103. She Wanted Love by Barbara Cartland Page A

the Master I have a bad headache and am going straight to bed.”
    “I’ll tell them both, my Lady,” the footman replied and disappeared.
    Eleta then undressed and climbed into bed.
    She was trying to think over as she did so of all the items she must take with her, just in case she did not return home for a long time.
    At the same time she could not help feeling that she was leaving something very precious behind her.
    It was all her feelings and thoughts for her mother whom she had always associated with this house.
    It had never been a real home for her since her mother had married again. Yet it had always been there, as the house in the country had always been in her dreams.
    She had imagined herself riding over the land she had ridden over when she was a child and swimming in the lake in front of the house.
    It was all so large a part of her childhood and it seemed incredible that, now she was back in England, she could not go there and feel as she had felt when she was very young.
    She remembered so vividly the first pony she had ridden and later the first horse.
    No house – and she had visited a great number of them in many parts of the world – could ever be the same as the house in the country which was her real home.
    On the way back from France she had been musing how exciting it would be to go there at the weekend.
    Even if her stepfather had accompanied her, which she had hoped he would not do, she would still have felt the thrill of being home. Of running to the stables for the horse she wanted to ride, sliding down the banisters which she had done as soon as she was old enough to do so!
    It was all part of her. The home she now could not go to, simply because if she stayed even one more day in London she would inevitably be confronted by the Duke.
    ‘I must escape, I must,’ she told herself again and again before she fell asleep.
    *
    It was Betty who wakened her when it was still dark, although the stars were not as bright as they had been earlier in the night.
    “It’s a quarter-past four, my Lady,” Betty said, “and you should be out of the house in twenty minutes in case someone is up early.”
    In her mother’s day the staff had been on duty at five o’clock and Eleta was suspicious that now many of them rose much later.
    However, she knew that Betty was wise to take no risks and she must be out of the house before anyone could see her leaving.
    She dressed quickly with Betty’s help and she told her that she had taken the luggage after the servants had gone to bed and placed it on the staircase inside the door of the Agency.
    “You are an angel, Betty,” Eleta sighed. “Don’t forget to give me back the key.”
    Eleta dressed in the same plain coat and skirt she had worn yesterday, but, as she thought it was chilly, she put on the cape she had taken from her mother’s room.
    Because it smelt of violets she reckoned that her Mama was standing guard over her and there would be no difficulty in getting away from London.
    As she gazed round the room, she believed that she had remembered everything.
    Betty was putting on her bonnet and black cape.
    “You are coming with me!” Eleta exclaimed.
    “Of course I am, my Lady. You don’t suppose I’d let you walk the streets of London at night by yourself.”
    “I did not think of it, but, of course, Betty, I would love you to be with me. But I don’t want you to get into trouble with Step-papa if he fancies I left the house and was accompanied by you.”
    “He won’t know anythin’ that you don’t want him to know,” Betty replied. “If I tells them in the kitchen, I’ve been to Church and am real astonished when your room is found empty, they’ll believe me all right.”
    “You are a genius, Betty! You think of everything and I am so very grateful to you.”
    Eleta gave a deep sigh before she added,
    “I have a feeling I would never have got away if you had not been here to help me.”
    “I’ll be countin’ the days until