“Will you get out of this room, Sir Percy?” she said. “If you don’t, I will speak to Lord Lynche. It is not right that a gentleman should come upstairs to the nursery or schoolroom, whatever you like to call it. Please go!”

“So fiery, so spirited!” he exclaimed. “By Jove, you are a woman worth mastering!”

“Go away,” Carina insisted. “I don’t want you here. If you think I am rude, I am sorry, but I want to make this quite clear, I don’t want to talk to you.”

He laughed a little beneath his breath and then before she could prevent it he put out his hand and cupped her chin.

“You are very attractive!” he said in a thick silky voice that she had begun to think she detested above anything she had ever heard.

For a moment she felt almost paralysed by the touch of his thick warm fingers.

Then she wrenched herself free and, running from him, burst open the bedroom door. She entered and, slamming it behind her, turned the key in the lock.

With her breath coming quickly, she listened.

Then she heard his heavy footsteps going across the room and heard them receding downstairs.

As he went he chuckled and she knew that he was not in the least discomfited by her anger.

She waited until his footsteps had completely died away and then, with her hand shaking, she opened the door and went back into the nursery.

Chapter 5

Dipa seemed a little feverish and Carina put him into bed, where he fell asleep immediately.

She began to search through her luggage for a thermometer and then remembered that she had always used Nanny’s and had never had one of her own.

She decided to ask Mrs. Barnstaple if she could lend her one and, shutting the door of the night nursery quietly behind her, she went along the passage in search of the housekeeper’s room.

Carina could have rung the bell, but she thought that anyone coming into the night nursery might wake Dipa. And also she felt a little embarrassed at summoning the servants to the top floor even though her request was a reasonable one.

She could already sense a little tinge of resentment in the housemaids’ voices and manner when they waited on her. It was so different from what she had known in the past when everyone had always appeared so willing to help.

Perhaps she was super-sensitive about it, but she felt that they were saying, ‘who is she to give her orders and why should we wait on someone who is only a servant like us?’

‘I will find Mrs. Barnstaple myself,’ Carina thought, ‘and, if Dipa has a temperature, she can doubtless recommend a cooling draught.’