The Glittering Lights (Bantam Series No. 12) (20 page)

“So there was no escape?”

“None,” the Duke answered in a hard voice. “I was also told that in the pattern of Royalty I had to marry money, so that the Estate could be kept up and I myself could live as befitted my rank.”

“And you agreed?” Cassandra asked.

“My assent was taken for granted,” the Duke replied. “My marriage was arranged by my father and I accepted it as something inevitable that must happen to me at some time in the future. Then I went round the world.”

“That was important to you?”

“I realised that in other countries men of my age were making money by using their brains and their energy. In England it is considered degrading for gentlemen to work for a living. But that does not apply elsewhere.”

His voice deepened.

“In Australia I saw a chance of making a fortune, and I found even greater opportunities when I reached South Africa.”

He paused for a moment and Cassandra saw he was looking back into the past, recalling perhaps his enthusiasm at what he had discovered.

“I came back to England with ideas that I was certain could be the foundation stone for restoring the family fortunes.”

“What ... happened?”

“My father laughed at me, refused to invest one penny either in the mining possibilities I had envisaged in Australia or in the prospecting for gold that I was sure would prove to be a success in South Africa.”

He was silent and Cassandra saw the bitterness on his face.

“So you could not do what you wanted to do.”

“But I did!” the Duke answered. “I borrowed the money!”

Cassandra looked up at him.

“From ... whom?” she asked, her voice hardly above a whisper.

“Need you ask?” the Duke replied. “From Carwen. He offered me anything I wanted. He is a very rich man.”

“And you trusted him?”

“He made himself very pleasant,” the Duke said. “He listened to my ideas, he flattered and encouraged me. That was something I needed desperately at that particular moment.”

“What happened?”

“I was making up my mind to tell my father the truth and to ask him to reconsider his decision and be my sponsor, when he died,” the Duke said. “It was then I realised I was my own master—until I learnt how utterly impoverished the Alchester coffers were!”

Cassandra saw that it had been a shock, but she did not speak and after a moment the Duke went on:

“There were death duties, and my father had spent far more than he could afford on his horses—banking, I suppose, on being able to pay off all his debts through the rich marriage he had arranged for me.”

There was so much sarcasm in his voice that Cassandra drew in her breath.

“I realised that if I was to stand on my own feet I had to have money. I mortgaged part of the estate to Carwen. I sold everything that I did not consider a family heirloom. Then when the money was invested Carwen began to show himself in his true colours.”

“What did he do?”

“He began to manipulate me as I had been manipulated all my life by my father. He used my name to further his own interests and insisted that I should be his representative on Boards which I considered to be shady. He also asked for security against the loans he had made me in my father’s life-time.”

“What did you give him?” Cassandra asked.

“Horses, among them those we rode today, a large amount of furniture and the family pictures,” the Duke replied. “He deliberately took them off the wall so that every time I looked at the spaces where they had been I should feel under a deeper obligation to him!”

“He is despicable!” Cassandra cried.

“He is a sharp-headed business-man,” the Duke replied, “and I was a fool to get into his clutches.”

He was silent for a moment before he went on:

“I know that in a few years the money I have invested in Australia and South Africa will increase a thousand-fold. Already the reports from both countries are fantastic, but I cannot wait.”

“Why not?” Cassandra asked.

“Because I cannot maintain the estate and pay the wages. Because I refuse any longer to be beholden to Carwen!”

He paused to say slowly:

“Now there is only one thing I can do.”

“And what is that?” Cassandra asked and her voice seemed almost to have died in her throat.

“I can sell the house,” the Duke answered, “pay off the mortgage and the monies that Carwen has loaned to me. That will leave enough to pension off the old retainers and provide cottages for their old age. What part of the estate is left will, in time, pay its way.”

“Is there not ... another alternative?” Cassandra asked hesitatingly.

“Of course there is,” the Duke answered. “I can marry the heiress that my father procured for me. She wants my title—I want her money. A very sensible arrangement, you might say.”

