An Archangel Called Ivan

CHAPTER ONE 1860-1

CHAPTER ONE

1860Arliva walked away from the noise and laughter in the ballroom towards her sitting room.

She had just found that she had left her evening bag on the table after dinner and, as she wanted a handkerchief out of it, she must find out where it could be.

She was almost certain that the servants would have taken it into her sitting room and put it on the writing table, as there would be no doubt that it was hers.

It was gold and had been given to her on one of her birthdays by her father.

It had her initials on it in diamonds and contained an attractive powder compact that had been another present which also had her initials displayed in precious stones.

In point of fact the whole front of the compact was sprinkled with them.

It was just another indication of her wealth.

At her father’s large house in Park Lane she was able to hold an evening party at which everyone in the Beau Monde was to be present.

Arliva had made a tremendous impact on the Social world from the moment she first appeared in it.

As her father had died when she was just seventeen, she had stayed quietly in the country for a year.

When she appeared this Season, she was nearing nineteen and had completely astounded the Social world.

It was not surprising because she was immensely rich, which, as the Dowagers said to each other was always an ‘Open Sesame’ to the Beau Monde.

She was also extremely beautiful.

It’s really most unfair the other debutantes muttered amongst themselves that Arliva should have so much to make her the most talked about, the most beautiful and the most successful debutante of the Season.

Lord Ashdown, her father, had been a most brilliant diplomat and he had contributed enormously to the huge British Empire presided over by Queen Victoria.

He had been rich and influential before he became a diplomat, but his success then had lain in the fact that his father had been an extremely clever man and he had done a great deal for the countryside he lived in.

When Lord Ashdown had shown, while he was still at Oxford, that he had an exceptional brain and great charm that was the hope and ambition of every budding diplomat, his father had wisely insisted that he become proficient in every foreign language.

When he was later offered an apprenticeship to the Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs, the Secretary said,

“He knows more languages than I do and I cannot imagine anyone who would be more useful to us at this or any other moment.”

It was then that Lord Ashdown realised that he was in his element.

He travelled from country to country and, because he was handsome and when it suited him flirtatious, a large number of women fell willingly into his arms.

But surprisingly he did not marry.

It was because he enjoyed his life so much as a bachelor he felt he would find himself tied down, however attractive his wife might be, and he would feel confined in a way he was certain he would hate.

He was therefore nearly fifty when he was finally married.

He was extremely happy with his young and very beautiful wife.

Unfortunately and to his and everyone else’s great sadness she died during the birth of her first child.

Whilst Arliva was a comfort to her father, he was continually travelling throughout the world and it was not until she was old enough that he took her with him.

The countries they visited and the people they met made a great impression on a girl who was only fourteen years of age.

She learnt to speak almost as many languages as her father and to be friendly with the men and women of every different nation. It was an extraordinary education in a way for an English girl.

But, when her father died, she then realised that her wandering life had come to an end.

She was obliged to settle down in the large country house he owned in Gloucestershire and be given lessons by Governesses, who could teach her very little that she did not know already.

In his years of extensive travelling Lord Ashdown had become even richer than he had been when he had inherited his fortune from his father.

He was interested in so many different things.

The treasures he had brought home from his travels filled the house in the country to the rafters and were an increasing delight to his daughter.

Whenever she saw something for sale which she knew would delight her father, she insisted on buying it, thereby adding to the great collection he had already made.

Arliva was chaperoned after her father’s death by his sisters. As he had four of them, they took it in turns to have her either in the house where they lived or to stay at Ashdown Abbey which had been her father’s favourite house and which was now hers.

It was not surprising that the stories of the valuable treasures that the house contained and the beauty and worth of its owner reached London long before she set foot in Mayfair.

To claim that she was an overnight sensation at the first ball given for her in London by one of her relatives was to express the situation mildly.

The very fact that she appeared to be so completely unaware of her beauty and her money made her attractive to every man who danced with her.

Naturally it caused her to receive great attention from the Dowagers, who not only wished to marry off their daughters to someone of importance but also to find a rich and charming wife for their sons.

To Arliva it was a new world that she summed up, as she had every other place she had visited, to find out the truth beneath the obvious glitter and the reality behind the diplomatic pretence.

She had learnt so much from her father.

What was most significant was his advice never to frighten people with your knowledge and never to let them feel that you are too clever to enjoy the compliments they undoubtedly will pay you.

Arliva had laughed at the time, but she had noted how astute her father was in dealing with Statesmen from other countries who wanted to obtain something of value from him.

