Chapter Two
The trouble with loving a woman all your life, Wilfred ruminated as he stamped his feet in the freezing night air, is that your whole life becomes centered on that woman.
It was a mistake to do this. He had known it, the moment he and his valet had returned to his townhouse in Bath yesterday for the beginning of the winter season and he’d discovered a small card waiting for him in his all-too-knowing housekeeper’s hand.
“I thought you might return before it arrived,” Mrs. Ansley had said with a smile that had lit up her dark eyes. “But no, she managed it before you.”
Wilfred had attempted not to pull his housekeeper’s hand off and only just managed it. The card had been light in his hands but had been weighed with the promise of opportunity. The promise of something he had not thought possible.
They were here. Already.
The Viscount and Viscountess Pernrith, present their compliments to the Duke of Aynor and inform him of their presence in Bath.
Wilfred had clutched at the card as though it had been made of gold. “They’re here?”
“That’s what it says,” tutted his housekeeper, straightening his cravat like a mother hen and smoothing back his wayward fringe.
“And your steward is looking for a new lodgekeeper, if you had anyone in mind. You’re an absolute state, Master Wilfred.
Did you not even bother to stop at an inn on the road? ”
He’d permitted the closeness and the incorrect address to the Duke of Aynor. Mrs. Ansley was more than a housekeeper, after all. It had been she who had told him—
Wilfred had pushed the thought from his mind. He was not going to think about them; he was not going to dwell on the past. He was only going to think about the future.
His future. With her.
That had been yesterday. Today, he was stamping his feet outside the Chance townhouse and wondering if he had made a terrible mistake.
“Do you mean to tell me that you are not going to fall into my arms and fall madly in love with me?”
“No, I don’t think so. And you’re not likely to throw yourself down on one knee and protest your ever-dying love, are you?”
She had not meant it, Wilfred tried to console himself. Irene had not really known what she had been saying. If she had any idea of his feelings…
But of course she didn’t. Wilfred had always kept them deep inside, never allowing even a hint of them to escape his closely guarded heart. Not a single person in the world knew he was completely in love with Miss Irene Chance.
Well. Except Mrs. Ansley. And she wasn’t going to tell anyone.
Wilfred pulled his pocket watch out of his greatcoat pocket and hissed at the cold. It was twenty past seven. He had rung the doorbell twice, knocked at the large, heavy door, and started to wonder—along, surely, with his coachman—whether or not they were truly at home.
But she had agreed to his suggestion, hadn’t she?
Hissing through his teeth at the cold, Wilfred pulled the note from his pocket.
Marvelous idea. I’ll see you at a quarter past seven. Bring your carriage, will you? We had to send ours back.
He hadn’t quite understood that last part, but the point was, Irene had agreed to accompany him. Wilfred had invited Theodora, the next sister, to act as her companion to chaperone the exchange. No one would ever be able to suggest he hadn’t done this properly.
His stomach lurched at the very thought.
Done this proposal properly.
Perhaps this was a mistake. Perhaps he’d gotten the wrong day. Perhaps even thinking about declaring his undying love to an unsuspecting Irene was not a good idea.
Wilfred turned on his heels and started back for the carriage—
“Don’t blame me for being late. It was my mother,” Irene declared to the night air, slamming the front door behind her.
Wilfred blinked. He hadn’t even heard it open. “Your—Your mother?”
“She would insist on attempting to explain the entirety of the plot to me as I left the house, which, as I told her, was quite ridiculous,” Irene said, by way of explanation as she slipped her hand through the crook of his arm without waiting for an invitation.
“I told her, Mama, you’re not supposed to know what is going on in an opera. That is the whole point!”
And Wilfred melted.
Well, not exactly. What he actually did was laugh, comment something he hoped desperately was amusing in turn, shiver with delight as Irene laughed, and walked her to his carriage.
But inside, he was melting.
How could he not? Irene Chance was beautiful, and charming, and clever, and good hearted. She had chestnut-gold hair and a laugh that could peel paint. She was a minx with her elbows if she wanted to get through a crowd, and she had never said a bad word about anyone.
How could he not love her?
It was only when Wilfred had helped Irene into his carriage, therefore, that he realized what was missing. Or rather, who. “Is Theodora getting an earful from your mother too?”
Irene blinked. “Teddy?”
