“You can admire the Villa and the view, but the less you actually say the better,” Tempera went on. “Just fix your eyes adoringly on the Duke. There are very few men who can resist that!”
“He should be fixing his eyes on me!” Lady Rothley retorted.
“I know that,” Tempera said, “but remember, he is a Duke and they are a race apart from other men.”
“They must still have a heart somewhere under the strawberry leaves,” Lady Rothley replied with an unexpected sense of humour.
With a smile she was gone and Tempera went back to the unpacking. But she could not help feeling apprehensive. Everything rested on the Duke finding her stepmother compellingly alluring, but nobody knew better than Tempera how stupid she could be when it came to any intelligent conversation.
Then she told herself that
