CHAPTER FIVEThe King was laughing.
As he looked around the room, he saw that everybody else was laughing too.
He had expected to sit through dinner finding that the Englishwoman he was being forced to marry an unutterable bore.
Instead he had been stunned from the first moment he set eyes on her.
He had made up his mind, as he had said to Natasha, that she would be large, fat and plain.
But, when Pythia reached the top of the steps, he saw that she was small, frail and beautiful in an ethereal way that he had never imagined.
She was exquisitely dressed in a pale eau-de-nil gown and the bodice outlined the curves of her breasts and her tiny waist.
She curtseyed to him with a grace which he recognised was unusual.
When she rose, he looked into her blue eyes fringed with dark lashes a
