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Hardly the private location Ernest had hoped for.

The hand in his was wrenched away. “Ernest, what are you thinking?”

“I’m not,” he said, perhaps more honestly than was called for. “Come on.”

He grabbed Gwen’s hand again despite her audible shock and hurried up the staircase, along a corridor, and through a door, and they were standing on a landing in what had to have been guest quarters, for a door was open and within it was a pair of armchairs.

Perfect.

“What on earth…?”

“In here,” Ernest hissed, desperately hoping a servant would not catch them up here, all alone and away from the ballroom. “Come on!”

It did not take a great number of steps to cross over to the open doorway, and Ernest thrust the woman beside him inside and closed the door behind them.

Only when he turned around to face her did he realize—

“Ah,” Ernest said weakly.

“And why, exactly,” Gwen said sharply, her hands on her hips as she glared, “did you think to pull me away from Lady Romeril’s ballroom, up a servants’ staircase, and into a bedchamber?”

Yes. It was a bedchamber; Ernest could see that now. The bed had not been visible from the door because the room was so very large, and only the pair of armchairs either side of the fireplace had been obvious. He had thought it a small sitting room.

But it was most definitely a bedchamber. One could not fail to see the large four-poster.

“Look,” Ernest said hastily, almost certain the woman he loved was about to march out of here in high dudgeon—understandably—and never speak to him again—most regrettably. “I do not know what I have done to offend you, Gwen—”

“‘Offend’ me!”

Clearly, it was so obvious that he should have worked it out, but Ernest pressed on. “Whatever I have done to offend you, I can assure you that I am in ignorance of it. Please, tell me. I wish to make amends.”

He waited, desperately trying not to notice how the hasty ascent of the servants’ staircase was doing wonders for Gwen’s bust as it rose and fell heavily with her breathing.

Her lungs slowed, and her expression…it did not soften, but it did change.

Precisely what Gwen was now thinking, Ernest did not know.

That was why when she opened her mouth and said three words, he could have been bowled over by shock. “You love me.”

“I—I what?” Ernest spluttered.

She could not have said that. Perhaps he’d dreamed it. Perhaps this whole thing was a hallucination he was enjoying while dancing with her downstairs, in Lady Romeril’s ballroom.

“You love me,” Gwen said softly, no smile on her lips but no censure in her brow.

Ernest swallowed. He had done his best to hide it. Not hide his desire—the kiss had made that impossible—but hide his true ardent affections.

Obviously, he had not done a particularly good job.

“I-I mean to say, love?!” Ernest blustered, hating how his mouth was doing nothing but panic as the woman he adored stood before him. “I mean—love is a strong word, isn’t it? I mean, to bandy about such a term, not really—”

“You love me,” Gwen interrupted, no frustration in her voice and a small smile now on her mouth. “And I love you.”

This time, Ernest really did have to put his hand to the wall to make sure he did not fall over.

She… She loves me?

It wasn’t possible. Women as beautiful, as brilliant, as kind-hearted as Gwen did not go about falling in love with mere barons. Women who could have their pick of anyone did not select the one man unable to marry her.