Page 15 of In With a Chance

It wasn’t that she had intended to be so dismissive. After all, Gwen had been forced to leave the room when she had first met the man, he’d been so…so intoxicating.

Tall, and handsome, with a mouth that tended to smiles and a jaw she could cut her quill on. Broad shoulders, and a presence that calmed, and a scent that made her thighs quiver…

No, it was utterly inappropriate for her to feel such things from a man she had just met, particularly when Gwen had been in the tedious process of attempting to gain congratulations from her family about engaging herself to quite another man!

Still, she could not help but smile nervously as the baron crossed the street to reach her side. “Lord Frasemere.”

“‘Quintrell,’ please,” he corrected with a brief smile. “The title is so new upon my shoulders, I find that I do not quite recognize it yet.”

Absolutely not, thought Gwen resolutely. It would be quite one thing to call her brother’s friend by such a familiar name if she were unattached, but she was engaged, and to a marquess! A marquess, mind you, who was very particular about these things.

“Well, Quintrell,” she found herself saying, most inexplicably, not even opting to include a ‘Mister.’ “You… You are enjoying your time in London?”

Precisely why the man was in London, she was not sure. Michael had never explained, when he and Phylis had come for luncheon the day following the baron’s arrival, and it had been a mite awkward to ask.

Good morning, Lord Frasemere, and why are you here in London living in my home?

“A little,” said Lord Frasemere quietly. “You are on your way home—alone?”

Gwen tried not to roll her eyes, but it was a challenge. Oh, so he was one of those sorts of gentlemen. The sort that thought a lady could hardly cut her own meat at dinner without going into a faint.

Well, what a bore.

“I am on my way home, and there is no one with me, so I suppose I am alone,” Gwen said, drawing herself up, before adding, “Except for you, obviously.”

“I would be delighted to be entrusted with the responsibility of accompanying you home,” he said quietly, as though he had not heard the tartness in her voice. “It would be my honor.”

Gwen snorted as they started walking, but when he didn’t join in with her laughter, heat burned her cheeks. “Oh. You were in earnest.”

The baron stared. “Is that a joke?”

A joke? What was the man talking—

Oh. Right. In earnest. Ernest Quintrell.

“You know, it honestly wasn’t,” Gwen said, trying to laugh as they turned a corner onto an even busier street. “Though I suppose you get that all the time, do you? Ernest, and…and earnest.”

Dear Lord, one day, she would work out how to stop her mouth from talking!

“Yes,” the baron said quietly. “Quite.”

Well, just in case this whole thing wasn’t awkward enough, it was most definitely awkward now. The man was just so—so… Well. Awkward.

At least they didn’t have to talk as they walked back home, Gwen reassured herself as they waited on the edge of the pavement to cross the street. It would only be a walk of about fifteen minutes, anyway. There was surely no time for any uneasy conversation to develop—

“So why are you marrying the Marquess of Ravenshurst?” Lord Frasemere asked lightly, stepping out into the road.

Gwen almost tripped over her skirts and onto the cobbles at the sudden question. Her head was spinning, her pulse thundering—though clearly, that could have been due to the almost catastrophic fall—and all she could think to splutter was, “H-How dare you!”

The baron turned to look back at her. He had to; she had fallen behind in the tangle with her skirts. “I beg your pardon?”

“How—what business is it of yours why I am marrying the Marquess of Ravenshurst?!” Gwen said angrily, reminding herself to walk forward, lest she be run over by a carriage, and she be left unable to marry the Marquess of Ravenshurst by virtue of being squashed flat.

When the pair had reached the pavement on the other side of the road, Lord Frasemere merely shrugged. “I’d like to know. I’m interested.”

‘Interested’?

Gwen gaped at him like a fish forced onto shore.