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
