104. A Heart Finds Love by Barbara Cartland Page B

which they will try to persuade me to find a bride!”
    “That should not be difficult!” Alnina responded.
    “Let me tell you it is impossible, because I intend never to marry anyone. I have an uncomfortable feeling it will make those who continually pester me that much more voluble than they are already.”
    ”I am not surprised. All Dukes need to leave an heir behind them.”
    “Oh, there will be plenty of those,” the Duke said. “The only difference is that they will not be my sons.”
    There was silence for a moment.
    Then Alnina said,
    “I think that is rather sad.”
    ”Now come on,” William interrupted. “All I want you to do is to look at each other and appear loving, even though you feel that this is a confounded bore.”
    Alnina laughed and turned to the Duke,
    “Mr. Armstrong is quite right. We should get down to business and I will look up at you affectionately.”
    She threw back her head as she spoke.
    As the Duke looked down at her, he thought that it would be very difficult to find another woman anywhere in the world who was quite so attractive.
    ‘What I have to do,’ he thought, ‘because I knew Charles and because she has been so kind to me is to find her a really nice husband. I just wonder if she would fancy William?’
    “Now,” said William, almost as if the Duke had spoken his thoughts aloud, “don’t move and for Heaven’s sake look affectionate.”
    The Duke bent his head a little nearer to Alnina.
    She stared up at him.
    Their eyes met and then she felt a little feeling run through her that she had never felt before.
    They both stood very still, almost as if mesmerised.
    William once again threw off the velvet cloth and declared,
    “Excellent! Really excellent! If it does not come out exactly as you looked, I will be furious and sue the man who sold me the camera!”
    “I am sure it will be perfect,” the Duke said. “Now if you have finished, I will go and change.”
    “And I will do the same,” Alnina added. “Then I am sure that Brooks has tea ready for us all in the study.”
    “I will look forward to that,” William said. “I think I deserve it after all the trouble I have had in taking these photographs.”
    “It has been far worse for us,” the Duke protested. “After all, we have had to dress up and obey commands. And that is something I have managed to avoid up to now, even though we have known each other for years.”
    “That is certainly true enough,” William replied. “You always think that you know best, so I have given up arguing with you.”
    The Duke laughed and countered,
    “I have not noticed much difference.”
    “Perhaps you will in the future. Now ostensibly you are a married man and I have proof of it!”
    “You are scaring me, William, and before you say any more I am going upstairs to change and be again, as I have always been and always intend to be, a very sensible bachelor without a heart.”
    He had left the room before William could answer.
    Alnina, who had been putting her bouquet in water so that the flowers would not die, turned round.
    “Why is your friend, the Duke, so determined not to marry?” she asked him. “And everyone will expect him to, although I quite understand that he has no wish to marry this Princess from another country.”
    William glanced at the door, almost as if he felt the Duke was still there listening to him.
    “He was very badly treated by someone he loved and whom he had asked to marry him,” he said. “But don’t tell him I have told you so.”
    “Oh, how sad! Did she jilt him?”
    “Yes, she did and only a few days before they were due to be married.”
    Alnina stared at him.
    “How terrible! How could she do such a thing?”
    “She did it because she wanted a title. She married instead a Viscount who will become an Earl. Little did she know, if she had waited long enough, she would have been a Duchess.”
    Alnina was silent for a moment and then she said,
    “I suppose many women would