The Glittering Lights (Bantam Series No. 12) by Barbara Cartland Read Free Book Online

to supper.
    And naturally in her dreams the one upon whom she had bestowed her favour was the Duke of Alchester.
    ‘A child’s imagination,’ she had told herself during the last six months, when despite every resolution the dream had returned to her.
    Why should she not compete with the Gaiety Girls? Why should they have all the fun and collect all the men? Or was she worrying about only one man in particular?
    There were a million questions which presented themselves and to which she could find no answer.
    Now she knew that in some subtle and insidious way her adolescent dreams had become so much a part of her thinking that they were assuming reality.
    It was mad! It was crazy! It was a recklessness that would excel anything she had ever done before, and yet she was determined to meet the Duke on his own ground.
    She would see him as he was when he was not pretending, when he was not putting on an act for her father’s benefit and for hers.
    ‘I have to do it,’ she told her own reflection in the mirror. ‘I must do it! I cannot go on allowing Papa to live in a Fool’s Paradise, thinking that I shall agree to his plans when I have no intention of doing so.’
    She had been so sure ever since Christmas that the Duke would not write, and that sooner or later Sir James would have to realise that for once in his life he had lost a race.
    It was just her father’s proverbial luck, Cassandra thought, that now his horse should romp home at the last moment. It was the sort of thing that always happened to Sir James!
    ‘But this time,’ she told herself bitterly, ‘there is going to be no gold cup for the winner.’
    She walked across her bed-room restlessly, knowing it would be impossible for her to go to bed and sleep until everything was settled in her mind.
    ‘Supposing,’ her brain said to her, ‘when you see the Duke you fall crazily in love with him—more in love than you have ever been?’
    ‘I still will not marry him if he cares for someone else,’ Cassandra answered.
    Even as she spoke the words beneath her breath she wondered if they were true.
    Would she be strong enough to refuse to marry the man she loved, to turn away from him, even if he was willing to marry her, because she could not endure the humiliation of loving where she was not loved?
    ‘How could I be fool enough to think he would come to care for me in time?’
    She knew she had more pride than that.
    If she was convinced in her mind that he really loved someone else then she would be strong enough to say “No.”
    ‘I shall never be sure whether he is telling me the truth or not unless I see him when he is off his guard,’ Cassandra said to herself.
    She had in fact thought this all out quite a long time ago, and whilst she dismissed it as sheer nonsense, she knew that like her father she was merely planning ahead. All she had to do now was to translate her thoughts into action.
    She would go to London. She had already decided that. And it was a genuine excuse for her to wish to buy clothes.
    Somehow she must meet the Duke, not as Cassandra Sherburn, but as an actress, as the type of woman in whom he was interested.
    She would be gay, amusing, sparkling with a joie de vivre which he could not find among simpering young girls or even the sophisticated society women who sought his company because he was the bearer of a noble title.
    Almost like a puzzle, the pieces fell into place, making a complete picture that Cassandra could look at and know that, in its own way, it was faultless.
    She had already told herself a long time ago that Lily Langtry would be a passport to the glittering world she was determined to enter.
    To Cassandra her father’s friendship with the Jersey Lily implied only a discreet flirtation. She had no awareness of physical passion, which had never intruded upon her sheltered life.
    She thought she understood that her father, so handsome, so attractive to women and so masculine, must find it hard at times, to be