Page 11 of In With a Chance

“I knew Michael would take a potshot at me, and he’s not even here.” Miss Gwendoline glared. “Who are you, anyway?”

“Gwendoline!” said her mother.

“It’s not a scandalous question. The man is standing in our drawing room,” Miss Gwendoline pointed out, thrusting a hand toward him.

Ernest tried to smile. Oh, excellent. So Michael did not bother to tell his sisters that I was coming to stay. “My name is Ernest Quintrell, Baron Frasemere. Please, call me—”

“And why are you here?” Miss Gwendoline interrupted, her cheeks pink now in clearly repressed fury. “I had hoped my family would have expressed a little more joy at my announcement, but now that you’re here, I suppose we can forget it even happened.”

Lady Pernrith’s mouth flopped open. “Now, then, Gwen, we never said—”

“And if you don’t mind, I have a wedding to plan,” said Miss Gwendoline haughtily, and without another word, she had swept out of the room, slamming the door behind her.

Ernest stared.

Dear God. She was a whirlwind, a barely repressed storm; she was thunder in the hills and a warning of rain.

Damn it, but he liked her.

“And that was Gwen,” said her mother wryly. “Poor girl—we should have made more of an effort to make a fuss of her, Pernrith.”

“Perhaps I might have done if she had engaged herself to another man, but the Marquess of Ravenshurst?” Lord Pernrith shuddered. “Married to him?”

“He’s not all bad,” came a quiet voice from the pianoforte.

Ernest had only just turned to the other Miss Chance before one of the married ones, he could not remember which, spoke behind him.

“But he is such a bore, Mama,” the married daughter said with a sigh. “Such a shame, all that money going to waste.”

“Reeny!”

Right, so that one has to be Irene, Ernest thought desperately, trying desperately to catch up. So that one had to be—

“As long as she’s happy,” said the Baroness Llyne. “It’s not up to us to decide.”

“It is such a disappointment, though,” said the Duchess of Aynor with a sigh. “She’s so young yet! She’s barely been out. She could have anyone—”

“Almost anyone,” said her mother diplomatically.

“Anyone who would take her,” her father said with a wry grin.

Ernest returned the grin. Then he swiftly adopted a somber expression, remembering that it was hardly his place to join in with the family jokes.

Especially at the expense of such a firecracker. Such things rarely remained private in families, and for some reason, he did not want Miss Gwendoline Chance to know he had teased her, even with a smile.

Lady Pernrith cleared her throat. “The marquess did…try to do it properly. I would hardly call the proposal romantic, but it was very proper. Hasn’t our Gwen always been stubborn about not waiting to ‘become a spinster before marriage,’ as she so often calls it?”

“The cheek of her!” said Her Grace. “When she has three sisters she’s so clearly referring to.”

“You were not so old as I was,” said Lady Llyne softly.

“By just a year,” the duchess remarked.

Miss Chance didn’t comment, merely playing the pianoforte louder. Ernest wondered if she felt any sort of disappointment at the fact that at her younger sister was betrothed before she was.

“I suppose we shall have to hope they will find a happiness of…of a sort,” said the former viscountess with a sigh. “And now, Lord Frasemere, I suppose you will stay for luncheon?”

Ernest stared. Well, certainly, he was going to stay for luncheon—he was staying here with them, wasn’t he? One would have expected one’s family to provide, but his Aunt and Uncle Quintrell in London had not room enough to spare to host their ‘country cousin,’ or so they’d told him, at least. Frankly, given the size of their house and the lavish balls he knew they threw each year, Ernest had accepted the obvious lie and attributed it to the fact that his baronet uncle had never gotten along with Ernest’s baron father, to the point where Sir Arnold had merely offered his condolences at the man’s passing and little else. Ernest could completely understand the sentiment—he just wished his uncle’s disdain for his father hadn’t extended to Charles and him.