A Kiss In The Desert

CHAPTER ONE - 1870-1

CHAPTER ONE

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1870The Earl of Bracken walked into White’s Club in St. James’s Street.

“Good morning, my Lord,” the porter greeted him.

“Good morning, Jackson,” the Earl replied. “Is Captain Kenwood here yet?”

“No, my Lord, but there’s a letter for you that has just arrived.”

He produced a sky blue envelope and the Earl took it from him and put it in his pocket before walking into the coffee room.

There were two members of the Club whom the Earl knew well sitting in the bow window which had been made famous by Beau Brummel.

They were deep in conversation and he had no wish to join them, so he walked quickly to the other end of the room and sat down in a corner.

He ordered a bottle of champagne from the Steward and almost reluctantly opened the letter which had been waiting for him.

It was, as he knew, from Lady Grantham as there was a faint scent emanating from the paper which he recognised.

He considered it a mistake for Irene to write to him using anything so noticeable as her sky blue writing paper. She had made it specially her own and the Earl knew it was recognised by the porters in his Club as well as by most servants in houses in Mayfair.

As he expected the letter was a long effusion of love and was mingled with urgent requests for him to come to her as quickly as possible.

He read it through and tucked it away into his pocket.

It was increasingly obvious that Irene Grantham was becoming somewhat of a problem and one that he was finding increasingly difficult to solve.

After the Earl had travelled round the world at his father’s suggestion, he had returned to England looking for amusement and it had not been hard to find.

As he was exceedingly handsome, well off and heir to the Dukedom of Brackenshaw, he was on the list of every Society hostess.

He was also on the list of ambitious mothers of daughters they hoped would make a good matrimonial catch.

The Earl had long ago been determined not to marry until he was very much older. Although he was the heir to this father’s title, he had a brother who would take his place if he did not produce a son.

He made it very clear to his relatives that if he did marry it would be his own choice and he did not need their advice nor to be in any way pushed into matrimony.

What happened next was inevitable.

A large number of attractive and colourful married ladies had made London Society the talk of Europe, and the Earl had quickly found one amongst them who fascinated him.

When he had first seen Irene, he had recognised that she was different from the women he had met on his travels.

They gravitated towards each other almost instinctively.

Very slim, with dark hair and flashing green eyes, Irene was sinuous and exotic. She fastened herself, as it were, around any man she fancied.

He found it impossible either to ignore her or to move away.

As soon as she met the Earl she knew at once that he was exactly what she had been looking for. She had been married when she was just eighteen to Lord Grantham.

He was old enough to be her father, but was anxious to produce a son and an heir.

He also found Irene irresistible.

He had been married to a woman who was a perpetual invalid and he had found her extremely boring only a few months after they were married.

When she died he told himself that if he married again it would be his choice and not that of his relatives.

He had fallen head over heels in love, as only an elderly man can, when he was first introduced to Irene.

Her father was a country Squire from a well known and respected family but with very little money.

He and his wife were overwhelmed and delighted when Lord Grantham started to woo their daughter, conveniently ignoring the difference in their ages.

Irene had been ambitious from the moment she was born. She had always desired more from life and she was determined to outshine her friends and her relations.

Lord Grantham had then proposed to her.

She realised that he could take her away from the parochial boredom of the country to the bright lights of Mayfair.

As soon as they were married Irene began to shine as a London hostess and she found that most of her husband’s friends, although they were elderly, were members of the House of Lords.

Her parties which were lacking in the younger generation became noted for their intelligent conversation and there was always a variety of nationalities amongst her guests.

Irene was not well read nor particularly well educated. She was however clever enough to be able to draw a man out and to make him feel that everything he said to her was of vital interest.

It soon became an honour to be invited to dinner by the Granthams and invitations to Irene’s parties were particularly sought after, especially amongst diplomats.

She was however insatiable where a man she fancied was concerned.

If Lord Grantham was ever suspicious that she had taken a lover, he did not appear to suffer from jealousy and nor did he interfere with his wife’s pleasures.

Irene flirted with practically every man she met and they swarmed over her like bees around a honey-pot.

Lord Grantham actually took it all as rather a compliment to himself.

It was not surprising that the young Prince of Wales soon became one of Irene’s guests, nor that practically every distinguished gentleman in London was seen sooner or later at his Lordship’s table.

Irene had however never lost her heart as she controlled her emotions by not allowing them to control her.

That was until she met the Earl of Bracken at a dinner party given by the Duchess of Devonshire.

Favin Bracken had been invited soon after he returned to London and he had accepted more out of curiosity than because he enjoyed large dinner parties.

