An Unexpected Love Read Free Page A

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.
    â€œNanny, 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.
    â€œAnd you said no, I hope.”
    â€œOf course. But why does he keep doing it? I like Giles, but – ”
    â€œHe 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.”
    â€œWell, 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.
    â€œYou 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.
    â€œNo, certainly not. Undoubtedly he is a clever man, rich and powerful, but he has not shown any interest in me in that way.”
    â€œAnd 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.
    â€œOh, 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.
    â€œI want to experience all the passion and drama and desire that I have read about in books such as Jane Eyre and Wuthering Heights .”
    â€œTosh 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,
    â€œWould 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.
    â€œPerhaps 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.
    â€˜That is