A Chance in a Million (The Chances #5)

Chapter Nineteen

February 11, 1840

“I don’t want to be here,” hissed Victoria, attempting to tug her arm from her mother’s iron grip. “Mother, let me leave.”

“I will not have you moping about at home any longer. This has gone on quite long enough,” her mother hissed back, managing to do it while displaying a broad smile, which even Victoria had to admit was impressive. “Now then, let’s introduce you to—”

“I don’t want to be introduced to anyone,” Victoria muttered, sagging against her mother and allowing her to be sailed through an outer room into a large ballroom. “Not that my opinion matters much here.”

They had argued over this quite thoroughly for a day and a half, but Mrs. Ainsworth was determined to have her way and so that was what happened. Victoria had grown so used to it over the years, she found it difficult to deny her mother anything—which was her downfall.

It was also why she was here, dressed to the nines in a gown far too tight for her breasts, forced to talk to the other guests at the Dalton ball.

Instead of at home. In bed. Crying.

“There will be a great number of people here with whom I think you will enjoy speaking,” said her mother brightly. “After all, as you are no longer… You know…”

Victoria sighed. Her poor mother had only two days ago accepted her daughter was not going to be marrying the Duke of Cothrom. It had taken a while, particularly because Mrs. Ainsworth had insisted the whole thing was just a misunderstanding.

“A misunderstanding built on lies and deceit,” Victoria had said sweetly. “Yes.”

There was no arguing with her mother, at least not for long. That was why the two of them were beaming out at the numerous guests of the Daltons as the musicians in the corner prepared to play their first piece.

“Now, I would have you dance,” her mother said sternly. “With at least three gentlemen.”

“I’m not sure how we’ll all fit together, but if you insist, Mother,” Victoria said sardonically.

Mrs. Ainsworth tapped her daughter with her fan.

“Ouch!”

“Oh, I barely touched you,” she said dismissively. “Now, it’s very important you—what on earth is going on over there?”

There was something of a disturbance going on in the doorway they had just walked through. Victoria could not make it out, but heads were turning and it was starting to become impossible for people to walk in or out of the double doors, as so many people were standing there staring, craning their necks to look at something clearly fascinating.

“I suppose it’s not possible that… Well, that the queen is here?” Her mother gasped.

Victoria forced down a laugh. “I doubt it, Mother.”

“It would be such a coup for the Daltons, and what a thing to be able to say, that one invited the queen to one’s ball and she came!” Mrs. Ainsworth’s eyes were bright and Victoria did her best not to roll her eyes. “I mean, if you were to become the Duchess of Cothrom, then perhaps—”

“ Please , Mother,” Victoria said tightly.

The pain scratching across her chest was almost visible, heat splattering red across her décolletage. It was most irritating. Most upsetting that just the hint of what could have been was sufficient for her to feel so…so…

So empty.

Victoria swallowed as the hubbub around the door grew. “What do you think is actually happening? Assuming the queen has not…”

Her voice trailed away. She would have kept speaking, if it were physically possible, but all the air had left her lungs and her throat was far too busy knotting itself.

Thomas Chance, Duke of Cothrom, stepped into the Daltons’ ballroom. And he was not alone.

He was surrounded by… Well. Not quite children, but not quite adults. Young people. They looked shy, and nervous, and they were all wearing the Chance russet, but they weren’t servants. They looked like…family.

“Oh, my,” Victoria murmured.

“Is that—”

“It can’t be—”

“But I thought he was a spendthrift! A reprobate! What on earth is the man doing?”

“Those are the St. Thomas’s orphans, aren’t they?”

Victoria could hear every thump of her pulse in her ears, feel every press of its pounding against her ribs. He was here. And he was accompanying…orphans?

Reprobate, spendthrift, she had thought all those things about Thomas Chance and at times, something worse.

And now he was here with a whole host of children ?

“Miss Ainsworth,” Thomas said quietly as he approached her. “Mrs. Ainsworth.”

The elder woman practically sputtered. “Oh, Lord Thomas—I mean, Your Grace, of course. Oh, how wonderful to—”

He did not ask. There was no seeking permission, either from herself or her mother. Before Victoria could open her mouth and say a word, before any thought could rationally express itself through her lips, Thomas had taken her hand and started to pull her away.

“Thomas!”

She should not have shouted. She certainly should not have shouted his name.

Heads turned and whispers started to abound, all with words like “betrothal” and “scandal” and “who?” and Victoria could not stand it.

She tugged her hand from his own—at least, she would have done if he had not such an impressive grip on her hand.

Was this to be her fate tonight? Paraded up and down by her mother and dragged through a crowd by her…whatever Thomas was to her now?

“Thomas, let me go.”

“Absolutely not,” he muttered, though she might have misheard him in the noise and chatter of the ballroom. “Never again.”

