An Angel Runs Away by Barbara Cartland Read Free Book Online Page B

and kind about this room and in fact the whole house, which I have not found for over a year.”
    “I think perhaps, Drogo, that is the nicest compliment you have ever been paid,” the Duchess said. “And it is true that I always feel happy when I am in one of your houses.”
    “Thank you,” the Marquis said, “and that is what Ula must feel in the future.”
    “It’s wonderful for me to find it again,” Ula replied.
    He knew that she was thinking how happy she had been when her father and mother were alive.
    “Now we must make plans for the ball,” the Duchess said.
    Listening to her discussing with the Marquis how many people they should invite, how the ballroom should be decorated, what they would have for supper and which band was considered best at the moment made Ula think once again she must be dreaming.
    None of this could be happening to her.
    Deep down inside her there was a fear that at any moment she would be taken back to Chessington Hall.
    The Marquis, however, was intent on making the ball so sensational and so unusual in every particular that Lady Sarah would be furious that it was not given in her honour.
    He had already told the Duchess that he intended to invite the Earl and Countess of Chessington-Crewe and Lady Sarah to be present.
    “Is that wise?” she enquired.
    “I want to see their faces when they learn that the ball is given for Ula.”
    There was something almost cruel in the Marquis’s eyes as he spoke and the Duchess said,
    “Revenge is not always as gratifying as one hopes, Drogo!”
    “I shall find it very gratifying,” the Marquis replied, “and to make my revenge complete, you have to make Ula look much more beautiful and better dressed than her cousin.”
    “I will do my best,” the Duchess said. “In fact, in my opinion, Ula is ten times lovelier than Lady Sarah, who, I have always felt, whilst she has a classical perfection, has what my old maid used to call ‘hard eyes’.”
    “I know that now,” the Marquis said sharply.
    They did not talk about it anymore, but the Duchess knew that he was still furious with himself for having been deceived by a beautiful face into believing that Lady Sarah loved him and would have made him a good wife.
    The Duchess was well aware how many women had wanted to marry her grandson and how many more had been deeply and wholeheartedly in love with him.
    She recognised that it had been a very bitter setback for him to realise that he had made a fool of himself. She could only hope that it would not make him more cynical about love than he was already.
    Because she had always loved Drogo more than any of her other grandchildren, she had always hoped that he would find a girl to marry who would love him for himself and not for his title and his very great possessions.
    She could hardly imagine it possible that Lady Sarah should not have fallen in love with him as all the rest of her sex seemed to do.
    It had disillusioned him to the point where he was wholly obsessed by the idea of taking his revenge upon her.
    ‘And when he has done so,’ she asked herself, ‘where will it get him?’
    It would certainly drive him back into the arms of the married, sophisticated women, who in her opinion engaged far too much of his time, as well as his brains and money.
    The Duchess, however, did not say anything about this to Ula, when on the following day they once again went shopping.
    On the way home, after it seemed to Ula that they had bought up everything in Bond Street, she slipped her hand into the Duchess’s and said,
    “You don’t think it wrong, ma’am, that I should accept so much form his Lordship? I am sure Mama would be shocked. But, as he thinks I am helping him, perhaps it is not wrong, as it would be if it was just for me.
    “You are not to worry your head over the whys and wherefores,” the Duchess said firmly. “Drogo is a law unto himself and, if he wants something, he invariably gets it.”
    Her voice was very kind as