She longed as she had never longed for anything in her whole life to be in his arms, to feel his lips on hers and know that he evoked in her a rapture, a love that she had never thought or dreamt she would ever know.
It seemed incredible that within such a short space of time she should have found a man she loved and who had told her that he loved her too.
“Thank you, God, thank you,” she whispered in the darkness.
She thought perhaps in some strange way it was her mother who had brought the Count to her and had swept away the misery and loneliness that she would have been feeling had he not come into her life.
‘Take care of him, Mama,’ Vernita prayed, ‘and please let him stay with me. Do not let him go away. How can I – lose him now?’
There was a little sob in the last words, but eve