Victoria’s mind whirled as Thomas pulled her through a card room, along a corridor, toward a door. Never again? Surely, she had imagined that. It wasn’t possible that he had said that, was it?

Thomas wrenched open the door with his free hand and Victoria gasped as the freezing-cold February air whirled in. “You can’t be thinking of going outside! Thomas, neither of us has a coat or pelisse!”

That, apparently, did not matter. There was a grim determination set in his jaw, one she had never seen before, and before she could cry out for help, he had barreled through the door, pulling her along with him.

It was bitter outside. A cold wind blew, rustling the leafless trees and tugging her tresses. Victoria shivered, the cold prickling against her skin. Why, oh, why had she allowed her mother to dress her in such a ridiculous gown?

“That’s better,” Thomas muttered, shutting the door behind them.

“‘Better’?” Victoria repeated, utterly at a loss. “Better than what?”

He did not reply, but he did release her, stomping a few feet away and turning on his heels to look at her.

Look at her with a ferocity that Victoria had never seen before.

Her gasp was captured by the wind and he probably never heard it, but he could surely see the expression on her face. An expression that surely said how confused and pained she was to see him.

Because it hurt. It hurt, standing here before the man with whom she had thought she would spend the rest of her life. It hurt to know she had just been a whim, a casual impulse could have gone so differently.

And it hurt that he loved her, Victoria thought, shivering slightly, and all that love was going to go to waste.

Well, she couldn’t stay here all day.

Raising herself up stiffly, she said, “I demand you take me back inside.”

“No,” said Thomas shortly, still standing feet from her and just…looking.

Victoria’s lips parted in astonishment. “‘No’?”

He shook his head, his carefully coiffed hairstyle utterly ruined thanks to the wind. Which meant hers was likely just as mussed. It probably looked like…like they had been…

Victoria swallowed hard. “Well, I do not need an escort. I am sure I can find the—”

“I need you to listen to me.”

Listen to him? Here? “You had your opportunity.”

“I know, but I need another one.” Thomas’s voice was low, sensuous, just as she remembered.

Victoria was tempted, just for a moment, to close her eyes and ask him to keep talking. Just say anything , she wanted to cry out. I need to hear your voice. I need to know that you’re near me.

One last time.

“I don’t have to stand here and listen to this,” she said aloud, mouth dry. “Now, if you will excuse me, Your Grace.”

She did not curtsey. The man had dragged her out of a ballroom in front of the whole of Bath Society. There were going to be rumors about her all over the place. He did not deserve that courtesy.

Stepping forward, Victoria lifted her skirts slightly off the damp terrace upon which they were standing and made to move around him.

And she would have done, if Thomas had not stepped right into her path.

“You are not excused,” he growled. “I need to talk to you.”

Her heart skipped a beat. “What makes you think that you have any right to—that I would want to—”

“Because you love me,” Thomas said. “And I love you, and this nonsense has to stop.”

Fury rose from Victoria’s stomach, a dark, sticky fury that coated her lungs and poured out of her. “This is nonsense. It’s your nonsense, nothing but your own! You lied, you treated me like a jest, you—”

“You and I care about each other far too much to let this little misunderstanding—”

“‘ Little misunderstanding ’!”

Somehow, Victoria found herself pressing her palms against his broad chest, fingers splayed out. To force him out of my way , she told herself. So why wasn’t she moving him—why wasn’t he moving?

His eyes roved across her features. “I have to tell you about St. Thomas’s.”

Victoria blinked. “St. Thomas’s?”

She knew that place—she had heard about it. Wasn’t it that orphanage she was hearing so much about?

The distraction was too much to ignore. Fine , she told herself as the wind blew and her spine shivered. She would listen to whatever it was that Thomas—that Lord Cothrom had to say about St. Thomas’s, and then she would leave.

“Look,” he said quietly, blowing out a long breath. “I’ve always wanted to do good in the world, real good, good that will matter.”

“What are you—”

“So I founded an orphanage last year with most of my money. It… Well, it accelerated from there. More children, more food needed, then I thought, lessons, they can’t leave without an education, so I had to find teachers, and they needed salaries.”

Victoria stared, amazed, hardly able to think. This— this was the great secret of how Thomas Chance had spent his family’s fortune? This was what he had chosen to do with his life—to care for those unable to protect themselves?

“They insisted on calling it St. Thomas’s, which I loathed, but there it was,” he said with a twist of his face. “And before I knew it, the laundry needed updating, and water piped into the kitchens would make such a difference…”

He was babbling now and Victoria stared at the nervous creases in his brow. He was worried about telling her. Worried, about admitting to such philanthropy.

“And that is where all the money went,” Thomas said with a heavy sigh almost lost in the wind. “Look, come here.”

