“Will you not be seated?” he asked. “I am going to send for wine and I shall insist on your drinking a glass because I think it will do you good. You have passed through an unpleasant experience.”

He bent as he spoke and pulled at the embroidered bell rope. Almost immediately, as if he had been awaiting the summons, the door opened and a footman appeared.

“Wine and biscuits,” the Marquis ordered briefly.

The footman vanished and, as the door closed, Gretna persisted,

“I-I would rather go, my Lord.”

“And I am determined that you shall stay until you have drunk a glass of wine,” he said with a smile. “Will you not sit down if I promise not to hurt you?”

She laughed at this a little tremulously and seated herself on the edge of a big damask-covered chair.

The Marquis said nothing and after a moment, as if his very silence eased the tension, Gretna undid the ribbons of her bonnet and pulling it off laid it on the floor beside her chair.

The firelight shone on her fair curls and they seemed as if they too were suddenly full of light and movement, as if glad to be released from the confines of the bonnet.

A moment later the wine and biscuits arrived and were set down on a small table.

“Leave them,” the Marquis commanded and, when the footman had withdrawn, he poured the wine from the decanter into a small, exquisitely cut crystal glass.

He handed it to Gretna.

“Drink this,” he suggested. “It will bring the colour back into your cheeks.”

“I am not frightened – anymore,” she protested.

“I am glad of that,” he answered. “You still look rather like a child who has just awoken from a nightmare.”

Gretna shivered.

“I hate Lord Wroxhall. There is something about him, something in the way he speaks and looks – that makes me sure that he is a bad man, an – evil man.”

“You must avoid him,” the Marquis proposed. “He must not cross your path again.”

“But supposing – he does?” Gretna asked, her eyes dark at the thought of it.

“I have been thinking about that,” the Marquis said slowly. “In fact I was thinking of you as I travelled to London this afternoon.”

“Of – me?” Gretna asked.

“Does that surprise you?”

She dropped her eyes before the look in his.

“I expected you to be incensed with me, my Lord. I have been rude and ungrateful – but in the night it seemed the right thing to do.”

“The thoughts we think at night are usually distorted,” the Marquis answered. “I have been thinking of you in the daytime and to be frank I am perturbed as to what will happen to you in London.”

“It is kind of your Lordship, but there is no reason for anyone – to worry about me,” Gretna said swiftly. “When I find my friend, she will look after me.”