Page 67 of In With a Chance

“But it’s a tale of two people who loved each other!”

“It’s a warning tale told to gentry all over Yorkshire is what it is,” Ernest said darkly, shaking his head ruefully as he looked at the two small posies lying on the graves before him. “It’s a scandal that thankfully hasn’t made it to London.”

“So are you here to find a wealthy bride?” came Gwen’s quiet voice. “Or are you here outrunning the past?”

Ernest swallowed.

Both, he wanted to say. Both. It was impossible to stay in Yorkshire and face down the whole of Society up there alone. How could he possibly be the new Baron Frasemere? How could he step into Charles’s shoes and be the man his brother was supposed to have been?

How could he face Lord Johnstone? They had only written to one another about the arrangements for the burials. He could face no more than that. Knowing that if Ernest had just married the woman while still studying at university, she would be alive right now. Unhappy, perhaps. But alive.

Wasn’t that better than this?

“I am sorry.”

Ernest blinked. When he turned to Gwen, it was to see a genuine look of concern in her eyes. “You are?”

“It has affected you deeply, this affair,” she said quietly.

He nodded. “Losing them both—”

“I don’t just mean their deaths, although it is terrible to lose them both, and so young,” Gwen interrupted, her gaze not exactly scrutinizing but not far off. “No, I meant the fact that your childhood friend, when it came to it, did not choose you.”

Ernest’s shoulders tightened. “Not… Not ‘choose’ me?”

“Well, no.” Gwen gestured to the two graves. “She had a choice, did she not? To stay, to marry you as your parents wished, or to betray you and defy her father and yours, and run away with a man she barely knew—”

“It was true love.” His simple words cut across hers and brought her to silence.

True love.

Ernest sighed. “I hadn’t believed in it until then. Oh, I’d known love existed; a few of my friends had made love matches—unapproved love matches—while we had still been young, so I had seen the passion that could overcome a rational mind. But I had never… True love, a love that overcomes not only all rational thinking, but also planning, family ties, obligations, previous commitments… There was nothing in the world that was going to keep Charles from Laura, or her from him. It was…powerful.”

More powerful than anything he had ever seen.

When he turned back to Gwen, there was a small smile on her lips.

“You speak about it as though you will never see it again,” she said quietly.

“Oh, I think I will. I have,” Ernest said, his pulse skipping a beat as he looked into those sapphire-blue eyes. “But I don’t think it is going to overcome everything. Not this time.”

They stood there for a moment, a hazy moment, one that seemed to last an age and yet no time at all. He could barely breathe as he lost himself in those blue pools, Gwen’s hand still in his own. Was that her pulse throbbing, picking up its pace until it was almost a hum…or was that his own?

Ernest could not tell, and he did not need to. Without him saying a word, without him asking or begging—and if he were totally honestly with himself, he was at the point that he would beg—Gwen tilted her body to lean against him, raised up her lips, and kissed him.

He could have wept.

Oh, this was what he had been longing for. The warmth of her, the press of her breasts against him, the achingly sweet longing on her lips as she parted them, as she welcomed him in. Ernest was greedy, desperate for her, hungry for a taste of the woman he had craved from the very first moment he had laid eyes on her, and as his tongue darted into her mouth and took his fill, he moaned.

And she responded in kind—the woman he loved did not hold back, but instead trailed her free hand around his neck and pulled him closer, seemingly as desperate for him as he was her. Her tongue met his, shy at first then passionate as tendrils of bliss soared through Ernest and his loins stiffened as he heard her mewl in his mouth in her delight.

“Gwen,” he moaned into her mouth. “Oh, Gwen—”

“Don’t stop,” she managed, pressing her lips once again to his own.

Ernest could have feasted on her for hours, never tiring of the pleasure that roared through his body at her touch—but for the creak of the gate.

Gate?