104. The Glittering Lights - The Eternal Collection , livre ebook

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 andHannah’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 remnants 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 ardentlyand 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