Raven's Ransom Read Free

detestable book. Some dry old verbiage about steam engines, as if horse-drawn carriages were not quite sensible enough! She was of two minds to write to Olivia Darcy at once. Her eyes twinkled for a moment. Olivia’s loathsome brats with their fluttering eyelashes and insipid little simpers would be a suitable punishment for him. The young Marquis of Rochester, like his father before him, did not suffer fools gladly,
    “Do pay attention, Gareth! If you do not make some attempt to pick yourself a bride this Season I shall have to do it for you. I thought the Darcy sisters might . . .”
    “What?”
    “Aha!” The marchioness pounced on his book and unrepentantly lost his page. “I knew that would capture your attention! ”
    “More likely to give me indigestion. Stop teasing, Mama. When I meet someone who is sensible, intelligent, bright, and beautiful, you shall be the first to felicitate me.”
    “And how do you expect to meet such a paragon if you refuse every suitable invitation? Lady Castlereigh is much put out that you did not attend her soiree. Emily Cowper is barely speaking to me, and as for Lady Turlington . . . She has three daughters to dispatch and she was relying upon your handsome nature to give them a good sendoff.”
    “And why was that? I believe I have never so much as clapped eyes on the chits.”
    Lady Rochester had the grace to blush. “Well, I fancy I might have led them to believe . . .”
    “Oh, Mama! Can you not stop promising my attentions to the whole world? Last Season with the ladies Delia, Eugenie, Clarissa, and Harriet was quite enough!”
    “Well, their mothers were my particular friends!”
    “Mother, you are too popular by far! If I were to dance with the daughters of all your particular friends I would be frequenting Lobb’s every day!”
    “The bootmakers? Don’t gammon me—it would take more than a couple of quadrilles to wear a hole in your elegant hessians!”
    “I shouldn’t like to put it to the test, though. The results might prove expensive.”
    “Tch! As if you care a soux for expense! You would not have paid off your latest ladybird with a handsome carriage and four snow white horses if money was the smallest consideration.”
    “Mama!” Lord Gareth Rochester’s tone was shocked, but his eyes twinkled with exasperated affection. “Is there nothing that gets past you? And how thoroughly disreputable to mention such matters!”
    “Mmm the pot calling the kettle black. Gareth, when do you mean to settle? I quite yearn for grandchildren and there is the title to consider. I would turn in my grave if it ever passed to Cedric.”
    Something in his mother’s tone stopped Rochester from making the flippant retort that immediately sprang to mind.
    “Mama! I shall make a deal with you!”
    Lady Rochester did not quite like the quizzical sparkle in her son’s eye. She knew, for a certainty, that it meant trouble was brewing. Lord Rochester, whilst charming perfection personified and the very best of sons, nevertheless had an occasional wild streak that had caused both his parents a fair bit of flutter in the past. She was thus cautious as she mildly raised her noble brows and asked for elucidation.
    “I shall marry the precise maiden you select for me. No doubt she shall have all the credentials you require. My only specification is that she be neither cross-eyed, cross-grained, nor a shrew.”
    “Gareth! You cannot mean such a nonsensical thing!”
    “I most certainly do! You want an heir and I want some peacel”
    “But to be so cold-blooded . . .”
    “The marriage mart is cold-blooded. You are the first to admit it.”
    “Yes, but . . .”
    “If you have qualms, forget the whole thing and let me live in peace.”
    Lady Rochester looked at the stubborn set of her son’s jaw. She sighed. So much like his father, he was! There would be no making him see reason.
    “Very well. I shall present you with my choice at the end of the Season.”
    Gareth grinned.