“Papa has come up with the most ingenious design for a system of gravity heating, and we are about to inspect the east wing to see how it could best be implemented. It is really very exciting.”
Olivia raised her fine brows at her sister as he went out, leaving them in the sunny parlour, which overlooked a pretty rose garden and was Beatrice’s favourite room in the house.
“How can you contemplate the idea of having your house disrupted, Beatrice?”
Beatrice smiled. “We never use the east wing because it is so very cold. Papa can do no harm there. Besides, I have seen the new drawings. They look as if they might actually work. It is the principle of water finding its own level, you see. Harry explained it all to me. The idea is very much that used in those charming waterfalls you admire in landscaped gardens, where you see all the water tumbling down into a pool and wonder how it returns to the top to start falling again. The pressure of water carries it round and…”
“Oh, pray do not go on,” Olivia begged. “I never understand more than a few words of Papa’s theories.”
“That is because you have not had the benefit of Harry’s explanations,” Beatrice replied, her eyes alight with laughter. “We often discuss such things for hours at a time.”
“Truly?” Olivia looked at her in awe. “How can you bear it?”
“I enjoy listening,” Beatrice explained. “I have always been fascinated by the way other people’s minds work. I suppose that is why I love to gossip.”
“Oh, gossip,” Olivia said and laughed. “Now that is a very different matter, of course. Sophia wrote to me from town. Have you heard the latest about Caroline Lamb and Lord Byron? Truly, she is shameless! Everyone is talking about it…”
Olivia was thoughtful as she changed for dinner that evening. After spending a week at Camberwell, she could not doubt her sister’s happiness. Beatrice no longer spent long hours in the kitchen cooking, nor did she clean, but her influence was everywhere in the house. It was evident that her servants respected her, and her household was impeccably run while retaining a warmth and charm that was often missing in large houses.
Olivia supposed that she might be happy in a house like Camberwell, which happened to be the smallest of Lord Ravensden’s houses. Or she would be if she were married to a man she could love and admire; but somehow her rebellious spirit still craved adventure.
There was a strange restlessness inside her. She had begun to realise that her careful upbringing had been against her true nature. Lady Burton was a nervous, fussy woman, who had raised Olivia in her own image, but as each day passed the girl had gradually found her perception of the world and herself changing.
As yet she did not truly know the real Olivia. The girl who had loved to dance until dawn and flirt with the gentlemen who paid her pretty compliments was still there, of course, but she suspected there was another Olivia waiting to emerge.
“If only something exciting would happen,” she murmured to herself as she prepared to go downstairs and join her family at supper. “If only I could fall in love the way Beatrice has…” She laughed at herself. At Brighton, she was likely to meet the same gentlemen she had known in London, none of whom had caught her interest.
“What are you waiting for, Olivia?” she asked her own reflection in the mirror. She shook her head at her own thoughts as the words of a poem came into her mind. A pale knight wandering lost and alone after the heat of battle…waiting to be brought back to life by a beautiful lady, who would take the shadows from his eyes… “Where are you, my pale knight?”
Her head was full of romantic nonsense! Why could she not settle for someone kind and generous? Why must she always look for something more?
Dismissing her own longings as ridiculous, Olivia picked up her silk shawl and went downstairs to join the others.
Olivia sighed as she glanced out of the carriage window. They had been travelling for three days, having broken their journey by staying two nights with Lord and Lady Dawlish, who were great friends of Harry and Beatrice, in their house near the lovely, ancient village of Bletchingley in Surrey. It was now nearly noon, and they had set out at half-past the hour of eight that morning. They would soon be stopping to take refreshments and change the horses at the posting stage.
“Whoa! Whoa there!”
“What is happening?” Beatrice said, looking surprised as their coachman pulled the horses to a rather sudden and juddering halt. “Can you see anything, Olivia?”
Olivia glanced out of the window. “I believe there is an obstruction on the road. It looks as if someone’s coach may have lost a wheel.”
“Oh, how unfortunate,” Beatrice said. She would have gone on, but her groom opened the carriage door and looked in. “Yes, Dorkins? Has there been an accident?”
“I’m afraid so, milady. It means a delay while we help the gentleman to clear the road.”
“Then we may as well get down and stretch our legs,” Olivia said, giving her hand to the groom. “Pray help me out, Dorkins. I need a little exercise.”
They had stopped on a quiet stretch of road, which was quite narrow and hemmed in by a thick wood to either side. One glance at the cumbersome coach ahead, which was tipped drunkenly forward, having lost its front nearside wheel, told Olivia that they would be delayed for several minutes while the grooms of both vehicles combined to move the coach off the road.
Beatrice looked out of the window as Olivia started to wander away. “Where are you going, dearest?”
“Just to stretch my legs. Do not worry. I shall not go far.”
Olivia left the road, entering the wood. Her purpose was an indelicate subject, and one that she was not prepared to discuss in full hearing of the grooms, but she had been waiting to answer the call of nature for some while. She had preferred not to ask coachman to stop, thinking that they would soon reach the posting inn, but now she had determined to seize her chance to relieve herself.
Not for the first time in her life, Olivia found herself wishing she were a man as she gathered the voluminous skirts of her stylish travelling gown and squatted awkwardly behind a bush, which was well out of sight of the road. A few moments later, she emerged feeling more comfortable and began to rearrange her clothing, peering round at the back to make sure she was decent. Reassured, she was about to return to the road when she heard a low growling noise and turned to find her way blocked by a huge black dog. Its top lip was curled back over vicious-looking teeth, and it was snarling, poised as if preparing to leap at her if she dared to try passing it.
Olivia froze, unable to move so much as a finger. Her heart was beating wildly. She was terrified of large dogs. Lord Burton kept a pack of fierce guard dogs at his country estate, and she had once been bitten by one of them. The scar on her arm had almost completely faded, but the mental scar was still there.
“Do not move, ma’am!” a male voice suddenly commanded from behind her. “He has been trained to attack intruders. Hold, Brutus! Lie down, sir!”
The dog seemed to hesitate, then it stopped growling and stretched down on the earth at Olivia’s feet, its head on its paws. She tried to make herself walk past, but found she was quite unable to move.
“He won’t hurt you now. It’s perfectly safe.”
Olivia’s
