An Angel Runs Away by Barbara Cartland

as if touched by a reptile, shiver with revulsion.
    Then, after what seemed a long time, he released her and to her relief she found the Marquis was at her side.
    “Why were you dancing with the Prince?” he asked sharply in a voice that only she could hear.
    “I-I could not – help it,” she answered, “but – please don’t let him come – near me – again. There is something horrible about him that – frightens me!”
    She looked up at the Marquis as she spoke and saw an expression of anger in his eyes.
    “That creature should not have come here in the first place,” he said. “He is certainly not the sort of man you should associate with.”
    Then, before he could say anything more, her partner for the next dance, a young man in the Household Cavalry, came to her side.
    As they danced the quadrille it was a relief to know that she need not be held close in the arms of a man she had disliked on sight.
    At the same time, for the rest of the evening, she was aware that the Prince was watching her. It made her feel self-conscious and as if she could not escape from his scrutiny any more than she could from her uncle’s, her aunt’s and Sarah’s.
    The ball did not end until three o’clock in the morning when, despite protests from the guests who wished to go on dancing, the Marquis ordered the band to play the National Anthem.
    “It was such a wonderful party, how can we bear it to come to an end?” a very lovely lady glittering with a profusion of rubies in her dark hair said to the Marquis.
    “You may not need your beauty sleep, Georgina,” the Marquis replied, “but my grandmother is growing old and late nights are not good for her.”
    The lady called Georgina pouted her lips provocatively.
    The way she looked at the Marquis told Ula that she was enamoured of him. In fact, she was only one of the many beautiful women she had noticed who all the evening had been fawning on him, putting their hands on his arm and lifting their lovely faces to his with what appeared to be an invitation in their eyes.
    ‘And is it surprising that they find him irresistible, when he is so handsome and also so very kind?’ Ula mused.
    “A wonderful party, Drogo!” the Duchess said when the last guest had gone and she moved slowly across the hall towards the staircase.
    “You are not too tired?” the Marquis asked.
    “I am very tired,” the Duchess replied, “but elated by the huge success that Ula enjoyed. Everybody, with the exception of three of our guests, told me how beautiful she was and your men-friends all averred that she eclipsed any beauty they had ever seen.”
    “I really cannot believe that,” Ula protested. “But I am so glad that, after all the trouble you have taken, I did not let you down.”
    She was looking at the Marquis as she spoke, then added almost as if she wished to make sure,
    “You – you were not – disappointed?”
    “No, of course not,” he said quite sincerely. “You were exactly what I wanted.”
    She knew that he was thinking of the frustrated expression on her cousin Sarah’s face when she had said goodnight to him.
    Ula was standing near enough for her to hear Sarah say,
    “I am very hurt that you left The Hall after you had called the other day without seeing me.”
    “It was what I heard, rather than saw, which made me leave,” the Marquis replied.
    For a moment Lady Sarah did not understand. Until, as if she guessed the meaning of the words, she stiffened and there was a puzzled expression of concern on her beautiful face.
    Then she turned away and went quickly to join her father and mother who were just leaving the ballroom.
    Ula went to bed feeling as if the dance music was still playing in her heart and the beauty of the scene was still floating in front of her eyes.
    Because she wanted to think only of happy things, she deliberately forced herself not to remember the hostility of her aunt and uncle and Sarah.
    She thought instead of the flattering words that