The Glittering Lights (Bantam Series No. 12) by Barbara Cartland

one. Which will you have first?”
    “The frivolous one!” the Duke replied. “At this sort of party one never wants to be serious.”
    ‘“Well ... the frivolous reason is that I have often wondered why someone as gifted as you are should find the theatre more amusing than anything else.”
    She realised as she spoke she was being deliberately provocative. Yet she knew she had to hold his attention, to make him curious about her, or else she might lose him as quickly as she had found him.
    “How do you know that?” he asked.
    Cassandra laughed.
    “Are you really surprised that I can read?”
    “You mean the newspapers! You should never believe all you read in those scurrilous rags.”
    “Nevertheless, they cannot invent all the things they say about you,” Cassandra said. “I read for instance that you attained a First Class Degree at Oxford and that at one time you considered a career in the Diplomatic Service. That must mean that you are able to speak several languages.”
    “That was a long time ago,” the Duke answered. “I suppose I was ambitious once, but then I decided it was all too much trouble.”
    “I think people are happier when they are working at something which interests them.”
    “Is that what you find?”
    “I am always interested in what I am doing,” Cassandra answered truthfully.
    “Tell me about yourself.”
    “What do you want to know?”
    “Are you acting at the moment?”
    “No, I have come South to London for singing lessons. There is a chance of my getting a good part in a Musical Comedy, but my voice is not yet strong enough and I have to work hard at it for at least a month.”
    “Who has arranged all this for you?”
    It was a question Cassandra had not expected and she had to think for a moment before she replied:
    “A ... friend has given me an introduction to a good teacher.”
    As soon as she spoke she saw the Dukes eyes glance at the diamonds in her ears and in her hair and she wondered if he thought a man had paid for them.
    She felt the blood rising in her cheeks and a little ripple of fear run through her in case the Duke should be shocked.
    Then she told herself not to worry: it was what he would expect from anyone in the theatre-world. Had her father not said that men liked giving presents to actresses they took out to supper?
    “So you are spending a month in London,” the Duke said reflectively. “Will you be very busy all of the time?”
    She smiled at him.
    “I am always ready to be ... tempted into playing truant.”
    “They tell me that is a part I play extremely well,” the Duke said. “Will you come to the theatre with me one night?”
    “I would enjoy that,” Cassandra said simply. “I had not been to a theatre in London for a very long time until tonight when I saw ‘Enemies’.”
    “What did you think of it?”
    “I think Mrs. Langtry was magnificent in the part.”
    “She is extremely adaptable,” the Duke said.
    Then, as if Mrs. Langtry did not particularly interest him, he went on:
    “Now will you tell me the serious reason why you wanted to meet me?”
    Cassandra had her story ready. She had thought it all out coming down to London in the train.
    “Do you remember a groom your father once had with the name of ‘Abbey?’ ”
    There was a little frown of concentration between the Dukes eyes.
    “Do you mean a man who was at Alchester many years ago when I was a child?”
    “That would be Abbey,” Cassandra replied. “I knew him when he was very old. I used to visit him in the cottage to which he retired.”
    “Of course, I remember old Abbey!” the Duke exclaimed. “Even when I was a child his face was like a withered walnut. He must have been a hundred when you knew him.”
    “He was eighty-seven before he died,” Cassandra said. “He asked me, just before his last illness to tell you, if we ever met, that he still had the horseshoe that you gave him.”
    “Good Heavens!” the Duke exclaimed. “I remember the