She was hopeful of one thing, that the Dowager did not know of her son having lost his inheritance at a game of cards. But everything else would have been relayed to her and it was obvious that she would have to explain exactly why she had wished to kill Sir Percy Rockley.

Matthews was waiting to open the door and Carina thought that she looked a little white and strained. She barely returned Carina’s greeting and opened the door hurriedly so that Carina had the impression of being pitchforked forward as if she was a Christian being fed to the lions.

The Dowager was sitting upright in bed, her pillows piled behind her.

Around her neck she was wearing her strings of diamonds and similar stones glittered round her wrists below her bed jacket of white swansdown trimmed with mauve velvet ribbons.

She looked up as the door opened and fixed Carina with her piercing eyes.

“Good m-morning, my Lady,” Carina said a little nervously, and was aware that her voice shook as if she was a schoolgirl brought in front of the Headmistress.

“Why did you not kill him?” the Dowager asked.

It was not what Carina had expected her to say. She started and moved nearer the bed.

“Answer me, girl! There is no need to be afraid of me if you were not afraid to hang,” the Dowager said. “If you had not shot him, I was prepared to kill him myself.”

As Carina stared at her speechless, the Dowager brought a small wicked-looking pistol from under her pillow.

“I have this with me always,” she said. “But I learned to shoot and to shoot straight. You should have taken lessons before you fired at Sir Percy.”

“I meant to kill him,” Carina said simply.

“And missed!” the Dowager interposed scornfully.

“He is alive?” Carina asked.

“He is alive,” the Dowager answered. “Oh, you are quite safe, girl. No chance of the gallows for you now, although someone should finish him off.”

“No!” Carina said quickly, somewhat appalled at the bloodthirsty tone of the conversation. “It was wrong of me – I see that now. But – when I learned that it was he who had brought about the death of my father – I could think of nothing except that he must die.”

“He played into your hands by coming up to your bedroom,” the Dowager remarked.

Carina flushed.

“I knew he was coming,” she answered, “because he sent his man ahead of him with a bottle of champagne.”

“The kind of thing he would do!” the Dowager exclaimed “He was always conceited enough to imagine that every woman he met was in love with him. One could hear his self-satisfaction in the way he talked. Lord knows why Justin ever made a friend of him.”

Carina prevented herself from saying that perhaps Lord Lynche was running away from his own thoughts.

After a moment the Dowager went on,