Join us as Samantha Ward-Smith introduces Alexander, Viscount Dundarran, main character in her thrilling new Gothic novel, Ravenscourt #HistoricalFiction #GothicRomance #RecommendedReading

Ravenscourt

by Samantha Ward-Smith

He wanted to be gone from the dark enclosing room, with its mocking misery, to be gone from this house of nightmares, of shattered dreams, and discovered secrets which could not be put back in the box.

Venice, 1880.

Alexander, Viscount Dundarran, seeks refuge from scandal amidst the fading grandeur of crumbling palazzos during the infamous Carnival in the city. There he encounters the enigmatic Lady Arabella Pembrook—a young, beautiful widow. Both are scarred by their pasts but find solace in each other and a chance at redemption.

But when duty calls Alexander back to England upon his father's death, a darker journey begins. Travelling to Ravenscourt, the decaying estate once belonging to Arabella’s late husband, Alexander must confront the house’s disturbing legacy which has echoed through the generations. Within its walls lie secrets that refuse to stay buried and will threaten everything he thought he knew. But can Alex uncover the truth in time?

Alexander, Viscount Dundarran: motivations, conflicts and challenges.

When I first began writing Ravenscourt, I knew I wanted the story to revolve around a young man standing at a crossroads between privilege and purpose. Alexander, Viscount Dundarran, begins life as the heir to a grand estate, surrounded by comfort, expectation, and the quiet certainty that his path has already been decided for him. He is bright but bored, polite but restless — a young man who senses there must be more to life than inherited land and family reputation.

It isn’t until Cambridge that Alexander begins to change. Away from home and exposed to new ideas, he discovers a passion for social reform and the rights of ordinary people. The conversations he has there, the books he reads, and the lives he glimpses beyond his own narrow world ignite something in him. For the first time, he has a purpose. He wants to make a difference, to challenge the injustices that others accept as inevitable. His idealism becomes the force that drives him — and, as the story unfolds, the very thing that tests him.

His greatest opposition comes not from strangers, but from his own family. His father represents the old order: rigid, hierarchical, and utterly convinced that change is dangerous. He expects Alexander to marry sensibly — the daughter of a neighbouring landowner — and to settle quietly into the life prepared for him. His mother, too, finds her son’s ideas unsettling, especially his sympathy toward women’s rights. For her, such notions are not only improper but incomprehensible. To them, Alexander’s interest in politics and reform is a kind of betrayal — a rejection of everything they have built their lives upon.

Then comes Arabella Pembroke, and with her, the greatest challenge of all. She is everything Alexander admires — intelligent, outspoken, fiercely independent — and everything his family disapproves of. A widow, an American, and a woman of no fortune, Arabella stands entirely outside his class. Yet she understands his ideals, shares his hopes, and refuses to conform to the role society has assigned her. She becomes both his inspiration and his undoing.

When his father threatens to cut him off, Alexander is forced to confront the reality behind his ideals. For all his talk of change, he has never lived without privilege, never faced the constraints of money or class. His love for Arabella demands courage of a kind he has never had to summon before. It is one thing to dream of a fairer world — another to risk losing your own place in it.

At the beginning of the novel, Alexander can seem naïve, even foolish — too kind-hearted for his own good, too easily swayed by beauty and sentiment. But that is where his story begins. Ravenscourt follows him as he learns, often painfully, what it truly means to live by one’s convictions. His journey is one of awakening, of stepping beyond the safety of his upbringing and into the uncertainty of his own beliefs.

For me, Alexander embodies that difficult moment when idealism collides with reality — when a young man raised to inherit the world begins to ask whether he has the courage and the ability to change it.

 

Mihai Eminescu, 1869. Photograph taken by Jan Tomas, Prague.
Wikimedia Commons. Public Domain.

This is an image of Mihai Eminescu, a Romanian poet, painted in 1869 when he was just 19, and he is pretty much how I imagine Alexander!

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Samantha Ward-Smith

Samantha Ward-Smith is the author of Tower of Vengeance, her debut historical novel set in the Tower of London during the 13th century, and the forthcoming Ravenscourt, a Victorian Gothic tale unfolding across Venice, London, and the windswept Lancashire moors.

She lived in London for over three decades, building a career in investment banking while also pursuing a PhD in English at Birkbeck. For the past 13 years she has volunteered at the Tower of London, an experience that provided invaluable historical insight and directly shaped her writing.

Now based in Kent by the sea, Samantha continues to explore the intersections of history, place, and story, writing in the company of her two cats, Belle and Rudy.

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