*
The following day there were more things to buy and more relations to meet.
The not-so-important ones had been asked to tea and because both the Earl and the Duke were in attendance at Buckingham Palace there was no dinner party that evening.
Honora had been afraid that she might have an uncomfortable dinner with her aunt, but to her relief the Countess said that she intended to have dinner in bed.
No one suggested she should do the same, so she ate a small and quick meal downstairs in the dining room and would have felt very lonely had not Dalton talked to her of her father while he served the meal.
‘It is extraordinary,’ Honora thought, ‘all the nice things everybody says about my Papa.’
She wondered if his relatives and servants would be equally warm-hearted about the Duke.
She
