Any Chance You Can Take (The Chances #9)

Chapter One

It wasn’t that Miss Jessica Chance would rather have been anywhere else than here. There were lots of places in the world. Surely, some of them, though it was difficult to believe, were worse.

And so she resigned herself to the most difficult challenge a wallflower could endure: a family party.

“Are you sure you don’t want to—”

“No, thank you,” Jessica said firmly—or at least, as firmly as she could manage.

She was not one to speak firmly. Her voice quavered, even as her mother looked at her down her aquiline nose, full of concern.

“It’s only a conversation about the latest novel by—”

“I’m going for a walk,” Jessica said, launching upright from the sofa as two of her cousins stared.

Did they know how painful it was, when they stared like that? Did they understand how mortifying it was, to be the only one not to enjoy attention, not to want noise, not to wish for all eyes to be upon her?

Every step across the library floor of Stanphrey Lacey appeared to take an age, but somehow, Jessica managed it. Leaning against the wall in the corridor and wishing to goodness that she had managed to persuade her mother to leave her in London, she attempted to consider her next move.

The place was heaving. Stanphrey Lacey, the ancestral home of the noble Chance family, was large, indeed, but with her four siblings, three sets of uncles and aunts, and eleven cousins—plus a few of their spouses—it was difficult to find peace and quiet.

The garden.

Yes, Jessica thought with rising hopes. The gardens were surely sufficiently large to avoid a great number of people.

Passing two maids and a footman on her way to the front door, servants at whom Jessica did not look and hoped to goodness would simply pretend she did not exist, she finally breathed in the cool air of approaching autumn and felt her tension start to melt from her shoulders.

This had been a most excellent idea. All she had to do was cross the drive—a majestic one, but that would surely only take five or ten minutes to accomplish—then she could lose herself in the rose garden, or the water garden, or the long drive to the fountain, or perhaps even into the grove of silver birch trees that crept around one side of Stanphrey Lacey Forest. There, she could be quiet alone.

If anyone had been watching from the windows of the impressive Jacobean manor house, and Jessica fervently hoped no one was, they would see a rather unremarkable individual.

Jessica was well aware of this and thanked her stars on a daily basis that she had none of the striking beauty of her cousin Lady Lilianna, or the memorable hair of her sister Irene, or the dramatic figure of her sister Teddy.

No, she was a pale imitation of her mother. Edith Chance, Viscountess Pernrith, had been a striking beauty of the ton in her day. In truth, her mother’s beauty had not dimmed with age; it had merely grown into a different direction.

But that was all to the good. The fact that I am plain, that is, Jessica thought as she marched as swiftly as she could across the drive. No one would miss her. Her dull, brown curls were unremarkable, which was precisely how she wanted them, and no one would—

“Good morning!”

The greeting had come from nowhere, and Jessica was so thrown by the sudden voice that she almost tipped over.

Turning and glaring before she could stop herself, Jessica snapped, “What?”

“I-I said, good morning,” said the woman who had somehow appeared to her left.

Jessica blinked. The woman was unfamiliar—no, not unfamiliar, just not family. Recognition slowly arrived…of course, it was Kathleen. Katherine? No, surely, Kathleen. The woman who had married her cousin Leopold so recently.

Oh, hell, more family to gawp at me.

“It is still morning, isn’t it?” said the woman, who raised a brow at the man whose arm she was holding. But then her lips parted in a small smile.

Jessica swallowed, hating that her nerves were so potent, hating that she could not even return for a holiday to the family home without being accosted by a stranger. A stranger who seemed to think Jessica was too stupid to know the time of day.

“Yes,” said Leopold, who was grinning foolishly like a maniac and went so far as to wink at his spouse.

‘Yes’? Jessica blinked, unsure why he had pronounced such a word. Yes—what did he mean? Had he asked her something? Oh, right. The fact that it was still morning. Were they both laughing at her now, even her own flesh and blood?

His new wife appeared desperate to make conversation, something that Jessica wished she wouldn’t do. “Such a pleasant day.”

And before Jessica could tame her tongue or marshal her thoughts into any particular order—any order at all—a plethora of random sounds erupted from her mouth. “No, it isn’t. No, I’m not—no!”

Oh, hell. Perhaps if she had managed to keep her voice down, her erratic nonsense would not have mattered. But nerves had tightened Jessica’s throat, causing the noise to be more a shout than a whisper.

