Page 33 of In With a Chance

“Your mother,” Miss Gwendoline said with a nod.

Once again, Ernest smiled. “No.”

That almost stopped the woman in her tracks. “‘No’? What do you mean, ‘no’?”

“This might be a lot easier if you just let me talk,” suggested Ernest, trying not to grin at the immediate outrage that flew across Miss Gwendoline’s face.

And then it settled, and she calmed, and she even allowed herself a wry twist of a smile. “Sorry. And sorry for saying, ‘sorry.’”

“My father married, and he had a son. A son he was eminently proud of,” said Ernest, making sure to keep any envy from his voice. “But mere hours after that son was born, the Baroness Frasemere died—childbed fever, apparently—and he remarried.”

“To your mother—sorry,” said Miss Gwendoline, her shoulders curling forward and her head bowed as they turned a corner onto a street upon which was a busy market. “Honestly, I’m trying not to interrupt.”

“I know,” Ernest said with a laugh, and he did. There was something boundless about the energy of this woman. “Suffice to say, Lord Frasemere’s second wife also had a son—”

“You!”

“Me, Miss Chance,” he said, shaking his head ruefully at her exuberance. “My father was unaffected by the loss of his second wife in much the same manner as the first. He had his heir, and his spare, and saw no reason to bother himself with a third marriage.”

Try as he might, Ernest could not completely keep the bitterness from his voice. That was what a childhood without love would do to one.

“You and your brother—sorry, half-brother…”

“Oh, he was my brother,” Ernest said, a pang in his heart twisting painfully. “Charles was the best brother I could have ever wanted. When our father died, it was…well, with some relief. Our father was not a kind man, Miss Chance. He was not cordial, like your father. He had no time for his children.”

That was an understatement, but it was probably an understatement he could live with.

A sudden tug—a weight. Ernest looked down to see that Miss Gwendoline had placed her hand in the crook of his arm.

“You sounded lonely, just then,” she said softly.

Ernest’s stomach lurched. “I was,” he admitted before he knew what he was saying. “Charles was seven years older than I was, and he was sent off to school before I’d left the nursery. Summer holidays, Christmas holidays, those were the times I lived for—my father did not consider the expense of sending a spare to school worth the cost.”

And hadn’t he been told about it.

“But…” Miss Gwendoline’s eyes widened as sorrow entered them. “But you are Baron Frasemere now. Your brother—”

“He died in the spring,” Ernest said brusquely, as though the loss of the only member of his family had been naught but an inconvenience, not a devastating sense of grief. A double sense of grief. A story of grief he could never tell another soul. “And now I am Baron Frasemere, and I must marry and create more heirs—though I hope with a great deal more affection for them than my father ever managed.”

Now why the devil had he said that?

He and Miss Gwendoline walked along in silence for a minute before she said quietly, “You know, I think it good that a person wants to have children to love them, not just because they are heirs.”

“Well, I still need heirs,” Ernest said awkwardly with a shrug, which only emphasized the weight of the woman’s arm in his.

Miss Gwendoline’s steady eyes met his. “Every man does. But you…you want a family. That is quite different.”

How had he never noticed how beautiful London was? The trees in their red-and-golden apparel, the sun shining down, birdsong in the air and the scent of apples pies…

Ernest inhaled deeply and could not help the inane grin on his face. “That is precisely it, Miss Chance.”

“You may as well call me ‘Gwen,’” she said, her cheeks pinking. “If you are to stay with my family this long, I mean. Everyone does.”

“Does Lord Ravenshurst?” Ernest asked before he could stop himself.

Which was a foolish thing to do, indeed.

Gwen—Miss Gwendoline’s jaw tightened, and the joy and sparkle disappeared from her eyes. Without ceremony, she slipped her hand free of his arm and shifted a few inches to the right, away from him.