An Angel Runs Away by Barbara Cartland Page A

her partners had said to her and most of all the approval in the Marquis’s eyes.
    Then just before she fell asleep she remembered how much she disliked Prince Hasin, and felt herself shiver.
    *
    Although the Duchess and Ula slept late, the Marquis was up early and as usual went riding in the Park.
    He met a number of his friends and they all combined to tell him that the ball he had given last night was the best they could ever remember and it would be impossible for anyone to rival, let alone eclipse it.
    “You are very flattering,” the Marquis said.
    “I cannot think how you do it, Raventhorpe,” one of the gentlemen on horseback remarked, “and it’s no use our trying to beat you when you produce for our delectation an angel who only for you would have dropped out of the sky!”
    There was a roar of laughter at this.
    Then somebody else said,
    “The Prince Regent always hits the nail on the head. Miss Forde does look exactly like an angel and the proper place for her would be a shrine in your hall at Raven, where we can all light pink candles in front of her!”
    There was more laughter, but as the gentlemen rode off, the Marquis was thinking with satisfaction that it was he who had first thought that Ula looked like an angel when he had given her a lift in his phaeton to help her escape from Chessington Hall.
    He, like Ula, had been well aware last night that the Earl and Countess had been furious at Ula’s success.
    They had found it difficult to realise that the radiantly beautiful girl who attracted everybody’s attention was the wretched child they had ill-treated to the point where she could bear their cruelty no longer.
    He was sure that they were wondering how he had met her and by what supernatural means she had been transformed overnight into being the most talked-of and admired young woman in the whole of the Beau Monde .
    The Marquis congratulated himself, feeling he had pulled off a coup that was even more satisfactory than winning a classic race.
    He had known it was with the greatest difficulty that the Earl had refrained from asking him searching questions as to how he had met Ula.
    Sarah’s obvious frustration because he did not go near her during the whole evening had pleased him as much as if he had won a large sum of money at the card tables.
    One look at her petulant face, when she was not deliberately smiling with what he was sure was an effort, told him he had had a very lucky escape. Never would he endanger his freedom and risk his comfortable way of living by marrying anybody.
    There were cousins who could succeed to the Marquisate and, if he did not have a son, why should that worry him, after he was dead?
    ‘I will never marry,’ he vowed, ‘and never again will I be fool enough to be deceived by a woman!’
    The cynical lines on his face were even more deeply pronounced than usual as he rode back to Berkeley Square. He found, as he expected, that he was to breakfast alone, there being no sign of either of the ladies.
    He was quite content, but he would have been even more pleased with himself if he had known of the scene that was taking place two streets away.
    It was in the imposing residence the Earl had bought, gambling on his daughter being the outstanding success she had undoubtedly been up until last night.
     
    *
     
    The Earl had come down to breakfast first in a bad mood.
    He had drunk too much of the Marquis’s excellent champagne and even more of his superb claret with the result that his right foot in which he suffered from gout was paining him.
    He was helping himself to a dish of sweetbreads and fresh mushrooms, when to his surprise his daughter Sarah joined him.
    “You are very early, my dear!” he remarked.
    “I could not sleep, Papa.”
    Sarah certainly looked very pale, the Earl thought, and with her hair hanging down her back and wearing an unattractive robe in which she usually rested in the afternoon, she did not look as beautiful as usual.
    “You should