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Gwen slipped from his grasp and stood a few feet from him as footsteps on the path echoed around the churchyard, her face pink and her hands clasped together before her.

Ernest just focused on standing upright.

That… That was…

Dear God. He had tumbled a few women while at Oxford—every man had—but it had been a physical release, an itch he had scratched and swiftly grown bored of.

Nothing had… No woman had ever… He’d never known anything like…

“I should go,” Gwen said quietly, her attention darting to the family who had turned off the path and were making their way to another grave.

And Ernest desperately wished to ask her to stay. To hear more stories of Laura, and Charles, and himself. To kiss him again when the strangers had gone. To tell him she would break her promise to the Marquess of Ravenshurst and run away with him—

He pulled himself back.

No.

No, he had seen how that story would end, and it would end in nothing but tears. An engagement made should not be broken, not for anything but true love, and though what he felt for her was overwhelming and complete, Ernest was no fool.

Gwen did not love him.

She had not said she did. She had made no promises to him—quite the opposite, at every turn, she had professed herself determined to marry Lord Ravenshurst and no other.

And though she had a fortune for a dowry, it wasn’t fortune enough to help him.

And she had kissed him.

Ernest shook his head vaguely, as though attempting to rid his ears of water. “Gwen, I—”

“My mother will be expecting me back,” she said quickly, her cheeks red as though—damn. As though she regretted the kisses they had shared.

“Gwen—”

“I’ll see you at dinner,” came the words thrown over her shoulder as Gwen swiftly made her way down the path toward the gate.

Ernest tried to catch his breath and simultaneously remember when he had lost it. His eyes followed the elegant figure in blue down the path and through the gate, where a carriage was waiting. Only when the carriage had left his sight did he turn back to the gravestone beside him.

“Well, Charles,” he said heavily, “what am I supposed to do now?”

Chapter Thirteen

October 5, 1841

Gwen stared listlessly into the fire.

“And I told her, there is absolutely no possibility of her visiting the circulating library on her own—”

“You can send a maid with her, surely?”

“We have the one maid, Frederick, and she cannot be with Gwen and Teddy at the same time if they are going to different places!”

Teddy was playing something pretty on the pianoforte in the corner of the drawing room. She might have mentioned what it was before she’d started playing, but Gwen had not been paying attention.

Her attention had been entirely elsewhere.

True love.

It was not the sort of thing she had ever really given much thought to, which sounded ridiculous, considering she was engaged to be married. But she hadn’t!