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

enquired.
    “No, it’s my own money in my own name, but I think it would be a mistake to go myself to the bank”
    They were now walking back through Grosvenor Square and Eleta was thinking of what she must do.
    ‘I must be practical about this,’ she told herself. ‘I must not do something stupid which might result in Step-papa finding me.’
    At the house Eleta went up to her room, found her chequebook and wrote a cheque for five hundred pounds.
    Then she put it in an envelope and gave it to Betty.
    “If I need more money,” she said, “I will have my chequebook with me. But to make sure that the bank does not know where it has come from, I will send the cheque to you to cash it for me.”
    “I think this should last you for some time,” Betty commented. “It’s a lot of money and don’t you waste it or get it stolen.”
    “I promise to do neither, Betty. As you know I’ve always tried to keep my promise.”
    “That be true enough, but you’re going to live a very different life from the one you’ve lived before.”
    “I know that, which is why, Betty dear, I need your help. It’s a great comfort to me to know that whatever occurs you are here and will let me know what happens.”
    “I’ll do that,” Betty promised. “But I wish you was goin’ to any other house rather than that man’s.”
    “Now you are making it sound even more exciting than it already is!”
    “You must promise me one thing,” Betty said. “If he makes advances to you, you then come straight home. You’ll be better off with the Duke, old though he may be, than with that Marquis.”
    “I have my doubts about that for the simple reason that the Duke is offering marriage, while it’s obvious that is the last thing I am likely to get from the Marquis!”
    Eleta waited until Betty had slipped out to go to the bank and then she went to her father’s room.
    When her mother had married Cyril Warner, she had arranged for him to sleep in the room next to hers, but it was on the other side of the corridor.
    This meant that her father’s room remained very much his and his possessions were still there.
    She entered the room and it somehow smelt musty and was just the same as it had been when she was a child, when she used to run in to talk to her father while he was dressing for dinner or getting ready to go riding.
    What she was looking for and which she found at the back of a chest of drawers was a small revolver that he always carried when he went abroad.
    “Is it dangerous where you go, Papa?” she recalled asking him.
    “Sometimes,” he replied. “But it’s always best to be prepared for the worst. Therefore, because I carry what you would call a gun, I know I can protect myself however dangerous the enemy might be.”
    She remembered thinking at the time of her father shooting people instead of birds and she knew now that it was what she might want to do but for a different reason.
    She found that the bullets were also in the drawer and took them and the revolver to her bedroom and put it right at the bottom of the case she was packing.
    She had no wish to discuss the reason why she was taking it with Betty and then she began to pile on top of it the clothes she thought were most suitable for a Governess.
    Fortunately those she had worn at school had been more or less plain, but she had no wish to leave behind all the pretty dresses she had bought in Paris, so she put them in another case.
    She thought if she kept it locked, they would not be criticised by the Marquis’s staff as being unsuitable for a Governess.
    What was far more difficult was to pack her hats, as she could not bear to leave all the pretty ones behind.
    She was thinking as she packed them that she might not stay long anyway with the obstreperous daughter of the Marquis. In which case she might have to go somewhere to find an entirely different position where her best dresses would be appreciated.
    ‘I have to be practical about this,’ she kept