104. the Glittering Lights Read online

  AUTHOR’S NOTE

  The background of this novel is authentic – the descriptions and gossip about the beautiful Lily Langtry, the show at The Gaiety Theatre and its pretty leading ladies, the restaurants in London like Romanos, Rules, the Café Royal are all part of the history of the time.

  Chapter One 1886

  “I am back, Mama.”

  “Oh, Cassandra, I have been so worried! You are very late!”

  “I had trouble with one of the horses,” Cassandra replied, walking across the drawing room to where her mother was sitting in a wheelchair in front of the fire.

  As she reached her, Lady Alice Sherburn looked up and gave an exclamation of horror.

  Her daughter was certainly looking most disreputable.

  Her habit was splashed with mud, her hair had escaped from beneath her riding hat and she also appeared to be extremely wet.

  Cassandra saw her mother’s face and gave a little laugh.

  “I am safe and sound,” she said reassuringly, “but wet through! It’s raining and I had a fall.”

  “Cassandra!”

  The cry was one of horror.

  Reaching her mother’s side, Cassandra leaned down and kissed her cheek.

  “Now don’t you worry, Mama, about something that has not happened. It was not a bad fall and, although I may be a little stiff tomorrow, there are no bones broken and not too many bruises – not where they will show anyway!”

  “Cassandra, my dearest, if anything happened to you, I do not think I could bear it.”

  “I know that, Mama,” Cassandra said in a soft voice, “and that is why I came in to tell you I was back before I went upstairs to change. Otherwise I would not have let you see me looking like this.”

  She saw the fear still lurking in her mother’s eyes and said quietly,

  “You know that lightning never strikes in the same place twice. You have taken all the dangers of the family upon yourself, so Papa and I are likely to get off scot-free.”

  “If only you were not so reckless,” Lady Alice murmured almost beneath her breath.

  Cassandra kissed her mother’s cheek once again.

  “There is nothing you and Papa would dislike more than if I were a mouse-like little miss, sitting at home with my tatting,” she countered. “And you, as one of the best horsewomen the County ever saw, would disown a daughter who trit-trotted along the roads and looked for gaps in the hedges.”

  Lady Alice smiled.

  “I cannot imagine you ever being that kind of rider! Go and change, child, and when you are looking decent your father wants to see you.”

  “He will have to wait a little while,” Cassandra replied airily. “I must have a bath and, while I am about it, I shall put on my evening gown. So tell Papa, if he asks for me, it will be at least an hour before he can expect me.”

  “I will send a message to your father,” Lady Alice replied. “Cassandra, I – ”

  But her daughter had already left the room and was running up the broad stairway to her own bedroom.

  Her maid, Hannah, was waiting for her there and, like Lady Alice, she gave an exclamation of horror at Cassandra’s appearance.

  “Now don’t you start screaming at me,” Cassandra admonished with a smile. “I took a toss this afternoon. It was all my fault. I tried a young horse at too high a fence and he refused at the last moment.”

  “You’ll break your neck one of these days, Miss Cassandra,” Hannah said in the scolding voice of an old servant whose affection allows her to take liberties.

  Cassandra did not answer and she went on,

  “And I should have thought that seein’ your mother every day in her wheelchair would be a warnin’ to you. But no, you ride as if the devil himself was at your heels! But one day, you’ll get what’s comin’ to you.”

  Cassandra gave a little sigh.

  She had heard all this before. At the same time she understood her mother’s anxiety and Hannah’s.

  For the last fifteen years, Lady Alice had been confined to a wheelchair, having broken her back out hunting.

  Yet, surprisingly, it had drawn her and her husband closer together.

  There had never been, people said, a more devoted considerate man than Sir James Sherburn, and Lady Alice’s love for him was very evident every time her eyes rested on his handsome face.

  The real tragedy lay in the fact that because of her incapacity they could have no more children.

  Cassandra, who was five at the time of her mother’s accident, was their only child.

  That she was lovely, daring, reckless and impulsive was to be expected in the offspring of two such attractive and unusual people and Cassandra had certainly lived up to their expectations of her.

  To begin with, she was startlingly beautiful.

  As Hannah took off her dirty riding habit, she stood for a moment naked before stepping into her bath, which was waiting in front of the fire.

  The perfection of her slender figure with its white skin made her look like a young Goddess.

  She released her hair from the last remaining pins that had not been dislodged while riding and it fell over her shoulders reaching nearly to her waist.

  It was a colour that drew every man’s eyes when she entered a room. Deep red, it was highlighted with streaks of gold, which appeared to ripple through it and shine tantalisingly, so that no one was able to exactly describe it.

