Read Online The Bluestocking and the Rake (The Regency Gentlemen Series) by Norma Darcy - Free Book Online Page A

his eyes through the thick glass of her spectacles.
    “I have needs, ma’am.”
    “Indeed?” she choked.
    “I have a large estate and there is much to be done. My dear Miss Blakelow, whom else did you suppose me to be speaking of?” he asked innocently.
    “An idle man may very easily give into corpulence,” said Aunt Blakelow at this moment, unconsciously rescuing her niece at that moment as she adjusted the arrangement of her considerable bulk upon the sofa.
    “So may an idle woman,” murmured his lordship softly and had the satisfaction of hearing a choke of laughter emanate from the other side of the room.
    “Remember that,” said Aunt Blakelow, waving a finger at him. “But I hear that these days they can do much with corsets, although they are prone to creak just when one wishes that they would not. Mr. Grantham wears one and you can hear him enter a house before ever he has been announced. You might consider corsets when you have a need of them, Marcham.”
    “I’ll bear them in mind,” said his lordship.
    Miss Blakelow, much amused by the thought of his lordship in a corset, was moved to take a firm hold on her bottom lip with her teeth and went to sit by the fireplace, narrowly missing upsetting the tea tray on the small table.
    “How does your mother do?” her aunt asked without hearing his answer. “Dear Lady Marcham, such a fine woman and such excellent taste. I have often remarked upon it that one rarely finds a person with a better eye for colour than the Countess. I haven’t seen her in an age. Pray, does she not live up at the Dower House?”
    “No, ma’am,” he replied. “She likes to divide her time between Longfield Park and town.”
    “ London is very well for entertainment, but I dare swear one grows tired of it after awhile. Come and sit by me, young man,” invited Aunt Blakelow, patting the sofa beside her.
    Lord Marcham, who had not been called young man since he was in short coats, resisted the urge to let fly the retort that sprang to his lips. This imperious, forthright woman was fast making him lose his temper and Miss Blakelow was laughing at him for it. The words of his friend Sir Julius Fawcett came back to him and he decided that the biggest punishment to an uptight bluestocking who had little experience of men was to be the object of the attentions of a notorious rake. He smiled inwardly, took the offered seat by the spinster aunt and sipped his tea.
    “You are a well looking man…although no longer in your youth,” remarked the elderly Miss Blakelow. “How old are you?”
    “Nine and thirty, ma’am.”
    “Well, you don’t look it. Oh, yes, I might be in my dotage but I can still appreciate a pretty face.”
    “Thank you,” replied his lordship, meekly.
    “Although you are rather too tall to be considered handsome. Your fiancée is a tall woman, I take it?”
    Lord Marcham took the remark with a tight smile. “I have no fiancée.”
    “Lady Emily Holt.”
    “Lady Emily Holt is no more than an inch or two above five feet and she is not my fiancée.”
    “Oh, dear…well, it cannot be helped, I suppose. And is she pretty? No, you need not answer that. I cannot believe a man like you would marry a woman who was not. Her father was a handsome man in his day, you know. Blonde, isn’t she? Voluptuous too. But she won’t age well, Marcham, you can be sure of that. She’ll be fat by the time she is thirty, but I suppose you won’t mind that once she has given you a house full of little Hockinghams and then you can take a mistress.”
    His lordship choked on his tea. He opened his mouth to reply and then thought better of it and closed it again.
    “My dear Aunt,” interjected Miss Blakelow, torn between mortification for her aunt’s manners and amusement at the resulting effect on their esteemed visitor. “Lord Marcham is here to discuss business.”
    “No he isn’t,” replied his lordship, bluntly.
    Miss Blakelow coloured faintly and looked at him