“I am sorry.”
Then somehow because in the dark he did not seem so awe-inspiring and so frightening as he did in the daylight, she spoke honestly and said what she felt.
“I feel so inadequate to play hostess in a house like yours. I don’t know the people and it is difficult to know what to talk to them about. I feel I am letting you down most of the time.”
It was only as she finished speaking that she realised how childish and inconsequential she must sound.
“I have no fault to find with you so far, Miss Milbank, You have been, shall we say, entirely satisfactory.”
“Thank you! That is kind of you to say so,” Aria smiled.
“I gather you have not had much experience of this sort of life before,” Dart Huron went on.
“No.”
“Do you like it?”
The question was surprising in itself and she
