Page 3 of A Sporting Chance (The Chances #8)

L ord Leopold Chance took a deep breath. Then he stepped forward.

“Graycott! I did not think you would be here this early—it’s before midday. How are you awake?”

He had expected there to be laughter. There was always laughter when he walked into a room these days, and today was no exception.

Viscount Graycott smirked, deepening the dimples in his elongated face, as Leopold approached him and a few of his friends. “Your surprise at my being awake is nothing to my surprise of you being here at all, Chance.”

Leopold maintained the smile, but it was an effort. “Now why would you think that?”

“The news is all about Town,” said Graycott, nudging one of his friends, a bloated gentleman Leopold did not recognize. “You cannot pretend not to have heard the rumors. You started them, after all.”

“ Caused them,” sneered his bulbous-nosed friend.

The worst had already happened, so it was not too difficult for Leopold to maintain his smile, despite the great provocation. “I cannot think what you mean.”

There was laughter rippling through the group now, all save one. Leopold caught his cousin’s eye, but Samuel looked away, the Chance intelligence in his expression, even if it was marred with discomfort.

So, clearly just being related to him was something to which to avoid calling attention. Excellent. As though his father’s disappointment had not been enough.

“I did not think you would be coming,” said another man with bushy, dark eyebrows and a laugh that echoed around the carefully mown lawn area just outside the club. “If I had known—”

“Don’t tell me, you would have stayed at home,” Leopold said as pleasantly as he could manage, pulling off his jacket and throwing it down with the rest of them.

For a moment, just a moment, he saw the flicker of discomfort among his friends.

His former friends, it appeared. A little whiff of scandal, and the whole pack of them seemed to wish to be rid of him.

Which was most unfair when the scandal itself wasn’t even true.

But were they really going to kick up a fuss about his jacket being in a pile with their own? He was a Chance, the son of what Society was calling “the dowager duke,” now the brother of the current Duke of Cothrom. Would a card game really put an end to his reputation?

“Perhaps I should have stayed at home,” Graycott said with a laugh that was far too cold to hold actual merriment. He brushed at an imagined piece of lint on his shirt, his hollow cheeks twitching as he strained to keep from smiling once more. “Perhaps the company would have been more refined.”

Leopold doubted it. The last he heard, Graycott’s mother had another head cold and his sister had caught it too. Red noses all round.

Still, that was hardly something to speak of in public, so he comforted himself with the prospect of some archery. That was what he had come here for, after all. The tug on the arm, the slowing of his breathing, the satisfaction of the thunk as the arrow kissed the target.

Not Society, and politics, and rumors, and gossip. If he’d wanted that, he could have stayed at home and talked to his sister, Maude.

“How is everyone doing?” Leopold asked lightly, picking up a bow and a couple of arrows. Not that he would need more than one to hit his mark. “I see someone has been improving.”

The butt before him, fifty yards away, held a number of arrows. From what he could see, the person who had shot before him had either gained in skill, the arrows growing closer to the center, or had had a blinder of a first shot and then panicked and gotten progressively worst.

Graycott’s thin lip curled. “I don’t need improving. I was demonstrating.”

Leopold’s smile did not waver, but it took a great deal of effort. “Well done that, man.”

It had been a mistake to come here. A mistake to think he could just step back into Society, as though the card game had never happened. What was it that his father had said?

“We do not tolerate scandal in this family, Leopold. You will go out there, and you will clear up this misunderstanding. You will.”

There had not been a choice in the matter, though perhaps coming here rather than White’s had been a poor choice. At least there he could have explained himself, explained the whole misunderstanding. Here, with Graycott—

“Are you going to shoot or not?” Graycott said in a bored tone.

More laughter—laughter at his own expense, Leopold knew.

Graycott may only have been a viscount, but he had a title of his own.

Leopold was a second son. His father had once held a multitude of titles in his estate, but he’d made the rather peculiar choice of sharing the titles with his brothers long before any of their sons had been born.

And now, his father had acted against Society’s expectations once more, bequeathing his last remaining title to his eldest son well before his own demise.

Still, with all of his father’s generosity to others, Leopold had naught but his name, though even that was a burden sometimes.

