The Glittering Lights (Bantam Series No. 12) (9 page)

“How do you know that?” he asked.

Cassandra laughed.

“Are you really surprised that I can read?”

“You mean the newspapers! You should never believe all you read in those scurrilous rags.”

“Nevertheless, they cannot invent all the things they say about you,” Cassandra said. “I read for instance that you attained a First Class Degree at Oxford and that at one time you considered a career in the Diplomatic Service. That must mean that you are able to speak several languages.”

“That was a long time ago,” the Duke answered. “I suppose I was ambitious once, but then I decided it was all too much trouble.”

“I think people are happier when they are working at something which interests them.”

“Is that what you find?”

“I am always interested in what I am doing,” Cassandra answered truthfully.

“Tell me about yourself.”

“What do you want to know?”

“Are you acting at the moment?”

“No, I have come South to London for singing lessons. There is a chance of my getting a good part in a Musical Comedy, but my voice is not yet strong enough and I have to work hard at it for at least a month.”

“Who has arranged all this for you?”

It was a question Cassandra had not expected and she had to think for a moment before she replied:

“A ... friend has given me an introduction to a good teacher.”

As soon as she spoke she saw the Dukes eyes glance at the diamonds in her ears and in her hair and she wondered if he thought a man had paid for them.

She felt the blood rising in her cheeks and a little ripple of fear run through her in case the Duke should be shocked.

Then she told herself not to worry: it was what he would expect from anyone in the theatre-world. Had her father not said that men liked giving presents to actresses they took out to supper?

“So you are spending a month in London,” the Duke said reflectively. “Will you be very busy all of the time?”

She smiled at him.

“I am always ready to be ... tempted into playing truant.”

“They tell me that is a part I play extremely well,” the Duke said. “Will you come to the theatre with me one night?”

“I would enjoy that,” Cassandra said simply. “I had not been to a theatre in London for a very long time until tonight when I saw ‘Enemies’.”

“What did you think of it?”

“I think Mrs. Langtry was magnificent in the part.”

“She is extremely adaptable,” the Duke said.

Then, as if Mrs. Langtry did not particularly interest him, he went on:

“Now will you tell me the serious reason why you wanted to meet me?”

Cassandra had her story ready. She had thought it all out coming down to London in the train.

“Do you remember a groom your father once had with the name of ‘Abbey?’ ”

There was a little frown of concentration between the Dukes eyes.

“Do you mean a man who was at Alchester many years ago when I was a child?”

“That would be Abbey,” Cassandra replied. “I knew him when he was very old. I used to visit him in the cottage to which he retired.”

“Of course, I remember old Abbey!” the Duke exclaimed. “Even when I was a child his face was like a withered walnut. He must have been a hundred when you knew him.”

“He was eighty-seven before he died,” Cassandra said. “He asked me, just before his last illness to tell you, if we ever met, that he still had the horseshoe that you gave him.”

“Good Heavens!” the Duke exclaimed. “I remember the incident well! Abbey was an inveterate gambler. He never had a penny to his name and he was always full of stories of how his horse had been pipped at the post.”

“Yes, I heard them too,” Cassandra said with a little smile.

“One day when he was taking me out riding,” the Duke went on, “we stopped for a rest and I was running around, as small boys do, and found a discarded horseshoe.

“ ‘Look, Abbey,’ I cried, ‘I have found a horseshoe.’

“ ‘So you have, Master Varro,’ he replied. It’ll bring you luck’.”

“I remember debating with myself for a moment, because I wanted to take the horseshoe back home to show my father, but then I said:

‘I think you need luck more than I do, Abbey,’ and I gave it to him.”

“That is exactly the same story that he told me,” Cassandra said with a little cry of delight. “The horseshoe stood on his mantelpiece right up to the day of his death. It was in the place of honour and I think it did bring him luck.”

“I have not thought of Abbey for years,” the Duke said. “I have an idea he went to work for a racehorse owner called Sir James Sherburn. Is that right?”

“He may have,” Cassandra said lightly. “When I knew him he was far too old to work. He talked of nothing but horses.”

“And what could be a better subject?” the Duke enquired. “Except of course, beautiful women!”

There was no disguising the expression in his eyes.

“I believe you are an acknowledged judge of both,” Cassandra answered.

“Again you flatter me,” the Duke answered. “Shall I tell you I cannot resist a fine horse or a lovely woman, and you are very lovely, Miss Standish!”

Cassandra could not prevent the blush rising in her cheeks, and for a moment her eye-lashes flickered shyly. Then she forced herself to say:

“Your Grace is obviously also an expert flatterer.”

“You say that with a cynical note in your voice which I do not like!” he said accusingly. “How can I convince you that I am sincere? Surely in the North, or wherever you come from, there must be men who have eyes in their heads and are not completely blind?”

“They can see with their eyes,” Cassandra answered, “but perhaps they are not quite so glib with their tongues as you gentlemen in the South!”

The Duke threw back his head and laughed.

“You have an answer to everything. Come, let us go and dance and I hope that as you are a stranger to London you do not know many other men here tonight”

“As a matter of fact, I am throwing myself on your mercy,” Cassandra answered, “as I do not wish to keep bothering Mrs. Langtry for introductions.”

