“See that somebody shows Miss Honora to her room, Dalton, and I suppose the carriage is waiting for me?”

“Yes, my Lady.”

“I shall be back in about an hour’s time. I am expecting His Grace the Duke of Tynemouth to call at six o’clock.”

“Very good, my Lady.”

She must now have been walking down the stairs, but Honora did not move from where she was standing.

She felt as though she had been hit on the head and it was hard to think.

It was almost as if the room was whirling around her and the floor was as unsteady as it had been in the ship crossing the Channel.

‘Married! How can I be – married?’

She felt as if she had asked the question out loud, but her lips had not moved.

Then a woman came into the drawing room whose face she recognised. It was Mrs. Morton, the housekeeper, whom she had known in the past.

“Good afternoon, Miss Honora,” Mrs. Morton said. “Nice to see you back and, my, how you’ve grown!”

“Quite a lot, I think,” Honora smiled, “and I am very glad you are still here.”

“Of course I’m still here,” Mrs. Morton replied. “Thirty-one years I’ve been with his Lordship and I like to think he’d find it hard to do without me.”

“I am sure he would,” Honora replied.

“Come upstairs, Miss Honora. Her Ladyship wants you changed and dressed before she returns and the footmen have brought up your luggage.”

Mrs. Morton led the way from the drawing room and up the stairs that led to the next floor.

It was only later that Honora realised she was not in the small single room that she had occupied before when she had stayed with her uncle and aunt in Grosvenor Square, but in one of the best guest rooms that overlooked the garden in the square.

“You’ll be comfortable here, miss,” Mrs. Morton was saying, smiling affably.

Honora’s two small trunks had been unstrapped and opened by the footmen and now two housemaids were taking out the clothes she had brought with her from Florence.

They were simple, but one of them was a very pretty day gown, which she had bought from a friend who had grown out of it and which originally had come from an expensive dressmaker in Paris.

It was a young girl’s gown of very pale blue silk, the skirt was very full and the waist tiny and a bodice of soft material had a tiny edging of lace that was exceedingly becoming.

When Honora had it on, Mrs. Morton looked at her with admiration.

“You’re as lovely as your mother, miss, and that’s a fact! When I first sees her with your father after they was married, I thought she was the prettiest lady I’d seen in my life!”

“I thought that too,” Honora said, “and if I am only a little like her I will be very proud.”

“You’re very like her and that’s somethin’ nobody would dispute,” Mrs. Morton replied, “only your hair’s a bit fairer.”