Page 7 of In With a Chance

So it was a touch hard to take him at his word.

“You worry too much.” Michael Chance laughed, shoving his shoulder into Ernest as they walked down the street in the misty rain. “I told you, my family will be delighted to see you again. Half my sisters have never even met you! Did I tell you that two of them got married?”

Ernest rolled his eyes. “No, you did not.”

That was Michael all over; the man was hilarious, great fun to be around, but his ability to remember something from one moment to another was virtually nil.

It had made him a tidal wave of a friend in their youth. Now they were nearer to thirty than twenty, it was more than a little disarming.

“Yes, they’re the Baroness Llyne and the Duchess of Aynor now, I suppose.” Michael rolled his eyes as they turned a corner onto a street that was far quieter, with trees lining the pavement. “And did I mention Gwen is being courted by a marquess?”

Ernest tried to smile. All these titles; he had imagined that the world of London was sparkling and delightful, naturally, but it was quite one thing to imagine it while living at home in the Yorkshire Dales, with nothing but sheep in all directions, and quite another to turn up here and discover it was actually true.

And when one of the most tragic things to ever occur to his family had happened here…

Don’t think about it.

“You did not,” he said aloud with a laugh as he shook his head. “You do manage to miss out the most important things in your letters.”

“I never was one much for letter writing,” Michael said ruefully, shrugging with a nonchalance that Ernest knew was mostly practiced. “But I am glad to see you, I must say. A few months in London and you’ll be desperate for the calm of home, I assure you.”

Ernest tried to smile.

In all honesty, he was desperate for the calm of home already.

London was… Well, it was like nothing he had ever imagined. Not just loud, not just bustling, not just dirty, not just filled with rules he had never learned. As far as he could tell, Yorkshire was stuck in the 1820s, with the same rules and fashions his mother would have enjoyed in her brief youth in the capital.

Everything felt off here. As though he were walking about with one leg, and he had only just noticed. And he had promised himself he would never come to London and yet now he was here, the memories of that painful time pressing on his heart.

Still, Ernest told himself bracingly, he was Baron Frasemere now. He couldn’t stay up in Yorkshire counting sheep.

He had come to find a bride—a wealthy one, unsurprisingly, seeing as his brother had…

Probably best not to think on such things.

“How long did you say you were staying?”

Ernest’s jaw tightened. He had intended a few weeks; that had to be time enough to find a suitable wife, did it not? He was hardly an expert, but he would not expect the thing to take that long.

He had only been in the city a few days and already, he was longing for the calm of home. The quiet in the morning, the skylarks soaring in the summer, the crackle of thunder rolling over the Dales in winter.

“A few days,” he said quietly. “With your family, at least. I cannot expect to intrude on their hospitality for longer than that.”

“‘A few days’? Oh, no, you cannot stay for that short a period. My mama will be mortally offended,” Michael said cheerfully. “She’ll expect you to stay at least a week or two.”

Ernest nodded. “A week or two, fine.”

A week or two. Excellent. Find a bride, make her an offer—he had little to offer but the title, but that would have to be something—then return back to his comfortable, albeit monotonous life.

That sounded about right.

“Oh,” said Michael lightly as he turned to ascend a trio of steps leading up to a front door. “And did I mention? I’ve inherited the title. I’m now Viscount Pernrith. Hallo there, Mrs. Kinley!”

Ernest almost tripped over his own feet as he attempted to both follow his friend up the steps and halt in his tracks. “P-Pernrith?”

“Yes, the viscountcy is mine, worse luck.” His friend grinned, handing his greatcoat to a stout and gray-haired servant who was clearly repressing a smile.

‘Worse luck’? The man had lost his father—and suddenly, too, for Michael had mentioned no illness in the family—and described that fact as ‘worse luck’?