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Gwen could not help but snort a laugh—in a very unladylike manner—as she sat beside him. “Something like that.”

“No one can hurt or heal us like family,” continued Ernest, a wry smile on his face as he finished the last of the second ice. “And there will come a time, perhaps, when there is no family left to hurt or heal you and you’ll miss it.”

Hmm. Gwen cast her mind over her four siblings, two parents, three in-laws, eleven cousins, their innumerable spouses… She was the youngest, but life didn’t always work out as one expected.

“Eventually, maybe,” she considered dubiously. “If I have very bad luck.”

All too late, she remembered what he had confided in her.

Ernest smiled ruefully. “It is very bad luck, indeed.”

“Oh, Ernest, I’m so sorry!” Gwen could scream, she was so annoyed at herself. Was this to be her fate? To go around life completely putting her foot in it again and again until all she could do was infuriate those around her?

“I’m not saying to forgive the bounder immediately,” Ernest was saying, and Gwen took ‘bounder’ to mean her brother, and her spirits perked up. “I’m just saying—well. I cannot tell you how much I have enjoyed staying with your family. After leaving Frasemere Hall, so empty and alone, echoing with the memories of people I will never see again…”

His voice trailed off and Gwen’s heart ached for him.

The poor man. To lose one’s parents and only sibling; she could not imagine. It would be to grieve not only the loss of loved ones, but a part of yourself. When there was no one else who recalled you as a child, a part of yourself surely died with them.

“Do you think your brother was truly offended?” Ernest asked quietly.

Gwen weighed up the expressions her brother had made and compared them with a lifetime of experience. “Perhaps a six out of ten? I think he was mostly startled by the request I’d made of his wife that he was trying to fulfill.”

“‘Trying’?”

“The less said about that, the better,” Gwen explained somberly, thinking of all the fabulous silk lingerie waiting at Madame Jacques’s that she would have to attempt to see tomorrow. “I just… I’ve spent so long being crowded out in my family, crowded out by my siblings, never having the focus, never having a moment to…to shine. Does that make me sound terribly selfish?”

She turned to the man seated beside her on the bench and found herself hoping he would disagree.

That he would tell her she should fight her corner, should carve out space for herself in a bustling family that always seemed to have something happening.

And Gwen realized that perhaps the man whose opinion she should have been asking was quite another man entirely.

Bother. This was what happened when the marquess was occupied with business. She started talking about these things to the baron, and all of a sudden, she was pressed up against him on a public bench and all she could think about was her racing pulse, and her sense of closeness, of nearness, but also of intimacy, and those searching eyes and that handsome mouth—

“I think everyone deserves a day that is truly about themselves at least once a month,” Ernest said quietly, his voice a low hum that seemed to vibrate through her. “And I think you have foregone a number of those days. And you are tired.”

Gwen swallowed. “‘T-Tired’?”

“Tired,” he said quietly with a nod, his attention never leaving hers. “I think you’re tired of seeking connection. Tired of worrying about your family. Tired of being the one dismissed, and you’re looking for someone who will always see you. Always value you. Always want your opinion and your ideas before they act. Someone who will love you.”

Someone who will love you.

Gwen was going to breathe absolutely normally. Just as soon as she remembered what breathing was.

Ernest’s focus washed over her, darting to her lips before returning to her eyes. “And I think you’ve found that someone, haven’t you?”

Try as she might, it was becoming impossible to think, almost impossible to see. The whole world had collapsed into this bench, the two of them, herself and Ernest, a handsome, charming, delightful man who—

“And I cannot marry you.”

“You can’t?”

Who could not marry her.

Gwen lurched up from the bench so quickly, she almost toppled over. “Lord Ravenshurst!”

“Where?” Ernest rose swiftly, his gaze darting about.