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Ernest was not going to look at her. He wasn’t—he wasn’t going to look at her.

Sunlight streamed down through the autumnal leaves, casting gold across the raven black of Miss Gwendoline Chance’s hair. Her curvaceous body swayed beneath her pelisse, showing him more than enough to make Ernest’s mouth dry.

Damn it.

“—don’t understand why you have no interest in the ocean at all,” Captain Seaton was saying ahead of him, one arm linked with her husband’s, the other with her sister-in-law’s. “There is so much adventure out there just waiting to be found.”

“I don’t want adventure,” said Miss Gwendoline firmly. “I just want…a home.”

Ernest’s stomach twisted.

It felt intrusive, somehow, walking through Green Park with the Pernrith Chances and listening to their personal conversations. As though he were an interloper, a trespasser forcing his way into the family.

Not that it seemed to matter to them. Indeed, the Dowager Viscount and Viscountess of Pernrith appeared more than happy to chat about topics that he, Ernest, would have been mortified to discuss before another.

“We need to find someone for her,” murmured the hostess, walking behind Ernest with her husband. “There must be someone who sees her merits.”

“Teddy will find a husband if and when she wants to,” Lord Pernrith said darkly. “And I’m in no rush for the last of my babies—”

“‘Baby’? She is one and twenty, Frederick. She cannot stay with us forev—”

“Yes, she can,” came the man’s voice steadily. “She’ll always have a home with us.”

That was what Society expected for a spinster—to live, if not with her parents, then with one of her married siblings. Though he supposed some did wind up working or with a companion, despite expectations.

Ernest smiled wryly.

Having never had a sister, he was not entirely sure what his parents would have wanted for one, but he had to guess his mother would have quite agreed with the dowager viscount: that she would have a home, no matter what, even if she decided not to marry.

As he had never exchanged a word with his mother, he would never know.

His father, on the other hand—Ernest realized with a twist in his gut—would have probably encouraged a daughter to marry as soon as possible, and become someone else’s expense.

Which was probably why it was a good thing he didn’t have a sister.

“Adventure is, I suppose, what one wants to be challenged by,” Captain Seaton—the new Lady Pernrith, Ernest corrected himself with a jolt as the family took a fork in the path and turned right, the morning sun blazing above them. “I always thought—”

“She’s already said she doesn’t want to be challenged,” came Michael’s teasing voice.

Ernest did not need to hear what came next to predict it.

“I did not say that—take that back, Michael Chance!”

“She said she wanted to stay home,” came the placating tone of his friend’s wife.

No, she didn’t, Ernest could not help but think. She’d said that she wanted a home.

Ernest’s attention fell once more upon the back of Miss Gwendoline Chance. She had avoided him the last few days—which was just as well, after that ridiculous moment in which he had almost kissed the woman senseless at her own front door.

What had possessed him to act in such a way…

“You have some dirt on your face…”

Well, in the chill of this morning air, he knew precisely what it had been.

Desire. For a woman he could not have.

“Oh, you’re impossible,” complained Michael, dropping his wife’s arm and slackening his pace. “I’m going to talk to someone reasonable.”