Chance Would Be a Fine Thing (The Chances #10)

Chapter One

Miss Irene Chance looked around carefully and nodded to herself. Yes, the wedding had gone to plan, thank goodness. All she had to worry about was—

Sudden darkness. Hands had covered her eyes, her senses utterly disrupted, the hands large, strong yet soft. There was a presence behind her, someone who had decided she should not be permitted light.

Irene was not concerned. “Wilfred Zouch, you stop that this minute.”

The snort of laughter behind her was as familiar as her own. “You can’t blame a man for trying!”

“Trying what? I thought we had given up on that foolishness a long time ago,” said Irene as the hands disappeared. She turned and looked up into the familiar face of her best friend.

Wilfred Zouch, utterly incorrigible idiot and the Duke of Aynor, grinned back. “You know me. I haven’t grown up yet.”

“That, I can well believe.” Irene grinned, nudging him in the side as a footman passed them with a series of delicious things on a silver tray. “You haven’t changed a bit in the last decade!”

Well, other than the fact that you’ve shot up a few feet and are now taller than me, Irene had to admit in the privacy of her own mind. It had come as a shock at the time, from the boy who had always been a few inches shorter than her. But no matter. She had grown used to it, in time.

“Your family puts on a rather wonderful party,” Wilfred said happily, easily taking two glasses of champagne from a passing footman and handing one to Irene.

“It’s not a party. It’s Jess’s wedding reception,” Irene pointed out, sipping the wine. It was incredibly good. Where had her father been keeping this? “And she looks happy, doesn’t she?”

The pair of them looked across the light and airy drawing room at the happy couple, currently receiving the congratulations of half of London.

“She does,” came Wilfred’s quiet voice.

Irene did not reply, just looked at them with a smile dancing across her lips.

In a way, she could hardly believe it. Jessica Chance was the most incorrigible wallflower. No one had ever thought she would wed, not after she’d reached the age of four and twenty. But here she was, married to Baron Llyne, presumably happy. She certainly looked happy enough.

Something tugged at the corner of her mouth, and Irene’s smile ceased.

How her sister could marry someone she had met mere weeks ago, however, she would never understand.

Even if she and Wilfred had played a sizeable role, if she did say so herself, in the couple’s reunion after a misunderstanding—but that was only because Jessica had seemed so miserable without him.

“We should go over and congratulate them.” Wilfred’s words cut through Irene’s markedly unpleasant thoughts. “Come on, Reeny.”

Her best friend grabbed her by the hand.

“You know I don’t like that nickname,” muttered Irene, trying to keep her wineglass balanced as her overexuberant companion pulled her forward. “Besides, they might want peace and—well, who would have thought it!”

As expected, her sister flushed at the sudden approach of people, but there wasn’t much Irene could do now, so she kissed her sister’s cheek and beamed.

“I am delighted for you, my darling,” Irene said sincerely.

“And so am I,” added Wilfred, who had somehow managed to grasp Lord Llyne’s hand and was pumping it enthusiastically. Irene attempted not to giggle. “It’s hard to believe, isn’t it! A Pernrith Chance, getting married!”

Irene tried not to snort, but it was difficult. “It is certainly not something that I think will happen again soon!”

Her mind flickered to her other siblings.

Her only brother and the eldest child, Michael, his gaze always on the horizon, always looking for the next adventure.

Theodora, so quiet that only that similarly quiet gentleman of their father’s acquaintance, Mr. Kennedy, ever seemed to get anything out of her.

Little Gwendoline, hardly out in Society yet but already following in her eldest sister’s footsteps and acting the proper wallflower whenever anything was demanded of her.

Honestly! Was it truly her fate to be the only normal one among them?

At her pronouncement, however, Wilfred did not laugh, as Irene had expected. “You—You don’t?”

Irene blinked. Don’t what? Oh, yes. Don’t expect her siblings to get married. It was a strange response from her friend who had known her siblings since forever.

He could surely see how unlikely it was, couldn’t he?

“Well, Teddy and Gwen aren’t out, not properly, and Michael is too much a rakehell to be tied down,” Irene explained with a shrug, her attention distracted by Lady Romeril, an intimidating woman of great height and even greater bearing, who was berating someone in a corner.

Who had invited her?

“And… Well, and what about you?” came Wilfred’s voice.

It sounded a little strange, now Irene came to think of it. Her attention snapped away from the doyenne of Society and over to her friend, whose expression looked…

Had the man eaten an unpleasant oyster?

