An Unexpected Love Read online

  Ravina was overcome with shame.

  Giles was a dear boy and did not deserve this treatment. She knew her mother would be appalled at her behaviour if she ever found out.

  “Giles, I am sorry – ” she began, but the gangling youth had stood up, surprisingly dignified for all his ungainliness.

  “I quite accept that I am not good enough for you, Ravina,” he said stiffly. “And I can only apologise for intruding and spoiling the ball for you. I will take my leave and wish you a pleasant evening.”

  With a brief nod he turned and walked away, stumbling slightly as he mounted the steps out of the rose garden.

  Ravina jumped to her feet about to run after him when a sudden sound made her stop and spin round.

  A stranger appeared from behind a tall trellis, heavy with huge white roses that scattered their petals like snow on the ground at his feet.

  He was slim and very dark, immaculate in evening dress. His deep brown eyes were serious in a tanned face that to Ravina looked disapproving.

  “Sir?” she said bravely. “A gentleman does not eavesdrop on a private conversation.”

  The stranger bowed.

  “Madam, a young lady should not be so hard-hearted when listening to a proposal of marriage.”

  Ravina felt hot colour rush up into her cheeks.

  She knew the stranger was right to condemn her behaviour, but he could not be aware of the relationship between her and Giles, so he was judging her on false assumptions.

  “So you believe I should have simpered and smiled and told Giles de Lacey that he did me an incredible honour in thinking I was suitable to be his future wife?”

  The dark haired man took another step forward and at that moment the moon sailed out from behind a cloud and bathed the rose garden in silver light. It struck a beam from the diamond clip in Ravina’s hair, making it glitter like ice.

  From the house, the band struck up a new tune, a polka this time.

  Ravina glanced round, wondering crossly where Robert Dunster was with her lemonade. His arrival would at least mean this man could not continue to lecture her.

  “I believe you could have let the young Viscount down more gently,” the tall stranger said. “He was offering you his heart and his life. Surely not an inconsiderable gift.”

  Angrily, Ravina snapped her fan open. She knew he was right, but there was something about this man that brought her stubborn streak to the fore.

  “Oh, I see, sir. Well, I hope that if you ever propose marriage, your future wife will be as thrilled by the offer of your name as you obviously think she should be.”

  There was a moment’s silence and as Ravina lifted her chin and stared into his dark unfathomable eyes, she thought she saw a flash of pain cross his face.

  But then it was gone and, to her astonishment, he was reaching out and with one finger, touched the cream lace frill where it cascaded down over her upper arm.

  “You seem to have a blood stain on your dress, madam. I would suggest you try to remove it as soon as possible. And take care, Lady Ravina. There are thorns that bite in every relationship.”

  And with a severe bow, he turned and vanished into the dark gardens.

  Ravina glanced down at the frill and bit her lip. The odious man was right. A small blood stain marked the lace.

  She realised straight away that it must be from Mr. Dunster’s finger. The thorn on the rose he had picked must have bitten deep and when he grasped her arm to stop her falling, he had marked her dress.

  She shuddered.

  She hated the sight of blood, especially on her clothes.

  Picking up her full cream lace skirt, Ravina moved swiftly away from the rose garden. She did not want to stay and speak to Robert Dunster again.

  The stranger had annoyed her so much.

  But as she headed for the house, determined to find her friends and insist that they go home, she did wonder how he had known her name, because she knew she had never met him before. He was not the type of man you would easily forget.

  Ravina was not in a good mood when she finally arrived at Ashley House, the London home in Knightsbridge belonging to her father, the Earl of Ashley.

  Steven, the night-footman on duty, opened the front door as she stepped out of the Ross’s coach, said her thank yous and goodnights and ran swiftly up the steps.

  “My Lady,” he murmured as she flounced into the house, pulling off her long white gloves and throwing them carelessly on the beautiful inlaid hall table.

  “Hello, Steven. Heavens, I am tired. I think I have danced too much. Are my parents still downstairs?”

  “No, my Lady. They have retired for the evening. But Nanny Johnson is waiting for you in her room, I believe. She asked me to tell you that she would not be retiring until she knew you were home.”

  “Goodness, why on earth does she do this?” Ravina said crossly. “She should have been in bed hours ago. Steven, can you arrange for me to have a cup of tea and some biscuits in my room, please? I am starving.”

  The footman grinned as she dropped her evening cloak on the floor and headed for the stairs.

  He picked up the heavy ruby silk garment with a sigh. Lady Ravina had ruled this house ever since she was born, but the staff knew that beneath her sometimes careless attitude lay a kind and affectionate person.

  He wondered as he headed back below stairs if she had received any more proposals that evening. She had been portrayed in the newspapers as being one of the prettiest debutantes London had ever seen.

  Bets were being laid between the staff as to who exactly would win her hand.

  Unaware that her private life was the subject of such discussion between the servants, Ravina ran up the main staircase.

  She passed her own bedroom and up another smaller flight to the suite of rooms that had once been the day nursery, the night nursery and the bedroom that was now the permanent home of Nanny Johnson.

  Ravina knocked on the door and, without waiting for a reply, opened it and hurried inside.

