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Mrs. Kinley stuffed the letter into her apron and nodded sagely. “Don’t you fret, Miss Gwen. As soon as I get out to the post office, I shall post your letter.”

Off she bustled, humming a vague tune.

And… And that was it.

Gwen blinked. That was it. She had done it. She had broken things off with Lord Ravenshurst. It was over.

The moment he received and read her letter, their engagement would be formally broken. The Marquess of Ravenshurst and the youngest daughter of the Dowager Viscount Pernrith would be no longer engaged to be married—and just in time too, before the wedding invitations were sent out.

And that meant…

Something deep, and twisting, and primal rose within her—a certainty, a knowledge that Ernest Quintrell, Baron Frasemere, was hers.

That she would do anything: traverse any social norm, break any of Society’s rules, offend anyone, and shock the world just to be with him.

Nothing would keep her from him.

Was this what Miss Johnstone had felt about Charles Quintrell? Was this the overwhelming power that had driven two people to abscond from the safety of their families and embark on a journey that would ultimately lead in their deaths?

Gwen swallowed. Was this…true love?

Chapter Fourteen

October 6, 1841

Ernest tugged on his cravat and wished it weren’t completely strangling him.

“Oh, you look fine, Lord Frasemere,” said the Dowager Viscountess Pernrith as the family group ascended the sweeping steps up to Lady Romeril’s townhouse. “Absolutely fine!”

Fine. Fine was good.

The trouble was, Ernest did not wish to look fine. He wanted to dazzle, and there was only one person for whom he wanted to dazzle.

Gwen had not turned around at her mother’s words, but then why would she have? She had already reached the top of the steps and was allowing a footman dressed in a dark-crimson livery to take her wrap from her shoulders.

Anger flared in Ernest as the man’s fingertips brushed across Gwen’s shoulders. I should be the only one to do that—

Just in time, he managed to force aside the emotions that immediately stirred. They were hot, and violent, and absolutely unacceptable to feel about a woman to whom he was not engaged.

Particularly when said woman was engaged to be married to another man.

Ernest glanced around himself as he and the other Chances—the Dowager Viscount, his wife, and their two unmarried daughters—stepped into the elegantly appointed hallway. The Marquess of Ravenshurst was nowhere to be seen, but he surely would have been invited. He was one of the most eligible bachelors in Society, Ernest knew, and even though he was now engaged to be married, that did not reduce his lure as an exciting guest.

Doing his best not to scowl at the mere thought of the man who had the audacity to be engaged to the woman with whom he, Ernest, had most accidentally fallen in love, he tried to focus on the conversation happening around him.

“I thought she would be here,” Gwen was saying in a worried voice to her mother. “But the footman just said—”

“The Aylesbury Chances are here, but not with Samuel,” Lady Pernrith was saying soothingly to her daughter. “The news apparently came literally as we stepped into the carriage, Mrs. Kinley sent a boy—Rose has had her baby.”

Both Gwen and Miss Chance lit up at the news, and Ernest was forced not to beam along with them. It was not his family’s news, after all, but it was pleasant to see the news of a baby in the family bringing such joy.

And the thought of another baby in the family, but this time his own and Gwen’s, her dark hair and his lopsided smile, roared through Ernest like a bullet.

He stumbled as he stepped forward, unable to keep himself steady as the image of his and Gwen’s child utterly overwhelmed him. Oh, to hold the next generation in his arms and know the child would grow up with Gwen’s heart, her searing wit, her brilliance and sparkle…

“And how did the news come so late?” Gwen was asking brightly as the family stepped toward the double doors that were being guarded, it seemed, by two footmen in the same deep-red livery.

“Oh, Mrs. Kinley intercepted the late post,” her father said lightly. “She’d been to the post office and—Gwen, are you quite well?”