The Glittering Lights (Bantam Series No. 12) (15 page)

She could not face him now with the truth!

She could not bear either the contempt with which he might treat her or worse still, his delight in finding that he could have for the asking both the woman he loved and the money which he needed so desperately!

‘I cannot bear it,’ Cassandra whispered to herself.

She knew that if she had thought it difficult to act in the past, it would be far more difficult to act now as if nothing of any consequence had occurred.

The horses were harnessed to the Phaeton once again, and by the time they set off it was growing late in the afternoon.

The country was very beautiful. There was no wind and it was therefore comparatively warm. There were primroses under the hedgerows and the daffodils were showing their golden trumpets among the young grass in the meadows.

Cassandra was telling herself that she almost hated the Duke, when he turned his head to look at her and say softly:

“When I look at you, I think you are spring and in some magical manner you can disperse for me the darkness of winter.”

There was a note in his voice that made her heart seem to turn over in her breast. She longed to move closer to him, to rest her head against his shoulder.

‘What does it matter what happens tomorrow?’ she asked herself wildly, ‘as long as we can have today?’

He was near her, and when he spoke to her with just that note in his voice and that particular expression in his eyes, the only thing that mattered was that they were together.

They travelled for miles down twisting lanes, along cart-tracks and through woods to the top of a hill where they could look over the valley towards the Chiltern Hills.

They spoke of many superficial things, but Cassandra knew that they were conscious only of each other’s hearts.

Something magical had happened! Something which drew them closer to each other every second, until she felt, although he had not touched her, she was in his arms, and that with every word he spoke, he kissed her lips.

Then all too soon the sun was beginning to sink in the West, the sky was a kaleidoscope of colour and below them was a huge stone mansion, its roofs impressively ornate above the trees which surrounded it.

“Is that the house?” Cassandra asked.

“It is,” the Duke replied briefly.

Cassandra thought as they drew nearer that it was typical of Lord Carwen to own a place which seemed to symbolise importance, pomposity and wealth.

The green lawns with their stereotyped flower beds; the gold-tipped iron gates; the yew hedges fashioned by topiary work into travesties of nature, seemed to her to reveal the character of their owner.

She was sure of this when they entered the huge Hall, where half a dozen footmen in a grandiose livery bedecked with gold braid were in attendance.

“His Lordship lives in style,” Cassandra commented as she and the Duke followed an imposing Major-Domo down wide corridors hung with valuable pictures.

They reached a large Drawing-Room and Cassandra saw Lord Carwen detach himself from a small group of people centred round the mantel-piece at the far end of it.

He advanced towards them.

Taking Cassandra’s hand in his he raised it to his lips.

“May I welcome you to my home, pretty lady?” he said with a look in his eyes which she particularly disliked.

She curtsied and withdrew her hand from his with some difficulty.

“Varro, my dear boy,” Lord Carwen said to the Duke, “you know you are always welcome. I think you know everyone who has arrived so far, but I must introduce Sandra.”

By the time Cassandra was able to go upstairs for a short rest before dinner more guests had arrived. They were mostly men, with a few exceptions of Lord Carwen’s age and on intimate terms with him.

He chaffed them in a manner which Cassandra felt was vaguely insulting to her and the other women present.

It was not the way she would have expected her father to speak in a lady’s presence, and then she realised that to Lord Carwen she was not a lady!

She was not certain, either, how to place His Lordship’s other female guests.

There was a very attractive woman of about thirty-five, obviously well-born, who was flirting with sophisticated expertise with the Earl of Wilmere.

He was a middle-aged man and responded with bursts of loud laughter. The innuendo in most of the things he said were lost on Cassandra.

They kept referring to episodes when “we did this” and “we did that,” and seemed so intimate that Cassandra innocently thought they were man and wife.

When she accompanied the other ladies upstairs to find their bed-rooms, she said, making polite conversation:

“Do you and your husband live in the country?”

The woman, whom Cassandra later found was called Lady McDonald, laughed derisively.

“He is not my husband!” she exclaimed. “I only wish he were, and poor old Jimmy wishes it too! But unfortunately he has a dragon of a wife and six extremely tiresome children!”

Cassandra’s eyes widened in astonishment.

“How is your husband, Julie?” one of the other women asked.

“As boring as ever,” Lady McDonald replied, “wrapped in tartan and his pride in the frozen North.”

“He still refuses to divorce you?”

“He is adamant about it!” Lady McDonald answered. “Says there has never been a scandal in the family since Robert the Bruce liaised with the Spider!”

Her laughter at her own joke echoed round the Hall.

Cassandra was shocked. Then she told herself that it was exactly what she might have expected.

After all, both Lord Carwen and the Duke thought that she was an actress, and an actress would certainly not have been invited to a house-party together with someone like her mother or indeed with any lady of her acquaintance.

‘It will be amusing to see how these sort of people behave,’ she told herself.

At the same time she knew that the manner in which the gentlemen had joked not only amongst themselves, but with Lady McDonald and the other women downstairs had made her feel embarrassed.

She learnt that more guests would be arriving much later in the evening after the theatres closed.

There would be Lily Langtry and Freddy Gebhard besides, judging by what Lord Carwen said, several well-known figures from the Gaiety and the leading lady of Daly’s Theatre.