“You don’t see me surrounded by admirers, do you?” Irene snorted, sipping her wine and enjoying the joke. “I spend too much time with you!”

Wilfred opened his mouth hurriedly, as though what he wished to say was something of great import, but he was interrupted by her sister’s new husband.

“And for that, I must thank you both,” said Lord Llyne, looking at Irene with not so much a purposeful wink, but he may as well have done. “Thank you. Both of you. Your Grace.”

Irene could have rolled her eyes with irritation. Did the man have to make it so obvious that she and Wilfred were the ones who had convinced the idiot—the baron, she should say—to apologize to her sister?

Honestly, the man was dense. Lord save her from men who didn’t see what was plainly right before their eyes!

Wilfred, of course, was just as subtle. “You owe me one!” he said, slapping Irene’s new brother-in-law on the shoulder. “And please, I hate being called ‘Your Grace.’ By friends, anyway. Aynor will do.”

Irene sighed as her sister Jessica looked between the two gentlemen, an expression of confusion in her beautiful eyes.

Once again, it would be up to her to bring some levity to the occasion and distract her sister entirely from the truth.

“Yes,” she said jovially. “I expect jewels of my own as recompense, now we know you have a fortune. Come on, Wilfred,” she added, deciding that it was about time to remove the idiot from the man’s presence before he revealed everything.

“I think the punch is about to be served.”

It was a pretty poor excuse, even Irene had to admit it—at least, she might admit it if pressed, but only to a select few who could be trusted never to remember her admission of fault.

Wilfred stared as though she had pulled off her own head. “You hate punch!”

Irene did not roll her eyes this time, but it was a close call. Did he not understand that she was trying to extricate them? “And I have a duty to attempt to like it. Almost every Society affair has it and it would be remiss of me not to attempt it. Come on!”

The last syllable of her statement was accompanied by a mildly violent tug of Wilfred’s arm, which seemed to do the trick, though Irene was sorry to see her wine splashed over the rim of her glass.

Well, it couldn’t have been helped. The most important thing was that they walked away from Jessica, who was asking her new husband what appeared to be some pointed questions, and Irene was not there to be yelled at.

Not that she thought it would come to that. It was down to her, after all, that this wedding was happening at all.

“You would think she would be grateful,” Wilfred said cheerfully as he was marched across the Pernrith drawing room and into the large, open music room that adjoined it. “Seeing as it is thanks to us that—”

“And she doesn’t know that, remember?” Irene hissed, smiling at her parents, who were seated happily on a sofa, their hands intertwined.

The last thing she wanted was for the Viscount and Viscountess Pernrith to know that they had their second daughter to thank for their eldest girl’s marriage.

Wilfred’s expression cleared, and he gave Irene a lazy grin. “You know, I think it’s remarkable that you don’t want anyone to know. I mean, I’d want some credit, especially with my parents.”

They had reached the punch table at the other end of the music room and Irene picked up the ladle as she tried not to sigh. Why on earth would he—

“If they were still with us, naturally,” Wilfred added, his voice lowering and an edge curling around his tone.

Irene hesitated, then poured an extra-large glass of punch, which she offered her friend.

Sometimes it was easy to grow exasperated with her parents. They were so…so endearing, so happy to get involved in their children’s lives. Michael was irritating beyond belief, and as for Teddy and Gwen, the less said, the more charitable Irene would be, perhaps.

And then she would look at her best friend and see the sadness he kept quiet, hidden deep within him, only emerging at times when he was unable to prevent it from seeping through, and she would remember.

Wilfred Zouch, Duke of Aynor. Only child and orphan.

Irene impulsively slipped her hand through the crook of Wilfred’s arm as they stepped away from the punch table. “You’ll always have us, you know. The Chances.”

“What, all of you?” Wilfred’s grin was a tad too forced. “That might be far too much family, if you ask me.”

She could not help but laugh as they stood to the side of the room and looked around them. “I know what you mean.”

Her father, as the youngest of four brothers, had invited all three of his siblings, and their wives, and their children—and now some of them had spouses—to Jessica’s wedding, as he should. Still, it was a lot for her sister, who liked quiet and a complete lack of notice.

How many cousins did they have, after all? Eleven? Twelve? Eleven, definitely eleven.

“Besides, I have you,” Wilfred said simply. “I don’t need any more family.”