Chapter Eighteen
Reginald thumped his head against the wall. Then he did it again, three times, just for good measure.
“Stupid, stupid, stupid.”
He should have burned the piece of paper. He should have hidden it. He should never have written it in the first place.
“Stupid.”
And his head was hurting—but that was nothing to the pain within him, reminding him with every pulse that he had done the most foolish thing possible.
Not write the list. He stood by it, in a way; it was the only way he could conceive of deciding between the numerous Chance cousins, and it had been the best and only way he could think of to save his family.
No, the foolish thing had been not fighting for the woman he loved. She had asked him to leave, but Reginald should have stayed—should have tried to explain, continued to apologize, tell her that she was right and that he was sorry.
And what had he done instead?
Walked out of the room and walked out of Stanphrey Lacey and rode out of her life.
Reginald thumped his head against the wall in his study one final time. “Stupid.”
He’d arrived back in London two weeks ago to discover that his sister had accepted an invitation to stay with a friend for a fortnight. The house was empty, save for a few servants, and there was a particularly miserable tinge to the air with the knowledge that he had hoped to bring Jessica here.
Now he never would.
Miss Jessica Chance—by all accounts, dull as ditchwater and very shy. Should be easy enough to win over, as a wallflower, as she’s had no attention. Poor thing.
Reginald sighed heavily as he stepped across his wood-paneled study and threw himself into his green leather armchair. What a fool he had been. He could never have guessed, when he’d written that list, just how little he had understood Miss Jessica Chance from the rumors.
Wallflower, yes. But passionate. Eager. Clever.
Unlike any other woman he had ever met. He had been foolish, and reckless, and much to his own chagrin, Reginald had to accept that he did not deserve her.
Sighing again, he reached out and took the bottle of brandy from his desk, where he had deposited it within ten minutes of arriving home.
Drowning his sorrows wasn’t a habit he currently had, and he certainly hoped it wouldn’t become one—but it seemed like a very good idea now, from where he was sitting.
The top of the bottle opened with a satisfying thunk, and Reginald grinned weakly. Well, he had done all he could. He had tried to keep his sister out of it. He had tried to marry into one of the most eligible families to save their name.
He had even been foolish enough to fall in love.
All he had to do now was—
“And I said the damned Baron Llyne will see me now!”
The door flew open and a whirlwind entered.
Reginald blinked. Well, not quite a whirlwind. Whirlwinds didn’t wear gowns, for a start, and one of the people now standing in his study was most definitely wearing a gown.
She was also familiar.
“Miss Irene?” he said, hardly able to believe his eyes as he rose to his feet.
Miss Irene—Irene Chance. Jessica’s sister.
What on earth was she doing here?
“Forgive the abrupt introduction, Lord Llyne. Aynor,” said the dark-haired gentleman beside her, who was dressed rather well and spoke as though he had been bred from nobility.
Aynor… The title sounded familiar. “Friend of the family. The Pernrith side, at any rate. Not that there’s anything wrong with the rest of them, you understand, but—”
“Wilfred,” said Miss Chance calmly, “do shut up.”
He chuckled. “Shutting up, Reeny.”
“And don’t call me that. You know I don’t like it when people call me that,” said Miss Chance without missing a beat, closing the door in the face of Reginald’s astonished butler and turning back to her host. “And you!”
It was not quite a malediction, but it was spoken as one, and Reginald’s feet moved automatically, stepping backward so that he fell backward into his chair.
“Don’t be too hard on the man, Reeny,” said Aynor nonchalantly, as though the two of them regularly stormed into a man’s house to castigate him.
Perhaps they did.
“Oh, excellent, brandy—a tad early, but then it’s always six o’clock somewhere,” said Aynor cheerfully, plucking the bottle of brandy out of Reginald’s unresisting hands before glancing about. “Now, where do you keep your glasses?”
“This is not the time for brandy, Wilfred,” Miss Chance snapped as she moved to sit in the chair opposite Reginald. Although she spoke to her companion, her gaze did not leave Reginald for an instant.
Her friend snorted. “I was going to pour you a large glass, Reeny.”
“Oh. Well.” Miss Chance appeared mollified. “That’s all right, then.”
Reginald could not help it; he gaped.
There was something about these two. They appeared to work in complete tandem, not needing to speak to know what the other was going to do next. Was he a cousin? No. Not a Chance. A distant cousin? Who was he to be so casual with an unwed lady, and without a chaperone in sight?
