Lord Ravensden's Marriage

Only Beatrice’s parents had known the truth. Mrs Roade had held her while she wept out her disappointment and hurt…but that was a long time ago. Beatrice had been much younger then, perhaps a little naïve, innocent of the ways of the world. She had grown up very quickly after Matthew’s desertion.

Since then, she had given little thought to marriage. She suspected that most men were probably like the one who had tried so ardently to seduce her. If she had been foolish enough to give in to his pleading…what then? She might have been ruined as well as jilted. Somehow she had resisted, though she had believed herself in love…

Beatrice laughed harshly. She was not such a fool as to believe in it now! She had learned to see the world for what it was, and knew that love was just something to be written of by dreamers and poets.

She had been taught a hard lesson, and now she had her sister’s experience to remind her. If Olivia had been so hurt that she was driven to do something that she must know would ruin her in the eyes of the world…What a despicable man Lord Ravensden must be!

“Oh, you wicked, wicked man,” she muttered as she finished dressing and prepared to go down for dinner. “I declare you deserve to be boiled in oil for what you have done!”

Lord Ravensden had begun to equate with the Marquis of Sywell in her mind. After her uncomfortable escape from injury that evening, Beatrice was inclined to think all the tales of him were true! And Lord Ravensden not much better.

A moment’s reflection must have told her this was hardly likely to be true, for her sister would surely not even have entertained the idea of marriage to such a man. She was the indulged adopted daughter of loving parents, and had she said from the start that she could not like their heir, would surely have been excused from marrying him. It was the shock and the scandal of her having jilted her fiancé that had upset them.

However, Beatrice was not thinking like herself that evening. The double shock had made her somehow uneasy. She had the oddest notion that something terrible had either happened or was about to…something that might affect not only her and her sister’s lives, but that of many others in the four villages.

The scream she had heard that night before the Marquis came rushing upon her…it had sounded evil. Barely human. Was it an omen of something?

After hearing it, she had come home to receive her sister’s letter. Of course the scream could have nothing to do with that…and yet the feeling that the lives of many people were about to change was strong in her. A cold chill trickled down her spine as she wondered at herself. Never before had she experienced such a feeling…was it what people sometimes called a premonition?

Do not be foolish, Beatrice, she scolded herself mentally. Whatever would Papa say to such an illogical supposition?

Her dear papa would, she felt sure, give her a lecture upon the improbability of there being anything behind her feelings other than mere superstition, and of course he would be perfectly right.

Shaking her head, her hair now neatly confined in a sleek chignon, she dismissed her fears. There had been something about the atmosphere at the Abbey that night, but perhaps all old buildings with a history of mystery and violence would give out similar vibes if one visited them alone and at dusk.

If Beatrice had been superstitious, she would have said that her experience that evening was a warning—a sign from the ghosts of long dead monks—but she was not fanciful. She knew that what she had heard was most likely the cry of a wounded animal. Like the practical girl she was, she dismissed the idea of warnings and premonitions as nonsense, laughed at her own fancies and went downstairs to eat a hearty meal.

“Ravensden, you are an almighty fool, and should be ashamed of yourself! Heaven only knows how you are to extricate yourself from this mess.”

Gabriel Frederick Harold Ravensden, known as Harry to a very few, Ravensden to most, contemplated his image in his dressing-mirror and found himself disliking what he saw more than ever before. It was the morning of the thirty-first of October, and he was standing in the bedchamber of his house in Portland Place. What a damned ass he had been! He ought to be boiled in oil, then flayed until his bones showed through.

He grinned at the thought, wondering if it should really be the other way round to inflict the maximum punishment, then the smile was wiped clean as he remembered it was his damnable love of the ridiculous that had got them all into this mess in the first place.

“Did you say something, milord?” Beckett asked, coming into the room with a pile of starched neckcloths in anticipation of his lordship’s likely need. “Will you be wearing the new blue coat this morning?”

“What? Oh, I’m not sure,” Harry said. “No, I think something simpler—more suitable for riding.”

His man nodded, giving no sign that he thought the request surprising since his master had returned to town only the previous evening. He offered a fine green cloth, which was accepted by his master with an abstracted air. An unusual disinterest in a man famed for his taste and elegance in all matters of both dress and manners.

“You may leave me,” Harry said, after he had been helped into his coat, having tied a simple knot in the first neckcloth from the pile. “I shall call you if I need you.”

“Yes, milord.”

Beckett inclined his head and retired to the dressing-room to sigh over the state of his lordship’s boots after his return from the country, and Harry returned to the thorny problem on his mind.

He should in all conscience have told his distant cousin to go to hell the minute the marriage was suggested to him. Yet the beautiful Miss Olivia Roade Burton had amused him with her pouts and frowns. She had been the unrivalled success of the Season, and, having been thoroughly spoiled all her life, was inclined to be a little wayward.

However, her manners were so charming, her face so lovely, that he had been determined to win her favours. He had found the chase diverting, and thought he might like to have her for his wife—and a wife he must certainly have before too many months had passed.

“A damned, heavy-footed, crass idiot!” Harry muttered, remembering the letter he had so recently received from his fiancée. “This business is of your own making…”

At four-and-thirty, he imagined he was still capable of giving his wife the son he so badly needed, but it would not do to leave it much later—unless he wanted the abominable Peregrine to inherit his own estate and that of Lord Burton. Both he and Lord Burton were agreed that such an outcome would not be acceptable to either of them—though at the moment they were agreeing on little else. Indeed, they had parted in acrimony. Had Harry not been a gentleman, he would probably have knocked the man down. He frowned as he recalled their conversation of the previous evening.

