An Angel Runs Away Read Free

salon and out into the hall.
    There were two footmen on duty whispering together who sprang to attention as he appeared.
    The Marquis passed them and, walking down the steps, set off towards the stables. The footmen were so astonished at his behaviour that they made no effort to try to detain him.
    He reached the stables to find his phaeton standing in the centre of the cobbled yard, while his groom and two stable-lads were giving his horses a drink from buckets spilling over with water.
    The Marquis frowned before he climbed into his phaeton, picked up the reins and, as his groom flung himself into the seat behind, drove off.
    When he turned up the drive, down which they had so recently come, he was furiously angry in a way he could not remember feeling for many years.
    How could he, with his discrimination and what he had always thought of as his perception, have considered marrying somebody who could talk in a manner that had not only been unpleasant but positively ill bred?
    He had prided himself for so long on being a good judge not only of horseflesh and men, but of women too, that he was appalled at his own failure to realise that Lady Sarah, like so many of her sex, was interested only in a man’s position.
    She wanted the place he could give her in Society, not what he was in himself, which to him was of sole significance.
    He was used to the sophisticated women with whom he had affaires de coeur losing their hearts irresistibly to him and loving him to distraction. He could hardly believe that the young woman on whom he had looked with favour should have considered him in such a cold calculating manner.
    He was genuinely shocked at the way she had spoken and at the same time humiliated that he should not have been aware of what lay behind her beautiful face.
    Like any young greenhorn, he told himself angrily, he had been captivated into believing a superficial beauty covered a heart of gold. Perhaps even, an idea that was often laughed at, a soul.
    It was something he wanted in the woman he would call his wife and who would be the mother of his children.
    ‘How can I have been such a damned fool?’ he asked himself furiously.
    Only years of self-control prevented him from pushing his horses hard in his desire to distance himself from Chessington Hall with all possible speed.
    ‘I will never marry – never !’ he told himself. He passed through the iron gates and set off down a side lane that would bring him out onto the main road.
    He realised that in one aspect of the matter he had had a very lucky escape and he felt now like a man who by a hair’s breadth had been saved from total destruction.
    He was well aware that the fact that he had called at Chessington Hall and then not ‘come up to scratch’ would infuriate the Earl and he could only hope that it would upset and distress Sarah.
    Although he felt contemptuous of any woman who would sell herself to the highest bidder, he knew that he was more shocked than by anything else that he should have been so obtuse!
    How could he have been beguiled as actually to be prepared to offer marriage, which he had never done before, to a girl who was completely and utterly unworthy of bearing his name.
    His chin was square, his lips were set in a tight line and his eyes beneath his drooping eyelids were dark with anger as he drove on.
    Then nearly a mile along the main highway he saw ahead and there was no one else in sight, a small figure running along at the side of the road, who turned to look back at the sound of his approach.
    Then she deliberately stepped into the centre of the road and held out her arms.
    He was surprised, but there was nothing he could do but pull his horses to a standstill only a few feet from the slight figure with her outstretched arms.
    She had not moved and had not in fact shown the slightest fear that he might run her down.
    As the phaeton came to a stop, she ran to his side saying in a breathless little voice,
    “Would – you be very