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A few inches. That was all.

It may as well have been a chasm for the distance it created between them.

“No,” Miss Gwendoline said coldly, gazing before her as though she could have been speaking to anyone. “No, Lord Ravenshurst calls me ‘Miss Chance’ or ‘Miss Gwendoline’ when my sister Teddy is present, as is appropriate.”

“And does he want children, or just heirs?” Ernest asked, hating himself with every syllable but certain he had to know.

Miss Gwendoline did not answer.

That was, she did not answer in words. There was a paleness now to her cheek, and a worried line in the center of her forehead, as though she had just realized she had never asked.

Ernest hated himself for pouring these doubts into her mind. Hell, it would be worth doing if he were free to marry a woman with no money; he might even have proposed already. She was such an intoxicating woman to be around.

But to know that she had no dowry and his estate needed one…it was cruel of him, surely, to poke at the connection that he knew Gwen so desperately wished for.

Why, he still did not understand.

“Thank you for walking me home, my lord,” came Miss Gwendoline’s words from a long way away.

Ernest blinked. “Wh-What?”

Somehow, they had appeared before the Chances’ home. Good grief, how had they done that?

“I think I shall retire for—”

“Gwen,” said Ernest hastily, reaching out and taking her hand.

He should not have done that.

Oh, not because it was against Society’s rules. Hang the rules, at this point.

He should not have done it because the moment his gloved hand enclosed upon her gloved hand, it was as though the gloves did not exist. He could feel her warmth, feel the heat and need of her, feel the ache she burned with for connection, for adoration. Ernest almost groaned at the tender desperation he could feel in Gwen’s hand for home, and family, and a place to belong and a place to simply be.

Her eyes met his, shocked and molten, her lips parted as she said nothing, the pair of them just standing in the hallway, hands clasped and no words between them.

Ernest swallowed. They didn’t need words. He knew what this woman wanted, and this damned Lord Ravenshurst would never be able to give it to her.

Miss Gwendoline Chance deserved so, so much more than a dullard nobleman looking for a broodmare.

“Miss Chance,” he said in a low voice.

She looked at him, brows furrowed as though he were a puzzle she simply could not work out. “Wh-Why are you doing this?”

And it was her abject confusion, her pain mingled with the longing she knew she should not have felt, that made Ernest release her hand and step back.

Just in time.

“You two must have taken an age. Have you only just gotten back?” Miss Gwendoline’s mother grinned as the foursome stepped through the door into the hall. “And it’s about to rain; we timed that perfectly. Have you spoken to Cook?”

And that moment between them—that sense that he didn’t know why he was doing anything, just that he had to in the face of Miss Gwendoline Chance—was gone.

Chapter Seven

September 16, 1841

“What about this one?”

Gwen hastily stepped back as a lurid tartan fabric was thrust into her face. “Teddy!”