Read Online A Battle of Brains by Barbara Cartland - Free Book Online

‘the Goddess of the Moon’, I would rather be the Goddess of the Sun.”
    â€œWhich you are anyway,” her father had answered, “and also for me – the Goddess of Love.”
    â€œYou are being greedy and using up half Olympus!” her mother had protested.
    Then they both laughed, as he kissed her, saying,
    â€œTo me you are more lovely than all the Goddesses put together.  In fact I have no wish to meet a Goddess, only to have you, my glorious wife, and that means you belong to no one else but me.”
    It was the sort of thing they had so often said to each other as they felt it did not matter that they expressed their love in front of a child.
    At school the girls talked endlessly about romance, but Yolanda still found it difficult to think of anything else except the delightful words her father had said to her mother – the happiness they gave her was in her mother’s eyes.
    â€˜It was bliss for them both to be together,’ Yolanda thought now.  ‘Why, oh why did Papa have to die in that useless way?’
    Life would never be the same without him, not for her mother or for herself.
    All the money in the world could not make up for the love her mother had lost.
    Yolanda knew without her saying so that she would have thrown away the grand house.
    She would have thrown away the comfort, luxury and the glittering jewels just to be with her father, even if it meant being in poor and uncomfortable lodgings.
    â€˜That is real love,’ Yolanda had said to herself, ‘and perhaps one day I will find it too.’
    It did not seem to be very likely if the only men she was to meet were the likes Jack Harpole and Cecil Watson!
    She shuddered at the thought of how unpleasant Cecil Watson was.
    She was sure that many of the remarks she had not understood at dinner were vulgar and obscene and should never have been uttered in front of a lady.
    She felt a little cold after standing by the window wearing only her nightgown.
    Her lady’s maid had departed, having blown out the candles before she did so with the exception of the small candelabra, which stood by Yolanda’s bed.
    She climbed into bed and tried to read a book – it was one she had found extremely interesting.
    But it was impossible not to keep listening.
    She was straining to hear the man coming upstairs.
    She wondered how soon after Mr. Watson had gone to bed, she would be able to go into the boudoir.
    She was in fact feeling rather tired and she would have liked to have gone to sleep.
    Instead, she kept reading her book just in case she dozed off and would wake up to find it was morning.
    Then at last she heard a loud voice in the distance.  She knew that Mr. Watson was now coming up the stairs, very likely with the help of her stepfather and he was certainly making a lot of noise about it.
    His voice seemed to be echoing round the walls of Yolanda’s bedroom.
    He passed her door.
    Now she could hear her stepfather’s voice speaking in a somewhat soothing tone – as if he was trying to make Cecil Watson walk more steadily.
    Then at last Yolanda heard them go into his room on the other side of the corridor.
    A few minutes later her stepfather went to his room at the far end of the corridor.
    Yolanda realised that his valet would be waiting up for him, so she listened for when he passed her door.
    As he did so, he was speaking in a muffled voice to someone beside him and when a man answered, she knew that Cecil Watson’s valet had joined him.
    Now there was complete silence.  
    Still Yolanda waited breathlessly as she wanted to make quite certain that there was no question of the valet returning or Mr. Watson not being asleep.
    Half an hour must have passed.  
    Finally she concluded that if she did not go into the boudoir now, she would fall asleep.
    She climbed out of bed as quietly as possible and opened the drawer of her dressing table where she had put the key.
    Then, very