Light To The Heart (eBook)

Barbara Cartland (Autor)

eBook Download: EPUB

2024
316 Seiten
Barbara Cartland eBooks Ltd (Verlag)
978-1-78867-821-6 (ISBN)

Infos

Lovely Elita Garson knew she must escape. She must be freed from her golden chains to make her own life and her own friends. When she walks out of the luxurious London hotel she has been staying in, she takes nothing but a single suitcase - and her hopes of an independent life.

 

She quickly finds work as an airhostess on a privately chartered plane, and then secures a better job working for the elderly passenger she met onboard. Excited by her new freedom, Elita soon discovers that life has turned very complicated, mysterious and at times dangerous.

 

Complicated by falling head over heels in love with a hotel valet, of whom she knows little about - mysterious and often violent goings on with her new employer, and danger when she is drawn into a web of theft, lies and deception. In this exciting romantic tale set in beautiful Copenhagen, can Elita give up the luxuries she was born to and find the happiness she is searching for?

Textauszug

2

A bored waitress took Hans Knudsen’s order for two cups of coffee, and then they were alone, smiling a little shyly at each other across the narrow table.

“Will you get into trouble coming out with me like this?” Elita asked.

“Trouble?” he questioned, raising his eyebrows.

“I mean, will the people in the hotel notice that you have gone?” Elita explained.

He smiled at her.

“I think we are safe. I do not think anyone will notice my absence for an hour or two, but it is kind of you to think of it.”

“What do you do?” Elita enquired, glancing again at his plain, dark jacket and striped trousers.

Perhaps he was in the reception, she thought. She didn’t remember seeing him there.

“We have come here to talk about you,” he reminded her. “If you are to get a job today, we have to hurry.”

“Yes, yes, of course.”

Her curiosity evaporated a little. She became absorbed with her own problems. Of one thing she was certain – that neither he nor anyone else must guess that she was not what she appeared – a secretary or companion, someone of no particular consequence who was looking for another job. If anyone should guess…

She paused in her thoughts. Visions of blackmail slipped through her mind, then were dismissed instantly.

The man opposite her had a frank, honest face. He was good-looking too, but that had nothing to do with it. There was something about him which made her feel she could trust him and that he would not let her down.

“You want to be an air hostess?” he was saying, gravely.

“I suppose there are other things I could do,” she said a little hesitantly, not wishing to admit a lamentable inadequacy of talents when it came to typing, doing shorthand or anything that was a requisite for a good secretary.

“As I said to you just now,” Hans Knudsen went on, “I do happen to know that there is a large waiting list for all the main airlines. But I have a friend who has a special service of privately chartered planes – the Golden Eagle Line it is called. It hasn’t been going long, but it has been a great success, and he is very proud of his achievement.”

He pushed the pepper-pot about absentmindedly as he went on.

“My friend was talking to me only a few days ago of the necessity of having air hostesses for his longer flights. If I could get him to see you, would you go along there right away?”

“But of course,” Elita said. “I should be very glad of the opportunity.”

He glanced down at her hands, white and soft, with long, beautifully manicured fingernails.

“I suppose you know what duties being an air hostess entails?” he asked.

“I’ve got a very good idea,” Elita answered. “In fact, so good that I wonder if it’s absolutely necessary to tell him that I actually have no previous experience.”

She felt that Hans Knudsen looked at her quizzically and went on quickly.

“You see, I’ve done a lot of flying. My last employer took me all over the Continent and, as it happens, to Africa and Egypt. I never felt airsick, and I can remember very clearly exactly how the air hostesses looked after us – in fact I was very friendly with one of them.”

“Well, if you are quite certain you can do it,” Hans Knudsen smiled, “will you wait here while I telephone my friend?”

“Of course,” Elita answered.

He rose from the table and went out of the café, and Elita remembered that just round the comer she had noticed a callbox. That was where he would be going, she thought.

She gave a little sigh and pulled her cup of coffee towards her. It was a sigh of excitement and tension – a sigh, too, of anticipation. How thrilling this all was! How much better to do this than to go out to lunch with some of the friends her father had chosen for her, to wander round the shops buying things she didn’t really need and to look forward to an evening with Alan – Alan asking her the question she didn’t want to hear.

She wondered how long she had got before they began to look for her. Her father was not likely to get back to Claridge’s until it was time to dress for dinner. He would then ask Jenkins where she was, and he would reply that he hadn’t seen her all day. Her father would go into her bedroom and find the note. What would he do?

Elita smiled to herself as she thought of his anger and what must inevitably be a sense of frustration. The one thing he would want to avoid, above all things, was that the press should get to hear that she was missing.

