“I am disappointed you have seen it like it is now,” Alyna said. “I meant to have it all beautifully arranged when you next came to visit us. In fact Elizabeth and I have been poring over sketches in The Ladies Journal to see how I should do it.”

“I like it as it is,” Lord Dorrington affirmed.

“You cannot expect me to believe that,” she smiled. “But I really believe this last washing has removed the remaining traces of that horrible yellow paste.”

She turned as she spoke to walk back towards the house. She stepped onto the lawn out of the shade of the trees and the sunshine made her hair gleam with fiery gold in a tint that Lord Dorrington never remembered having seen before except in a painting.

“I will stay for dinner,” he said as if following the train of his own thoughts, “and I wish you to wear the white evening gown that you will find amongst the others. I have ordered you several more, but they are not yet ready.”

Alyna stopped in the middle of the lawn.

“You realise,” she said in a low voice, “that I cannot pay you back at the moment. In fact I may never be able to do so.”

“They are a gift.”

“A gift that I should not accept.”

“Why?”

She made a little gesture of her hands.

“I am sure it is incorrect and – unconventional!”

Lord Dorrington laughed.

“Is it not rather late in the day for us to be worrying about such things? It was incorrect and extremely unconventional for you to meet me alone in the gallery of St. George’s Church and even more reprehensible that I should have carried you away in the middle of the night from your mother’s house to a secret and unknown destination.”

He spoke mockingly and Alyna laughed up at him.

“You are right,” she said. “I will not split straws with you over a few gowns. But thank you, my Lord, it was very kind of you to think of it.”

When they went back to the house, it was to find that Elizabeth was awake and had prepared tea for them in the salon.

“The children have been gorging themselves on sugar almonds,” she said reproachfully. “Nanny is furious and says that they will not eat their proper tea.”

“I hear Rupert wants a riding whip,” Lord Dorrington said.

”I told him not to ask you for one,” his sister replied.

‘‘He did not,” Lord Dorrington answered. “He merely told me that you told him not to ask.”

Elizabeth laughed.

“They are both as bad as you are, they always get their own way,”

“And do I always get mine?” Lord Dorrington enquired.

“Invariably!” Elizabeth exclaimed. “As a child I was always put off with promises. As far as I was concerned it was sometime, never. But you were the golden boy, you always got what you wanted.”