“Did you really think that I should not do so?” the Marquis asked. “You may have changed your gown and you have hidden the gold of your hair, but your face is just the same and those troubled innocent eyes of yours are quite unchanged.”

“I think perhaps you are paying me a compliment, my Lord. But I do not wish for your compliments or for those of Lord Wroxhall. If you will let me pass – I wish to return to the salon.”

She made a movement towards the window, but the Marquis was blocking her way. She looked up at him and saw in the moonlight that cynical curve of his lips that she both feared and disliked.

“One minute,” he suggested. “Do you not realise that I have been looking for you for the past three days? It was clever of you to leave my coach in Piccadilly and take a Hackney carriage. Had I thought that you would play such a trick, I should have gone with you.”

“I see no reason – why you should interest yourself in me,” Gretna said. “And even if my deception gave you reason – now that you know who I really am, there is no need for us to continue an acquaintanceship that should never have begun, save perhaps for the ill-judged tooling of your curricle.”

She had the satisfaction of seeing the Marquis’s eyes flash with a momentary anger.

“You are saying that to deliberately provoke me,” he said slowly. “You have been very clever, but I am not to be side-tracked. Where are you staying? I wish to call on you.”

“There is not the slightest – n-necessity, my Lord,” Gretna replied “I am prepared to accept your Lordship’s apology for the mistake that you made about me and excuse it on the grounds that you really imagined me to be a girl from a farm – a m-milkmaid perhaps.”

“Dammit, I thought nothing of the sort,” the Marquis said angrily. “Do you imagine that I am so blind and deaf and dumb that I did not realise that you had quality? I had best make myself very clear. I thought you to be the daughter of some Nobleman who had perhaps not had the time or the inclination, to marry your mother. That is what I thought and I think even then I suspicioned that the fat woman who accompanied you was no relation.”

“Thank you for your frank explanation, my Lord Marquis,” Gretna said, her eyes defying his and sparks seeming to flash between them. “I can only conclude that Mrs. Merryweather was absolutely right in mistrusting – the Nobility and doing her utmost to prevent me from dining alone with you.”

“That is unfair,” the Marquis replied quickly. “I would not have hurt you and well you know it.”

He paused for a moment and added,