Everyone knew the Chance family.

And then Leopold raised the bow to his chest and all the laughter, the cruelty of it and the crassness of it, fell away. So too did the sky, the lawn. Nothing remained but his breathing and the arrow.

Leopold welcomed it. Welcomed the quiet, the softness, the opportunity for his mind to stop and just think about the arrow. The point. The desire within it to fly straight and true.

His attention shifted to the butt. The target. The target that desired the arrow.

He breathed out, long and calm.

He let the arrow fly.

There was muffled applause. The applause grew in volume as Leopold blinked and the sky and the lawn rushed back and he saw his friends and acquaintances clapping—some of them grudgingly, it was true, but still. They could not ignore his talent.

“Yes, well, very clever, doing it once.” Graycott jut out his chin. “But I don’t suppose you could do it again.”

Leopold’s smile did not crack. Not an inch. “I would never dream of monopolizing the butts in that way. Whose turn is next?”

A small squabble arose between two gentlemen as Leopold stepped aside and returned the bow to its hook, and in that small movement, his focus was pulled away from the circle of friends and away, past the rack of bows, beyond it.

To the woodland that encircled the righthand side of the archery butts.

Where a woman was standing.

Leopold blinked. It was definitely a woman. No gentleman would wear something that vibrantly pink that fell all the way to the ground.

A woman—here? Standing there? Doing what?

“—suppose you are permitted at White’s still, Chance? I say, Chance, are you listening?”

Leopold whirled around. Graycott was glaring with barely concealed dislike, along with a few others who had clearly not enjoyed being shown up at the butts.

Samuel, Leopold’s own cousin, was inspecting the ground. Evidently, it was uncomfortable, being a Chance around him.

His stomach lurched. He had not thought it would be this bad. It had only been a card game, after all. Did not many people have card games that went awry? He surely could not be the only one.

“If you don’t wish to continue, Chance, do not let us detain you,” said Graycott with a laugh that was most unfriendly. “It was my assumption that one came here to practice one’s archery, not gaze off into the distance.”

Leopold glanced over his shoulder. The woman in pink was still there. Had no one else seen her? Were they oblivious, as well as arrogant and unpleasant?

“Right. Archery.” He picked up a bow, a different one this time, one with a harsher draw, and stepped forward.

This time, it did not take Leopold long to move into the almost trancelike state he enjoyed whenever he had a bow in his hand.

It was easier, more pleasant to leave behind the world and concentrate on nothing but the soaring path of the arrow.

A second, a third, a fourth—each arrow pulled back with ease, each arrow craving to be in the center of the target, and Leopold gave them what they wanted.

When he blinked, it was to see Graycott’s disgruntled brow.

“I don’t know why you come to practice, if you are just going to show off,” he muttered.

Leopold continued to smile, but his jaw tightened painfully. It was just one of those situations, he supposed. If he had been poor at the butts, Graycott would have ridiculed him as a bad archer. But because he was good, he was criticized for showing off.

There was no winning with some people.

Inclining his head as graciously as he could manage, Leopold stepped aside and placed the bow into the rack. As he did so, he glanced over at the woodland.

She was still there.

Curiosity swelled within him. Ladies were not permitted to be members of the London Archery Club.

Precisely why, he had never considered. She certainly wouldn’t be able to pull a bow at his level.

She had probably never touched an arrow in her life.

It was unfair. His cousins Frank and Teddy would certainly think so, but that was the rule.

Still. The fact remained that she should not have been here. Yet there she remained, clearly watching them.

A prickle of something Leopold did not quite understand rippled down his spine. It was strange, being watched and knowing you were being watched.

Truly, how had none of the others seen her?

Leopold glanced about the laughing gentlemen, chuckling at a joke he had missed and was clearly not a part of. No, they did not appear to have spotted her—which was strange because the pink of her gown was quite brilliant against the vibrant green of the leaves.

Something stirred within him as he watched his cousin attempt to pull back a bow that was far too heavy for him. Why was being watched so…so odd? So distracting?

“Not strong enough, Chance.” Graycott sneered. “I thought you were all supposed to fine specimens?”