The Incredible Honeymoon (Bantam Series No. 46) by Barbara Cartland Page A

discovered, there were small arbours discreetly arranged where there were soft cushioned seats and the reassurance that anything that was said could not be overheard.
    She could not help feeling that even if the Duke had not asked her to dance he might have taken her into the garden.
    If the Marchioness had been present, that was where, she was quite certain, they would have ended up.
    She gave a little sigh, then thought to herself that if the Duke had been thinking of the Marchioness while they were on their way to Paris and perhaps earlier to-day, he would certainly not be thinking of her now!
    Never had Antonia seen anyone quite so fascinating as the Comtesse de Rezonville.
    She gathered from the reference to Vienna that she was in fact Viennese. Her hair was certainly the deep, dark red beloved of the Austrian women who all wished to look like their beautiful Empress.
    Yet her eyes were dark, almost purple in their depths, while at the same time they sparkled as everything about her had seemed to glitter and shimmer.
    She had made Antonia feel that however elegantly she might be dressed in a Worth creation there was something lacking inside herself which the Comtesse had in superabundance.
    “You are very pensive,” her partner said, breaking in on her thoughts.
    “I was thinking,” Antonia replied.
    “I wish it could be of me!”
    “But I do not know you!”
    “That is something that can easily be rectified,” he replied. “When may I see you again? Where are you staying in Paris?”
    She laughed at him because they were questions that had been asked by all her partners.
    The dance came to an end and another Frenchman drew her onto the dance-floor.
    Although Antonia glanced frequently towards the windows there was no sign of the Duke returning, nor could she see the fascinating Comtesse.
    She lost count of her partners. Then she found herself dancing with a man to whom she did not remember being introduced. She was quite certain he had not written his name on her dance-card.
    It did not seem to matter if she exchanged one man for another. They all seemed to say much the same thing, and she was really hoping the Duke would appear so that they could go home.
    “You are the Duchess of Doncaster?” her new partner asked as he swung her round to the music of the ‘Blue Danube’.
    He spoke in a heavy voice almost as if it was an indictment.
    “Yes, I am,” Antonia replied. “But I have a feeling we have not been introduced.”
    “Your husband is with you?”
    “Yes, of course,” Antonia answered. “We are on our honeymoon.”
    Her partner glanced round the room.
    “I do not see him anywhere.”
    “He is in the garden,” Antonia replied, “with a very fascinating and alluring lady whom I suspect of being an old friend and who was certainly very pleased to see him.”
    “What was her name?”
    The question was so sharp, so abrupt that Antonia looked at the man in surprise and almost missed a step.
    “The Comtesse de Rezonville.”
    “So! It is what I suspected!” the Frenchman muttered in a furious tone.
    He stopped dancing and taking Antonia by the arm drew her across the room towards the open window.
    “We will find them,” he said grimly, “doubtless, as you say, in the garden.”
    There was something so ferocious in the way he spoke that Antonia said quickly:
    “I ... I may have been ... mistaken. Who ... who are you? And why are you so interested in my husband?”
    “I happen to be married to the fascinating, alluring lady you have just described so vividly!” he replied.
    Antonia’s heart gave a frightened leap.
    She realised by the way he spoke and the manner in which he was pulling her along that the Comte was in a rage and she knew she had precipitated it by what she had told him.
    “How could I have known?” she asked herself frantically, “that the man dancing with me was the Comtesse’s husband?”
    They walked down the steps which led from the terrace into the garden.
    The