Chapter Four
Well, this isn’t awkward at all…
Reginald tried not to think about it too much.
He tried not to think about the fact that around this dinner table, he was the only non-family member in attendance.
He tried not to think about the fact that he had not packed any suitable attire for such an event, had not traveled with his valet, never presuming that he would be invited to stay for more than one night.
And he most definitely tried not to think about the woman seated next to him.
His future wife.
“—heard she and Richard are doing very well,” came a voice from down the table. “Evelyn says in her letter that she is painting a great deal…”
“—truly, you are also an archer?” said a voice on the other side of him, chattering happily to Lord Leopold Chance. “What are the chances of that?”
Muffled, refined laughter followed.
Everything these people did was refined. Hell, Reginald had been raised in a baron’s household—he was hardly a plebian unsure how to hold a knife and fork…but there was something intensely polished about these people.
Something about the way they walked. The way they held themselves. A confidence—no, it was not a confidence, but a certainty.
The Chances were absolutely certain of anything and everything they did. It was intoxicating.
All of them, that was, except his bride-to-be.
Reginald glanced at the woman next to him.
She was eating silently, her gaze mostly fixed on her plate of roasted trout and lemon.
Every now and again, she would look up—either to listen to something someone said, or to pick up her glass of wine and take a sip, then her eyes would return to her plate.
His eyes had barely looked at her plate. He was more interested in looking at her.
Dark hair. When he had first encountered her, Reginald had thought her hair merely brown, but he was wrong; there was a richness within it, almost a sheen of red. The curls appeared natural, flying away around her face out of control.
And her nose. Slight, and delicate, drawing the eye to her lips…
“I said, I hope your stay at Stanphrey Lacey has been comfortable so far?”
Reginald jolted. There was a man talking to him—who was talking to him?
Looking up, he saw that it was Viscount Pernrith. Miss Chance’s father.
Right.
“Yes, yes, more than comfortable,” Reginald said with a wide smile, hoping to goodness they asked him no further questions than that. Not when his mind had been so pleasingly occupied.
How had he never noticed the luscious shape of Miss Chance’s lips before?
“I notice you do not have appropriate dinner attire,” continued the viscount blithely. “Happens when one travels without one’s valet, I suppose.”
The man’s wife, seated next to him, nudged him heartily in the ribs. “Frederick!”
“What I mean to say is that we are more than happy to lend you any additional clothes, should you need them,” added the viscount with a wry grin. “As I was about to say.”
Reginald drew himself up. Well, hang on now. He couldn’t have the Chance family laboring under that misapprehension. Did they think him so poor that he could not afford clothes or a valet? Hang it all, that had not been the impression he had wished to create.
Beyond the fact that it was wrong, it was… Well. Not remarkable. And he’d wanted to impress this family. He just hadn’t the patience, once he’d fixed his mind on his brilliant idea, to wait for his valet to pack and to sit in an accursedly slow carriage all the way here.
“I have sent a note to my valet in London, and he should be arriving tomorrow on the mail coach with a trunk of my clothes,” he said brightly. “I had no wish to presume, and I doubt my horse would have permitted a large trunk.”
There was some genteel laughter at this and a flicker of pride soared through him.
Yes, I could belong here. He could make this work. He had chosen well; the Chance family was accustomed to things being a little…irregular. But he could be happy here. He could restore his family’s honor here.
All he needed was the hand of Miss Chance.
Reginald glanced at her again. She had not looked up as he’d conversed with her father, but by the tilt of her head, he wondered whether she had listened.
He wasn’t sure if he wanted her to have paid attention or not.
Farther up the table was some… Well, he would not call it whispering. Murmuring, perhaps. Glances were cast his way, and one of the Chance cousins perhaps a few years younger than himself pointed uncouthly with a fork.
Pointed at him.
Trying to keep his expression steady, Reginald reminded himself that he was the imposition here. He was the outsider. Hell’s bells, he had marched right up to this house and demanded—well, not quite demanded—the hand of one of their number. He could hardly expect the warmest of welcomes.
After all, the only reason they had invited him was because, once Miss Chance had given her consent, they’d had to.
