65 A Heart Is Stolen by Barbara Cartland

a friend of your father’s?”
    For a moment he thought Ivana Wadebridge’s eyes widened, and then she asked,
    “Did he tell you so?”
    “He spoke of your father in glowing terms, so that I was sure they were acquainted and Markham agreed that was so.”
    “I daresay they met,” Ivana said vaguely, “especially as we shop in the same village.”
    The Marquis reflected that this told him nothing, but determined to attack he asked,
    “Are you going to tell me, Mrs. Wadebridge, that this is your first visit to Heathcliffe?”
    Ivana laughed quite naturally.
    “All my life,” she said, “there was not an angel with a flaming sword keeping me away, but a Naval gun pointing directly at my back if I should so much as walk in the direction of Heathcliffe!”
    The way she had answered his question made it impossible for the Marquis to press her further and, when dinner was finished and port was on the table, she rose to her feet to say,
    “I think, my Lord, I should withdraw in the correct fashion and wait for you in the drawing room.”
    “I think we will start by sitting in the library,” the Marquis replied. “I want to show you from where the snuffboxes were taken and you can see how devastatingly empty the place is.”
    “Then I will wait for you in the library,” Ivana smiled.
    She went from the dining room and only when she had been gone for some minutes did the Marquis realise that she had not asked where the library was.
    Equally, he told himself there would be a footman on duty in the hall and she could ask him.
    Because it was insistent in his mind, he said to Anthony, “I am certain that there is something strange about this young woman. I am sure she is not what she appears.”
    “I am perfectly happy with her as she is,” Anthony said. “I find her charming, amusing and very very lovely. Good God, Justin, what else do you expect?”
    “That is the trouble, I don’t know what I expect,” the Marquis replied. “I just feel in the back of my mind or in my bones, as my father used to say, that everything is not as it should be and I am being deceived.”
    “It is Rose who has made you feel like that,” Anthony suggested. “You think because she tricked you that everybody else has the same idea. You look for footprints, criminals behind every door and doubtless smugglers in the cellar. I will make love to Ivana and tell her I think she is adorable!”
    For some reason Anthony’s answer annoyed the Marquis.
    He put down his glass and rose from the table and without speaking walked from the dining room, while Anthony waited to pour himself another glass of port from the decanter before he followed him.
    The Marquis found Ivana in the library.
    She was sitting in the window and not, as he thought critically, as any other intelligent woman would have been looking at the books and the pictures.
    He walked across the room to join her, but she did not turn her head. Instead she continued gazing at the trees silhouetted against the dusk.
    “It is so beautiful here. How can you possibly stay away for five years from a place that is so lovely and peaceful?”
    “I have been thinking since I came back that I have been very remiss in not returning before.”
    “I think most people would be grateful that the place they remembered had changed so little.”
    “But there are changes!” the Marquis objected.
    “What sort of changes?”
    “Many of the old servants have gone for one thing. I thought to see familiar faces, but instead Bateman, the butler, has retired.”
    “You will find him in the village.”
    “You know him?”
    “Yes, of course.”
    “Why of course?”
    “Because living here, I know everyone in the village.”
    “Then perhaps you can tell me what has happened to the footmen we used to have.”
    Ivana stiffened for a moment and then she said in a very different tone,
    “I am sure your agent, my Lord, will give you any information you require about the servants in the house, but now I