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Well, it would have been foolish to attempt to say anything else. What, was he supposed to pretend there were two Baron Frasemeres?

If it had been anyone else standing beside him, Ernest would have found an excuse to leave as quickly as possible. Standing here with another person felt wrong, somehow. As though he were trespassing on Charles’s rest.

But with Gwen…it felt peaceful. Ernest’s chest started to loosen. He had not even noticed it had tightened.

“I… I presumed your brother was buried in your family church, in—in Yorkshire, wasn’t it?” Gwen’s eyes dropped to the tiny, pathetic little posy Ernest had placed upon the grave. “Why is he here?”

Before Ernest could answer, Gwen’s gaze flickered to the grave beside it. Laura’s. She took in the similar-looking posy on that grave, mere inches apart from the first, and something akin to curiosity flickered in her face.

Ernest steeled himself for the expected questions. It was natural. Gwen was a smart woman. She would put two and two together and ask—

“I will leave you alone,” Gwen said quietly, reaching out to his arm and squeezing it, just for a moment, before turning to leave.

And it was in that moment that he realized he didn’t want her to. He wanted her to know the truth, all of it. The full story.

The story he had never told another soul.

“Wait.”

He had not spoken loudly, but then, he had not needed to. Gwen had obviously been hoping he would stop her, for she had taken but a step away before turning on her heels and looking at him with a stiff posture, almost an air of readiness about her.

Hope.

What hope could be found here? This is the final resting place of so many hopes, Ernest thought with a painful twist in his gut. The end of the story for two of the three of them, though none of them could have guessed it would end this way.

End so completely.

“My father…” Ernest’s mouth was dry, his throat a knot. Fine, that was not the best place to start. “You see, when my mother…” No, his body wouldn’t allow him to do that, either.

Blast it all to hell; you keep a familial secret long enough, it becomes impossible to tell!

Ernest’s attention flickered over to Laura’s grave, and his shoulders drew back as he spoke. “Laura Johnstone was the daughter of a neighbor. A viscount. We were much the same age and we… We roamed the moors together.”

Out of the corner of his eye, he was vaguely aware of movement. It was only when Gwen spoke that he realized she had stepped closer to him.

“You were good friends.”

“‘Friends’?” Ernest gave a laugh and found, much to his surprise, that the pain he had been anticipating…never came. “Yes, we were friends. Good friends, and I think our fathers knew that and saw an opportunity.”

“‘An opportunity’?” Gwen furrowed her brow as Ernest turned to her, but before he could say anything else to elucidate the matter, her eyes widened in shock. “Oh—an opportunity.”

“Indeed,” Ernest said dryly, looking back at the two graves. “I was surprised—I think we both were—when Laura returned from finishing school and I from my first term at Oxford to discover a match had been made between us. I think we joked about it. I certainly did.”

They had laughed—he could remember now. The pain of the memory had faded and the original was still intact under there. It was a miracle, that he could retrieve such happy recollections.

“It was agreed that we would wait until I finished my time at university, then we would be wed,” Ernest continued, the words somehow coming more easily now. “We saw each other quite a bit. Charles was abroad at the time, traveling; he was unable to come back for the engagement celebrations, but he sent his best wishes. He hardly remembered Laura, I think,” he said with a rueful smile. “She had been a scrap of a child when he’d left.”

“But… But Miss Johnstone,” came Gwen’s quiet voice. “She… She died. Died unmarried.”

Ernest’s pulse skipped a beat. “She did.”

“So… So you refused to marry her.”

Ah, if only it had been that simple. Ernest tried to smile, and for all he knew, it was an impressive effort. Whether it looked like a smile or a grimace, he did not know. “No.”

Gwen stared. “‘No’?”

“No,” Ernest exhaled, shaking his head as he prepared to reveal the shocking truth. “My… My brother returned the month before our wedding.”