Page 54 of In With a Chance

Ernest turned to find Gwen’s father standing behind him. “‘L-Lord Ravenshurst’?”

“Gwen’s betrothed, yes,” said the Dowager Viscount Pernrith, with absolutely no expression on his face. No suggestion of an emotion on his features at all. “Are you acquainted?”

“No,” said Ernest shortly, turning back to look at the man.

So that was Gwen’s betrothed.

The man was not at all what he had imagined. The way Gwen had spoken of him, Ernest had presumed he was a smart, fashionable sort with more money than sense, a handsome face, and a charm that could fell trees.

But that was not what he saw. No, the Marquess of Ravenshurst was a reasonable-looking man of middling height who appeared utterly uninterested in all that was around him.

Including Gwen.

A fiery rage burned in Ernest. Imagine having Gwen, knowing she had agreed to be your wife, and doing nothing to claim her! Not enjoying her conversation, not delighting in her company, not even listening to her!

It was unfathomable.

And he was going to do something about it.

“Lord Frasemere,” Gwen’s father called after him, but Ernest ignored him as he strode forward and crossed the saloon in a few strides.

“Good evening,” he said politely, inclining his head to the inexplicably red Gwen and the inexplicably delighted Lady Pernrith. “I do not think we have had the pleasure of being introduced.”

Ernest’s gaze was steady as he looked at the man, and so it was therefore most confusing that the woman to his left looked so outraged, she was practically shaking.

“No,” said Lord Ravenshurst stiffly. “We have not.”

“Which is a shame. I have been staying with the Pernriths,” said Ernest smoothly, bestowing a smile upon Gwen’s mother, who had gone past beaming and was now glowing. “Such a lovely family, as I’m sure you know. Spending time with the Chance daughters has been a real treat.”

Precisely how his mouth was still moving, he did not know. What he did know was that the marquess was looking somehow colder, unhappier, his brow furrowing and a distant look in his eyes.

Ernest smirked and turned his attention to Gwen. Who was glaring.

“Lord Frasemere,” she ground out through a taut jaw.

“It is a shame the elder Miss Chance could not join us,” Ernest continued blithely, as though having this sort of conversation were perfectly natural, especially with someone to whom he had not been introduced, “but we still have the pleasant company of Miss Gwendoline. And what a delight it is to have her beauty and wit with us.”

His pulse was thundering and his lungs were taut, but Ernest felt somehow as though he were flying, soaring through the air in a world with no consequences and no aftermath.

He was flirting—flirting, with Gwen! Right beside her betrothed and her mother, and yet that could not stop him.

Nothing could.

“I can’t tell, exactly, whether it is her beauty that is the most entrancing thing about Miss Gwendoline,” Ernest said conversationally with a shrug as Gwen started to make little popping noises of outrage. “Perhaps it is her wit, though I must say her wide reading choices are—ouch!”

There was nothing else to say. What else did one yelp in the middle of a resplendent saloon when a woman grabbed your arm and jerked you forward through a door into another room?

A room, now that Ernest could blink a few times, that was just as elegantly proportioned and furnished as the former. This one appeared to be some sort of library, with a large globe in a corner and a longcase clock—

“What the hell do you think you are doing?!” Gwen hissed, shoving him furiously with both hands and glaring with a dark malice.

And Ernest grinned.

He couldn’t help it. In that moment, Gwen had been faced with a choice, even if she had not known it. She could have grabbed the Marquess of Ravenshurst and pulled him away, telling him some sort of excuse about her brother’s strange friend who had absolutely no manners. She could have excused herself with her mother, taking the two ladies away from the posturing males and ignored the pair of them.

Ernest’s chest swelled. But she had chosen the third option. She had chosen me.

Gwen poked him sharply in the chest. “You can’t do that!”