She told herself that she hated them all – Sir Percy with his lecherous suggestions, Lord Lynche whose behaviour to his wife and even to his mother was beyond comprehension and their friends whom she had seen at luncheon, bold coquettish women and the flirtatious overfed men.

“I hate them all!” Carina cried desperately and knew with a deep sigh that her feelings were not of the least consequence to any of them.

She realised her own insignificance in that Sir Percy really believed that she would go with him to the house he had suggested in St. John’s Wood. He thought he was doing her an honour offering her the position as his mistress until such time as he would tire of her.

‘He is obviously used to having such invitations accepted eagerly,’ Carina thought and wondered with a kind of dull despair how she was going to convince him that when she said no she meant it.

‘Perhaps I should leave,’ she told herself again.

But where could she go? She could not go far with less than ten pounds in her purse and, although she might find other employment, was it likely to be better than this? It might even be worse!

At least upstairs in the nurseries she was alone. There was no doting mother to come and interfere with her, there was no overbearing and hysterical Nanny to try and isolate her from the other children.

“I will stay,” Carina said out loud. “I will not let them defeat me.”

She poured some water into the china basin and washed her face. Then she coiled her hair up neatly at the back of her head, trying to confine the silky thickness of it into a severe bun, which she felt was appropriate to her position.

Small tumbles of curls kept escaping around her oval forehead and, although she brushed them back, they defied her again.

After a while she gave up the struggle and left them as they were and concentrated on changing into another blouse, clasping round her small waist a belt, which had once been her mother’s, with a silver embossed buckle that shone as she moved.

She heard a movement in Dipa’s room and went in to find that he was awake and that his chill or fever, whichever it had been, had gone.

Now he wanted to run about and jump, but she prevented him, saying it would be best if he stayed in bed and she would read to him.

“Get up,” Dipa protested. “Dipa want to get up.”

Carina felt his forehead and his hands and they were cool. The thermometer was in the nursery and she thought that very likely it would be a fight to make him keep it under his tongue, so she decided not to worry him at the moment.

“I will get you some tea,” she said.