She looked up into Lord Dorrington’s face as she spoke and saw that his eyes were searching hers.

“I have always hoped,” he said quietly, “that sapphires would become my wife.”

She had the feeling that he was trying to tell her something more. Then she was sure that once again she was just being imaginative.

The coach had reached the Mall and as they were approaching Carlton House, Alyna leant forward. She was anxious to see the huge mansion that had been the subject of controversy ever since the Prince had begun to restore it sixteen years earlier.

The cartoons depicting the Heir to the Throne’s fantastic extravagance, the accounts in the newspapers of the money spent on the building and on its contents were known to everyone, rich and poor.

Carlton House had been rebuilt without regard to cost and in defiance of the King’s wishes.

Every year more and more splendours were added to it. Adjoining houses were bought and demolished to make way for new wings.

Craftsmen, cabinet-makers, decorators and wood-carvers were brought over from France and set to work until the Prince’s residence was spoken of as being finer than any other house in the whole of England.

As Alyna looked at the huge Corinthian portico, she saw a coach in front of them setting down some other guests and she said a little nervously,

“It is bigger than I expected.”

“It has been compared to Versailles,” Lord Dorrington replied, “and by Count Munster to the Palace of St. Petersburg.”

His tone was cynical as he added,

“By many people, however, it is considered almost vulgar in its opulence.”

His words did not make Alyna feel any less apprehensive as she entered the Great Hall and followed a gorgeously arrayed flunkey up the graceful double staircase. She could see them both reflected in a large mirror.

The elegance of Lord Dorrington with his white knee-breeches and long-tailed cut-away coat seemed the perfect complement to her small slender figure with its sapphire-coloured Grecian gown and the glitter of the lovely family jewels.

She could see the fiery sheen of her hair and the whiteness of her long neck, which somehow mitigated a very young fear in her huge green eyes.

She had handed her velvet wrap to an attendant and now, as they reached the first floor, they moved through what Alyna guessed was the music room into a drawing room decorated in Chinese taste.

To someone who had never seen many of the great houses of London, the Chinese Room in Carlton House was breathtakingly theatrical and yet at the same time impressive.

An agent had been sent to China to buy the furniture for this salon and Alyna was to learn later that a fortune had been expended on the lanterns alone.

But for the moment she was concerned only with the large number of people already congregated there.