Read Online Raven's Ransom by Hayley Ann Solomon - Free Book Online Page A

of the interior with her outrageous ostrich feather fan. Slamming the door shut on her gay damask shawl, she tutted a little but abandoned the thing to its fate.
    “Well, Gareth!” She chuckled a little as she viewed her son’s sudden discomfiture. She was not at all perturbed by the presence of a lady seated comfortably on her favorite squab. Her sharp eyes detected, even in the lamplight, the crimson cheeks and the demure lashes of copper gold that lowered, shyly, upon her scrutiny.
    “You need not look so gleeful, Mama! Miss . . . good heavens, I do not know your name!”
    “Chartley.” The words were chorused by both Primrose, and to her astonishment, the marchioness. Lady Rochester chuckled and winked at Primrose, who felt she had never been caught at such point non plus in her life.
    “I am not totally a scatter wit, Gareth! Miss Chartley is one of Esmeralda’s chicks.” She opened her fan then snapped it shut with a sudden click. “Gracious, I believe I may be your godmama!” Her smile was so infectious, Primrose lost her rigid bearing and sudden consciousness.
    “No, ma’am, that is my sister Lily.”
    “Well, well, I knew it was one of you. And you are ... ?
    “Primrose.”
    “Ah, yes. Esmeralda was always quirkish.” She regarded Primrose solemnly, but a little dimple fluttered on either side of her cheek. After a pause, she smiled. “The other one’s a flower too, I believe.”
    Primrose nodded. “Sadly, madame, that is so. It is a sore trial to us.”
    The marchioness chuckled. “As I am to poor Gareth. My manners! Forgive me! It was very wrong of me to call Esmeralda quirkish.” She held her hands to her face in such a delightfully flustered manner that Primrose felt her lips twitching.
    “You are perfectly right, ma’am! Mama was quirkish, though a dear from all I recall.”
    “That she was. That she was.” Lady Rochester’s eyes misted up in sudden memory. “One day I will tell you the tricks we all got up to. But come! You have to tell me the answer to this puzzle. Did my son lure you in here or did you happen to stumble into my chaise by chance? Or”—her eyes sparkled mischievously—“can it be you have a clandestine meeting . . .”
    “Mama!” Gareth brought her up sharply.
    “No? But how disappointing! Gareth, I began to cherish hopes.”
    Primrose giggled in spite of herself. The women shared glances of amusement at his lordship’s sudden discomfiture.
    “He is quite terrible, you know. Takes fright at a single dance and goes to impossible lengths to shirk his duties on the dance floor. I should not have been so softhearted. I should have left him to kick his heels all night as I threatened. Still, I’m not entirely sorry I cut the night short. I might not have had so much as a whisper of this interlude if I’d not seen it myself.”
    Her tone held an unmistakable interrogative that caused Gareth to explain the mistake at once. The marchioness said nothing, but glanced curiously at Primrose on occasion, especially at those times when her exasperating son’s eyes sparkled dangerously clear and when his lips curled just slightly, as if at some dear, much concealed memory.
    The marchioness was no fool. She knew her son would not be a Rochester born and bred if he’d not expurgated his account, somewhat. Besides, the adorable copper-curled miss was blushing furiously. She was also, she noticed, casting adoring glances Gareth’s way. She hoped she would soon rid herself of the habit. It would do the marquis no good to become too puffed up in his own conceit. When they were wed, she would drop Miss Chartley a little hint.
    Ah, yes! There was no doubt in the marchioness’s smug, self-composed, irrepressibly matchmaking mind that her son had at last met his match. It needed no more than a few moments in the eldest Miss Chartley’s company to know that. Too bad that meddlesome Lord Raven was making the trio the talk of the Ton. Lady Cornwallis was already letting her