Aynor had managed to find three glasses and had popped them on the desk, pouring a generous measure in the first one.
Miss Chance picked it up. “For you. You cad.”
Reginald could hardly argue with her, but it was a most strange encounter, being given brandy in his own study.
The gentleman poured the second glass and Miss Chance glared at her companion. “I’ll tell you when to stop.”
When the beautifully golden liquid was a mere quarter inch from the top, she nodded almost imperceptivity and Aynor moved to the third glass. Miss Chance took the second, downed it almost in one go, coughed, grinned, then fixed Reginald with a stare made of daggers.
“So. You and your list.”
The bottom fell out of Reginald’s stomach. “I-I beg your pardon?”
“Do not bother to deny it,” said Miss Chance fiercely, leaning back in the chair and folding her arms. “Jessica has told me all about it, and I must say, I am very disappointed.”
Reginald opened his mouth, looked at Aynor, who had mimicked the young lady and crossed his arms too, and closed it. The gentleman winked from where he was standing, crucially behind Miss Chance’s back.
“I saw that,” said the unrelenting Miss Chance.
“Well, every man is permitted at least one mistake, isn’t he?” Aynor suggested as he perched on the arm of Miss Chance’s chair. “I mean, does a man have to be perfect to be permitted to marry your sister?”
Miss Chance turned in her chair to stare incredulously at him. “Yes!”
Reginald shifted uncomfortably in his own chair.
He had expected something like this. Oh, not something like this.
He had thought Mr. Michael Chance, or perhaps even the Viscount Pernrith himself might appear on his doorstep and demand answers.
Not a woman from the family, and certainly not a stranger to the situation—though the way the two of them were carrying on, he wondered whether the two of them…
Though he had not uncovered a betrothed during his own research into the family.
The reminder of his research into the family made the guilt heavy in his stomach.
“Jessica is a very precious and very delicate flower,” Miss Chance was saying hotly to Aynor. “You know that as well as I do, and she deserves—”
“Oh, she deserves the very best, obviously,” interrupted the gentleman, “but no one is perfect, Reeny, and—”
“Stop calling me ‘Reeny’!”
“—and you cannot blame a man for getting it wrong once. Once,” Aynor said magnanimously, “is acceptable.”
The two of them turned, slowly, to look at Reginald. Their focus pinned him to the chair.
Reginald swallowed. “It was a mistake—a terrible mistake. One I wish I had never made.”
“There you are, then,” said Aynor, thrusting his brandy glass at his host and sloshing the expensive liquid onto the rug. Reginald made a mental note to mention it to his butler for cleaning. “The man is sorry. The man won’t do it again.”
“The man will not have a chance to do it again if he is not careful,” Miss Chance said slowly. “And I rather fear that he is not going to give himself the opportunity to do it again. Are you, Lord Llyne?”
At this point, Reginald was utterly lost, and so he did the only thing that made sense. He took a sip of brandy.
The deliciously sweet, heady liquid unfortunately went to his head, exacerbated by the lack of luncheon he had taken while on the road.
Reginald blinked. For a moment, just a moment, he thought it was Jessica seated on the chair. He blinked again and the mirage cleared, revealed an increasingly irate sister instead.
“And worst of all,” Miss Chance said slowly, “is that you do not even realize that the whole thing could be solved in about five minutes.”
“Five—Five minutes?” Reginald asked.
“Oh, hang on, Reen—Irene,” Aynor amended hastily. “I do not think that five minutes would be sufficient to fix this.”
“My point is, you dolt,” said Miss Chance, presumably addressing her friend, though Reginald was not quite sure, “that they could be happy.”
Happy.
Reginald had not understood the meaning of the word until he had met Jessica.
The rest of his life had been good, yes, but not great.
The sun had shone and life had continued, one day after another, and then suddenly, he had been faced with a traitor in his family and he had made a decision that had brought him to…
Her. Jessica Chance. The one person in the world with whom he wished to be, right in this moment.
“I can’t be happy.”
Miss Chance and Aynor looked up at Reginald’s words, the former saying sharply, “And why is that? More brandy, Wilfred.”
As the gentleman poured another incredibly generous portion of brandy into the young lady’s glass, Reginald said quietly, “I’ll never be happy again. I… I have lost the affection and trust of the most incredible woman I have ever met. Will ever meet. I… She…”
His words trailed away, his mind unable to explain just how lost he was.
Reginald swallowed, his whole chest tight. He had lost her. He had lost his Jessica.