No Place For An Angel. Gail Whitiker

      Catherine didn’t bother to reply. What was the point? Lily was a hopeless romantic who was forever devouring penny novels with the belief that dark, handsome heroes existed to sweep beautiful young women off their feet. It didn’t matter how often she was told that fiction seldom resembled real life or that the heroines of most stories didn’t live happily ever after. Lily preferred her own way of looking at the world.

      Still, Catherine couldn’t deny that whether by chance or design, she was seeing rather a lot of Valbourg, nor could she deny that she was flattered by his regard. He was handsome, charming and considerate; more so than any man she had ever met. Unfortunately, he was also a marquess’s son and the type of man for whom a woman happily and willingly did foolish things.

      Catherine could not afford to be foolish. Valbourg was just passing through her life. The best she could hope for with him was the kind of tawdry relationship she had been offered and turned down so many times before.

      Besides, how would he feel about her when he learned about Thomas? Would he turn away in disgust? Ask why she was keeping herself chaste when her son’s existence proved she was anything but?

      Best not go down that road, Catherine warned herself. She had endured enough heartache over the past five years. She had no desire to live through any more in the future.

      * * *

      The night after the Gryphon closed, Theo and Tandy Templeton threw one of their lavish dinner parties. The entire company was invited, and Catherine was persuaded, as were several other members of the cast, to stage an informal entertainment after dinner. Victor Trumphani would recite a passage from a Shakespearean play, Tommy Silver, one of the newcomers to the troupe, would perform wondrous tricks of magic and illusion, and Catherine would sing a selection of songs.

      Anthea Templeton, or Tandy as she liked to be called, always invited an eclectic mixture of guests to her dinner parties; everyone from a viscount and his lady to a doctor and his unmarried sister. Catherine was introduced to a barrister and his beautiful French fiancée, several extremely wealthy gentlemen whose conversations led her to believe they spent more time out of the country than in it and a delightful Italian count whose broken English was colourful if not always correct.

      ‘He can be quite outrageous,’ Tandy confided. ‘But he is such an interesting man, no one really minds. Just don’t take anything he says to heart. Italians can be such notorious flirts. I should know. I almost married one!’

      As always, the guests mingled together well, no doubt due to the relaxed atmosphere Theo and Tandy took such care to foster. Catherine spotted the viscountess laughing with the barrister’s wife, saw the doctor chatting with Victor Trumphani and heard Theo speaking quite respectable French to the barrister’s fiancée. The Italian count flirted with every lady he could, but Catherine soon discovered that Tandy was right. He was harmless as long as you didn’t let his blandishments go to your head.