But her hopes were not realised. She heard an alert voice bid her enter and she found the bedroom a blaze of light and the Dowager wearing a new and even more magnificent assortment of jewels.

“Good evening, Miss Warner,” she said as Carina entered. “I heard that the Prince was not well this afternoon or I would have sent for you earlier.”

“He is quite all right again now, thank you, my Lady” Carina replied, wondering whether, if she had said that Dipa was very ill, it would be a moment for rejoicing.

“I sent for you,” the Dowager said, “because my son has suggested that you might care to dine downstairs this evening.”

“Lord Lynche has suggested that!” Carina exclaimed.

The Dowager nodded.

“I told him that such an idea was unusual, to say the least of it,” she said, her voice sharpening, “but he was insistent that I should convey to you his invitation. It will be a big dinner party and, of course, you might enjoy it.”

Carina did not answer for a moment. She tried to fathom what lay behind the invitation.

Had Lord Lynche taken his own words seriously in suggesting that she was not finding enough amusement in The Castle? Or was it, in a way, an apology?

She thought perhaps in some strange manner of his own he wanted to show her that, to him at any rate, she was not just a mere Governess to be treated with indignity but a lady to whom he could proffer an invitation for her to meet his friends.

Which way had he meant it? she wondered, and then realised that the Dowager was waiting to hear her decision.

“Will you please thank Lord Lynche,” Carina said quietly, “but I should prefer to dine upstairs. I am afraid I am not a very sociable person.”

She saw a glint of triumph in the Dowager’s eyes and realised that mother and son had argued this point.

“You have made a sensible decision, child,” she said. “I told Justin it was not the right thing to suggest and something I should certainly have never done when I employed a Governess for my sons.”

“It was very considerate of Lord Lynche to think of it,” Carina said conventionally.

She saw the Dowager looking at her in a speculative way and felt an urgent desire to be free of her sharp tongue.

“If there is nothing else,” she said hastily, “perhaps I had better go back to Dipa.”

“Yes, go back to him,” the Dowager agreed.

Then, as Carina opened the door, she asked,

“Do you, by any chance, fancy yourself in love with anybody?”

For a moment Carina felt that she could not have heard aright.

Then she answered quickly,

“No, of course not, why should I be?”

“I was interested,” Lady Lynche replied, “that was all.”

There was a note of dismissal in her voice and Carina went from the room, closing the door behind her.