Page 70 of In With a Chance

Still, she had forced the concoction down and lain on her bed definitely not thinking about Ernest Quintrell and the way he kissed.

After failing that for a few hours and hearing the carriage outside depart, she had crept downstairs and joined Teddy and her mother.

And at some point the gentlemen, without Lord Ravenshurst, had joined them.

“You don’t look quite yourself,” came Ernest’s voice.

Gwen blinked. “What is that supposed to mean?”

“Oh, I don’t know,” he said quietly, not quivering under her furious glare. “I haven’t seen you in over four and twenty hours. You sort of…disappeared.”

She twisted uncomfortably in her seat. “I don’t know what you mean.”

She knew precisely what he meant, but she wasn’t about to give him the satisfaction of knowing just how utterly destroyed she had been by that kiss.

Oh, that kiss. How did anyone stop kissing once they found someone to kiss like that? How on earth this Miss Johnstone had managed to let go of Ernest and fall in love with some other man, she had no idea. Perhaps true love really did exist. It would have to take a force of nature to make Gwen stop kissing Ernest whenever she could.

And that was precisely the problem, was it not?

“Gwen, I was just saying to your father,” called over Lady Pernrith, right on cue, “now that St. Meredith’s is agreed as the location, we can send the final wording for your wedding invitation to the engravers! Isn’t that good news?”

Gwen was more than painfully aware of Ernest’s focus upon her as she croaked, “It’s—It’s certainly news!”

Oh, dear Lord.

Her mother turned back to the conversation she’d been having, and Gwen looked down at her hands, still clinging on to the sofa.

What on earth am I going to do?

“I wanted to thank you.”

Gwen blinked. What? Who’d said that?

Surely, it could not have been Ernest…

But it had been. He was leaning back on the sofa as though he had never been so comfortable in his life, which was astonishing in and of itself, and with a smile that said he was thinking about—

Heat burned through Gwen. How could he have been thinking of that kiss, at a moment like this?!

“‘Thank’ me?” she said weakly.

Please, do not thank me for kissing you, right here in my parents’ drawing room! Dear Lord, she would expire…

“Yes, thank you,” said Ernest lightly, as though what they spoke of was nothing more than polite conversation one would make with a new acquaintance at a card party. “You were kindness itself in the churchyard. I… I do not think I could have told anyone else the story of Charles and Laura, but you made me feel most at ease. Thank you.”

Gwen smiled weakly. “Oh. Oh, it’s… It’s my pleasure.”

What she did not say was that she had argued quietly with Lord Ravenshurst about going to speak to a man on her own, and he had been most cross with her when he had left the churchyard.

What she also did not say was that she had kissed Ernest so passionately and so utterly because in that moment, she could not imagine kissing anyone else, and that he had ruined her for all other men, and she was furious with him for it.

What she also did not say was that she had cried when she had stepped into the carriage: cried from shock at the earthshattering kiss, but also the loss that Ernest had endured and endured alone.

Ernest clasped his hands together over his lap. “There is no one else I would rather have shared that story with.”

“I am glad.” And Gwen was. Perhaps too glad. “I… I… How is your bride hunt coming along?”

The words had blurted out from her mouth before she could stop them, and Gwen cursed herself for being so idiotic.