Brighton Road Read Free

sort of
tryst was about to take place. And yet Ravenel's dark eyes looked
more impatient than amorous. Gwenda crouched farther back on the
settle, hoping that the lady might persuade him to leave, but his
lordship did not appear to be a persuadable sort of man.
    "Of course I intend no impropriety," Ravenel
said. "And your aunt would be very much in the way. Now sit down.
Please."
    Even when Ravenel added "please," it still
sounded like a command. Gwenda heard the scrape of a chair and then
a rustling of silk, which told her that Miss Carruthers had
complied.
    "Oh, blast!" Gwenda whispered to herself. Now
what was she going to do?
    Miss Carruthers said, "Surely, Lord Ravenel,
whatever you have to say to me could wait until we meet again in
Brighton."
    "No, it cannot. I feel I have waited too long
already."
    Miss Carruthers's heavy sigh carried clearly
to Gwenda's ears. Squirming at the plight in which she found
herself, Gwenda eyed the open window through which Spotted Bert had
vanished and wondered what her chances were of clambering through
it unnoticed. But after risking another peek around the settle, she
quickly abandoned any such notion. Miss Carruthers's chair was
drawn up in the far corner of the room, closest to the door.
Although Ravenel loomed over her, he did not look at the young
lady. Rather, he seemed to be staring out the window, an absent
expression in his eyes as he mustered his thoughts. Despite the
discomforts of her situation, Gwenda could not help being caught up
by the picture that two of them made, somewhat like the hero and
heroine of her latest novel—Miss Carruthers, so angelically fair;
Ravenel, so dangerously dark. Except that the backdrop was all
wrong. Gwenda would have opted for walls of stone with rich Italian
tapestries and velvet curtains of royal purple fringed in gold.
Miss Carruthers's blond hair should have cascaded down her back
instead of being arranged a la Sappho, and Gwenda would have
rounded her eyes, gotten rid of that catlike slant. As for Ravenel,
he would appear to better advantage in a crimson doublet, with a
sword buckled at his waist His hair should have flowed back from
his brow in midnight waves rather than been cropped into the severe
Brutus cut so popular among the gentlemen.
    Linking his hands behind his back, Ravenel
drew himself up to his full height. Gwenda thought her mama would
greatly have approved of his lordship's posture. The man looked as
though he had been born with a ramrod affixed to his spine. He said
abruptly, "I see no reason to waste any more time, Miss Carruthers.
I have your father's permission to address you, and I am sure you
have been expecting me to do so."
    Good heavens! Gwenda could scarcely credit
her ears. The man could not possibly intend to deliver a proposal
of marriage, not here at an inn.
    But her own dismay was nothing compared to
Miss Carruthers's. Dropping her manner of placid gentility, she
half started from the chair, irritation and alarm chasing across
her delicate features. "Oh no. I—I wasn't expecting—Please, Lord
Ravenel. Desmond,it is yet too soon."
    Desmond? Gwenda stifled the desire to shriek.
She was not so unreasonable as to expect to find men named Roderigo
or Antonio outside the pages of her books, but Desmond! How could
his parents have been so utterly unfeeling?
    " It is not too soon," Ravenel snapped. "I
have received enough encouragement from you, Belinda, that I think
I may make bold to speak what is in my mind."
    In his mind? What about his heart? Gwenda
thought. She realized she had been staring so long that, despite
her concealment, she marveled that they did not feel her eyes upon
them. Both Ravenel and Miss Carruthers were so caught up in their
own drama that neither seemed to suspect that they were not
alone.
    All the same, Gwenda drew farther behind the
settle. Resigning herself to the fact that she was now cornered
until the end of this painful little scene, she eased into a more
comfortable position as