Free Chasing Raven by Jayne Fresina Page B

they had now invited someone far more suitable for him to meet above the tea urn. A lady of "impeccable pedigree", probably very sweet and demure. Someone to bring him back from the precipice and onto safe ground.
    "That was an extremely heavy sigh, Hale," Deverell exclaimed. "I hope the steak is to your liking."
    But it was not the steak that troubled him. It was cooked exactly to his specifications. He simply had an appetite for something different, something he'd never had before. Something that just might take a bite out of him first.

Chapter Nine
    Anxious to get out and breathe some fresh air, Raven finally replied to Matthew Bourne's note and agreed to meet him in the little park across the street, but only to pass along their winnings from Hale. She did not want any share of it now. When she looked at that cheque and the sternly penned signature, it felt as if he had paid her to break with Matthew.
    Her mother accompanied her to the park that day, watching her too closely to allow much conversation.
    "When she's like this it only lasts for a while," Raven assured Matthew with a whisper and a smile. "Before too long she will find something else to worry about and I'll be free again to do as I please."
    "Raven, I must tell you—"
    "You're soon to be engaged. Yes, I know." She had to cut him off, couldn't bear it when he whined and simpered. Better be brisk and get it over with. "Matty, I never expected anything from you but friendship. We had a very jolly time, did we not?"
    He lowered his voice and muttered urgently, "But I had hoped for more. So much more."
    Lady Charlotte, waiting by the park railings, summoned her with a sharp cry, "Raven, do hurry."
    So as she gave him her hand to kiss, she said cheerfully, "Let me congratulate you, Matty. Lady Louisa Winstanley is a delightful girl. Or so I have heard. I don't know her well, of course."
    Staring at her fingers, he stuck out his lower lip. "I hoped this...circumstance...would make little difference to you and I. That's why I never mentioned it. We can go on as we did before."
    She paused, reminded again how naive he could be, how young and unthinking. "I'm sure Louisa would not like that much. Better you make a fresh start with her."
    "But such things are often arranged and she need not be consulted."
    Appalled, Raven tugged her hand from his. "I may not care for the idea of marriage myself, but I would never spoil another woman's chance of contentment and happiness if that is what she has chosen. If you marry her she has a right to expect your fidelity."
    "I don't understand you."
    That was just the trouble, she thought sadly. "We will always be friends, Matty, but I fear it must be from a distance. I do not want to cause any trouble for you, or for your fiancée." It was different before, when they were both merely having fun, but now their playful adventures must be over.
    He swore under his breath. "If my brother Douglas were alive, my parents would let me have whomever I wanted. He was always their favorite and as the eldest this duty would have been his, not mine. He would have married Louisa Winstanley, and I would have had you."
    Raven said nothing, but she doubted this scenario very much. Matthew's father had been just as eager to keep her like a bird in a cage, not that she'd ever told him about that strange conversation.
    "If my brother were alive..." The subject of his dead brother was surely a painful one for Matthew, but he continually brought it up, as if he was afraid of forgetting if he did not keep the wound open. Or else he enjoyed the pain. "So Hale has cost me again," he mumbled resentfully at the ground. "Now I've lost you too, as well as Douglas, thanks to that man's interference. You know, of course, why he paid the wager to you, instead of to me?"
    "No, I hardly thought of it at all." She'd wondered about little else those past few days.
    "It is Hale's sly, condescending way of telling me he knows what we did. Now he expects me to tremble