A Nightingale Sang by Barbara Cartland

Author:Barbara Cartland
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781782134213
Publisher: Barbara Cartland Ebooks Ltd
Published: 2014-12-26T16:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER FIVE

“Now that Tybalt is better,” Mr. Wardolf said, “We can give the much talked about ball.”

“Yes, of course,” Lucy-May replied.

She did not sound very enthusiastic and her father looked at her in surprise before he went on,

“I’ll arrange the band and you must remind Dunstan to send out the invitations. I believe they were all ready a week ago.”

The Duke said nothing.

He thought that Lucy-May’s friends did enough dancing without having a large ball.

They seemed to think of little except fox-trotting and one-stepping and he had already come to the conclusion since coming downstairs after his accident that it was difficult to distinguish one from another.

They all looked so much alike, the girls all had bobbed or shingled hair, short dresses with low waistlines and the young men had a kind of artificial gaiety about them, which he knew expressed not only their joy at being alive after the horrors of war, but also an effort to escape from the problems that faced them in civilian life.

They certainly seemed carefree enough, but he was perceptive enough to know that underneath a superficial veneer to most of them the future was a frightening problem that they had no idea how to solve.

None of that worried Lucy-May, he thought, with her huge fortune, an adoring father and the knowledge that she had only to lift her little finger to have everything she wanted in the world placed at her feet.

It struck him as rather surprising that he had seen very little of her since he had come downstairs. He had felt rather groggy about the knees and apprehensive in case overdoing it in any way should start one of the blinding headaches that the doctor had told him he was likely to suffer from for some time.

“You were lucky, Your Grace, to get off as lightly as you did,” he had said. “I had a patient last week who had the same sort of collision and he had a broken nose, required nine stitches in his forehead and lost two of his front teeth.”

The Duke had smiled.

“I am very grateful that did not happen to me.”

“Another time I would choose your driver more carefully,” the doctor went on. “The trouble with the young men today is that they are all obsessed with speed.”

“That’s very true,” the Duke agreed. “And I am thinking that aeroplanes at least will have plenty of room to fly in without colliding with each other.”

“I should not be too sure of that,” the doctor answered, “if all the young fools take to the air!”

They both laughed.

The Duke knew that a number of men who in the war had found the aeroplane a fascinating machine and would undoubtedly soon be trying to fly the Atlantic or reach Australia.

Lucy-May’s guests, however, seemed to wish to do nothing more adventurous than twirl their partners over the parquet flooring to the new tunes, which seemed to the Duke to be very appropriate as far as the English were concerned.

Those who had left the dining room where he was talking to Mr.

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