Having been abroad for so long he wanted to compare the parties in London with those which he had attended in India, Egypt, St. Petersburg and New York.

He was thinking that such grandiose occasions on the whole were all much of a muchness when he was introduced to Irene.

She was certainly very beautiful.

He understood exactly what she was feeling when their eyes met and in fact it was happening to them both in the same instant.

There were plenty of acquaintances to tell him the next day and every day all they knew about Irene. The gossips, the majority of whom were jealous, were none too kind in what they related.

From the Earl’s point of view it merely made her even more attractive as she was a challenge which had been difficult for him to resist.

What he had not expected was that Irene would fall wildly in love with him, which was not only overwhelming but, he felt, somewhat dangerous.

Lord Grantham was prepared to close his eyes to indiscretions, which could not be proved and gossip which was always exaggerated. He was however an intelligent man and exceedingly proud of his family and lineage.

It was of course the unwritten law of Society that there should be no scandal and that a married woman should never damage her husband’s reputation by besmirching hers.

Where Favin Bracken was concerned, Irene pursued him relentlessly making it abundantly clear that she loved him as she had never loved a man in her life.

She wrote him smouldering letters which he burned immediately as he was afraid that they might fall into the wrong hands, which could do both her and him an enormous amount of damage.

She pursued him wherever he was staying and she begged him to come to her husband’s house.

At times the Earl thought it would not only be indiscreet but madness to agree.

“We have to be careful, Irene,” he said not once but a dozen times.

“I love you, Favin,” Irene simpered. “There has never been anyone like you. Oh, darling, why did we not meet before I married?”

There were many answers the Earl could have given her, one being that she had been married for six years. He would at that time have only just been coming down from Oxford and he would have possessed very little then to recommend him in Irene’s ambitious eyes.

His father had been the Earl of Bracken and he was allowed very little money by the reigning Duke, so that Favin was in fact extremely hard-up.

He was well aware of Irene’s extravagance.

The large parties she gave incessantly in London and in the country would have been far beyond his meagre purse as a young man.

Two years after her marriage Irene was beginning to climb the social tree and it was then that Favin’s father became the Duke of Brackenshaw.

He, as the eldest son boasted the courtesy title of the Earl of Bracken. However money was still scarce.

After three years in the family Regiment, which was an expensive one, Favin resigned his Commission in the Army and on his father’s instructions he set off to explore the world.

The first time he returned was largely to collect more money as he was always short. Afterwards it was to be with his father who was in ill-health.

It was only when Favin returned last year that he began to take charge of the Ducal estate as his father was no longer capable of doing anything.

Now that he had introduced modern farming methods on the estate, the situation had begun to improve.

And then he met Irene!

It was only with the greatest difficulty that he managed to prevent her from taking up all his time.

Having read Irene’s letter, the Earl deliberately lit a match and burned it piece by piece in one of the ashtrays on the table in front of him.

He had disposed of the last corner of the blue writing-paper when the Steward brought him the champagne he had ordered. Having set it down on the table the Earl removed the ashtray.

“Shall I pour you out a glass, my Lord?” the Steward enquired. “Or will you wait for your guest?”

“Give me half a glass now, please.”

He was sipping the champagne slowly when Captain Charles Kenwood came hurrying across the room.

“I am sorry I am late,” he said as he sat down beside the Earl. “I have been at Tattersall’s to look at some horses, but I regret to say that they all fetched more than I could afford.”

“It’s about horses that I would like to talk to you,” the Earl began.

Charles Kenwood was a good-looking young man but not as outstandingly handsome as the Earl. They had been at Eton together and next at Oxford and they had actually joined the same Regiment at the same time.

Charles had stayed on after the Earl had resigned his Commission. He had in fact only left six months ago after his father had died.

Then he had gone to the country to look after his estate and his younger sister.

Charles’s father had been General Sir Alexander Kenwood and had commanded the Household Cavalry.

He was not a rich man by any means but he owned an attractive house on a five hundred acre estate in Hertfordshire.

It was very different from the enormous mansion in Huntingdonshire which had been in the Earl’s family since the time of Henry VIII.

All down the centuries the Brackens had always been distinguished members of the Establishment. They had improved and added to their home which became one of the most outstanding ancestral houses in England.

It was only now, the Earl thought with pride, that under his orders and guidance the estate was again profitable.

Over the centuries his family had been able to accumulate one of the finest collections of pictures and furniture in England.

As Charles Kenwood sat down beside him, the Earl asked him,

“Were you surprised to receive a letter from me?”

“I was delighted,” Charles answered. “I heard you were back and working hard on your estate, besides of course enjoying yourself in the social world.”