  “Ah, there you are. Back at last, miss.”

  Nanny Johnson was old. How old Ravina did not know. She had been her nanny, her father’s before that and had even been a nursemaid to Ravina’s grandfather when he was a baby!

  Small and wrinkled as an old apple, she always wore black with a white lace cap and, Ravina thought, mischievously, looked exactly like pictures of Queen Victoria, who was also very old.

  Ravina realised she must never, never tell her because to Nanny the Royal family were the most important people in the world and being told she resembled the dear Queen would, in her eyes, be close to treason.

  “Really, Nanny, you do not have to stay up every time I go out at night,” she said, trying to quell the irritation in her voice.

  She looked up from the crochet work in her gnarled hands.

  “I do not care to hear that tone from you, Lady Ravina. It is unpleasant. And take that frown off your face or else the wind will change and you will be left with it forever.”

  Ravina sank to the floor next to the old lady’s rocking chair and leant against her rough black skirt.

  She felt her bad mood slipping away. Nanny could always soothe her when she was troubled.

  Ravina could remember a time she had been plagued by nightmares when she was a small child – caused by the terrifying stories her nursemaid had told her.

  Her parents had been abroad and Nanny Johnson had been the only person who could calm her fears and discover why she was so upset.

  Nanny’s fire had been lit earlier in the evening and the embers left in the grate sparked and flared.

  “Nanny, Giles de Lacey proposed to me again tonight.”

  Nanny clicked her tongue in annoyance, but her hand reached down to stroke the blonde curls at her knee.

  “And you said no, I hope.”

  “Of course. But why does he keep doing it? I like Giles, but – ”

  “He is more a brother to you,” Nanny said wisely. “And you
have grown up enough to see it, but young Lord de Lacey has not. He will one day though, don’t you fret, my dear. Then he will set his eyes on some young girl, probably Lord Lyall’s youngest – the red-headed one and marry her.”

  “Well, I wish he would hurry up and do so,” Ravina yawned. “Oh, and I danced with Mr. Robert Dunster – twice.”

  Nanny’s fingers stilled on the white cotton she was twisting into intricate shapes.

  “You are surely not attracted to him?”

  Ravina gazed into the dying embers of the fire and absentmindedly rubbed the place on her dress where his blood had stained it.

  “No, certainly not. Undoubtedly he is a clever man, rich and powerful, but he has not shown any interest in me in that way.”

  “And if he did?”

  Ravina laughed softly then shuddered as she recalled the industrialist’s hot hands and the collar of his shirt digging into that pink fleshy neck.

  “Oh, no, Nanny. I could never marry him. I know lots of girls in Society marry for a name or to join two great families together, but I want to fall in love with the man I marry.

  “I want to experience all the passion and drama and desire that I have read about in books such as Jane Eyre and Wuthering Heights.”

  “Tosh and nonsense,” Nanny Johnson said with a little smile. “Off to bed with you now or you will become so ugly from lack of sleep that no one will ever want to marry you and you will end up an old maid.”

  *

  But later that night, as Ravina lay in bed, staring out of her window at the starry sky, she knew that her words to Nanny Johnson had been the truth.

  It would be stupid for her not to recognise the fact that as the only child of the Earl of Ashley, she would be a prize catch for lots of men.

  Her father was a powerful man in politics. Exactly what he did at the Foreign Office, Ravina was not sure, but she did know that people came from all over the world to their house to seek his advice and help.

  Anyone who married his daughter would have an exceptional chance of preferment.

  Ravina had learned from the age of sixteen that proposals of marriage were never hard to come by. But she had never been tempted to say yes.

  She had always asked herself the same question,

  “Would I be happy with him? Would I be content to belong to no one but him? To do what he wants rather than what I want and to concentrate on his way of life, instead of the freedom I have at the moment to do exactly what excites me and not ask any man if that is what he wants to do too.”

  With her eyes closed and a soft pillow beneath her head, she told herself that life was so exciting and very interesting as it was.

  For the moment at any rate she had no wish for anything different.

  “Perhaps one day I will find it impossible not to be so much in love that when a man asks me to marry him I can only say ‘yes, yes, yes’ and throw myself into his arms,” she told herself.

  She smiled in the dark.

  ‘That is just what I want,’ she said almost aloud, ‘and perhaps one day I will be very happy, wildly and gloriously happy, because I will want nothing but the man I love and the man who loves me.’

  This was the promise she had made herself, that she would never marry except when she felt a deep devoted love for a good man. A love that was returned in every way.

  Which, she thought as she turned over at last on her cool snowy pillows to fall asleep, was probably much more than the bride of that odious dark-eyed stranger in the rose garden would ever know!

  CHAPTER TWO

  Ravina was very late for breakfast the next morning. She sped down the shining wooden staircase into the hall of Ashley House, the skirts of her pink silk morning dress rustling as she hurried.

  Her parents were already seated at the table in the breakfast room, her father busy reading The Times and her mother opening her letters.

  Ravina leant over and kissed her father on the forehead, smiling at the usual gruff “good morning, child, you are late.”

