A Flight To Heaven by Barbara Cartland

alone at last.”
    She did not reply, but looked away from him and out over the Park, wishing that he would not keep gazing at her so intently.
    “I see I am still out of favour,” he began, after they had walked a few more yards. “But I am only trying to please you. Surely, if you are feeling unwell, a short walk in the company of a kind and handsome gentleman should be just the thing?”
    Chiara turned to face him.
    “I should like to go inside now,” she said.
    He sighed.
    “You are so cold to me, Lady Chiara.”
    “I should like to go in,” she repeated, striving to keep her voice level. “I don’t wish to walk with you.”
    “Ah, perhaps ‘cold’ is not quite strong enough. I might almost say that you are rude, my Lady. Perhaps you took a little too much wine with your luncheon and that is what is causing this strange mood!”
    “I did not!” Chiara snapped. “You were watching me almost all the time, you must have seen that I only took a few sips.”
    “Oh, that’s much better!” He stopped. “Now you are looking me in the eye and showing me a little spirit and I like it very much.”
    He caught Chiara’s wrists in his hands and spun her around to face him.
    “How lovely you are, Chiara, even when you are scowling at me.”
    “Let me go!”
    He was very strong and, although Chiara tried with all her strength to free her hands, she could not.
    “I will, when I am ready,” he said. “But first of all, since I have spent so long trying to please you, I am going to insist that I have a little something in return – ”
    He was interrupted by a loud rapping noise on the glass of one of the windows nearby.
    Mervyn Hunter swore under his breath and turned his back to the window, but still keeping a tight hold on Chiara’s wrists.
    She then heard the squeak of the casement window opening and Lord Duckett’s voice calling to them.
    “I say, Mr. Hunter! Disaster. Maud has nodded off over her hand of cards! Our game is ruined. Would you come and partner me, sir? I need your superlative talents at the card table or I am sure to lose.”
    The old man’s whiskered face peered anxiously out of the open window, as he added,
    “If the young lady has no objection? Perhaps she has walked for long enough?”
    Mervyn Hunter’s white teeth flashed in a smile, as he called over his shoulder,
    “Absolutely, Lord Duckett! Lady Chiara is a little under the weather and does not wish to walk any further. I shall be with you in an instant.”
    The window squeaked shut again.
    “Ha – we were right outside the drawing room. But I don’t think that the old man saw a thing.”
    He drew Chiara along the terrace so that they were out of view of the drawing room window.
    Chiara’s heart was beating painfully fast. What did he mean, when he said that he wanted to take something from her?
    “You must go,” she urged him as politely as she could manage, “they are waiting for you.”
    “Let them.”
    “Please, just go !”
    Chiara twisted her arms inside his grip, but he did not budge.
    “You don’t realise how much I care for you, do you?” he was saying. “Do you seriously think that I mean you harm?”
    “Let go of me, please!”
    “For, Chiara, this little thing that I am going to claim in recompense for all the attention I have offered you – why – had you not thought it might be something nice?”
    Before Chiara could think what he meant or how she should reply to it, he had bent his head and brushed his mouth against hers.
    His lips were hot and the touch of them sent a shock through her whole body. Her legs shook and she almost fell against him.
    “See. Was that so bad?” his pale eyes had a strange light in them as they looked into hers. “Another one? No, I think I will make you wait for it.”
    And then he did let her go and she watched him walk away from her along the terrace.
    She was trembling so much that she had to sit down on one of the little stone garden seats.
    *
    “Remarkable