Victoria allowed herself to be pulled along the terrace and around the corner, her head in a daze. The wind was almost gone here, the shelter of the building making this part of the terrace almost temperate.

He had done it all for children.

She blinked, hardly able to believe it. “Why did you bring them here?”

Thomas pulled a hand through his tousled hair. “I thought, give Society a chance to see them. Perhaps they would be moved to help out.”

“Why did you not tell me?”

Thomas laughed bitterly as he dragged a hand through his already windswept hair. “I… It was a secret from everyone. No one knows, in fact.”

Victoria raised an eyebrow. “Lady Maude knows.”

The duke uttered a very ungentlemanly oath.

“ Thomas !”

“I should have known my sister would worm her way into my business,” he said ruefully. “I didn’t want anyone to know. That was the whole point. Making it public… Well, it would steal away the satisfaction I felt in doing it. It wasn’t for other people. It was for me. For them.”

So many new thoughts were whirling through her mind, Victoria was finding it rather difficult to catch up.

He wasn’t a spendthrift, or a dissolute gambler, or a rake. Well, perhaps a rake. He had, after all, lain with her before marriage.

But Thomas Chance was not the fool or the reprobate everyone thought he was. And knowing that, knowing what it was doing to his reputation, he’d allowed everyone to think that.

He was so much more of a man than she had thought.

“I got in too deep, ending up caring far too much about the children,” Thomas said with a wry smile. “I gave them everything. Everything I could. That was when I realized I needed to—”

“Marry a fortune,” Victoria finished for him quietly.

He nodded.

This man. There was so much more to discover about him. Just when she thought she entirely understood, just when there was absolutely nothing else to learn, he told her something like this.

And so Victoria laughed.

Thomas’s frown was swift. “I don’t see what is so amusing.”

“Oh, Thomas, you utter fool.”

“Hang on, that’s a bit…”

Victoria giggled, unable to help herself. “Don’t you see? This makes you a better man, an even better one than I thought you were, and I will admit I was biased to begin with. Giving up the entire Chance fortune and not to risky stocks and shares, or the gambling den, or the races…but to an orphanage?”

Joy was spilling over into laughter, and there was a lightness across her shoulders she had hardly realized had been absent until now.

His shoulders loosening, his features softening, Thomas’s concern was slowly changing into a look of awkward delight. “Well, I wouldn’t put it quite like that…”

“I want to give you twenty thousand pounds.”

Victoria was not sure what made her say it. She was certain in herself that she wanted to do it, knew it was the right thing—he had already done so much.

Thomas faltered back a step. It was quite a surprise to see a look of devastated horror on his face.

“This is not what this is about,” he said quietly, reaching for her. “Victoria, I—”

“Twenty thousand pounds could be invested to create an income, don’t you see?” Victoria said urgently, trying not to notice the sparking heat flowing through her body from where Thomas’s hand was on her arm. Oh, touch me … “It would revolutionize St. Thomas’s, allow you to—”

“I made the mistake already of treating you like a bank account,” Thomas said fiercely, interrupting her. “You think I want to make that mistake again?”

“I can just send an order to my bank and it will be carried out,” said Victoria, exhilaration thundering through her at the look of indignation on the man’s face. It was her money, really, to use as she pleased. Not a husband’s reward for marrying her. “You can’t stop me.”

“By God, don’t I know that.”

And his hands were in her hair, his lips feathering kisses along her jaw, and Victoria gasped at the sudden invasion of his presence but moaned as the ripples of pleasure began awakening in her.

This was wrong, they couldn’t—they most certainly shouldn’t! And they weren’t betrothed, not anymore, and—

“I’ve missed you,” Thomas whispered in her ear in between pressing kisses down her neck, causing undulations of need to bud inside her. “Oh, Victoria, I’ve missed you.”

“You’ve missed this,” she murmured, trying to ignore the frantic pounding of his pulse under her fingertips still splayed against his chest. “You’ve missed ravishing me.”

The kisses suddenly stopped and he was towering over her, staring deep into her eyes as though she were mad.

“You think I would—you think I could do this with anyone else?” he whispered, pain etched across his features. “You think there’s anyone else in the world with whom I would want to share this?”

The words felt so good, though not as good as the way he next possessed her mouth, tugging from her a whimper of need that Victoria tried to swallow but could not. She needed him, needed this connection, this closeness. Needed to know she was precious to him. Needed to believe it could work.

“I’ll send you the money.” Victoria gasped, unsure precisely how she was still standing as one of Thomas’s hands snaked to her waist, pulling her even closer into his embrace.

“I’ll refuse it.”

“That won’t matter.”

“I’ll return it to you.”

“I’ll send it back.” Victoria’s eyes fluttered. She was barely able to cope with this onslaught of kisses and debate. “I’ll keep sending it to you until you accept.”