And she knew what was coming.

Yes, here was the blush. Jessica did not need to see it to know that her cheeks were turning a nice, rich crimson, not unlike the damask of the second drawing room here at Stanphrey Lacey, though her face would look less resplendent. More…ridiculous.

Well, that was enough embarrassment for one morning. Hopefully.

Not saying another word and hoping to goodness that neither her cousin nor his wife would ever mention this again, Jessica turned on her heel and started marching away from them.

They might have called after her. Jessica wasn’t sure. There was too much blood pumping through her ears, her pulse a roar, to hear anything.

Stupid, stupid!

Why couldn’t she just have a normal conversation? Why did her nerves always overcome her? It was bad enough that she was ignored by half the family and pitied by the rest because of her unfashionable looks and her chronic shyness—but now she had to go about shouting nonsense at them?

When Jessica turned into the rose garden, she dropped onto a stone bench, relieved by the feel of its cool surface through her skirts. Her whole body appeared to be on fire, which was most inconvenient.

And then she froze.

“—haven’t seen much of her, to tell the truth,” came a voice from the other side of the hedge. They must have been in the White Garden. “I suppose she is here?”

That was her cousin Lilianna; Jessica would recognize that imperious voice anywhere.

Not that she minded Lilianna’s remarkable belief in herself. It was something that Jessica could only hope for—but it did mean that her cousin’s opinions were often stated as fact. And that her voice carried.

“I’ve met her, then?”

The voice that responded was not one Jessica recognized, but that was starting to become an occupational hazard in this family. Why, there had been four Chance weddings in the last year!

They had all thought Thomas Chance, now the Duke of Cothrom, had been rather radical to get wed so swiftly, but it had become a veritable trend.

“You have met her, but you probably do not recall her,” Lilianna’s voice said kindly. “She’s not really the memorable sort.”

Jessica wrinkled her nose. Whomever they were talking about, she was not very memorable. Poor woman.

“Jessica…” mused the masculine voice, causing a shot of disappointment and confusion to rip through her as she sat on the stone bench. “No, I cannot say I could pick her out of a crowd.”

“I’ll point her out at dinner,” came Lilianna’s voice, quieter now as footsteps crunched on gravel. They were walking away. “But you may need to be introduced a third time.”

Whatever else her cousin and her husband said, Jessica did not hear. She did not need to.

Shame, piping hot and burning, slid down her throat into her chest, twisting painfully in her stomach and making her legs feel weak.

It wasn’t as though she did not know she was thought of in such a way by her family. Her three sisters and brother could forget she was sitting in a room if she was quiet for more than five minutes. Which she often was.

Miss Jessica Chance was not frequently invited to parties, despite being the eldest of her sisters. She was often accidentally missed off the invitation to card parties. When she arrived at dinners, forced there by her mother, an extra place often had to be added, the hostess with pink cheeks.

Her arrival at Almack’s, a place that simply wasn’t what it had been, had been ignored. It was only after her parents had actually put something in the newspapers—Jessica closed her eyes in horror at the mere memory—that people appeared to realize that she had been there.

So yes, Jessica was no fool. She was a wallflower, and a good one.

But to hear such a thing from her own cousin…

“You look a little dour.”

Jessica smiled as she looked up to see her sister Irene approaching her, a gun resting over her shoulder in that nonchalant way that her sister had.

Oh, what I wouldn’t give to have such…such presence.

No, it wasn’t that. It was confidence. An innate knowledge within herself that anyone speaking with Irene was going to enjoy the experience.

Precisely how her sister had gained such a thing and Jessica herself had not, she did not know. It was most unfair.

“I do not look dour,” Jessica said smartly.

Apparently, speaking smartly did not create confidence. Irene grinned kindly and sat beside her sister, ensuring that the gun—not loaded; they had all been shooting for so long they knew how to handle weapons—did not poke Jessica in the ribs.

“You do too,” said Irene conversationally whilst tugging a shawl around her narrow frame, as though accusing one’s older sister of looking dour was a perfectly natural thing to do. “Why? I thought you would have come hunting with us this morning.”

Jessica had considered it. She had wanted to go. She had told both Irene and their cousin Lucy that she’d wished to go with them.

They had seemed to forget about her. When she had come downstairs eagerly in her riding habit, she’d been told that they had already gone.