Page 22 of In With a Chance

“Well, Lord Ravenshurst didn’t ask you to marry him,” bit Miss Gwendoline with a sharp look. “He asked me.”

“I can’t imagine Lord Ravenshurst asking me to marry him, that is true,” conceded Ernest with a smile. “And I suppose there are all manner of different tastes and…and desires in a courtship.”

Was that his own inventiveness, or did Miss Gwendoline’s eyes widen momentarily as he said the word ‘desire’?

Surely not.

“Just… Just so,” she said quietly.

“So tell me, for my own curiosity,” Ernest said lightly, as though what they spoke of was as dull as the weather. “When did you fall in love with Lord Ravenshurst?”

Miss Gwendoline swallowed. “‘Fall in love’?”

Blast it all, but I am dancing with fire here.

He had never expected this, never expected to meet a woman almost as soon as he’d arrived in London whom he found quite so fascinating as Miss Gwendoline Chance. She was beautiful, yes, but she inspired more than longing. She inspired curiosity. Ernest wanted to know everything about this woman, and her thoughts, and her hopes, and—

And he had come to London to find a wealthy bride.

Ernest leaned back in his chair, having hardly noticed that he had leaned so closely to the woman seated on his left.

Come on now, man. This was getting ridiculous.

The Frasemere estate was not going to last unless he found a woman with a serious dowry—more than forty thousand, by his steward’s reckoning—and Michael had always been honest about his family’s fortunes.

Or rather, lack thereof.

His sisters had no dowry, Michael himself had had a pittance to live on as the viscount’s heir and even now as the viscount, he was on the poorer end of lords, and more than that, Miss Gwendoline Chance was already engaged.

Something he should probably attempt to remember.

“I—I cannot tell you when I fell in love with Lord Ravenshurst,” Miss Gwendoline said coldly as the bowls before them were cleared away by the same, now wincing footman.

Ernest could not help himself. “Because you do not wish to tell me, or because you do not know?”

“Because—Because I—Because my love for Lord Ravenshurst is…” Miss Gwendoline was clearly struggling for words and Ernest knew he should have felt sorry for her.

It was such a shame he could not.

“It is not the sort of thing one discusses in public,” hissed Miss Gwendoline eventually.

Ernest raised an eyebrow as his stomach lurched most inexplicably. “But we are not in public. We are in private.”

“You are not my family. You—You are a stranger to me!”

It was a point well made, and a jab that hit far harder than Ernest expected she could have known.

A stranger. Had he not gone through most of his life a stranger, save for Charles? Only his brother had understood, and now that he was gone, Ernest was left alone in a world where no one quite understood him.

Or had ever bothered to get to know him.

Ernest swallowed, trying to force down the pain, but as he lifted his gaze and met that of Miss Gwendoline, he almost wondered whether some of the grief that had momentarily overwhelmed him had been visible on his face.

“I… I didn’t mean—”

“I am sorry, once again, for speaking out of turn when it comes to you and the marquess,” Ernest said quietly, reaching for his wineglass and wishing it were filled with something stronger. “I overstepped.”

“Again,” Miss Gwendoline pointed out sardonically, though there was a hint of a smile on her lips. “A habit you are forming when it comes to me, my lord. A habit I would hate to see stick.”