  Cassandra’s hair was a heritage from her father and he often said that ‘red hair ran like wine’ in the Sherburn family.

  But she had her mother’s eyes and Lady Alice came from a long line of Irish Nobility.

  The O’Derrys had been Earls of Ireland for generations and it was always said that the dark lashes that framed their blue eyes were a legacy from a Spanish ancestor.

  He had, according to legend, been swept up on the South coast of Ireland from one of the wrecked galleons of the Spanish Armada and had married the pretty daughter of his captor.

  The combination of her red hair and her blue eyes made Cassandra inevitably the object of attention.

  It would have been a blind man who could resist the enticement of her smile or the way her laugh would ring out making everyone want to laugh with her.

  She was naturally gay, invariably happy and an irrepressible madcap, which made some older members of Yorkshire Society raise their eyebrows and look down their aristocratic noses.

  But even they had to admit that Cassandra was irresistible and they forgave her escapades, which would have brought down the full weight of their disapproval on any other girl.

  “I have had a really marvellous day,” Cassandra enthused as, having washed herself, she lay back in the bath, feeling her stiffness ease away in the warm water.

  She thought with satisfaction of the results she had obtained with the young horses her father had bought for her the previous week.

  There was not another girl in the whole of Yorkshire who could have attempted to school her own mounts or to ride them over what was in effect a private steeplechase course in the grounds of her own home.

  “By the time hunting starts,” she said, talking more to herself than to Hannah, “I shall have horses with which I shall out-ride and out-stay anyone else in the field.”

  “You’ll do that – if you’re alive to tell the tale!” Hannah responded tartly.

  She went from the room as she spoke, carrying the mudded and wet habit with her.

  Cassandra laughed to herself.

  She was used to Hannah fussing over her, but it hurt her if she knew that her mother was anxious. That was why she had hurried in to see Lady Alice before she went upstairs to change.

  At twenty Cassandra had lost her last remn
ants of adolescent awkwardness and to a great degree her shyness.

  She was usually very sure of herself and she would have been stupid, which she was not, if she had not been conscious of her own attractions.

  There was hardly a young man in the whole neighbourhood who had not pursued her ardently and incessantly.

  While she laughed at them for being immature, she was well aware that there was a glint in the eyes of her father’s old acquaintances when they looked at her and that the compliments they paid her were, for the most part, sincere.

  ‘Thank goodness we are not dining out tonight,’ she thought as she stepped out of the bath.

  The Sherburns lived in a very hospitable neighbourhood despite the fact that on the map it appeared somewhat isolated.

  It was however, excellent hunting country and that was what mattered, combined with the good fortune of having a large number of young people among the families of the big landowners.

  When Cassandra finished drying herself, Hannah was ready to help her into one of the exquisite gowns on which her father was only too happy to spend exorbitant sums.

  Naturally they came from London and were the source of considerable envy, and sometimes a little malice, amongst the other girls of Cassandra’s age.

  But it was difficult for anyone to resent her for long.

  She was as charming to women as she was to men and, apart from her shocking the older generation by behaving more like a boy than a girl in the hunting field and at other sports, there was no denying that she had been very properly brought up.

  “Thank you, Hannah,” she said now as she finished dressing. “Be an angel and call me at seven o’clock tomorrow morning.”

  “You’re not goin’ ridin’ at that unearthly hour!” Hannah exclaimed. “Not after you’ve been out so late today.”

  “I am not going to let my horses forget what I have already taught them,” Cassandra replied, “and tomorrow I will get Flycatcher to jump that fence, I am sure of it!”

  “You’re temptin’ Providence, that’s what you be doin’,” Hannah said warningly.

  But Cassandra only laughed at her once again.

  “If I break my neck, it will give you so much satisfaction to say ‘I told you so’.” she teased.

  With her gown making a silky swish behind her, she went down the stairs towards her father’s study.

  She stepped into the room and he looked up from his desk, appreciating with the eyes of a man who was a connoisseur of beautiful women how lovely she looked.

  Her dress was the pale leaf green of the spring buds that were just beginning to show on the trees and a skilful hand had moulded it over the front of her body so that it revealed the perfect contours of her breasts and her tiny waist.

  It was almost classical in its simplicity to fall from the bustle in a cascade of frills that ended in a small train.

  It was the dress of a young girl and yet every line proclaimed it to have been extremely expensive.

  Cassandra wore no jewellery, as with her white skin that had the texture of a magnolia she needed none.

  Her hair was swept back from her oval forehead and because she had been in a hurry, Hannah had simply arranged it in a large chignon rather than in the multiple curls that her father preferred.

  But whichever way Cassandra wore her unusual and beautiful hair, it was always spectacular.

