Free Fran Baker by Miss Roseand the Rakehell Page A

her eldest son as a purple flush climbed up his neck, “may I remind you that the matter is not yet settled. Lord Stratford has not yet applied to me.”
    “Oh, pooh, Griffen! It’s as good as settled. Is it not, my lord?” she inquired with an arch wave of her hand.
    “I’ve no doubt that you’ve indeed settled it, ma’am,” Stratford said, a sardonic smile playing on his full lips.
    The hands laying folded upon Miss Rose Lawrence’s woolen lap suddenly clenched and the fire of her anger blazed into her eyes. She could scarcely repress her rage over his lordship’s arrogant mockery, her fury over her family’s willing acceptance of his barely concealed insults.
    Stratford was endeavoring not to yawn when he chanced to glance her way. Black eyes met gray and held. His attention was firmly caught by the fierce glare being focused upon him. He looked her up and down. Miss Lawrence sat quietly, her long hands clasped in her lap and her face expressionless, but those overlarge gray eyes were clearly filled with hostility. The viscount found himself wondering what was going on behind the impassive face with the smoldering eyes and how he should discover it.
    He was recalled by Susanna, who inquired sharply if he meant to make a formal announcement immediately. He answered that it was his intention to do so and the conversation proceeded as before. When he rose some few minutes later to take his leave, he discovered that the sister with the angry eyes had slipped from the room. Shrugging off his unaccountable disappointment, he agreed to return later for a private interview with Griffen and followed his cousin outside.
    Baldwin mounted the curricle and Stratford was about to climb in beside him when his name rang out. He turned to see Miss Rose Lawrence standing on the front step with a small boy attached to each of her hands. He looked at the two children, then at the tall young woman between them. A challenge shone clear in her expressive eyes.
    “Lord Stratford, I should like to make you known to my nephews, Master Frederick and Master George Lawrence,” she said directly.
    The two little boys bowed solemnly, each with eyes rounded in awe of the man who had driven the magnificent curricle.
    “How do you do?” asked the viscount, just as seriously, as he extended his hand.
    Freddy shook it gravely, but the younger boy took his aunt’s skirt in his grubby hand and his shyly behind it. With a lift of one black brow, his lordship noted that she seemed neither to mind nor even to notice the damage being done to her gown.
    The elder boy tugged at her gown, too, and Rose bent while he stood on tiptoe to place his lips against her cap. Of a sudden, Roses’s laughter filled the air. Colin’s raised brow was joined by its mate, for it was not a tinkling society titter, but a warm, throaty laugh that was as enchanting as it was infectious.
    “I think, my dears,” she said with a tilt of her linen mobcap, “that you must ask him yourselves.”
    The boys’ brilliant blue eyes widened even further. Freddy’s mouth opened soundlessly.
    “May I perhaps be of some help?” his lordship prompted.
    “I—if you please, sir!—me and George would like to ride in your curricle. It’s a bang-up rig, sir!” Freddy looked for approval to his aunt.
    She nodded her head with such a twinkle in her gray eyes as they came up to meet the viscount’s that Stratford found himself saying, “It could be arranged. Perhaps tomorrow after church, if your mother is agreeable.”
    He did not stay to share in the boys’ ecstasy, and when he and Daniel were finally away in his curricle, he wondered again what it had been about those gray eyes that had caused him to assent to taking two young brats into his most prized vehicle.
    “I must be getting old,” he remarked aloud.
    To which mystifying comment his cousin had no reply.
     

Chapter 6
     
    The few persons who chanced to travel along the high road in the countryside beyond Willowley