Remember Love (Ravenswood #1)(2)
The middle of the central, south-facing block of the house was one story higher than the rest of it and was approached by a steep flight of marble steps leading up to a pillared porchway with a carved stone frieze and peaked roof above and to a set of high double doors opening onto the grand entrance hall beyond. The massive east and west wings on either side of the central block and jutting forward from it were topped at the front rather incongruously with octagonal turret rooms. A visitor to the house had once compared them to onions—it had not been a compliment—and remarked that they completely ruined any claim to classical beauty the housefront might otherwise have presented to the world. The world did not appear to agree. Young people who lived at the hall or visited it frequently invariably loved those rooms. They had windows facing in every direction and were bright with natural light and warmed by the sun. They made wonderful playrooms and reading nooks and romantic retreats, though they did not necessarily perform all three of those functions at once.
The central block housed the family rooms and their bedchambers above. The west wing contained the more formal rooms, including the portrait gallery, the ballroom, the grand dining room, and reception rooms of varying sizes. The east wing had offices on the lower floor, guest chambers above them, and the nursery and schoolroom at the top, though the countess occasionally asked rhetorically of no one in particular whose idea that had been. There was a north wing, making of the house a great hollow square. That wing housed the family carriages, with the servants’ quarters above.
A courtyard filled the hollow at the center of the house. It was approached by doors in each wing and by two magnificently carved stone archways and wide tunnels on either side of the marble steps in the southern wing. The courtyard was always lovely, with its neat, flower-bordered lawns and a rose arbor and fountain at the center. There were covered, cobbled cloisters about the perimeter.
The land north of the house was largely taken up by stables and paddocks on one side, kitchen gardens with extensive displays of flowers, vegetables, and herbs on the other.
The park stretched for a few miles to the east and west and consisted largely of rolling land with lawns and the occasional flower bed or copse of trees, walking and bridle paths, and driving lanes. There had once been a formal parterre garden before the house, its graveled paths constructed with geometric precision, its beds bright and fragrant with flowers and herbs of carefully coordinated colors and aromas and bordered with low, carefully clipped box hedges. It had been removed during the previous century, however, by the current earl’s grandfather, who had preferred to look out of the drawing room windows and those of his bedchamber above upon a less dramatic, more rural scene. It was he who had had the ha-ha built and sheep introduced to the meadow below. Flat lawns and a few flower beds and artfully placed trees had replaced the parterres.
On the highest of the grassy rises to the west of the hall, within a short walking distance of the house, there was a pavilion built to resemble a Greek temple. It was an open structure with comfortable chairs and love seats within. The pillars that supported the roof formed a pleasing frame for the views in every direction: the river and the village, the rolling land of the park—which invariably brought stillness and peace to the soul—and the long lake to the west. Upon an island not far from the near shore of the lake there was another stone pavilion, not unlike the one on the hill but of smaller size. It was put to a variety of uses. Most often it sheltered the musicians the countess was fond of bringing in during the summer to entertain select gatherings of guests who were rowed across to the island to enjoy the music and the champagne and dainties both savory and sweet that always accompanied it. Sometimes more sizable orchestras played for larger audiences as they picnicked upon the shore, but on those occasions the music was a mere background to conversation and laughter as guests enjoyed one another’s company and the beauty of their surroundings.
To the east of the hall there was more rolling land and what was known as the poplar walk—some people made a pun of the words poplar and popular, as though they were saying something everyone had not heard several dozen times before. A long, straight alley of lovingly cultivated grass was bordered on either side with poplar trees standing to attention like soldiers on parade. Benches were set at intervals along its edges for the relaxation of those who were in no hurry to reach the end of the walk. But at its end was an imposing glass summerhouse, a secluded retreat in which to sit on a summer day, or on a rainy day if one did not mind getting wet on the way there and back. A long line of hills lay some distance behind the summerhouse, separating the earl’s land from that of Sir Ifor Rhys. A well-defined path over the crests of those hills was used by walkers wanting some vigorous exercise and by riders. Sometimes even a gig or curricle driver braved the narrowness of the trail and the steepness of the drops on either side for the sheer adventure of it and for the views, which were nothing short of awe-inspiring in a number of places.
Considered all in all, Ravenswood was surely one of the loveliest of the great estates in England. Or so those who lived within its influence believed quite firmly, most of them not having seen many or even any of the others.
And it was a happy place.
The earl and his family did not hoard either the house or the park for their exclusive use and pleasure. They did not keep it even just for members of the Ware family who lived nearby or for the countess’s family, the Greenfields. No. The Wares of Ravenswood Hall were generous on a far wider scale with what was theirs. There were public days, two each week, often more during the summer, when the gates stood open and anyone was welcome to cross the bridge over the river and enjoy all the park had to offer, though it was understood without ever having to be stated or written down and posted on a board outside the gates that the family ought to be accorded some privacy close to the house.