As the door closed behind her, Alyna wondered for a moment if she was being completely and utterly selfish in not marrying the Prince and denying her mother the happiness that she craved.

Then she knew that she could never bring herself to tolerate the proximity of the Prince, even if he bought up the whole world as an inducement.

She tried to puzzle out in her mind why he had such a repellent effect on her and why she was terrified even by the sound of his voice.

‘There must be some good reason for it,’ she told herself and felt what her Nanny used to call ‘her flesh creep’ at the thought that in a few moments she must see him.

She heard the Prince arrive and go upstairs to the salon.

Now at last she knew that she must go down and meet him.

She glanced at herself in the mirror and thought cynically that her mother had dressed her like a lamb for the slaughter.

It was so very obvious that her bunched beflowered dress and her elaborate fair coiffure were exactly what was calculated to appeal to an Easterner who found a very young white girl attractive.

Alyna looked at the patches of rouge on her pale cheeks and the red lip salve on her mouth and thought that her mother had dolled her up in a manner that was not only calculating but incredibly vulgar.

There was something nauseating about flaunting her youthfulness in front of a man for whom she had no other attraction.

She was well aware that the Prince had no interest in her brain, her personality or anything except that she was very young and desirable.

‘It is horrible!’ she thought in a sudden panic. ‘I cannot go down and meet him!’

She felt that she must run away that very moment, pull open the front door and tear out into the street.

Anything rather than encounter the dark lustful eyes of the Prince as she entered the salon.

Then she remembered Lord Dorrington’s voice telling her what to do, speaking calmly, almost impersonally, and yet absolutely positively.

He had been kind, she thought, even though it would have been better if originally he had left her to drown as she had wished to do.

At the same time there was nothing soft or sentimental about him! He was hard, even ruthless. She could almost hear the contempt in his voice and see it in his eyes should she fail at the last moment.

Her father had been a soldier and she could not be so weak, so cowardly, as to run away without giving battle.

Holding her chin high, Alyna wrenched open her bedroom door and walked downstairs.

Only as she reached the salon did she remember the part that she had to play.