Read Online Royally Ever After by Loretta Chase - Free Book Online

“Raven,” though why they chose it was less obvious. Maybe his thick, black hair and too-piercing gray eyes gave them the idea, or maybe it was his deep, husky voice, better suited to a grown man than a boy of ten.Or maybe they referred to his nose, although this, while by no means small, wasn’t as beaky as many others.
    Still, he did always have the nose in question in a book, and some—actually, one of his paternal cousins—said that young Radford reminded him of “a raven poking into the guts of a carcass.”
    The cousin failed to mention or forgot or perhaps didn’t know—not being observant or clever—how extremely intelligent ravens were, for birds. Oliver Radford was extremely intelligent, for a boy. This was one reason he found the books vastly preferable to his schoolmates.
    Especially his unbelievably stupid cousins . . .
    At present he leaned against a wall at the edge of the playing fields, well away from the others, who were choosing sides for cricket. Unlikely and unwilling to be chosen, but required to be present at the character-building proceedings, he had his nose in the pages of Homer’s Odyssey .
    A fat hand with grimy fingernails covered the page of Greek script and a shadow fell over Oliver. He did not look up. He was, like his father, more-than-average observant. He recognized the hand. He had good reason to.
    â€œHere he is, gentlemen,” said Cousin Bernard. “Spawn of the family’s laboring branch: our Raven.”
    Laboring was meant to disparage Oliver’s father. Since the eldest son inherited everything, the others and their offspring had to find rich wives and/or places in “gentlemanly” professions like the military, the church, or the law. George Radford, son of a duke’s younger son, had elected to become a barrister. He was successful as well as happily married.
    All that Oliver had observed told him the other Radfords had extremely small brains and marriages the antithesis of his parents’.
    That a boy of ten knew what antithesis meant was another reason to hate him.
    He didn’t help matters.
    â€œNaturally you find the law laborious,” Oliver said. “Firstly, it wants a mastery of Latin, and you barely comprehend English. Secondly—”
    Bernard cuffed him lightly. “I’d hold my tongue if I was you, little Raven. Unless there’s tales you want told.”
    â€œFirstly, if you were me,” Oliver corrected. “Since you are patently not, you require the subjunctive. Secondly, tales is plural. Therefore you want the third person plural of the infinitive to be . The correct verb form is are .”
    Bernard cuffed him less lightly. “Best not to mind him too much,” he told the others—a small crowd of his disciples, some of them cousins. “No manners. Can’t help himself. Mother not quite the thing, you know. Bit of a tart. But we don’t talk about it much.”
    George Radford’s family had made a fuss of some kind when he married, at age fifty, a divorced lady. But Oliver didn’t care what they thought. His father had prepared him for the vicissitudes of Eton and the less-than-likable relatives he could expect to encounter there.
    â€œYou’re contradicting yourself,” Oliver said. “Again.”
    â€œNo, I’m not, you little fart.”
    â€œYou said we don’t talk about her but you did.”
    â€œDo you mind, little Raven?”
    â€œNot a bit,” Oliver said. “At least when my mother pushed me into the world, she contrived to keep my brain intact. The evidence shows the opposite result in your case.”
    Bernard yanked him from the wall and threw him down. The book fell from Oliver’s hands and his head rang, increasing his heart rate and sending him into a wild panic. He flung these sensations to the very back of his mind and pretended the feelings were miles away. He pretended that what