  “I am sorry if I kept you waiting, Papa,” she said as she walked across the large room and lifted up her face for him to kiss her.

  “I forgive you, my dearest,” he replied.

  When they were together, the likeness between father and daughter was very obvious, despite the fact that Cassandra was small-boned with delicate very feminine features and Sir James was a handsome very masculine man.

  He was dressed with an elegance that accentuated the lean and athletic lines of his figure.

  His clean-cut features, his eyes that seemed to have a permanent twinkle in them and his ability to make the most outrageously flattering compliments sound sincere, rendered him irresistible to women.

  “I wish you had been with me, Papa,” Cassandra exclaimed. “Those horses are outstanding! I cannot tell you how excited I am by their performance.”

  “I am glad they please you, my dearest.”

  “You know they do,” Cassandra answered, “and I think we have a real winner in Andora.”

  “I seldom make a mistake when it comes to horseflesh,” Sir James murmured.

  Cassandra walked towards the fire.

  It was the end of March, but the weather was still very chill and The Towers was a cold house, being not only very large but built on the summit of a hill with magnificent views over the surrounding countryside.

  “Mama was worried because I was late,” Cassandra said.

  “I know,” Sir James answered. “Try not to upset her, my dearest.”

  “I do try, but Flycatcher threw me. I had to school him for at least half an hour afterwards, otherwise he would have thought he could get away with it.”

  Sir James, who had followed Cassandra to the fireplace, smiled at her gently.

  “I think you now are as proficient with horses as I am and, quite frankly, I could not pay you a bigger compliment.”

  “I would not like to suggest that you sound conceited,” Cassandra teased. “At the same time I know that something has pleased you. What is it, apart from me?”

  “You always please me,” Sir James said with a note of seriousness in his voice, “but you are right as usual. There is something I have to tell you.”

  “What can it be?” she asked.

  She had a feeling that it was something unusual from the expression on her father s face,

  Sir James hesitated for a moment and then he said quietly,

  “I have had a letter from the Duke.”

  Cassandra was very still.

  “I have been expecting it, as you well know,” Sir James went on. “Equally I began to feel that since he had come into the title he was no longer interested in the arrangements his father had made for him.”

  “It is over a year,” Cassandra murmured almost beneath her breath.

  “I know that,” Sir James said, “and I should think it almost insulting if he had not prefixed his letter with ‘now that the period of mourning for my father has ended’ – ”

  “And how does he go on?” Cassandra asked.

  “He suggests that his visit here, which has been postponed for so long, should now take place,” Sir James replied. “He asks if he would be welcome in two weeks’ time, on the tenth of April to be exact.”

  Cassandra turned her head away to look at the fire. She held out her hands towards the flames as if she suddenly felt cold.

  Sir James looked at her profile for a little while before he said,

  “You know, my dearest, without my having to tell you, that I have always wanted you to marry the son of my old friend. We have not spoken about it for some time, but we are both aware that it has been in the back of our minds.”

  ‘That is true,’ Cassandra thought.

  She and her father always knew what the other was thinking and it had been obvious these past months that they both deliberately avoided the subject of her marriage.

  “It was all arranged and everything appeared to be straightforward,” Sir James continued, “until everything was upset by two, or should I say three, unexpected deaths.”

  ‘That also is true,’ Cassandra thought.

  It had been planned that she should make her debut in the summer of 1884.

  She was to have gone to London and her father had planned a ball at a house he had recently acquired in Park Lane.

  She was to have been presented at Buckingham Palace and to have been chaperoned, as her mother was unable to do so, by her father’s step-sister, Lady Fladbury.

  Then a week before they were due to leave Yorkshire, her mother’s father, the Earl of O’Derry, had died and they had been plunged into mourning.
/>   Queen Victoria had set a precedent for mourning long and ostentatiously every relative however seldom one had met them and however slight the ties of affection.

  It was therefore impossible for Cassandra to make her debut then. All the arrangements that had been made in London were cancelled and they stayed in Yorkshire.

  The following year the scene was set once again and Lady Fladbury who was only too willing to present Cassandra to London Society, had actually sent out invitations to receptions, soirées and balls to coincide with her arrival in London.

  Two days before Cassandra and her father were due to set out from Yorkshire, Lord Fladbury died of a sudden heart attack.

  “That settles it!” Cassandra said. “I am obviously fated not to be a debutante!”

  “Fladbury was only an uncle by marriage,” Sir James said, “but as the Social world knows that my stepsister 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 wheelchair, 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 I have been brought up with 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 and he made no bones about it! His great estate was mortgaged, the house was in disrepair and the Marquis 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.”