Read 104. A Heart Finds Love for Free Online Page A

anyone to see the pictures or to learn that they have even been taken.”
    “I understand and I promise no one will know you have come here again except the old servants who have been with us ever since I was born. They would never do anything I ask them not to do.”
    “It’s all too good to be true,” the Duke sighed, “and I will be here tomorrow at exactly three o’clock, as we have arranged – and thank you again.”
    “That is what I should be saying to you.”
    He stepped into the chaise and picked up the reins.
    As the groom hurried to jump up behind him, the Duke raised his hat and Alnina waved to him.
    She watched the chaise until it disappeared amongst the oak trees at the end of the drive.
    Then she walked back into the house to find Brooks in the hall.
    “I have sold Mama’s wedding dress,” she told him with obvious relief.
    “That be good news, Miss Alnina. “I never thought that’d go. In fact, I says to the Missus, I says, that’ll still be on our hands when everything else be gone.”
    “The Duke is coming again tomorrow as he wants to photograph it, but he has no wish for anyone to know he has bought it. Of course I told him that we never talk to any outsider of what happens here.”
    “One of the reasons, Miss Alnina, there be no one to talk to,” Brooks remarked. “I were only saying to the Missus a day or two ago that since you’ve been home there’s been no one hardly to say a word to.”
    Alnina knew this to be true.
    “You would think having known your father for so long,” Brooks went on, “they’d have been coming to tell you how sorry they be about Master Charles.”
    Alnina knew that the people around them were on the whole embarrassed by the circumstances of Charles’s death and they had kept away from what could have been an uncomfortable conversation.
    “I am perfectly happy,” she said, “to have you and Mrs. Brooks to talk to. But I expect His Grace will want a cup of tea when he calls tomorrow. So do ask your wife to make one of her delicious cakes.”
    “That’ll please her. She’s been feeling that she be wasted here with only you, Miss Alnina, to cook for.”
    Alnina, who had heard this before, said quickly,
    “Well, tomorrow she will have a Duke and I am sure that there will be visitors as soon as they think I am more settled.”
    She knew that what she was really saying was that, when their friends heard she was selling the furniture and pictures in the house, they might call, hoping to pick up a bargain.
    She walked into the study and looked again at the Duke’s cheque.
    She had decided already to divide it amongst two large creditors who were being rather more impatient than the rest. If they were pleased, which they surely should be, they would not harass her as much as they had been doing.
    She had made it very plain to them the last time they had called that she could not give them what she did not have.
    Then she remembered that she had to find the veil which was somewhere amongst her mother’s things, also to make the wreath for her head and a bouquet for her to hold.
    She only hoped there were enough white flowers in the garden and the sooner she picked them the less rush there would be tomorrow morning.
    A wreath, as she well knew, could be difficult to make look really attractive and it would take time, however skilfully she made it.
    Anyway, she was exceedingly grateful to the Duke for providing her with one thousand pounds.
    For some reason she could not really explain, she was determined that the photograph should impress and convince the Prince for whom all this trouble was being taken.
    *
    If Alnina was elated, so was the Duke.
    He drove back triumphantly to his large house in Berkeley Square.
    As he expected, William was waiting for him and exclaimed as he entered the drawing room,
    “You are late, John! You told me that you would be back before this.”
    “I am late, but I have been very successful.”
    “I just don’t believe it.