And how he never let them realise that he was well aware what their tricks would be long before they tried to capture him with them.

Arliva therefore acknowledged the varied proposals of marriage that she received demurely and kindly.

At the same time never letting the man who was proposing be aware that she knew what really attracted him was her fortune.

“You are a huge success, dearest,” one of her aunts complimented her, “and we are so proud of you. Of course there is no reason at all for you to be in any hurry to marry anyone.”

Arliva realised that her aunts had been consulting amongst themselves as to how they could deter fortune-hunters from snatching Arliva away from them.

They need not have worried.

Her father had taught her so much that she knew almost before the man in question asked her to be his wife that he was thinking of piles of gold rather than the light in her eyes.

The one outstanding talent of Lord Ashdown had been the fact that he could sum up the man he was talking to almost immediately he entered the room.

“It’s not exactly what he says or what he does,” he told his daughter, “it is something that vibrates from him and that is what you have to learn to recognise.”

Arliva understood exactly what her father meant.

As she grew older, he had sometimes allowed her be with him when he had a caller that he suspected would sooner or later desire to conduct some vital business with him.

“Now what did you think of that man?” he would ask Arliva when they were alone together.

“I thought that he was very good-looking and well-dressed for the part he wanted to play,” she replied.

Her father had smiled.

“Go on,” he urged her.

“Then I sensed,” she continued, “that behind the complimentary words that he was mouthing to me and the warm welcome he was repeating on behalf of Her Majesty, there was a determination to obtain something from you which he thought you would not immediately be aware of.”

“You are quite right,” he said, “and you are getting better at it every day. It was something I rather suspected before he came, but which I could see quite clearly once he began to talk on so many different subjects that he thought would blind me to the main reason for his attention.”

“At the same time, Papa, we want this country to be our ally and to support Queen Victoria rather than being antagonistic,” Arliva pointed out.

“You are quite right,” her father agreed. “Equally the danger remains that they wish to extend their borders and they can only do so by invading the countries adjacent to them.”

Looking back on that particular day, Arliva learnt what a brilliant diplomat her father was.

How, just as she had used her brain and her instinct when she was dealing with such people, it was something she must do in a small way in the Social world.

She had incredibly already received no less than five proposals of marriage since she had come to London.

Whilst she had been outwardly flattered by their attention, she had known that the men in question did not love her for herself.

‘What I really want,’ she mused, ‘is to be loved for myself and not for all that I possess.’

She had a strong feeling sometimes that her father’s enormous fortune was like a high mountain.

It covered her so completely that it was impossible for anyone to see her as herself.

Now, as she opened the door of her sitting room that had once been her father’s, she saw that there was only one lamp alight on the writing table.

But glittering beside it was the gold handbag she had left in the dining room.

She walked across the room and picked it up and then she sat down at the table to look in the small mirror of her compact to see if her hair was tidy.

The last dance she had taken part in had been The Lancers and she had been swung around by enthusiastic young men whose undoubted strength had made her limp in their arms.

She was relieved to see that her hair was unruffled and the beautiful pearls round her neck, which had been her mother’s, had not moved.

Then, as she placed the compact back in her gold handbag, she heard a voice speak her name.

“So then, do you really mean to propose to Arliva Ashdown?” a woman’s voice resonated round the room.

Arliva stiffened.

Then she realised that the voice came through one of the open windows that led onto a terrace overlooking the garden.

She wondered who was speaking.

Then on an impulse, before she heard the answer, she moved a little nearer to the window.

“I have to ask her,” a man replied.

Then to Arliva’s astonishment there was a note of almost desperation in his voice.

“But, my darling one,” the woman said, “how can you marry someone else when we are so happy together? I have always believed that God would answer our prayers and somehow you would find enough money to carry on.”

“It is hopeless, utterly hopeless,” the man sighed. “As you said, we thought things might improve, but the war took too much from the country and too many men. Two of my best farmers have lost everything they owned with the bad spring and it’s impossible for me to help them to replace what has gone.”

“I realise that,” the woman said very softly, “and you have been really wonderful. You have almost starved yourself to help your people.”

“But now I cannot pay the pensioners,” the man replied, “so they will definitely starve. As you well know yourself, there is no one working on the land and we have hardly a decent horse left to carry us over the estate.”

“I know, I know,” the woman cried. “But I love you, Charles, and I know that you love me. How can we possibly go on without each other?”