The Glittering Lights (Bantam Series No. 12) Read Free

my step-sister was chaperoning you, we can hardly ignore the fact that she is widowed and that we must wear black for at least a month or two.”
    “Cassandra cannot be presented in the circumstances,” Lady Alice had said in concern. “I would take her to Buckingham Palace myself, despite the fact that I am in a wheel-chair, but how can I make an application before poor George is even in the grave. It would be in the worst possible taste.”
    “It does not worry me in the slightest, Mama,” Cassandra said. “Quite frankly I would much rather spend the summer here in Yorkshire. You know as well as I do that I enjoy the races, and I find my own friends with whom I have been brought up far more agreeable than all the strange notabilities to whom I should be very small fry.”
    “Dammit! I wanted you to have a London Season,” Sir James said irritably, “and I have made all the arrangements with the Duke.”
    That, Cassandra knew, annoyed her father more than anything else.
    Sir James and the Duke of Alchester had decided many years ago that their children should marry each other.
    The Duke wanted an heiress for his son—he made no bones about it! His great estate was mortgaged, the house was in disrepair, and the Marquess of Charlbury was well aware that he had to marry money.
    “I had been half-afraid that I should have to put up with a damned American or a tradesman’s daughter,” the Duke had snorted to Sir James. “What could be better than that your girl and my boy should make a match, and we can see that they do things properly?”
    The Marquess of Charlbury, who was six years older than Cassandra, had been abroad when it had all been decided.
    “I have sent the boy to see the world,” the late Duke said. “It will make him appreciate his position in this country. No-body, as you well know, Sherburn, has a better family tree or a finer family seat. It is just that we have not enough money to keep it up.”
    Sir James and the Duke of Alchester had been friends for some years. They had met at Tattersall’s Sale-rooms where for some months they vied against each other in trying to acquire the finest horses.
    It was after Sir James had out-bid the Duke and paid an exorbitant price for two particularly fine hunters, that he had walked up to the older man to say:
    “It strikes me, Your Grace, that we are pouring a lot of unnecessary money, not only into the pockets of the owners, but also into the hands of those who run this Sale-room.”
    The Duke looked at Sir James in surprise. Then he had succumbed, just as so many other people had done before him, to the younger man’s charm.
    “What do you suggest we do about it?” he asked.
    “Come to a sensible arrangement between us!” Sir James replied. “We can inspect the horses before the sales, pick out those in which we are personally interested, and agree as to which ones each shall bid for.”
    The same agreement applied to their race-horses. When they went to the Newmarket or to the sales which took place on the race-course, they were always seen consulting each other and if one of them was bidding the other was silent.
    Because the love of horses is the closest bond that an Englishman can have with another, the Duke and Sir James Sherburn became close friends.
    Cassandra was only twelve when she first saw the Marquis of Charlbury.
    Her father had taken her to the Eton v. Harrow cricket match at Lords. They had a Coach on the Mound, where an innumerable number of people of all ages drank champagne and ate raspberries and cream, usually with their backs to the cricket.
    Cassandra however watched the boys in their white flannels fighting the annual battle of Eton College against Harrow School, and it had been impossible not to realise that the Captain of Eton was an outstanding young man.
    He took four wickets and made sixty runs and had, it appeared, ensured almost single-handed that Eton was the winner.
    He had been brought by the Duke to Sir James’s