Cassandra did not speak and after a moment the Duke went on: “I was prepared to do it. I had made up my mind that it would be better to be beholden to a woman—any woman—than to Carwen. And then you know what happened.”

“What ... happened?”

“I met you!”

For the first time he turned to look at her.

“Oh, God! Why did this have to happen to me now at this moment? And yet would I have it any different?”

His eyes showed her the anguish he was suffering.

He put out his arms and drew Cassandra from the chair.

“I love you!” he said. “I love you and I know that really nothing else matters. Will you be poor with me, my darling—for a few years at any rate?”

“You mean...?”

“You will have no pretty gowns, no gaiety, just a rather dull life in a small house, but we shall be together.”

He held her close in his arms. His eyes were looking into hers as if he was searching once again for something that was of the utmost importance to him.

Cassandra tried to speak but the words would not come to her lips.

“I am asking you to marry me,” the Duke said very softly. “What is your answer, my beloved?”

He saw the sudden light in her eyes and there was no need for words.

His mouth came down onto hers, holding her captive.

“I love you ...” she tried to say but he was kissing her wildly and it was impossible to speak.

Only inside herself Cassandra felt waves of happiness like white doves flying up to the Heavens.

She had won! He loved her!

He loved her enough to sacrifice everything that had mattered to him in the past.

He loved her and she felt his lips demanding her complete surrender.

No-one she thought, could know such happiness and not die of the wonder of it!

CHAPTER NINE

Cassandra shut her eyes so that Hannah, thinking she was asleep, would stop grumbling.

“I have never in all my life known such a carry-on!” Hannah had exclaimed last night.

She said it not once but a dozen times when Cassandra had returned to Park Lane to inform the old maid that they were leaving for Yorkshire by the seven o’clock train the following morning.

“There’s a good train, stopping only a few times, that leaves at nine-thirty,” Hannah said.

“I know that,” Cassandra answered, “but I wish to leave at seven. If you cannot be ready, Hannah, I will go alone and you can follow later.”

She had known this was the surest way to make Hannah get the packing done and be sure that they left together.

Listening with her eyes closed to the rumble of the wheels on the track, Cassandra found herself reliving the wonder she had felt when she knew that the Duke loved her enough to give up his ancestral house so that they could be married.

She was well aware of the immensity of his sacrifice and how despite his complaints about being tied to the Alchester Estate, it was in fact a part of him, and to sell it would be like losing an arm or a leg.

“Are you ... sure?” she had asked him later when they were seated together on the sofa so that he could still hold her in his arms.

“Sure that I want to marry you?” he asked. “I am more sure of it than I have been of anything else in my whole life.”

“But we have ... known each other such a ... short time,” Cassandra murmured.

“I feel that you have always been there in my heart,” he answered. “The woman I have always been looking for, the wife I have wanted beside me, but whom I could never find.”

There was a depth of sincerity in his voice that told Cassandra he spoke the truth.

“I love you!” he went on. “I love everything about you. Your absurdly red-gold hair, your little nose, your blue eyes! But more than all these I love the quickness of your brain and the kindness of your heart.”

“You are ... flattering me!” Cassandra demurred.

“I am telling you what I believe to be the truth,” the Duke answered. “But I forgot to mention something else which I love.”

“What is that?” she asked, lifting her face a little to look up at him.

“Your lips!” he answered.

Then he was kissing her again and it was difficult to say anything more...

A long time later Cassandra looked at the clock on the mantelpiece and realised it was time they returned to London.

It was then she could not help asking the question which had trembled on her lips for some time.

“What are you ... going to do about ... the girl you were supposed to ... marry?”

The Duke rose from the sofa to stand with his back to her looking into the fire.

“I admit that in some ways I have been a cad,” he said. “Our engagement should have been announced two years ago, but she was in mourning for her grand-father and we did not meet. Then, after my father’s death, I decided to make it clear that I did not intend to go on with the arrangement he had made with the girl’s father. But I was afraid—”

“Of what?”

