Free Chasing Raven by Jayne Fresina

loud clock somewhere?"
    "Just a ...little ache. My knee." He fumbled under the table and laid a hand over the supposedly suffering kneecap to rub it furiously. "So your sister has no serious suitors at present? Is that what you said?"
    "Raven tends to create most of her havoc on impulse. I daresay I wouldn't know about an engagement until it was made— and then promptly broken, as her few attempts at embarking upon connubial bliss have always ended." He paused, head tilted and eyes intrigued. Just like his sister's. "May I ask why you want to know?"
    Hale cleared his throat and wiped his lips on a napkin. "I wondered at the amount of freedom she appears to enjoy. It surely cannot help her reputation."
    "My father has tried, in recent years, to bring her to heel, but as she spends half her year with our mama, I fear any good he does is swiftly undone. On the other hand, our father attempting to preach to anyone about proper behavior is hypocritical, to say the least. Too little and too late, I fear, in Raven's case."
    He nodded again, remembering True Deverell once standing in a doorframe and whistling to his daughter as if she were a sheepdog, bringing the business of his club to a sharp halt with that wordless command.
    "She does appear to be a young lady of vigorous opinions."
    "Our father says she quarrels for the sake of it. We tend to be a noisy lot and one has to shout to be heard."
    He thought of her lips pouting as she spun around under the street lamp and glared at him. Of the way her emerald earrings trembled as he stood behind her and whispered in that crowded ballroom, watching the skin on her neck react to the stroke of his breath. And the sudden jolt to his heart the moment her eyes met his at the ball, boldly curious and wickedly amused.
    The touch of her fingertip to the end of his nose was playful in a manner no one had ever been with him before.
    By now he should be back at Greyledge and yet he delayed over this impertinent, spirited, reckless young woman. A woman about whom he wanted to know everything.
    His fingers tightened around the napkin, squeezing hard. "In addition to horses, what else does your sister enjoy?"
    "Oh, anything forbidden to her generally."
    "Of course." Hale reached for his wine glass.
    "I assume, eventually, she'll run off with a lusty, rustic fellow — a common sort with an excess of rough-edged charm, considerable debt to his name and more courage than he can afford. Having married him to spite our mother and prove herself a rebel, she will then produce a dozen squealing brats, all as thick-necked and stubborn as her husband."
    Hale paused with the glass half way to his lips. "It sounds as if you have a particular man in mind?"
    "No. There was one to whom I always thought she had a connection. Although she would deny it and our mother would have a conniption if anyone suggested him as a serious suitor. Farms some property near our father's castle in Cornwall. He's the only man who stood strong against her and wouldn't put up with her nonsense. But she turned him down flatly last year and he married elsewhere. His inappropriate qualities were always part of the appeal for Raven, I'm certain. Anything to be contrary and annoy our mama. When the question of marriage reared its rotten head, however, she ran screaming in the other direction."
    "I see." He set his glass down.
    "We Deverells are wayfarers who belong nowhere," Ransom continued. "We have money, we can be educated and dress ourselves up, but we still don't belong in any particular class. I suppose that's what frightens people about us. For Raven it's worse than it is for the rest of us. She must contend with our mother. Lady Charlotte gave up on the boys some time ago."
    "And there have been other men. Engagements?"
    "Once the adventure and thrill of the chase is all worn off, my sister loses interest. She would never be satisfied with the traditional roles set aside for womanhood, and anyone who tries to make her conform