Chapter TwoThat evening at dinner the Duke informed Loretta that he was going to be away for a week,
“I shall be in Newmarket for the first four days,” he said, “then I am going on for a couple of nights to your cousin Marcus, who has a house in Suffolk.”
“I believe he has some excellent horses, Papa,” Loretta remarked.
“That is why I am going to stay with him,” the Duke replied.
They talked on various other subjects, Loretta being careful not to refer again to the Duc de Sauerdun and then, after sitting quietly for a short time in the drawing room, she went to bed early.
All that evening while talking to her father she had been planning in her mind an adventure that was so outrageous that she was almost afraid to contemplate it.
But she knew it was that something she had to do, othe
