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

tied to her injured mother.
    He would in consequence occasionally escape from the conventional role he played to perfection to enjoy himself in London, to take a pretty woman out to supper and dance with her, as her poor mother could never dance again.
    Sir James’s love affairs never encroached upon his home.
    There were numerous women in the County who pursued him quite shamelessly. He flattered them and paid them compliments, but he made quite certain that as far as he was concerned that was the beginning and the end of their association.
    It would have violated his principles to go any further.
    In Yorkshire he was the devoted husband, a man of integrity and responsibility, who had built up an impregnable position of authority in the County and was respected by all who knew him.
    What he did in London was in fact nobody’s business.
    On his periodic journeys which involved attending race meetings and Tattersalls Sales, buying pictures and furniture, there were evenings when Sir James was certainly not dining in Park Lane with his Step-sister, nor was he at the Banquets, Dinner Parties or the Royal occasions graced by the Prince of Wales, to which he was invited.
    If on his return home there was a flood of tinted envelopes, jauntily perfumed, and impetuous telegrams, neither Lady Alice nor Cassandra was aware of them.
    But sometimes when her father was away, Cassandra thought her mother seemed a little more restless, and very occasionally she would protest against the fate which kept her tied to a wheel-chair.
    At other times Lady Alice never complained. Never in front of her husband by word or deed did she ever draw attention to her helplessness or invite his sympathy.
    Instead she made herself so attractive that when people stayed in the house or were entertained at The Towers, they would often say to Cassandra, afterwards:
    “You know, I keep forgetting that your mother is confined to a wheel-chair. She is so unbelievably brave and never makes anyone embarrassed by referring to it, that I always think of her as living quite a normal life.”
    “My father and I feel like that too,” Cassandra would reply, and it had in fact been the truth.
    But there was no disguising the unutterable gladness on Lady Alice’s face when Sir James returned from London! Her arms would go out to him with a cry of welcome which to Cassandra was more moving and revealing than any words.
    “Have you missed me, my darling?” Cassandra heard her father say once as he bent to put his arms around his wife.
    “You know that every moment when we are apart seems like an eternity of emptiness,” Lady Alice replied.
    Cassandra had felt the tears come into her eyes as she recognised the throb of anguish in her mother’s voice.
    ‘That is love!’ she told herself now. ‘Love is when one can sacrifice one’s own feelings so that the other person shall be happy! At the same time, Mama knows that Papa loves her with all his heart.’
    It would be different where she and the Duke were concerned: he would have no love for her, only a sense of duty.
    “I cannot bear it! I cannot bear it!” she said aloud again.
    She decided that if her plan failed, if she learnt that the Duke’s heart belonged elsewhere, then she would brave her father’s anger and would refuse categorically to marry him, whatever the consequences.
    Cassandra took off her silk wrapper and got into bed.
    “I will give him a fair chance,” she said aloud. “In fact he shall have more than a chance. I am giving myself a handicap in my efforts to be sporting about it!”
    She tried to smile at the racing jargon but failed.
    Instead she buried her face in the pillow and tried to think, not of the Duke of Alchester, but the part she must play in attempting to deceive him.
    In the train to London Cassandra went over her plans a dozen times, and it seemed as if the wheels of the train sounded an accompaniment to what she was thinking.
    “It is crazy—it is crazy—it is crazy!”