Granite Garson hated publicity. He was rude to the press whenever they tried to interview him and he would fume with rage when Elita’s name appeared in the gossip columns saying,

‘The beautiful daughter of the great financial wizard’, or, ‘Tycoon’s daughter dancing at a ball’.

“The country’s becoming like America!” Granite Garson would exclaim in disgust. “There’s no private life left. These news-hogs are everywhere trying to earn thirty pieces of silver by betraying the secrets of decent people who only want to be left alone.”

“It’s what the public want,” Elita had said once timidly, and her father had roared at her so loudly in his anger that she had never attempted to defend the press again.

Now she realised that his dislike of newspapers was going to be an asset in her own favour. He would have to keep very quiet about her disappearance. He would have to use what she called his own secret service to try to find her.

Secretaries whom he could trust, men whom he had employed for years, agents with whom he was in contact all over Europe – all would be told confidentially to look out for her.

Elita’s mouth set for a minute in a grim line.

“I will defeat him,” she promised herself. “I will show him not only that I can do without his money but that I can earn my own.”

She sipped her coffee, found it was nearly cold and looked apprehensively towards the door. What a long time Hans Knudsen was being! Supposing that after all he had decided not to help her and had gone back to Claridge’s, leaving her alone here.

Somehow she felt he would not do that – and yet what did she know of him? He was just a strange man whom she had picked up in the corridor, an employee in the hotel.

She stopped suddenly. Supposing Hans was suspicious of her? Supposing his offer of help had just been a ruse to keep her in his sight while he telephoned her father? She tried to reckon how far she was from the suite door when he had first seen her. He had never asked her for whom she had been working, which was strange in itself. Perhaps he was, in fact, one of her father’s spies and at any moment the café door would open, and Granite Garson would come striding in, ready to do battle with her, ready to subdue her, as he had done so often before, into a sort of abject humiliation because she had dared to defy him.

In her agitation Elita started to her feet, and then, as she did so, she saw Hans Knudsen’s handsome fair head pass the window and a second later he pushed open the café door and crossed the room to her side.

“It’s all right,” he said.

She was so agitated by her own fears that she was not quite certain what he was talking about.

“All r-right,” she repeated rather stupidly.

“John Knight will see you and the post is still unfilled,” Hans said.

He sat down at the table and Elita, feeling that her knees were trembling, returned to her seat.

“You mean there is a chance that he will take me?” she asked in a low voice.

“I am almost sure of it,” Hans Knudsen answered. “He is very anxious to get hold of someone who speaks languages.” He picked up his cup of cold coffee and smiled at her.

“I am afraid I have told a lot of lies about you,” he said. “You see, I was so anxious not to miss the chance of your getting the job that, I forgot to ask you all the questions I should have done before I spoke to John Knight.”

“What have you told him then?” Elita asked.

“I told him that you were very charming, very beautiful and quite obviously very intelligent,” Hans Knudsen replied. “And I was speaking the truth and nothing but the truth.”

Elita smiled and two dimples appeared in her cheeks. Her dark eyes met his grey ones for a moment. She felt as if the expression in them warmed her. It took away all the fear she had been experiencing before he returned.

“Then I told him that I had known you a long time,” Hans went on. “That you had been very successful in every job you had undertaken, that you spoke several languages just like a local, and that you were, in fact, the paragon of industry that no employer could afford to miss.”

They both threw back their heads and laughed.

“Oh, dear! However can I live up to that?” Elita said. “When Mr. Knight sees me, he won’t believe a word of it.”

“He will be so busy seeing how beautiful you are,” Hans Knudsen said, “that I think he will forget the other part of your reference.”

Elita dropped her eyes. There was something in the way he spoke that made her feel a little shy. Then, feeling she was being idiotic, she spoke brightly.

“I promise you that I will try not to let you down.”

“There is only one thing,” Hans said.

“Yes?” Elita enquired.

“John Knight asked if you had any references and who was your last employer.”

Elita felt her heart give a frightened thump and then she drew a deep breath and took the bull by the horns.

“It is a very awkward question,” she said trying to make her voice sound...

Produkt-Details

• Erscheint lt. Verlag: 1.10.2024
• Reihe/Serie: The Eternal Collection
• Verlagsort: Hatfield
• Sprache: englisch
• Themenwelt: Literatur ► Romane / Erzählungen
• Schlagworte: 2nd world war romance • 40 romance • War time romance
• ISBN-10: 1-78867-821-4 / 1788678214
• ISBN-13: 978-1-78867-821-6 / 9781788678216