Page 56 of In With a Chance

“Gwen…”

“Don’t touch me!” She jerked away from him, and that was perhaps what hurt the most.

Agony sparked through Ernest. The last thing he’d ever wanted was for his…for Gwen to flinch like that.

“I am going to marry him,” Gwen whispered, her eyes fixed on his own. “I am, Ernest. And there’s nothing you can say to—”

“You don’t love him,” Ernest said simply.

They stood there, mere inches apart, in the unlit library of the Cothrom townhouse, with the sounds and noises of the card party drifting under the door that separated the two rooms. Every moment felt like a miracle, every inhale a gift, for Ernest knew there would be fewer and fewer opportunities to stand with Miss Gwendoline Chance like this.

When she became the Marchioness of Ravenshurst, he never would.

But he was right. And she could not deny it.

“You don’t love him,” he repeated, his eyes trailing over every infinitesimal change in her expression. “How can you marry him if—” He stopped himself. He’d been there himself, though it had been different for him, he was sure of it. There’d been affection there, at least.

“Marriages happen between two people who don’t love each other every day,” Gwen said under her breath, a tight coldness in her tones Ernest could not believe. “Why, you yourself are attempting to do the same thing, are you not?”

Perhaps if he had not been so focused on the woman before him, he might have fallen over. As it was, all Ernest could manage was, “Wh-What?”

Her quiet laughter was uncomfortably bitter. “You think the ladies of Society do not talk? You think no one has noticed your very particular research in our home—The Eligible Ladies of High Society by Amberleen Trinkett?”

All too late, Ernest wished he had never bothered to look at that damned book. “I—”

“I don’t need to hear your excuses. You don’t need to apologize,” Gwen said lightly, though her smile was somehow painfully aloof. “You have come to London to find a wealthy bride, have you not?”

He could lie. But Ernest knew lying to her would be like lying to himself. It would break him, castigate him into pieces, and he would not do it.

Gwen’s chuckle stabbed a knife into his chest. “So here we are, two mercenary individuals—”

“You are not mercenary,” Ernest said swiftly, hating the slander even as she painted it upon herself.

But she was shaking her head slowly. “I am not ashamed of what I am. Yes, I sought out Lord Ravenshurst because I knew he had wealth, and respectability, and I want both. I have some money—”

He could not help himself. “You do?”

All these years, Michael had said none of his sisters had dowries. It had been one of his greatest fears when they had first met at university. that his four sisters would be unable to make the matches they wished for, simply because they had no fortune.

Now Gwen was saying…

And hope, hope Ernest knew somehow was pointless, started to rise, and he grinned inanely at the woman he truly cared for.

Perhaps it could be a love match, after all. Perhaps, somehow, she had come into money—enough money to—

“How much money do you need to marry to secure your estate?” came the most unromantic question from the woman opposite him.

Ernest cleared his throat, unaccustomed to speaking so directly about matters of the pocket. “I… I mean, it all depends on—”

“No, it doesn’t,” said Gwen with a wry smile. “I found The Eligible Ladies of High Society, after you had finished with it. Based on the family lines you were looking at, I would say you’d need…oh, a dowry of at least forty thousand. Am I right? By the way, the book was published before her marriage earlier this year, but Lady Marjorie Dalton is now my cousin’s wife. So you can cross her off your list. I suppose that leaves very few from the book.”

Blast it all. This is what comes of these modern women, Ernest could not help but think as prickles of discomposure soared down his spine. They are so…so direct.

And so attractive with it.

“You are right,” he said quietly, his hopes dying swiftly as he saw the disappointment on Gwen’s ashen face. “Forty thousand.”

She nodded slowly. “And here I am with my twenty thousand—a huge sum, I had thought. But not enough.”