65 A Heart Is Stolen by Barbara Cartland Page A

turned in the opposite direction.
    “Now we will go a-calling,” he said, “and I shall be interested to see what sort of reception we receive.”
    “Feelings obviously run high in this part of the world.” Anthony remarked. “I saw your agent’s face when he realised where you were going. It was a macabre study in horror!”
    The Marquis laughed.
    “Poor old Markham! He remembers how ferociously and violently my father hated the Admiral and I think servants always identify themselves with their Masters’ likes and dislikes.”
    They rode on and, a little while later, they saw in front of them a brick wall which, the Marquis remembered, encircled the Admiral’s house.
    It was not hard to find the entrance for just inside the gates there was an enormous flagstaff flying the White Ensign.
    Anthony laughed.
    “I am not surprised that annoyed your father.”
    “Even though he could not see it, he knew it was there,” the Marquis said.
    As they turned in at the gate, the Marquis looked back the way they had come and saw in the distance a man riding between the trees on what struck him as a particularly well-bred horse.
    He wondered vaguely if it was a neighbour whom Markham had not mentioned, then he and Anthony were riding up a short drive which ended in an elegantly laid out garden in front of an ancient Elizabethan manor with gabled roofs and casement windows.
    It was an extremely attractive house, but what struck the Marquis immediately was the extraordinarily precise tidiness of the garden.
    The small flowerbeds and the paths were all edged with stones which must have come from the beach and they had been painted white so as, he thought with amusement, to give them the neatness that one might find aboard a ship.
    As they reached the front door, a man appeared to take their horses and one look at him told the Marquis that he was obviously a Naval type.
    He dismounted saying as he did so,
    “Good morning. Is Miss Wadebridge at home?”
    “I thinks so, sir,” the man answered with an accent that the Marquis did not recognise, but was certain did not belong to Sussex.
    He walked to the front door and knocked on it with the butt of his riding whip and, even as Anthony joined him, the door was opened by an elderly maid who dropped a respectful curtsey.
    “I have called to see Miss Wadebridge,” the Marquis declared.
    “ Mrs . Wadebridge will be pleased to receive you, my Lord,” the maid replied firmly. “Will you please come this way?”
    She walked ahead of him and the Marquis thought in her neat grey dress she looked more like a child’s nanny than a servant and she reminded him of one he had had himself up to the age of seven.
    The hall was small but attractively panelled and the oak staircase shone as if it had been subjected to a great deal of polishing.
    The old maid opened a door and announced,
    “The Marquis of Veryan, ma’am, and companion.”
    The Marquis’s first impression was of a very attractive room with two bow windows, bowls of flowers arranged beside a pretty fireplace and an atmosphere that he could only describe to himself as cosy and home-like.
    A woman rose from a chair beside the fireplace and, as he walked towards her, he thought that the Admiral’s grandchild had certainly grown into a very attractive young woman.
    She was dark, which surprised him, because he had always imagined that people who had a great deal to do with the sea were fair, but her eyes were blue with dark lashes and he guessed that she must have Irish blood in her.
    She was very slim and her gown was old-fashioned, having a full skirt and a white fichu, which had gone out of vogue at the end of the century.
    Its colour was a deep emerald green, which gave her skin a translucent whiteness and she had what the Marquis realised with his experienced eye was exceptional beauty for a countrywoman.
    She curtseyed and the Marquis bowed, then as her eyes looked into his, he realised to his surprise that she was