A Virgin Bride by Barbara Cartland Page A

would be conceited, self-centred and intolerant.
    He would expect from long experience that every woman would throw herself at his feet or into his arms.
    Venetia felt herself shudder at the idea.
    And then she began to think how she should behave when they met.
    â€˜At least I have time to consider it,’ she thought. ‘It would be much worse if Papa had arranged for me to be married tomorrow before I had time to draw my breath.’
    Even so two weeks, with one day already gone, was not a very long time in which to prepare for her whole life.
    And so different from how she had envisaged her future.
    She had been so certain that she would have time to meet people in the Social world and time to go to the balls that she had heard so much about.
    Some of the older girls at her school had described them to her dramatically.
    â€œI was so afraid,” one said, “that I would be a wallflower and that no one would ask me to dance. But they actually queued up and in the end I had more partners than there were dances on my card!”
    â€œThat is exactly what everyone wants,” another girl laughed. “I sat out two dances at the first ball I went to and I have never been so miserable. I wanted to run away and hide myself, but my Mama would not let me.”
    â€œYou must have been unlucky,” another piped up.
    â€œMy brother says that if men go to a debutantes’ ball they know they must dance at least once with the girl for whom the ball is given or they won’t be asked to the next party.”
    Venetia laughed.
    â€œThat is one way of being certain one is not left sitting out when everyone else is dancing!”
    â€œYou cannot imagine how horrible it is,” the girl replied. “But you’ll be all right, Venetia, you are so pretty that all the men will want to dance with you.”
    â€œI do hope you are right,” giggled Venetia.
    Now she recognised that she would never be able to prove it one way or another.
    She would never go to debutantes ’ balls or even the ball her father had promised her.
    It was where she had expected to meet an attractive man who would ask her for one dance and then insist on partnering her for every dance.
    â€˜It’s just not fair,’ she thought to herself. ‘I am to be a married woman and never a debutante .’
    She had thought so much about it and had talked about it with the girls so often that it seemed incredible that now it was all taken away from her.
    Just because a strange man her father admired had been caught out behaving improperly.
    And however horrible the Earl of Darran might be, she still sympathised with him.
    It was dreadful that a man should go away, perhaps on business, and return to find his wife had been unfaithful with another man in his own bedroom.
    Venetia had not really thought about it before, but now she told herself that actually she was shocked by what was called an affaire-de-coeur .
    She had heard about them in Paris and in London and it seemed to her that the person who really suffered was the husband.
    She was sure that the French girls thought it quite natural for their brothers to have tempestuous affaires-de-coeur with married women, and she suspected that some English girls felt the same.
    Now she was walking into a trap from which she could never escape –
    And such behaviour had been expected of the man who had been chosen to be her husband.
    She stiffened at the idea of it happening to her.
    Looking back she could well remember when she was quite small overhearing a conversation that had taken place between her Mama and one of her close friends.
    Venetia had been playing on the floor and had not intended to listen and they thought she was too young to understand what they were saying.
    â€œI have just left poor Helen,” her mother’s friend said. “I am so very sorry for her, but as you know there is nothing we can do.”
    â€œYou are not saying that