Love in the Highlands Read Free

ran into the hall and put on the coat which the butler already had in his hands. Then she sped out to the carriage. Her father joined her.
    The next moment they were rumbling away on the first part of their journey.
    "We've escaped," Lavina breathed. "But only for the moment. Oh Papa, we must escape for good. You must save me!"
    The Earl put his arms around his daughter, holding her tightly. His face was very set and determined.
*
    It was a long drive from London to Ringwood Manor in Oxfordshire, and Lavina had much time to think.
    What she had told her father about her one meeting with Lord Elswick had been true, but not the whole truth.
    Three years ago she had been seventeen, on the verge of making her debut in London society. As she had no mother, Lady Bracewell had agreed to sponsor her, and she had visited the Bracewells at their London home to gain a little polish before the night of her ball.
    The Bracewells had given a few impromptu dances to help her "get in the way of things before you become a debutante," as her kindly hostess had said. There were many Bracewell offspring, whose young friends were invited to make up the numbers, and they made a very merry party.
    One evening, as they were dancing, the front doorbell had rung, and the butler had admitted Lord Elswick.
    Lavina had been struck at once by how romantically handsome and melancholy he looked. Tall, dark, with a lean face, noble brow and fine features, he had seemed the very image of a story-book hero.
    She had only a brief glimpse of him, as he had been conducted straight into his host's study, but he had made an indelible impact on her heart.
    A few minutes later there was an interval so that the dancers could drink lemonade and catch their breath. Lavina used it to put her head together with the young Lady Helen Bracewell, her dearest friend.
    "Isn't he handsome?" Helen giggled.
    "I think he looks just like Childe Harold," Lavina breathed.
    She knew Helen would understand this as they had sighed together over Lord Byron's world-weary haunted hero. In a poem of five cantos, Childe Harold wandered the world, especially the exotic locations, seeking an escape from boredom and melancholy.
    Haunted by tragedy, he took refuge in beauty. The world laid its joys before him, and he greeted them with a faint smile that hinted at suffering bravely borne.
    Helen's schoolboy brother had snorted with contempt.
    "What a clown the fellow is, drivelling with self-pity!"
    The girls had driven him off with loud cries of indignation. Lavina especially had been wrathful. How, she wondered emotionally, could anyone be so unfeeling as to speak of the beautiful, agonised Harold, in such a heartless way?
    Harold had haunted her dreams by night and her fevered imaginings by day. She had been quite sure that when she went into society she would find no man who lived up to his romantic presence.
    And then the door had opened, and 'Harold' had walked in, pale, dark-eyed, intense, moving loftily above the vulgar crowd.
    She was sure that she read suppressed emotion in the brief bow he gave to Lady Bracewell, and secret suffering in the indifference with which he surveyed the dancers.
    Ah, she thought, with the passionate fervour of seventeen, such pleasures were not for him. They could not assuage the secret wound that blighted his life.
    She was not sure what that secret wound might be, but when Helen whispered that he had been abandoned by his bride on the very day of the wedding, everything became perfect.
    The dance resumed. As she turned this way and that Lavina tried to keep her eyes on the door through which he must come when his meeting with Lord Bracewell was over.
    She knew what must happen when he emerged. Lady Bracewell would invite him to join the impromptu ball. He would do so, reluctantly. Then he would see her and grow still as heavenly recognition swept over him. They would gaze into each other's eyes, each knowing that the die was cast.
    He would forget the