She wanted him. She wanted to know that he was there to save her and protect her and to awaken that strange breathless feeling within her that had held them both spellbound on the balcony at Carlton House.

And then she knew with a sudden dropping of her heart and with a sense of almost desperate despair that he had gone for ever.

She had seen the scorn and contempt in his face, she had heard the ice on his voice and knew that he despised her as much as he condemned and despised Maria Fitzherbert, if not more so.

They were two of a kind and he had no use for either of them.

CHAPTER NINE

“You look sad, dearest,” Maria remarked as Gretna sighed for perhaps the third time as she stood at the window watching the carriages pass round St. James’s Square.

“Oh, but I am not,” Gretna replied with forced gaiety. “How could you think me so ungracious and ungrateful when you are so kind to me and there are so many amusements filling every hour of the day?”

In answer Maria put out her hand and drew Gretna towards her so that they sat side by side on the satin-covered sofa.

“I love having you here,” she murmured softly. “And you really are the belle of every ball I take you to. Yet sometimes I have a suspicion that your heart is heavy and you are not as happy as you appear.”

“Oh, but I am – I am,” Gretna protested.

And yet, even while she lied and was ashamed of telling falsehoods, she knew that she could not tell Maria the truth.

It was impossible to say to someone as sweet, as kind and as gentle as Maria,

‘I am in love with your enemy, with the man who defames you and who thinks you are just an immoral schemer pretending affection for the Prince for what you can get out of him.’

How could the Marquis be so blind? she had asked herself again and again in the silence of the night.

How could he believe only the cruel and wicked things that were said about Maria and not see or understand the good influence she had on the Prince?

Why did he not see how she managed in some subtle way of her own to keep His Royal Highness away from the wilder sparks and dandies who were only too ready to lure him into excesses of drink and gambling?

No, she could not tell Maria her troubles and she knew instinctively that Maria did not confide in her the many difficulties that beset her on every side. She always appeared calm and serene and yet Gretna knew that she lived, as it were, on the edge of a precipice, torn between her desire to love the Prince as he loved her and her terror that she might hurt or injure him in any way.