The Saint and the Sinner by Barbara Cartland Read Free Book Online

answered.
    Pandora hesitated.
    She wanted not to go downstairs until perhaps the Earl volunteered to go with her.
    Then she told herself she must not be a coward, and it was impossible to expect a man she had just met, even though he was her cousin, to involve himself in her personal problems.
    Holding her head high, but at the same time aware that her heart was thumping uncomfortably in her breast, she walked slowly down the Great Staircase.
    Somehow the sight of her ancestors looking down at her from their portraits on the walls seemed to give her courage.
    ‘Help me!’ Pandora cried to them silently. ‘Why should I be afraid of a man like Prosper Witheridge?’
    But she was afraid, and her fingers were cold as she reached the hall. The Butler who was waiting there said to her,
    “I’ve put your caller, Miss, in the Small Salon.”
    He spoke in a way which told Pandora he was enjoying what he felt was a drama, and she replied with a cold dignity,
    “Thank you. I presume that we are meeting in the Silver Salon before dinner?”
    “That’s right, Miss,” the Butler replied.
    She thought that he looked at her in a slightly more respectful manner, realising she was used to the ways of the house.
    He opened the door of the Small Salon, which was a room her mother had loved and where she had often received visitors when her grandfather had been too ill to entertain them himself.
    Prosper Witheridge was standing with his back to the marble mantelpiece, looking, Pandora realised with a sinking of her heart, particularly aggressive.
    He was so angry that there was a frown between his protruding eyes, which were set too close together, and there was a hard line to his thin lips.
    Pandora heard the door shut behind her and she forced herself to walk slowly and in a dignified manner towards him.
    He waited until she had reached him. Then he said in a voice in which his anger was barely concealed,
    “Have you gone raving mad? Are you crazy that you should have come here?”
    “As I told you in my letter, I am staying with my cousin.”
    “Then pack your box. I will take you back immediately,” Prosper Witheridge said sharply.
    “My cousin has asked me to stay here as his guest, which I intend to do.”
    “I can only assume you have taken leave of your senses,” he replied. “You know full well it is something which your aunt and uncle would not countenance, and your sensibility should tell you this is not a house in which you should stay.”
    “It is the house which belonged to my grandfather.”
    “But his place has been taken by a dissolute Rake and I will not allow you to remain in his company for one more second.”
    “You have no authority to stop me.”
    “As your future husband – ” Prosper Witheridge began.
    “I will not marry you! Let me make it quite clear here and now,” Pandora interrupted, “that I would not marry you if you were the last man in the world!”
    For a moment the Honourable Prosper Witheridge was stunned into silence.
    He was a very conceited man and so many women had flattered and fawned on him that it had never for one moment crossed his mind that Pandora would not fall into his arms gladly and gratefully.
    “Do you know what you are saying?” he asked.
    The surprise in his voice would have amused Pandora if she had not found it difficult to think of anything but her thumping heart.
    I will not – marry you!” she said, a determined note in her voice.
    “After you have stayed here it is unlikely that any man will offer you marriage.”
    “I understood that when I came.”
    “You are too young and innocent to know what you are saying or what you are doing,” Prosper Witheridge said, almost as if he were explaining her actions to himself.
    “I do understand, and I have come here deliberately, because I wished to come and because whatever my uncle and aunt may say – I will not – marry – you!”
    “You are talking arrant nonsense!” Prosper Witheridge snapped, and now