103. She Wanted Love by Barbara Cartland Read Free Book Online

he be very careful not to do that. My friend said he were so unhappy when his wife died that he vowed never to marry or get involved with an unmarried woman.”
    Eleta stared at her.
    “Are you saying, Betty, that the women he had ‘affairs’ with, if that’s what you mean, were all married?”
    “All of them and it gives him a very bad name. It were whispered that one husband threatened to challenge him to a duel, but, as it were forbidden by Her Majesty, they ended up by having a fist-fight that most unfairly, it’s thought, the Marquis won.”
    Eleta then laughed as it sounded so funny and Betty continued,
    “It’s said in Mayfair among the grand hostesses that no one’s safe when that Marquis is prowlin’ about.”
    Eleta laughed again.
    “I suppose it’s what you might expect if he is as good-looking as you say he is and very rich too.”
    “I am sure of that at any rate,” Betty said. “He has horses that win races and a big house in Hertfordshire.”
    “That is where I have to go tomorrow.”
    “Over my dead body! I’m not havin’ you run after by someone who’s whispered about by every respectable Lady in the country. You go straight back to Mrs. Hill and tell her to find somewhere else. You’re far too pretty, my Lady, to be under the same roof as that man!”
    Betty was speaking very seriously and Eleta knew that she was worried because she loved her.
    She put out her hand and laid it over Betty’s.
    “Now listen to me, Betty. I love you for caring for me and being worried, as I know Mama would worry.”
    “Your dear mother wouldn’t allow you to go to the home of a roué and a man who’s talked about as much as that Marquis is and that’s the truth.”
    “If Mama was here,” Eleta replied, “she would not allow Step-papa to marry me to an old decrepit Duke who only wants me because I have money.
    “But I have to escape and I have to do it quickly. You know how determined Step-papa is when he wants anything and I will find myself married before I know it.”
    Betty wanted to speak, but Eleta went on quickly,
    “I love you for worrying about me, but you must realise, as you have said, that the Marquis is determined not to marry again.”
    “He’s not likely to ask you anyway, my Lady, as you’re only a Governess, to marry him,” Betty conceded.
    “I know that,” Eleta replied, “but I am also aware from what you have said that he is so frightened of being married again that he never even looks at young girls, only married women, whom he cannot marry.”
    She thought that she had not put it very clearly, but Betty understood what she was saying and relaxed a little.
    “That be true,” she said. “But my friend says he’s never taken any girl to his house in the country nor even to his house in London.”
    “That is just what I was saying, Betty.”
    “But you’re so pretty like your mother, there must be dozens of other houses you can go to rather than his.”
    “There may be dozens of them, but the only one on Mrs. Hill’s books was the Marquis’s and they don’t really expect me to stay there more than a few days.”
    “I’ve heard about that. The child’s unmanageable and my friend says she’s had more Governesses than any other child she’d ever heard of.”
    “Did she say what was wrong with her, Betty?”
    “She didn’t think there were anythin’ wrong except that she be very naughty. Perhaps the first Governess she had upset her, but she just refuses to learn.”
    “Nothing?” Eleta asked.
    “Nothin’ at all. She screams and cries if they try to make her do her lessons and the last Governess my friend heard of says she’s a child of Satan and un-teachable!”
    Eleta laughed.
    “She certainly sounds most unusual. So how old is the little monster?”
    As she asked the question, she remembered Mrs. Hill saying that she was only nine years of age and before Betty could reply, she went on,
    “It’s just ridiculous to say that a child of nine is