“Well for your information, lady, I called, invisible, on Funk to find him entertaining an elderly lady-friend, Mrs. Jeebles, and confiding that he had discovered something about you that makes a marriage with you impossible.”

“No!”

“Oh, yes. And he is to take you driving on Friday and somehow during that drive the engagement will be terminated.”

“It can’t be true,” said Alice desperately, while he watched her curiously.

“Why so shaken?” he demanded. “Do not tell me you have formed a tendre for that old parcel of stocks and shares?”

“Yes,” said Alice wearily. “Yes.”

The Duke rose to his feet wondering if he looked as murderous as he felt.

He did, and Alice cringed back in her chair. But she would endure anything rather than confess that she had squandered all the money he had so generously given her.

The Duke marched over and jerked her to her feet. “I am going to teach you a lesson, my minx,” he said. “Look on it as part of your education.”

He pulled her roughly into his arms and began to kiss her savagely. Alice fought as hard as she could against the wave of passion she knew would shortly engulf her. She beat at his shoulders with her fists until he roughly seized her hands and pinned them behind her back, holding her pressed against his chest and gazing down into those large, violet eyes.

The Duke bent his head again and this time he kissed her very delicately and gently, his lips moving softly against her own. Alice closed her eyes and knew for the first time what the poets meant when they talked about not being able to call your soul your own. Head, heart and body surrendered under his exploring mouth. And when, still holding her tightly and kissing her, he floated up with her through the ceiling, up to her bedroom and onto her bed, she surrendered to him completely; she was aware of no sense of shame, only a burning, aching need to give herself to him.

She held tightly onto his naked shoulders as the room seemed to turn and dissolve, until the only thing that existed in the reeling world was the warm, passionate body of the man, moving above her.

At last, all passion spent, he cradled her in his arms. “Odd’s Fish,” he muttered. “Oh, Alice. My only love, what have I done to thee? I must go, dearest, child. Can’st not mate with a ghost. I will ruin thy life, sweeting. Thou need’st a real man, a man for the days as well as the nights.”

“I love you,” said Alice. “I cannot love anyone else.”

“It will not do, sweeting,” he said, putting her gently to one side. “I must leave thee.”

He began to dress hurriedly while Alice watched him in blank misery.