“What is – going to – happen to me?”
The Duke put his arms around her again.
“You are going to stay with me,” he said. “I am going to look after you and protect you, not, my precious, in the way I had suggested before, but as my wife!”
He felt Helga stiffen and realised that not for one moment had the idea of marriage ever crossed her mind.
Then, as he waited, she asked him,
“Did you really say – as your – wife?”
“It is your own fault that I did not realise it sooner,” the Duke said, “for trying to deceive me into believing you were an actress pretending to be a lady. I know now, my precious, that you are what I have always been looking for but have never found, someone who loves me for myself and whom I love because she is everything I want and need to be with me for the rest of my
