Never before in his life had the Duke felt the urge to protect a woman and never before had he known that he not only desired one but also felt as if she was something sacred. It all swept over him like a flash of lightning or a shaft of sunlight and he was aware that Valora’s artless question had awakened a chivalry that had lain dormant within him for years. Because ladies in the Social world in which he moved had a freedom of speech and a looseness of morals introduced by the King, which was very different from the behaviour of his mother’s generation, the Duke had grown to expect nothing else. The women he knew were sometimes as outrageous in what they said as they were in their behaviour. It had never crossed his mind before that any one of them would be ignorant about the lovemak