“I want you, Victoria, you !”

She opened her eyes. Thomas was gazing down, lips wet and parted as though he were about to kiss her again, and she would have welcomed it except they had somehow verged into territory far more dangerous than the discussion of money.

Thomas was panting, his grip on her waist tightening. “I want you, not the money—hang the money!”

This is not happening , she told herself firmly. And at any moment, you can disentangle yourself from this gorgeous rake and return yourself to the ballroom.

Any moment. Any moment now.

Her feet remained resolutely where they were.

“I need you—your joy, your laughter, your wit. Do you think I can put a price on that?” Thomas slipped the hand that had tangled in her hair to her cheek, cupping it and lifting up her head.

Slowly, slowly, he lowered his head and pressed his forehead against hers. He was so close, so achingly close. Victoria nudged his nose with hers and she felt him shudder with repressed need.

“I’ll sell the house in Bath.”

Victoria jolted, accidentally pressing a kiss onto his lips before saying, “You wouldn’t!”

“I’ll sell everything the Chance family owns, down to the last silver spoon, if it means you will marry me for me , Victoria,” Thomas murmured, the aching so potent in his voice, she could almost taste it. “I don’t want your dowry. You have to believe me.”

And she did.

She kissed him, hard on the mouth, and Thomas responded in kind, both arms wrapped around her as if he hoped by the intense pressure she could feel the passion within him.

And she could. Not just in his frantic kisses, or the way his laughter and relief mingled with hers, or even in the way that there was a certain stiff…organ, in his trousers, pushed up against her hip.

No, Victoria couldn’t understand it exactly, couldn’t explain it: but she knew. This man loved her, and for herself. For what and who she was, not what she owned.

Eventually, they had to lift their heads for air, their panting filling the cold night with blossoming breath.

“You thought you were swindling me,” Victoria said with a wry laugh, elation flooding through her.

Thomas snorted. “And you were most definitely swindling me —ouch!”

She had tapped him sharply on the chest. The broad, muscular chest that she very much wanted to see again.

“I think we were tricking each other.”

Thomas nodded with a mischievous look. “I can believe that.”

“You’re a chance in a million, Thomas.”

Victoria wasn’t quite sure what had prompted her to say such a thing, but the words made his face grow serious for a moment as his hands stroked her lower back, sparking a need below it she knew only he could fulfill.

“You’re a woman in a million, Victoria Ainsworth,” he said seriously. “I… I have something for you.”

She could hardly think so could not guess what it could have been—but if her mind had been able, it certainly would not have guessed…

Thomas held out a ring. It was gold, like the last one, but this had a single emerald, smaller than any of the stones that had appeared on the first ring.

“It’s different,” she said foolishly.

His face became crestfallen. “You don’t like it? I… Well, I bought the other one on credit, with the assumption of your dowry. I bought this one with my own money. I wanted it to be mine.”

Mine. Victoria swallowed, and only then did she realize that something was missing.

The signet ring on his left hand. It was gone.

Her throat tightened. “Thomas, you didn’t—”

“And I… Damn, I should kneel for this bit.”

“Don’t you dare,” she said warningly, clutching on to him. “You’re the only thing keeping me warm out here.”

He snorted, but seriousness returned to his eyes as he beheld her. “I’ve proposed to you before, Victoria, and I was so anxious, so nervous, I don’t think I gave you much justice.”

Victoria’s lips parted in astonishment. That cold demeanor, that stiff speech—he was nervous?

“More than nervous, I was ashamed. I didn’t want to marry you without telling you everything, but I was afraid once you knew, you would leave.” He swallowed. “I want to tell you all sorts of things about love, and need, and want. About how I always feel safer, more alive, when I’m with you,” he whispered, never taking his eyes from hers. “About how life without you isn’t worth living and a life with you is the best and only one to live—”

“Thomas.”

“But I can’t do that. I can’t do you justice with words,” he said ruefully, a wicked glint in his eyes. “So I think I’ll try the next best thing, and show you.”

Victoria blinked. “‘Show me’?”

“For the rest of our lives,” Thomas said simply. “That’s all I want. Your life.”

She smirked. “You don’t ask for much—”

Her words were stopped with a kiss: passionate, yet reverent. The sort of kiss a man would give his wife, say, on their wedding day. It was deep, his tongue twisting torturous pleasure from her mouth. Victoria clung to him, her hands gripping his lapels, as though he were the only man left in the world.

When the kiss ended, she said, their breath misting in the air between them, “Yes.”

“Yes?”

“You think I could say anything else after you dragged me out of that ballroom and caused a scandal?” Victoria quipped with a laugh, and Thomas joined her. “Come on, then. We’d better go back inside and make my mother a very happy woman.”