he said, ‘but before you make too many plans, I must beg you to accord me the formality of asking for my daughter’s hand in marriage.’

‘Your daughter?’

There was no disguising Robert’s surprise, and Mistral gave a little laugh of sheer happiness.

‘Yes,’ she said, ‘The Grand Duke is my father. It is so wonderful to have a family of my own at last.’

‘Yet if my eyes do not deceive me and my ears have heard aright,’ the Grand Duke said, ‘you are all eagerness to leave me.’

Mistral looked up at him with a worried expression.

‘Please understand, Father,’ she pleaded.

The Grand Duke smiled reassuringly.

‘I think I do,’ he said. ‘Robert, your father was an old friend of mine. You and I have met on several occasions. My daughter tells me that she has fallen in love with you and you with her. I gather there has been some misunderstanding between you, but from what I saw on entering the room I imagine that is now rectified.’

‘It is forgotten, Sir,’ Robert said.

‘I am glad of that,’ the Grand Duke replied. ‘There are many things that are best left in the past and ignored completely in our plans for the future.’

‘May I, Sir, then beg your permission to marry Mistral?’ Sir Robert asked.

‘You have that,’ the Grand Duke replied, ‘on one condition. ‘Yes, a condition,’ he repeated, as he saw both Mistral and Robert look at him a little apprehensively.

‘Which is?’ Robert asked.

‘That you do not take my daughter away from me too quickly,’ the Grand Duke replied. ‘No, do not look too disappointed, I am being wise for both of you. You have the whole of your lives ahead of you. You will live together and, please God, be happy one with another, but I wish you to start out in the right way, without scandal, without shadows attached to you from the past. You, Robert, came out here for a very different reason. That reason has ceased to exist, but people have long memories and longer tongues. I want you to go back to England tomorrow, to return to Cheveron and take up life where you left it. You doubtless have many things requiring your attention on your Estate, you have your peace to make with your mother. In three months’ time Mistral and I will come to England.’