Page 39 of In With a Chance

“So… So you are not one of those women who focus entirely on the wedding day and give little thought to matrimony itself?” Lord Frasemere asked after clearing his throat loudly.

Gwen rolled her eyes. “If there are such women, which I doubt—men are always looking for a way to dismiss ladies. But yes, I… My hopes and dreams for the future are about the lifetime I spend with my husband. Not one singular day.”

The baron leaned past her, brushing his sleeve against hers as he picked up a different button. This one was wooden and shaped like a heart. “And what are those hopes and dreams?”

This was not the place to have such a discussion.

He was also not the person with whom to have it. Gwen had not yet had this conversation with Lord Ravenshurst—and she would, she was certain. Now that they were engaged to be married, it was natural, of course, that their topics of discussion would shift from whether they would attend the ballet or the theater next week, to…to more interesting things.

She was certain.

Though, Gwen told herself calmly, there was no crime in discussing these things with others.

“I want… I want a home,” she found herself saying.

The baron nodded slowly. “Some would say you have a home already.”

“Then those people would have failed to recognize that I live in my parents’ home,” Gwen said with a sigh, twisting the button between her thumb and forefinger. “My brother’s now, technically, which might be worse. I love Mama and Pa dearly. They are truly the best parents I could ever have hoped for…but it is my mother who decides where we go and whom we befriend, her cook who decides what food we eat, my father who dictates when we are in London and when we are in Brighton. The choice—the decision for anything, it is not mine.”

She had been unable to prevent the longing from seeping back into her words and for a moment, Gwen felt foolish—until Lord Frasemere grinned.

“I know what you mean,” he said quietly as a trio of chattering ladies rushed toward the counter, eagerly shouting about the packages they had come to collect. “Frasemere Hall was always my father’s, then my brother’s. It has been strange, indeed, to realize that it is now mine, and mine to command.”

“That is exactly what I mean,” Gwen said eagerly. “I want to—I don’t know, plan out a garden and plant it. See it grow. I want to plant trees that I know I will never see touch the sky—”

“But know that your grandchildren will play with the autumn leaves,” the baron added softly.

Gwen stared, her lips curling into a smile. “That is it exactly.”

His smile met hers, and for a moment, she saw just how foolish she was to be talking about trees and leaves and the future she would never know—and with a man to whom she was not engaged!

But it did not feel foolish. It felt…natural.

“My father planted an avenue of oaks when my brother was born, for Charles’s grandchildren,” said Lord Frasemere, a shadow of sadness mingling with a wistful smile. “I suppose it will be my grandchildren who collect their acorns now.”

Gwen’s heart twisted for him. To know that one had stepped into a brother’s inheritance…what would that do to a man?

He smiled ruefully. “And yet I nurture the trees and care for them. I want to see them stretch toward the heavens.”

It was in that moment that she realized he understood.

He completely understood her—her, and her dreams, and her hopes, and her expectations for the future. He knew what it was to hope for something one may never see. He comprehended what it was to seek to make a place for oneself in the world.

No one else had ever understood that.

“I want a home,” Gwen said softly. “I want a family, a husband who adores me, and children racing about our feet, always getting in the way.”

“A son who learns quickly to catch but not to throw,” added the baron with a chuckle.

“And a daughter who can do anything she puts her mind to,” said Gwen, nodding vigorously as the visions of the future she so desperately wanted poured through her mind. “And I want to travel—”

“See the pyramids of Egypt?”

“I’d take seeing Rome,” Gwen said with a laugh. “My Cousin Evelyn says it’s truly marvelous…but it’s the coming home that matters. I sometimes think that’s why we travel.”

“Why?”

She looked up into the eyes of Baron Frasemere, and her stomach lurched as she said, “Why, so we can come home.”