‘That my business commitments would fail and I should be left at the mercy of Carwen! I had begun to find out the sort of swine he was.”

The Duke paused to add:

“So I did nothing.”

“And now?” Cassandra asked, her eyes on his broad shoulders and his head bent to look into the flames.

“I must behave decently,” he said speaking as if to himself. “I will go to Yorkshire tomorrow and see Sir James Sherburn. After all, he was my father’s greatest friend. If nothing else, I owe him a personal explanation.”

“And what will that be?” Cassandra asked.

The Duke turned round.

“I shall tell him the truth,” he said, “that I have fallen in love with someone so utterly adorable that not all the gold in the world could prevent me from marrying her!”

‘He loves me!’ Cassandra said to herself now. ‘He loves me! And everything I ever wanted or dreamed of in life has come true!’

At the same time she was aware of a real fear within herself that the Duke might be angry when he learned the truth.

She had known she could not confess her deception while they sat in front of the fire in the Library at Alchester Park.

It had also been impossible to do so when they had ridden back to London, arriving late at the stables of Alchester House where the Duke kept his horses.

The house was closed because he could not afford to live there, and in the stables, which could accommodate a dozen horses, there were only the pair which they had driven to the country.

The Duke saw them in their stalls and said to Cassandra:

“Your luggage will be waiting for you at the flat.”

When Cassandra and the Duke arrived at Bury Street, it was in fact waiting for her in the Hall, and the porter had charge of her jewellery case.

“I was told to give it only into your own hands, Miss,” he said.

“Shall I come upstairs with you?” the Duke asked.

“No,” Cassandra answered. “I am tired and I am going straight to bed. Thank you for a wonderful day.”

She put her hands in his and he raised them to his lips.

It was impossible to say more because the porter was within earshot.

The Duke had already promised as they rode towards London that he would return from Yorkshire on Wednesday and they would dine together that evening.

As soon as he had departed in his carriage in which they had driven from his stables to Jermyn Street, Cassandra asked the porter to find her a cab and place her luggage on it.

When he had done so she handed him the key of the flat.

“I shall not be returning,” she said. “Here is the key and I should be grateful if you would get in touch with the Agent.”

The porter thought it strange, but it was not for him to argue with the tenants.

As Cassandra drove away, she knew how glad she was that she would never again have to enter that horrible vulgar flat.
She wondered how she had ever allowed herself to rent such a place, but at the time she had not understood as much about the theatrical world as she did now.

As the train carried her home to Yorkshire it was a satisfaction in itself to know that she was going back to security, to her parents who loved her and had protected her, and cosseted her from the crude realities of the world outside her home.

She had never dreamt that there would be women who suffered as Nancy Wood had, or women who could flout the conventions like Lady McDonald and in a different manner even Mrs. Langtry.

‘I have learnt a lot,’ Cassandra told herself, but she knew her father would not consider it particularly desirable knowledge.

She was well aware that there was every likelihood of his being extremely angry at her behaviour. But what was more important at this moment was what the Duke would say when she told him the truth.

‘I will make him understand ... he must understand!’ Cassandra told herself.

She was conscious all the same of a little quiver of fear and a number of questions in her mind which would not be silenced.

Now that she knew him, she was well aware that he would dislike being beholden to his wife as much as he had resented being beholden to his father and Lord Carwen.

He was a strong character and to a man who was as masculine as he was, it would be humiliating to know that his wife held the purse-strings.

Then Cassandra told herself it was only a question of time. The Duke had said that eventually he would be rich in his own right and she was sure he would be.

She had never yet heard him exaggerate or boast about anything, and he had been absolutely certain in his own mind that in perhaps only a few years the investments he had made in Australia and South Africa would bring him the fortune he so ardently desired.

Yet at the moment the house had to go, and that he should be willing to sell Alchester Park with the whole history of his family behind it because he loved her was to Cassandra so perfect, so utterly marvellous that she could only pray that she herself would be worthy of such a love.

She loved him so overwhelmingly that she thought now that, if he had in fact been in love with anyone else, she would not have wished to go on living.

She loved everything about him—not only his outstanding good looks but his air of authority, his charm, his pride and his sense of humor.

Because she was jealous she could not help saying to him:

“You must have ... spent a lot of ... money on the pretty ... ladies from the Gaiety?”

“Are you suspecting diamonds?” the Duke asked.

His eyes twinkled.

“Dare I be conceited enough to tell you that I did not have to give anything more expensive than a few flowers for any favours I received?”

He had kissed her and added:

“That at least is one economy I can make in the future!”

Cassandra had sent a telegram first thing in the morning to The Towers to say that she and Hannah were arriving at York at 2:00 p.m.

It was nearly an hour’s drive to her home, and she knew that, even travelling by the faster train, it would be impossible for the Duke to arrive until after five thirty.

That would give her time to prepare her father for the shock of what he had come to say.

But in her own mind Cassandra was not decided as to how she would let him learn the truth.

She somehow felt desperately shy at the thought of just letting him walk in and find her there.

The carriage was waiting at York Station and all the way to The Towers Cassandra was very quiet. She was thinking apprehensively of what lay ahead, and though Hannah tried to talk she only answered in monosyllables.

The Butler was at the door to greet her.

“Welcome home, Miss Cassandra.”

“Is Sir James in?” Cassandra asked as she walked into the Hall.

“No, Miss, Sir James and Her Ladyship had left before your telegram arrived.”

“Then my father did not know I was coming back?”

“No, Miss. Sir James and Her Ladyship were having luncheon with Lord Harrogate and going on afterwards to a Reception given by the Archbishop of York.”

“Of course!” Cassandra exclaimed. “I remember that engagement.”

She also had been invited.

“Sir James has ordered dinner a little later than usual,” the Butler went on, “but he and Her Ladyship should be back before seven o’clock.”

“Is there another telegram?” Cassandra asked.

“Yes, Miss. It also arrived after Sir James had left, so I opened it, as he has always instructed me to do.”

“What did it say?”

“It is from the Duke of Alchester, Miss Cassandra, to say he is arriving by the train which reaches York at three twenty-five. I have arranged for a carriage to meet him.”

Cassandra considered a moment.

“Now listen, Hudson,” she said. “When His Grace arrives I want you to inform him that Sir James is unfortunately not here to greet him and that as I have a bad cold I will receive him in my Sitting-Room. Is that clear?”

“Yes, Miss Cassandra.”

“Just show him into the room and do not interrupt us until I ring.”

“Very good, Miss.”

The Butler looked slightly surprised at the instructions, but Cassandra knew he was too well-trained not to carry them out.

She then ran up the stairs to her own room—she had a lot of preparations to make.

The train must have been late because although Cassandra was ready and waiting by half past four, it was after five o’clock when she heard footsteps coming along the corridor towards her Sitting-Room.

Although it was not yet dark outside she had drawn the curtains and there was a fire in the grate, the flames flickering over wood logs.

She had put a screen around an arm-chair which had its back to the windows as if to furnish protection against draughts, and she had extinguished all the lights in the room with the exception of one cut-glass oil-lamp.

It stood on the circular table in the centre of the room and on the table Cassandra had laid the two Albums she had treasured for so many years.

Because she was determined to keep her secret a surprise until the last possible moment, she wore a pair of dark glasses and held a fan in one hand as if to protect her face from the heat of the flames.

She knew it would be difficult for the Duke, coming from the light in the rest of the house into the dimness of the room, to recognise her at first sight.

She also had the feeling that because he would be embarrassed at what he had to say, he would not look at her very closely.

‘It will be a surprise—a wonderful surprise for him when he knows who I am!’ she told herself.

But her words sounded more convincing than the feeling they evoked within her. She was still afraid he might be angry!

It seemed to her while she waited that every moment was an eternity. The clock ticking softly on the mantelpiece seemed to pause between every second, her heart beat feverishly in her breast, and she kept moistening her lips because they were dry.