“We shall be quite a packed house,” Lady McDonald said as they reached the top of the staircase. “Now, let us see where everyone is sleeping.”

Lying on a table on the wide landing was a plan of the bedrooms.

Cassandra looked at it and thought she had never before seen such a thing at any house at which she had been a guest.

There was always a plan of the dining-table so that guests could go straight to their places without having to wander around the table looking for the card on which their name was inscribed.

But to have the bed-rooms planned in such a manner was something new!

She saw that the majority of rooms were arranged in suites; her own, which was named “The Blue Room,” had a Boudoir and Dressing-Room attached.

She saw it was not far away from “The Master-Suite,” and that the Duke was only just round the corner in what was entitled “The Red Room.”

Lady McDonald was commenting on the rooms which had been allotted to two people called Rosie and Jack.

“Jack will have to go out in the corridor,” she giggled, “and if there is one thing he dislikes, it is having to do that!”

They all laughed, and Cassandra wondered why it should upset anyone to have to go into the corridor, especially one as well-heated and well-furnished as those that she saw on either side of the staircase.

But a great deal of the women’s chatter was incomprehensible, and she was glad when she could retire to her own room and find that Lord Carwen’s housemaids had unpacked for her.

She rang the bell and a maid came to undo her gown.

“Will you rest on the bed, Miss, or on the chaise-longue?” she enquired.

“On the bed,” Cassandra answered.

She put on the silk wrap which Hannah had packed for her, and the maid having removed the bedspread, she settled herself against the pillows and was covered by a satin eiderdown.

“I would like my bath an hour before dinner,” she told the maid and shut her eyes.

She thought she might be able to sleep, because having been up late last night she was in fact a little tired.

Instead she found herself thinking of the Duke and the moment that he told her that he had fallen in love with her! She had known, even as he held her eyes spellbound, that he was speaking in all sincerity.

He was in love as she was in love!

They were drawn to each other and there was no escape.

‘I want him to love me,’ Cassandra admitted to herself. ‘But I also want him to think that nothing else, not even money, is of importance beside our love.’

She thought of the bitterness in his face when he told her that his horses were to be sold at Tattersall’s.

She wondered what else he had disposed of, and thought that Alchester Park must be filled with treasures that would fetch enormous sums of money in the London Sale-Rooms.

‘I want him to tell me the truth,’ she thought. ‘I want him to admit to me that he is marrying for money, and then perhaps I can tell him who I am.’

Yet again there came that little tremor of fear that he might be angry because she had deceived him.

She was still thinking of the Duke when the maid came back to light the gas-lamps, make up the fire, and bring in the bath in which Cassandra could bathe by the fire-side.

Lady Carwen might be in Paris, but she certainly provided every expensive luxury for her guests.

There were three different oils from which Cassandra could choose to scent the bath-water, and the towels, which were embroidered with a huge coronet, smelt of lavender.

She noticed also that throughout the house there were bowls of pot-pourri obviously made, as her mother made hers at home, from the flowers in the garden.

The sheets and pillow-cases were edged with lace and there was an ermine rug lying on the chaise-longue.

The desk contained every possible facility for writing a letter. There was a jewel-studded pen-holder, a blotter with gold corners, a writing-paper box in red leather. There was a clock with a face encircled by diamonds.

There was an onyx pen-tray, a tortoise-shell letter-opener, a calendar framed in polished silver, and innumerable other objects, all of which were designed to make letter-writing an Art.

There were also carnations and a profusion of yellow daffodils to decorate not only the bed-room but the adjacent Boudoir into which Cassandra peeped before she went downstairs.

“Which gown will you wear, Miss?” the maid enquired.

Quite suddenly Cassandra knew she could not go down flaunting one of the low-cut theatrical dresses she had bought from Chasemore’s.

She had a revulsion for the women who were already staying in the house.

There was no need for her to look at their exaggeratedly fashionable clothes to know that they were not the type of whom her mother would approve.

The way they laughed, the boldness of their eyes, their hands which seemed to be always reaching out to pat a masculine arm or to hold on to the lapel of a coat, were more revealing even than anything they said or wore.

Cassandra looked with distaste at the glittering green gown she had worn on the first night to Lord Carwen’s party, at one of jonquil yellow and another of coral pink satin.

She pointed instead to one of her own gowns which Hannah had packed regardless of her protests.

It was exquisitely styled. The very soft lace which was draped over the front of the full skirt, swept backwards into quite a small bustle at the back, to fall in frills to the floor.

The
décolletage
was much higher and indeed correct for a young girl, but it revealed Cassandra’s tiny waist and the perfect symmetry of her white arms.

Tonight she did not even attempt to open her jewel-case, and she asked the maid to arrange her hair in the exact manner in which Hannah had done it before she left London.

The long tresses of fire-touched gold were swept around her head to make it small and almost Grecian in shape.

But however subdued Cassandra might wish to appear, there was nothing she could do to conceal the brilliant blue of her eyes or the dark lashes which seemed too long to be natural.

Because she felt it might cause comment if she left her face untouched, she flicked just a suspicion of powder onto her cheeks and put the faintest touch of salve on her lips.

“You look lovely, Miss, if I may say so!” the maid remarked.

“Thank you,” Cassandra smiled.

“I have never seen a more lovely dress,” the maid went on. “When I unpacked it, I thought it might be a wedding-gown!”

Cassandra turned towards the door.