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The baron smiled and her chest tightened. “Why?”
“Wh-What do you mean?”
“If he has not bothered to do those things in his pursuit of you,” said Lord Frasemere with a shrug that was so nonchalant, so languid, it was like honey flowed through his bones, “then what gives you any confidence that he will bother to do such a thing when you are wed?”
Gwen gaped at the man, at his outlandishness, his boldness, his very gall for speaking to her like this.
At the same time, she could not help but dwell on his words.
“He respects you, cannot go a day without you, and you know you can depend on him for anything. Anything at all.”
Such a man… Such a man would be worthy of matrimony, indeed.
Gwen swallowed, forcing herself to take a step back from the vexingly intoxicating gentleman. “The marquess is a good man.”
“So you keep saying,” said the baron, a slight frown marring his brow. “And yet you cannot give any evidence of such a thing.”
“You are not my brother,” Gwen snapped, jabbing a finger against his chest and expecting—well, whatever she had expected, it was not to find such muscle that she could barely make an impression.
Lord Frasemere’s eyes flashed. “No. I am not.”
They were just four simple words, yet they inflamed Gwen as nothing ever had done before. Trying to think was impossible, merely breathing was becoming impossible, and all she wanted to do was furiously defend the man to whom she had promised herself marriage and furiously kiss the man before her.
A strange combination that was probably not a good thing.
“You are a guest in our home, and if I wished, I could have you out of there in a heartbeat,” Gwen said sinisterly, trying her best to keep her voice level and mostly succeeding. “You leave me and my betrothed alone. You don’t know—you don’t know him, he’s—and it’s nothing to do with you!”
Not the wiliest of repartee, but it was all she could manage in that moment. Storming away from him and reaching home in just a few heartbeats, Gwen wrenched open the door, rushed upstairs, and slammed her bedchamber door shut.
Only then did she lift her hands to her cheeks and feel them burn.
Where on earth had all that come from?
Chapter Four
September 6, 1841
“And she’ll be starting to show soon—”
“Mama!”
“What? The whole family knows, Teddy. It is hardly a secret that she is with child.”
“Yes, but one hardly talks about it over the sprouts!”
Ernest glanced down at the tureen of sprouts that sat before him on the Chance dining table. Was there a different vegetable over which it was permitted to talk about this topic?
He looked up at the Viscountess Pernrith—the Dowager Viscountess Pernrith, as the current viscountess was a sea captain busy at work, a phrase Ernest never thought he’d ever think—and smiled. She returned his expression knowingly, then turned to her youngest daughter.
“Teddy, I am certain she would not mind us knowing. Her mother told me weeks ago.”
“That doesn’t mean you can parade that information about the place!” hissed Miss Chance, her cheeks burning as she took a sip of wine.
It was moments like this that Ernest really wished Michael—Pernrith now, he supposed—were staying here too.
Obviously, it made complete sense that the man would want to live with his wife. Ernest had not expected that place to be a boat, but fine. The trouble was, he had expected his friend to be here to…well, to mediate between himself and the rest of the family.
As it was, Ernest was forced to sit here through family bickering and debate, which was not something he was particularly used to, even if they never ended in real enmity.
