The following day Harry Carrington arrived in the morning to take her driving in his phaeton in Hyde Park.

Gretna, wearing a new coat of blue satin and a little chip straw bonnet trimmed with blue ribbons to match, ran downstairs to exclaim with delight when she saw the horses he was driving.

“They are magnificent,” she cried. “I have never seen finer horseflesh.”

“You have seen these before.”

“Have I?”

“Most certainly, yes,” he affirmed. “Do you not remember the chestnuts Julien was driving the day we first met? That was the reason why I was so keen to purchase them from him.”

Gretna drew in her breath. She remembered now – that first moment as she put her head out of the window of the overturned coach and saw a curricle of yellow and black with a groom at the horses’ heads.

She could see so clearly the Marquis himself, standing with that cynical smile on his lips watching the stagecoach horses being calmed after he had peremptorily ordered the coachman to their heads.

The Marquis’s chestnuts! And he had parted with them to Sir Harry. She wondered why.

He was already explaining,

“Julien hates parting with his horses, but I begged him for these. I told him the very special reason I wanted them was because he was driving them on the day I met you. So he permitted me to buy them and at not such a fancy price as one might have expected.”

“You told him that?” Gretna queried him.

“But, of course. I drove up to Stade Hall last Saturday. You will remember that was why I could not come to the rout at Cumberland House.”

“What was the Marquis doing?” Gretna enquired tentatively.

“That is precisely what I asked him,” Sir Harry said, helping her up into the phaeton and picking up the reins in a manner that showed him to be an accomplished driver and someone she might well be proud to be seen with in Hyde Park.

“And what did he answer?” Gretna prompted him.

“He said he was tired of Society. Did you ever hear such fustian? ‘Come back to London,’ I said. ‘We cannot have you mouldering here. Why, you will turn into nothing more or less than a country Squire, heavy-booted and turnip-brained. There are at least two new fashions in cravats since you left St James’s’.”

“What was the Marquis’s reply?” Gretna questioned him.

“He laughed at me. Said he was too old for all our bird-witted junketing. If you ask me, he is still feeling sore about the fair Eloise.”

“And who is the – fair Eloise?” Gretna asked in a very small voice.

She would not admit even to herself that this was a question that had been puzzling her for a. long time.

Sir Harry had the grace to look embarrassed.

“I ought not to speak to you of such things,” he said abruptly. “Let’s talk of something else.”