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

un-teachable and, if you ask me, the Governesses must have been very stupid women.”
    “Now you really don’t want to put yourself in an unpleasant position to then get the sack,” Betty suggested. “From what I’ve heard, some of the Governesses walked out even before they’d met the Marquis.”
    “It all sounds absurd, like something in a book. If I only stay there two days, it will be a new experience and different from anything I have ever encountered before.”
    She was thinking of the Convent, where the girls automatically always obeyed the nuns and were in awe of the Mother Superior.
    “How is it possible,” she asked, “that one small child could defeat properly trained Governesses?”
    “Whatever you may say or think,” Betty persisted, “I’m not happy about your goin’ there.”
    “I am not happy about going anywhere, but I have to hide from my stepfather and I cannot imagine it would enter his head that I should want to become a Governess or a servant of any sort.”
    “Perhaps he’ll send for the Police when he finds you’re not in the house,” Betty murmured.
    “I doubt it. The one thing he will not want is a scandal of any sort. It would certainly set Mayfair talking if they knew I had run away the day after I had returned from school.”
    “That’s true,” Betty agreed.
    “Also, what could Step-papa say if people asked him why I had disappeared in such a strange manner?”
    There was no answer to this and, after a moment’s silence, Eleta said,
    “No, what he will do perhaps is to engage a Private Detective to try to find me or just make enquiries himself amongst my friends. There’s a list of them, as he knows, in Mama’s address book. But even so he will have to be very careful or they will talk and wonder where I can be.”
    “I still don’t like your goin’ to that man, whatever you may say,” Betty muttered.
    “I know, Betty, but I have to get away at once and I cannot think of any better way of disappearing than going to a grand house in the country where Step-papa has never been invited.”
    Betty gave a deep sigh as she was, as Eleta knew, defeated. She was aware that whatever she might say Eleta would still do what she wanted to do.
    “Now you have to be helpful and we both have to be very clever, Betty. I have to leave home early tomorrow morning and be waiting outside the Agency at six o’clock.
    “What about your luggage, my Lady?”
    “That is where you have to help me tonight.”
    “Tonight?” she questioned. “What do you mean?”
    “I am going home to pack up everything I require and I want you to take it round to the Agency and put it on the stairs just inside the front door.”
    “That’s clever of you, I grant you that.”
    “I thought you would, Betty, and of course I must take enough clothes with me to last me for perhaps a long time before Step-papa sees sense.”
    “And you expect me to tell you when he does.”
    “Of course. You know, dearest Betty, I will tell you exactly what I am doing and, if I do leave the Marquis’s house, you will have to help me find another position.”
    “You know I’ll do that, my Lady, but I don’t like your goin’ there in the first place.”
    “I have no alternative, so we just have to accept things as they are and not as we want them to be.”
    Eleta rose from the bench and proposed,
    “Now we will go home and start packing, but be very careful what you say to me just in case any of the housemaids are listening.
    “There is just one other thing I want you to do for me now, Betty. I want you to go to my bank in Dover Street. It will only take you a very short time to get there.”
    “I suppose you want me to draw out some money,” Betty said, “and that’s real sensible of you.”
    “It will be quite a large sum and you must explain, if they query it, that I am going on a long journey abroad and that is why I need so much.”
    “They’ll not ask the Master before they give it to you?” Betty