“An infamous thing, sir,” Harry had accused. “To abandon a girl you have lavished with affection. I do not understand how you could turn her out. Surely you will reconsider?”

“She has been utterly spoilt,” Lord Burton replied. “I have sent her to her family in Northamptonshire. Let her see how she likes living in obscurity.”

“Northamptonshire of all places! Good grief, man, it is the back of beyond, and must be purgatory for a young lady of fashion, who has been used to mixing in the best circles. Olivia will be bored out of her mind within a week!”

“I shall not reconsider until she remembers her duty to me,” Lord Burton had declared. “I have cut off her allowance and shall disinherit her altogether if she does not admit her fault and apologise to us both.”

“I think that it is rather we who should apologise to her.”

After that, their conversation had regrettably gone downhill.

Harry was furious. Burton’s conduct was despicable—and he, Harry Ravensden, had played a major part in the downfall of a very lovely young woman!

A careless remark in a gentleman’s club, overheard by some malicious tongue—and he imagined he could guess the owner of that tongue! If he were not much mistaken, it was his cousin Peregrine Quindon who had started the vicious tale circulating. It was a wicked piece of mischief, and Peregrine would hear from him at some point in the future!

Olivia had clearly been hurt by some other young lady’s glee in the fact that her marriage was, after all, merely one of convenience, that despite her glittering Season, and being the toast of London society, her bridegroom was marrying her only to oblige her adopted father. She had reacted in a very natural way, and had written him a stilted letter, telling him that she had decided she could not marry him, which he had received only on his return to town—by which time the scandal had broken and was being whispered of all over London.

Harry cursed the misfortune that had taken him from town. He had been summoned urgently to his estates in the north, a journey there and back of several days. Had he been in London, he might have seen Olivia, explained that he did indeed have a very high regard for her, and was honoured that she had accepted him—as he truly was.

Perhaps he had not fallen in love in the true romantic sense—but Harry did not really believe in that kind of love. He had experienced passion often enough, and also a deep affection for his friends, but never total, heart-stopping love.

He enjoyed the company of intelligent women. His best friend’s wife was an exceptional woman, and he was very fond of Lady Dawlish. He had often envied Percy his happy home life, but had so far failed to find a lady he could admire as much as Merry Dawlish, who laughed a lot and seemed to enjoy life hugely in her own inimitable way. Even so, he had felt something for Olivia, and he had certainly not intended the tragedy that his carelessness had caused. Indeed, it grieved him that she had been put in such a position, for without fortune and friends to stand by her, she was ruined.

So what was he going to do about it? Having just returned from the country, he had little inclination to return there—and to Northamptonshire! Nothing interesting ever happened in such places.

Harry’s besetting sin was that he was easily bored. Indeed, he was often plagued by a soul-destroying tedium, which had come upon him when his father’s death forced him to give up the army life he had enjoyed for a brief period, and return to care for his estates. He was a good master and did not neglect his land or his people, but he was aware of something missing in his life.

He preferred living in town, where he was more likely to find stimulating company, and would not have minded so much if Olivia had gone to Bath or Brighton, but this village…what was it called? Ah yes, Abbot Giles. It was bound to be full of dull-witted gentry and lusty country wenches.

Harry’s eye did not brighten at the thought of buxom wenches. He was famed for his taste in cyprians, and the mistresses he had kept whenever it suited him had always possessed their full measure of both beauty and wit. He believed the one thing that had prevented him from giving his whole heart to Olivia was that she did not seem to share his love of the ridiculous. She had found some of his remarks either hurtful or bewildering. Harry thought wistfully that it would be pleasant to have a woman by one’s side who could give as good as she got, who wasn’t afraid to stand up to him.

“What an odd character you are to be sure,” Harry told his reflection. It was a severe fault in him that he could not long be pleased by beautiful young women, unless they were also amusing.

Harry frowned at his own thoughts. It was not as if he were hiding some secret tragedy. His mother was still living, and the sweetest creature alive—but she had not been in love with his father, nor his father with her. Both had carried on separate lives, taking and discarding lovers without hurting the other. Indeed, they had been the best of friends. Harry believed he must be like his mother, who seemed not to treat anything seriously, and was besides being the sweetest, the most provoking of females.

No matter! He was a man of his word. He had given his word to Olivia, and the fact that she had jilted him made no difference. He must go after her, try to persuade her that he was not so very terrible. As his wife, she would be readmitted to the society that had cast her off—and that surely must be better than the fate which awaited her now.

“Beckett…” he called, making up his mind suddenly. “Put up a change of clothing for me. I am going out of town for a few days.”

“Yes, milord,” said his valet, coming in. “May one inquire where we are going?”

“You are going nowhere,” Harry replied with an odd little smile. “And if anyone asks, you have no idea where I am…”

“Come in, dearest,” Beatrice said, meeting her sister at the door. It was some six days since she had received Olivia’s letter, and her heart was pained by the look of tiredness and near despair in Olivia’s face. Oh, that rogue, Ravensden! He should be hung, drawn and quartered for what he had done. “You look cold, my love. Was the journey very tiresome?”