  Lord Ashley was a tall, thin, distinguished man in his late forties. Like his father and his grandfather before him, he held a high position in the Foreign Office.

  Ravina had grown up with political discussions with high-ranking foreign officials taking place around her.

  She had often escaped from her nanny and governesses to hide under her father’s big desk in the library.

  She had played happily with her dolls and toys whilst talk of trouble in the Balkans, revolutions and wars were discussed over her head.

  As she grew older and was included officially at dinners and luncheons, she had met several foreign heads of state and Prime Ministers.

  She had learnt how vitally important her father’s work was for European peace. He was adept at defusing potentially explosive situations and Ravina recognised that only his skill at diplomacy had prevented a number of nasty situations from deteriorating into war.

  Her geography lessons had always been easy for her because her parents had travelled all over Europe and she had often accompanied them, much to Nanny Johnson’s annoyance.

  Nanny had very firm views about the place a young lady should take in Society.

  Lady Ashley was small and slender and Ravina was already taller than her. But she had the same honey-gold hair as her daughter and her delicate appearance was at odds with her ability to cope with all the demands made of her as the wife of a senior diplomat.

  This morning she was dressed in deepest lilac, her wide sleeves narrowing to tight cuffs that emphasised the whiteness of her elegant hands and the gleaming diamonds and amethysts that adorned them.

  She shook her head in mock resignation as Ravina kissed her cheek and slid into her chair, ignoring her father’s scowl.

  Being late for a meal was something Lord Ashley hated. He said it was impolite to the cook to eat the food half cold.

  One of the footmen poured Ravina a cup of coffee and she helped herself to bread and honey.

  “So, darling, did you enjoy yourself last night at the ball?” her mother asked. “You were very late arriving home.”

  “Not too late really, Mama. And yes, I had a very nice time. Giles was there, of course. And lots of the usual people.”

  “And I suppose Giles proposed again,” her mother smiled. Like Ravina, she was sure that the young man was not even slightly in love with her daughter. His heart would not even be dented by her constant refusals.

  Ravina frowned, remembering the dark-haired, sarcastic man in the rose garden.

  But she was not going to tell her parents about him. Her reaction to Giles had not been correct and she knew that her mother would not be pleased.

  ‘Poor Giles. Perhaps,’ Ravina thought, ‘I should have said yes and settled down to be a good wife and the mother of several delightful children. Giles enjoys travelling as I do. And when he inherits the castle, he will have a splendid life. Would that have been such a bad life to share? A girl could do far worse.’

  Then it was almost as if someone was asking her,

  ‘So why do you always say no, instead of yes?’

  And she knew that the answer was that Giles would never touch her heart. And there must be so much more to marriage than pleasant convenience–surely?

  She jumped slightly as her father folded away his newspaper and glanced across the table at his daughter with his piercing gaze.

  “Did you by any chance meet a Mr. Robert Dunster at the ball last night, Ravina?”

  “Mr. Dunster? Why yes, Papa, I did. I danced with him twice and he offered to bring me a cold lemonade in the garden when I was very hot.”

  “I see. And was he – polite?” Lord Ashley seemed to find his coffee cup extremely interesting.

  Ravina felt bewildered by his question.

  “Certainly, Papa. Why, do people speak badly of his manners? He certainly gave me no cause to be upset.”

  She caught her parents exchanging glances and her puzzlement grew. Her father seemed worried, as
if he had something on his mind.

  “No, no, I am sure his behaviour would be impeccable. Indeed, I have heard nothing that could be held against him, except that he is a hard–headed business man. But he does have a reputation for asking questions to gain information.

  “I would have been unhappy if you had been upset and if he had been pestering you in any way – asking where your mother and I were, for example. Why we were not attending the ball. That type of thing.”

  “Well, he did ask me if you were at home or travelling abroad. But only in a very polite general way. We discussed nothing of importance, Papa. I have met him before, but this is the first time I have danced with him. Do you wish me to avoid him in future?”

  “No, certainly not,” her father replied.

  “Ravina, dear,” her mother now broke in, “your father and I have something to tell you. We are going abroad for a few weeks.”

  Ravina pushed back her chair.

  This was news indeed.

  “Abroad? When? And am I to accompany you,Mama?”

  “We leave tomorrow and no, you will not be coming with us this time, darling. It is strictly a business trip and you might well be bored.”

  Lady Ashley looked fondly at her beautiful daughter.

  ‘But we are concerned about you staying here on your own so we intend to shut up this house for the duration of our absence. We feel you will be far happier in the country at Curbishley Hall.’

  Ravina nodded, her mind racing.

  “Well, I will certainly be sad to miss some of the London parties, but you know I love the countryside and I have been pining for my horses while I have been here in London.”

  “And Cousin Dulcie will be there as chaperone and company for you. I am sure that Nanny Johnson will travel down to Dorset too, but Dulcie is family after all and much closer to your own age.”

  Ravina screwed up her nose. She liked Dulcie Allen, but at twenty-eight, the older girl was a confirmed spinster and disapproved of her young cousin acting in any way she felt forward or improper.

  Dulcie’s father had been a distant cousin of Lord Ashley, but when he died it was discovered that he was heavily in debt.