Barbara Cartland - Never Forget Love

“How can you afford to give us so much money?” Nerissa asked her sister.

“I can afford it,” Delphine replied, “because I am gambling on making my background as a Stanley look good enough for the Duke to realise that he will not be lowering himself in asking me to be his wife.”

“But – if he really does love you – ” Nerissa began, “surely your ancestry is not all that important?”

“I am only very grateful that none of my friends can hear you talking such nonsense,” Delphine said rudely. “You cannot imagine that the Duke of Lynchester, who can have any woman he likes in the whole Kingdom, is going to make a mésalliance when it comes to marriage. I could easily be his mistress, I am well aware of that, but I am determined – yes – determined to be his wife.”

She spoke with a resolution in her voice that made Nerissa remember how as a child she had often defied her mother in one way or another and always eventually had her own way.

“If you ask me,” Harry said, “I think it an insult that the Duke, or any other man, should look you over as if you are a horse and decide whether you have enough good points for him to wish to own you.”

“That is a most vulgar way of putting it, Harry, but it is the basic truth. You cannot be so stupid and unsophisticated, as Nerissa is, not to know that in the Social world, which I move in, one’s antecedents and blood are of paramount importance when it comes to marriage. A doxy is one thing, a Duchess is another!”

Harry laughed.

“I will say one thing about you, Delphine, you are very plain-spoken!”

“I am fighting for something that matters to me a very great deal. Now let me ask you to answer ‘yes’ or’ no’, are you or are you not going to help me?”

Feeling as if it was too big a question for her to answer, Nerissa looked at her brother.

Three hundred pounds seemed to be dancing in front of her eyes, telling her what a huge difference it could make to them all and especially to Harry.

She knew, as she looked at him, that a battle was raging within him.

While he instinctively disliked any form of deception and untruth, he was as tempted as she was by the idea of so much money, especially when it meant that he could buy several horses.

It could also provide him with some clothes and he remembered that before he went back to Oxford he was going to beg Nerissa for enough money to provide him with a new evening suit.

The one he was wearing at the moment was in rags and one of his fellow students had told him that next term they might be asked to a formal dinner at Blenheim Palace.

Slowly he enquired as if he was thinking out the words as they came to his lips,

“If we refuse to help you, Delphine, what will you do?”

“If you refuse and I lose the Duke, I will hate you and curse you until the end of my life!” Delphine replied. “He has asked to see my Elizabethan home, which I described to him in glowing terms and to meet my very distinguished father. Surely there is nothing wrong in that?”

“What is wrong, as you well know,” Harry replied quickly, “is turning your sister into a cook and me into a butler! But I suppose we can pretend we are playing charades and hope to God the Duke never suspects that he is being deceived.”

Delphine gave a cry of horror.

“If he does, it will be because you are two incompetent fools!” she snapped. “But, if we succeed, I shall be the Duchess of Lynchester!”

There was a look in Delphine’s eyes that told Nerissa that she had won a victor thaty she had never intended to lose.

But, as she gazed at her sister, she had a strange and unaccountable feeling that Delphine would never wear the Duchess of Lynchester’s strawberry-leaf coronet.

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