Lights, Laughter and a Lady. Barbara Cartland

as soon as she came into the world, her father had opened the window to hear the churchbells ringing in the New Year and had picked her up in his arms and carried her to listen to them.

      “I well remember,” her mother had said reminiscently, “seeing you and your father, my darling, silhouetted against the stars that filled the sky outside and I thought how lucky I was to have two magical people here on earth belonging to me.”

      “I would like to touch a star and hold it in my hand,” Minella had said when she was a very little girl.

      “That is what we all want,” her mother had smiled, “and perhaps one day, darling, that is what you will do.”

      ‘I have to believe Minella said now to herself, “that I was born under a lucky star and what one believes comes true.”

      It was then that she made up her mind.

      It was daring and was something that she would never have thought of in the past.

      But she felt almost as if her father was beside her saying in his own way,

      “‘Nothing ventured, nothing gained’!”

      ‘I will go to London,’ she decided. ‘I will see Connie and ask her to help me for Papa’s sake.’

      As she spoke beneath her breath, but still audibly to herself, she knew that it was a very tremendous overwhelming decision and also one that was rather frightening.

      At the same time it was a risk worth taking.

      And what was the alternative?

      Only to go tamely to the unutterable boredom of Bath and grumpy Aunt Esther.

      Chapter Two

      Minella arrived in London and, although it had been a slow and rather tiring journey, she had been able to sleep part of the time.

      She had so much to do packing up everything in The Manor that belonged to herself, her father and mother that the night before she left she had fallen into bed absolutely exhausted and too tired to be unhappy.

      She had made a big bonfire in the garden of the things to be destroyed and had packed everything else into old-fashioned leather trunks that she had dragged down from the attic.

      The nearest farmer, who had always been fond of her father, had been kind enough to say he would store anything she did not wish to take with her.

      “They’ll be safe enough in the roof of one of my barns,” he said, “so don’t you go partin’ with anythin’ you wants to keep.”

      “I only wish I could keep the house,” Minella replied impulsively.

      “That be true and the village won’t be the same without his Lordship gallopin’ about, lookin’ as if he owned the world!”

      Minella gave a little laugh.

      It was a very apt description of her father and, however poor they had been, however many bills remained unpaid, her father had always seemed not only to look rich but to appear to believe that life was an amusing joke.

      It was an attitude he transmitted to other people and she could understand why Connie had addressed him as the ‘Lord of Light and Laughter’.

      It seemed strange in a way that she should have addressed him in so familiar a fashion, but then Minella felt that Connie had always been rather inclined to gush at people.

      It was something that she knew her mother thought that a lady should not do and she had often talked to her about being restrained and self-controlled.

      “It is best, dearest,” she had said in her soft voice, “to have a little reserve about your feelings, but at the same time to be warm, sympathetic and, of course, understanding.”

      “It sounds rather complicated, Mama.”

      “Not really,” her mother had answered, “and I want you to live up to your looks.”

      Minella had been surprised and had not been quite certain what her mother meant.

      Then she thought that once again, like her father, she was telling her that she looked like a lady and so must behave like one.

      She knew that her mother’s family who lived in the North of Ireland were very proud and, although they did not have much money or possessions, they could trace their ancestry back to one of the Kings of Ireland.

      “I wish you could be a Queen now, Mama.” Minella had said once when she was small.

      Her mother had laughed and her father, who had been listening, said,

      “She is a Queen! She is the Queen of my Heart and that is a more important position than that of Queen Victoria alone on the Throne of England!”

      Minella had made up little stories for herself in which her mother was a Queen and she was a Princess.

      She had thought that one day she would meet a handsome Prince, who would look very much like her father and they would be married and live happily ever afterwards.

      But living in The Manor she saw no young men and the little she knew about them was confined to her father’s descriptions of the house parties that he had been invited to after her mother’s death.

      He described the friends he met at Race Meetings where he invariably lost money and at the parties he enjoyed in London that for some reason he was surprisingly reticent about.

      ‘I suppose that I shall never have a chance of getting married,’ Minella thought, a little wistfully.

      She knew that her mother had planned that somehow when she was eighteen she would contrive that she would go to some balls and if it was humanly possible be presented to the Queen at a Drawing Room in Buckingham Palace.

      ‘Now I shall just have to earn my living and forget about all that,’ Minella told herself firmly as she packed away her mother’s gowns.

      Then she stopped.

      Her mother’s clothes were far smarter and in far better condition than hers, even if they might be a little out of date.

      Impulsively she took some of them from a huge weather-beaten trunk and then put them instead into the smaller one that she was taking with her to London.

      There were two very pretty ballgowns that her mother had worn the last time her father had taken her to London for an exciting weekend after saying he could not bear the boredom of the country any longer.

      Her mother had come back looking happy and relaxed and even much younger than she had for a long time.

      “We had a wonderful time, darling,” she had said to Minella. “I am afraid we were very extravagant and Papa took me to dine out with his friends. We went to several theatres and even very daringly to a music hall!”

      This meant very little to Minella, who had never been to a theatre, except once to see a pantomime in the nearest town at Christmas time.

      She had, however, listened to everything that her mother had told her and had asked her innumerable questions.

      “Did you go to the Gaiety Theatre, Mama?” she enquired, because she had heard her father talk about it.

      “Yes, we went there,” her mother replied, “and the Gaiety Girls are really as lovely as Goddesses, just as everybody says they are.”

      “Tell me about them, please, tell me about them,” Minella pleaded.

      Her mother described how they had travelled to the theatre in a hansom cab.

      “It was more thrilling than going in a brougham,” she related, “and we had a box, which again was very extravagant. It is difficult to explain how glamorous the theatre is and how exquisite the scenery and I have been humming the music ever since.”

      “Did you enjoy it too, Papa?”

      “Every