Reginald drew himself up and smiled as he took another bite of his trout. He would become a part of this family; at the next year’s summer house party, he was going to be right at the center of this brood.
And that had to start with the woman sat beside him.
He took a deep breath. This was going to be awkward, he knew, but it would only be as awkward as she allowed it to be.
Which, perhaps, would be a great deal. Ah, well. The only way to tell was to try.
“You look very well this evening, Miss Chance,” Reginald began.
It was a safe bet. No woman he had ever met had disliked being noticed, and a gentle compliment he felt was better than an all-out charm attack.
That could come later.
But the conversation did not play out as he had expected. For a start, one needed at least two people opening their mouths for it to even be called a conversation. And Miss Chance remained mute, merely flinching ever so slightly as she continued to eat.
Fine, the compliment had been too vague. Perhaps her silent condemnation is right, Reginald thought darkly. After all, that could have been said about anyone.
“I like your…your collar,” he said with a wry laugh.
Well, he was hardly a sartorial expert. Most ladies’ gowns looked the same to him.
But now he came to look at her…
Miss Chance was dressed in a green gown, a light greenish blue that reminded him of a murky sea. There were ruffles in the sleeves, yes, but they were elegantly darted and there was lace trimmed down the front of her gown. The front of her gown that drew his eye to her—
Reginald snapped his attention upward and most unfortunately met the eye of Miss Chance’s father. The viscount considered him a mite coldly, despite the subsequent nudge from his wife.
Despite his efforts of trying to smile, Reginald did not receive a smile in return.
“You like my collar,” Miss Chance repeated quietly.
Perhaps it had not been the best choice of subject. Reginald tried to think desperately about his sister. What did she like to be complimented on?
“And your earbobs,” he added. “Gold. Very pretty.”
That gained a response. Miss Chance looked up and met his eyes, and a strange sort of twisting in his stomach made Reginald’s jaw tighten.
She looked away and the twisting ended.
What the hell had that been about?
“Tell me about them,” Reginald said desperately. Goodness gracious, he could not remember the last time it had been this difficult to converse with a woman. Why did she have to make it so…so difficult?
Was it possible that he had chosen the wrong Chance?
“Tell you about my earbobs?” Miss Chance repeated, as though ascertaining whether or not he wished to stick to his nonsense.
“—why would he choose her?” came a whisper that floated down the table.
“But did they know each other?”
“Irene told me they had never met before!”
Reginald could not precisely tell which Chances cousins were speaking, but their murmurs traveled farther than clearly they had expected—right to the ears of Miss Jessica Chance.
He could see her listening, see the flush of pink that tinged her cheeks, the pain flickering in her eyes, the downcast look. He watched how her fingers tightened on her fork, how she placed her knife down and ceased eating.
It was a strange sort of prickling discomfort that roared through his own body, but Reginald could hardly march up the table and demand that Miss Chance’s own family apologize to her.
Not when he was the cause of such gossip.
“Earbobs,” he said firmly.
The decidedness of his statement appeared to catch Miss Chance’s attention. She looked up and smiled weakly. “You cannot truly wish to know about my earbobs.”
“I find that learning about a woman’s jewelry tells me a great deal about them,” Reginald countered, delighted that he had managed to elicit a statement of more than five words from her lips. It should not really have been a victory, but it was.
Miss Chance raised an eyebrow. “Really?”
Ah. Here we are, back to single-word responses. Is this what our marriage is going to be like?
It was a strange thought. Reginald had taken a great deal of time selecting Miss Jessica Chance from the plethora of eligible Chance ladies but had spent almost no time at all considering what married life with her would be like.
Up to a point, it did not matter; it was marrying into the Chance family that mattered. Any Chance would do. Any Chance he could take.
Only now that he sat beside her and started to taste not the Chance food, but his personal Chance future did Reginald start to wonder whether he should have chosen another woman.
He took a deep breath. Well, there was no going back. He had made his bed, and before the month was out, he was going to lie in it. With Miss Jessica Chance.
The thought flared unexpected heat through his loins, but the sensation passed, and instead, he found himself looking into the waiting gaze of his future bride.
Reginald cleared his throat. “Well, take your mother, for example.”