Lucky Logan Finds Love by Barbara Cartland Read Free Book Online Page A

wardrobe room that her mother had brought back from Paris after her honeymoon.
    Belinda packed everything into them and there were not only her mother’s clothes.
    There were her brushes, combs, bottles half-filled with perfume and a great number of trinkets. There were small presents that Belinda and her father had given to her at Christmas and on her birthdays.
    She had treasured everything she had received from them ever since her marriage.
    There was so much to pack that, when Belinda had finished, she felt exhausted.
    She told herself that they at any rate had not been in the inventory.
    They belonged to her and if she was left with nothing else, then at least she could wear her mother’s clothes.
    She would feel that her mother was with her even if she were living in an attic.
    She closed the cupboard doors.
    Then, having strapped down and locked the trunks, she went downstairs.
    Her stepfather was in the drawing room and the inventory which he had obviously been reading again was on the table beside him.
    “Hello, Belinda! Where have you been?” he asked.
    “I have been packing up Mama’s clothes, because whatever else you may have pledged to the bank, those are mine!”
    Belinda spoke defiantly.
    Her stepfather, without looking at her, merely responded,
    “Yes, of course. They are obviously not part of the inventory your father had made.”
    As if he had suddenly thought of something, he asked,
    “What about furs? Your mother had some fine furs when I married her and I bought her some sables in Paris.”
    “Those are also mine!” Belinda replied firmly.
    In case her stepfather argued, she added quickly,
    “How could we ever allow anybody else to wear Mama’s things in which she looked so lovely?”
    Her stepfather rose from the chair.
    There was a sudden crash and Belinda knew that he had thrown his empty champagne glass into the fireplace.
    Then he walked out of the room, slamming the door behind him.
    She realised as he went that he was not angry with her.
    He was railing against Fate for taking the one woman he had ever really loved away from him.
    Belinda gave a deep sigh.
    ‘I am sorry if I hurt him, Mama,’ she said in her heart, ‘but he should not have placed us in this dreadful position!’
    Even as she thought about it, she looked round the room that her mother had made so pretty.
    It was a room she had loved ever since she had been a child.
    Then she went to the window and looked out into the garden.
    It seemed impossible with the sun sinking a little lower in the sky that so much beauty was no longer hers.
    She felt as if she knew every flower that bloomed in the garden, every blade of grass on the green lawns.
    The birds were going home to roost in the trees. She had listened to them ever since she was born.
    ‘It is mine!
My home
!’ she told herself defiantly
    Once again, because she was tilting at a windmill, she felt like bursting into tears.
    Then, as if her father was beside her, she knew that if she was to save her home and her stepfather, she had to be intelligent about it.
    She had to fight, and crying was only a sign of defeat.
    “I must – save it! I –
must
!” she murmured aloud
    As she said the words, a bird flew across the garden just ahead of her.
    It swooped upwards, silhouetted for a moment against the sun.
    She felt it was an omen, an omen that told her that, however dark things might seem, if she looked up, there was light.
    “I will fight – and I will –
win
!” Belinda shouted out aloud.
    She turned from the window and walking from the room, went in search of her stepfather.
    She felt that she had to comfort and support him. It was what her mother would want.
    She thought, too, that she must give him some of the strength that she herself had just drawn from her father.
    “
Never give up
!”
    The words seemed to be ringing in her ears as she walked across the hall.

Chapter Four
    Belinda put on the jacket that went with her gown and a small hat that would