“There is no need for that,” the Duke said firmly. “I will look after you, and that is something at which I can assure you, without boasting, I am very proficient!”

The dance-floor was even more crowded than when they had left it, but the Duke skilfully steered them round the room and Cassandra wondered how she had ever enjoyed dancing in the past.

It was something quite different to be held in the Duke’s arms; to feel her hand in his and know the tulle trimming her
décolletage
brushed against the satin facing of his evening-coat.

“You dance divinely!” he said. “Do you dance on the stage?”

“I am a better ... actress,” Cassandra replied.

The party was getting even noisier than it had been in the earlier part of the evening, and now as the dance came to an end the Band started up the loud gay music which heralded the Can-Can.

“We will watch this,” the Duke said. “It is always amusing.” Cassandra had read in her father’s sporting papers of how the Can-Can had startled London some years before.

Brought from Paris by a
troupe
consisting of two men and a girl, who were brothers and sister, they appeared at The Oxford Music Hall, and packed the place night after night.

The Can-Can was considered the very height of impropriety and even
The Sporting Times
had some very scathing things to say about it.

Cassandra did not read this paper bought by her father, because she was interested in the “Seamy” side of London, nor in the broad jokes which she did not understand.

She read it because so often the Duke, as the Marquis of Charlbury, was mentioned in it.

Every few months or so
The Sporting Times
gave a list of what they called “The Young Bloods About Town.”

It also referred to the “Mashers” who haunted the stage-door of the Gaiety and were to be found at “the promenades” of all the Music Halls.

Cassandra added cuttings which mentioned the Marquis to her Album, but when she was searching for his name it was impossible not to be interested in the theatre gossip with which she realised he was so closely connected.

The Can-Can was later to lose The Alhambra its licence because of the slim legs and high kicks of a young lady called “Wiry Sal.”

Cassandra had often wondered exactly what it was like and now she was to find out!

Quite a number of Lord Carwen’s female guests considered they were proficient at the dance which had been denounced even in Paris because it revealed what women wore under their skirts—and what they did not wear!

It was obvious that the ladies of Lord Carwen’s party wore extremely frilly and lacy underclothes.

Amid the roars of applause from the Gentlemen guests present, they kicked their legs and went on kicking them round and round the room.

Cheeks became flushed, hair became loosened, but the high lacks went on with more and more frothy underclothes being revealed until, despite every resolution, Cassandra found herself really shocked.

The Duke was looking amused, but he was not cheering and shouting like the other men, who endeavoured to incite the girls to kick their legs even higher and be even more daring than they were already.

She felt she could not go on looking at members of her own sex making such disgusting exhibitions of themselves. She felt as if she too was degraded because she was a woman.

“It is very ... hot,” she murmured and turned away from the dance floor towards a window.

The Duke followed her.

Cassandra stood looking out into the darkness of the Park. She could just see the branches of the trees silhouetted against the sky.

“You have never seen the Can-Can before?” the Duke asked.

“No, no.”

“You are surprised? It is not what you expected?”

“No.”

“I have the feeling you are shocked,” he said, his eyes on Cassandra’s averted face.

‘It ... seems somewhat ... abandoned,” she faltered.

“I understand. I do not expect that such extravagances have yet reached the North.”

“No.”

Behind them the dancers had collapsed into chairs around the Ball-Room and even onto the floor itself, panting and exhausted. Now the Band changed from the exuberant music to a soft, dreamy Waltz.

Cassandra looked at the Duke expecting him to invite her once again onto the floor, when a voice beside her said:

“You promised me a dance, pretty lady!”

She glanced up and saw Lord Carwen standing beside them.

“I hope Varro has been entertaining you,” Lord Carwen said, “while I was regretfully too busy to do so.”

“He has been very kind,” Cassandra murmured.

“And now I must see if I can equal or even excel his kindness,” Lord Carwen said.

He drew Cassandra into his arms and they began to dance.

She realised that he was holding her too closely and too tightly. When she tried to move a little further away from him, he merely laughed down at her.

“You are very lovely, Sandra.”

She felt herself stiffen at his familiar use of her Christian name, then told herself it was out of character.

“You have a lovely house, My Lord.”

“I am not interested in my house, but in the loveliest person in it,” he replied. “Lily Langtry tells me you have just come to London. You must allow me to show you some of the amusements.”

“Thank you,” Cassandra answered, “but I am afraid I shall be very busy with my singing lessons.”

Lord Carwen laughed.

“It does not matter whether you sing or not,” he said. “You only have to look as you look now and you will fill the theatre for a thousand nights!”

He paused and added:

“That is, if the theatre is really important to you. I can think of more interesting things to do.”

“And what could they be?” Cassandra asked without really considering what his answer was likely to be.

“That is something I can explain to you in great detail,” Lord Carwen said tightening his arm around her waist.

As he did so Cassandra realised that she disliked him.

It was not only because he was treating her in a familiar manner —that was her own fault; she had invited it upon herself.

But there was something unpleasant about him as a man, and she was a good judge of people.

Even as a child she had seldom been wrong in judging the character or the characteristics of the people who came to The Towers and Sir James had encouraged this perceptiveness.

“How did that man strike you?” he would ask when someone had come to luncheon or for dinner. “What did you think of that fellow?”

Sometimes Cassandra would say: