“There is no need to put yourself about,” Gretna answered. “As I have already told you, I have no intention of leaving here and going to stay with your grandmother – or with anyone else.”
“I don’t want to say this,” the Marquis said almost between his teeth, “but you force it from me. This is not a proper or respectable house for an innocent girl. If you stay here with the Prince’s mistress, then you lay yourself open to insults and to aspersions on your character that you will find it hard to bear ands still harder to refute.”
He spoke slowly and in a manner that made his words seem even more weighty and overwhelming than they would have done if he had spoken in anger.
“You have no r-right to make – such a-assertions,” Gretna replied in a low voice.
“Unfortunately they are true,” the