“Yes,” Wilfred said patiently, trying not to shiver as he was blasted with a gust of freezing November air. It was all very well for Irene; she was seated in the warmth of the carriage. “Yes, I invited the both of you. So she could act as—I mean, you could chaperone each other.”
He had not intended to hedge at the end of that statement, but he could not help it. She was looking at him with those dark eyes and he… Well. He fell into them.
Irene snorted. “Don’t be daft! Teddy hasn’t the slightest interest in such things.
No, I told Mama you were surely asking Mrs. Brown to join us this evening.
” She peered around the small carriage, as if searching for a widow who had hidden between the cushions.
“She needn’t know your elderly neighbor has apparently lost her invite.
If anyone asks when we get there, she’s in our seats at the opera house, fast asleep, as usual. ” Her eyes sparkled at the scheme.
Wilfred smiled weakly. “Yes. Daft. Right. Good… Good thinking, that. Mrs. Brown.”
And it was a compliment, really, he tried to tell himself as he shut the carriage door smartly and walked around to the other side. It was a compliment, that Irene never concerned herself with chaperones when they were alone together.
Still. He was a gentleman. And a duke. Some of them were complete rogues!
He wasn’t, obviously, but it would be nice if someone thought he was capable of being a cad. Why, the viscountess hadn’t even checked to be sure his neighbor had actually accompanied him. She’d just trusted sweet, innocent Wilfred to do the proper thing.
“Now, this opera,” Irene said as Wilfred shut the door behind him and tapped the roof. “You have seen it before?”
“Never,” he said brightly as the carriage lurched forward. “I saw it advertised as I walked past yesterday and thought it was just the thing.”
“Is it a laughing opera or a crying opera?” Irene, great cultural expert, asked.
Wilfred attempted not to smile, but it was impossible. “Are there only those two kinds?”
“Oh, as far as I am aware, yes,” said his best friend, smoothing out her skirts and pulling her pelisse a little tighter around herself. “You know it is very cold. The least you could do was offer—”
Wilfred pulled a heavy and very soft blanket from underneath the seat.
“Ah,” said Irene happily, allowing him to place it around her. “Excellent.”
It was but the work of a moment. Wilfred held his breath as he tucked the edges of the blanket around Irene’s hips on the seat of his carriage.
Even so, it was impossible not to inhale the warm, sweet scent of her.
Impossible not to feel the swelling curves of her hips.
Impossible not to notice how she wriggled slightly with delight at his touch.
Or was he mistaking that last part?
“Wilfred?”
Wilfred cleared his throat as he sat back. “Y-Yes?”
“You said, in your note, that you had something important to tell me,” Irene asked serenely with bright eyes. “What is it?”
Wilfred’s pulse skipped a beat and his tongue decided to go on strike.
Something important to tell her. Something important.
Well, it was important. Life-changing. Life-fracturing, if she did not respond as he wished. Life-altering, if he could no longer see Irene and the rest of the Chances. Life-ending, if he had to live the rest of it knowing that Irene saw him not as a man, but as a boy.
As a friend.
“Is it a surprise?” Irene’s eyes gleamed in the dark and Wilfred’s stomach twisted. “Is it a gift?”
“It’s… It’s not a gift, no,” Wilfred managed.
There was no disappointment in Irene’s expression and his affection for her only stirred all the more. This was not a woman who was only interested in the material things in life. This was a woman who cared about more important things. Like friendship. Like connection. Like love.
“Whatever it is, I know it will be wonderful,” Irene said, tugging at the ties of her pelisse. “Goodness, I’m too hot now!”
The blanket had evidently done its work, for Wilfred looked on—unable to tear his eyes away—as Irene undid her pelisse and pulled it back, stretching forward and arching her back as she pulled the ties loose.
Arched her back and pushed forward her incredibly curved breasts.
Wilfred’s inhale was lost, thank God, in the rumble of the carriage, but he could not drag his eyes away from the perfect mounds that surely ached to be touched.
He knew Irene, knew all her secrets. He would have known, wouldn’t he, if she had kissed a man?
She had never mentioned such a thing. Unlike most men his age, Wilfred himself hadn’t kissed a woman, had never followed his university chums down darkened alleyways to meet with women of the night.
He would have, before he’d realized his feelings, told Irene if he had—and she never would have ceased with her teasing.
No, she could not have kissed another, either.
Oh, to be the first man to give her a taste of pleasure…
“Wilfred? You look a mite too warm too,” Irene said conversationally.