No Time For Love (Bantam Series No. 40) by Barbara Cartland Read Free Book Online Page B

him one of the best suites and only the Purser was aware of how difficult it had been to re-allot the other passengers without causing offence.
    However as an experienced traveller, Wynstan approved his cabins, tipped his stewards, which he always did at the beginning of the voyage, and left his valet to arrange things in the manner he found most comfortable.
    He settled himself down in an arm-chair, ordered a drink, and studied the passenger-list.
    There had been no-one to wave him good-bye on the Quay, a custom he always detested. It suited him that Harvey had been insistent that he should creep out of America as quietly as possible, so that no-one, except his immediate family should be aware that he was leaving.
    “For God’s sake, Wynstan, do not get involved with the Press,” he said. “You know what they are like if they suspect that anything unusual is occurring.”
    Wynstan however had been concerned less about the Press than about his mother.
    “I thought you would stay with me, darling,” Mrs. Vanderfeld said tearfully when he told her he had to sail to Europe immediately.
    “I know, Mama, and I wished to be with you now,” Wynstan replied, “but I have unfortunately promised to help this friend of mine if he was ever in trouble, and now he is keeping me to my promise.”
    “He?” Mrs. Vanderfeld asked suspiciously. “You do not expect me to believe, Wynstan, that there is not a woman at the bottom of it?”
    “Your mind invariably works in the same direction, Mama,” Wynstan replied with a smile. “There must be some French blood in you because your maxim is always ‘ cherchez la femme ’!”
    “With reason!” Mrs. Vanderfeld replied. “I thought you had finished your affair with that French actress, what was her name?”
    “Gaby Deslys,” Wynstan answered. “How did you know about her?”
    “I hear about everything,” Mrs. Vanderfeld said with satisfaction, “and although you are determined not to tell me the truth about this hasty journey of yours, you can be sure I will learn every detail about it sooner or later!”
    “I am sure you will, Mama,” Wynstan agreed.
    His mother looked at him as he sat on the end of her enormous bed, an imitation of the elaborate blue and silver one used by King Ludwig of Bavaria.
    The curtains, dressing-table cover, pillow cases and the edges of the sheets were all edged with real Venetian lace, and there was a balustrade separating the bed from the rest of the room as in most Royal State bed-rooms in France and Bavaria.
    “I suppose,” Wynstan had said when he first saw it, “that only princes of the blood are allowed behind the balustrade.”
    “Really, Wynstan, you are not to say such things!” his mother had replied.
    At the same time she loved it when he teased her, especially about her admirers of whom she had quite a number even in her old age.
    “You know, Wynstan,” she said now looking at his handsome face appreciatively. “I think you are a throw-back to one of my forbears who was a pirate and buccaneer at the time of Queen Elizabeth. He had a way with women. Otherwise, the Queen would have had little use for him.”
    “And yet she remained a virgin,” Wynstan said.
    “I have often had my doubts about that!” Mrs. Vanderfeld remarked, and her son laughed.
    “If you talk like that in front of Harvey, Mama, he will have a stroke! He is running his whole campaign on purity and insists that we must all be Puritans!”
    “It is the last thing I have ever wanted to be,” Mrs. Vanderfeld said sharply. “Harvey is an old woman—he always has been! At the same time I would like to see him at the White House.”
    “And so would I,” Wynstan said. “It would make him so happy, and at least he is a great deal better-looking than Theodore Roosevelt!”
    “That would not be difficult!” Mrs. Vanderfeld snapped, “but I am not certain you would not make a more effective President!”
    Wynstan put up his hands in horror.
    “Have you