Page 40 of A Sporting Chance (The Chances #8)

“L ook, all I’m saying is—”

“I know what you’re saying—”

“—and I think I have a point,” protested Leopold with a lazy smile, absolutely certain he did not.

Kathleen glared, but it was one of her good-natured glares, so he didn’t worry. “And I am telling you, I am not going to marry you!”

There was a snort of laughter from the woman also within the carriage. Leopold glanced at Miss Angela Andilet with a wink, gaining him another snort of laughter.

“Oh, you know what I mean,” Kathleen said with a smile that was clearly against her will. “I am not going to marry you yet. Not straightaway.”

“You would think, wouldn’t you,” Leopold said conversationally to Kathleen’s sister, as though the woman he loved was not in the carriage, “that the woman would be rather pleased to be marrying me at all.”

“You would think,” said Miss Andilet, entirely ignoring the irritated snort of her sister.

“And yet—”

“Are we almost there?” interrupted Kathleen in a small voice.

And Leopold halted his teasing and immediately took her hand in his. “I am sorry,” he said quietly. “I shouldn’t be quizzing you. Not today.”

Today, of all days, he should have been considering her needs, her fears. Today, after waiting for so long, he should have been helping her to feel calm and considered and important.

Today was the day.

“What if they don’t—”

“They will learn to love you,” Leopold said softly, squeezing her hand and wishing he could communicate through that small gesture all the pride he felt for her, the certainty that they would adore her just as he adored her. “They’d be fools not to.”

“Plenty of fools in London,” Kathleen said in a voice that was far too brave to be genuine.

He had to laugh at that. “I would agree with you there—and there are plenty in my family, but they’re not that foolish. They know how I feel about you.”

How I feel about you.

Leopold was not one for words. He never had been. Doing was always easier than speaking. When you had a bow to your shoulder and an arrow just waiting to take flight, you didn’t stop to give a speech.

At least, he didn’t.

But with Kathleen seated beside him in the slowing carriage, her nerves jangling through her hand into his own, he wished he could find the words. The words that would calm her, show her just how beautiful and how loved she was.

“You are perfect,” he said aloud.

Kathleen snorted.

“You are!”

“You’re a hopeless romantic, you know that,” she said with a lilting smile. “You do speak nonsense.”

“It’s not nonsense if I mean it,” Leopold pointed out.

He could see in her smile that she wished to be kissed, and he was hardly one to argue with the woman he loved. Unfortunately, just as he leaned forward, his eyes closing, the carriage jolted to a halt and Miss Andilet cleared her throat.

“Damn,” he whispered.

Kathleen smiled and kissed his cheek. “Plenty of time for that later.”

Leopold groaned. “I told you, I wanted to get married straightaway!”

“And I told you,” Kathleen said firmly, pulling her hand away and looking pointedly at the carriage door, “not before my sister. Come on, aren’t you going to be a gentleman and open the door?”

He very much wished not to be a gentleman at all and instead throw her sister out of the carriage, order the driver to go to Brighton, and do something very delicious and very inappropriate to Kathleen on the way.

Sadly, he did none of those things.

“I suppose so,” Leopold said with a heavy sigh. “Come on, then. Let’s meet my family. Officially, I mean.”

It was strange. As he stepped onto the pavement and looked up at his parents’ home, it was only then that Leopold realized that he no longer considered it his own.

His portion of the Cothrom estate had purchased him a pleasant townhouse just two streets away and that was home now.

That was where he would be welcoming his bride.

That was where he would build this new part of his life.

It was the aim, the target of all his thoughts.

The moment when he could bring his bride home.

The family butler smiled as he opened the door. “Master Leopold.”

“Hullo, Nicholls,” said Leopold cheerfully. “Everyone prepared?”

“As prepared as I believe they can be, my lord,” said the butler with a stiff smile.

Which was not helpful. Leopold did not need to look over at Kathleen to know she was stiffening with discomfort.

Hell’s bells, but he had hoped for better than this.

“Well, let me be the first to introduce you to Miss Angela Andilet. You have met her sister—my betrothed, Miss Kathleen,” he said loudly.

He was not ashamed. There was nothing to be ashamed of.

The trouble was, no one had informed Leopold’s stomach of that. As he stepped into the drawing room and saw his mother rise from the sofa, his father standing by the empty fireplace with a somber look, and his brothers—

His brother. Where the hell is Alexander?

“Don’t look too downcast,” quipped his oldest brother, Thomas—who quite inexplicably was lounging on a sofa along with his wife, Victoria, a stunningly beautiful and increasingly rotund woman. “It’s only the family.”

“Besides, they are far more afraid of you than you are of them,” came Maude’s voice from the pianoforte.

Leopold tried to smile. “I thought we agreed to at least act as though we were a normal family.”

“I actually think that ship has sailed,” said Maude, tinkling a few notes on the ivories. “Besides, we’ve already met Miss Kathleen. This whole thing is rather—”

“It is how it is done,” said their father in a slow and formal voice. “And so that it is the way we will do it.”

Leopold’s spine stiffened. Despite the helpful conversation with his father—not something he ever thought he would be able to say—it was still a tad disconcerting to have the whole family here to formally meet a woman they had already met.

But it wasn’t really Kathleen who they were meeting, was it?

Glancing over his shoulder, he saw that Kathleen’s sister had lingered by the doorway, hanging back from truly entering the room, and his heart went out to her.

He knew just how much Kathleen adored her, how the whole thing between Miss Andilet and Sir Paul Keystone had been a complete misunderstanding.

And now he had to introduce her to the Dowager Duke of Cothrom.

“Miss Andilet,” he said formally, extending a hand.

She hesitated, just for a moment, and Leopold saw Kathleen give her sister a smile of encouragement. Miss Andilet took his hand.

“Father,” said Leopold, turning and smiling broadly at his father as though he frequently introduced him to fallen women.

Not actually fallen. But still. “May I introduce Miss Angela Andilet? Miss Andilet, my father, the Dowager Duke of Cothrom. Miss Andilet will be marrying Sir Paul Keystone. A misunderstanding during their long engagement led to a…a slight ruffle in Society.”

He caught his father’s eye and pleaded with him silently to behave.

Not that his father didn’t know how to behave. That was the problem; his father knew precisely how to behave, but he was not very good at adjusting his behavior to make another feel welcome.

But Leopold should not have been so concerned. His father smiled warmly and bowed low, as befitting a lady. “Miss Andilet. Congratulations on your forthcoming marriage.”

Leopold had not realized just how much tension had built into his shoulders until he’d let it out. Dear Lord, he was exhausted.

Miss Andilet curtseyed and smiled nervously. “Thank you, Your Grace. It has all been rather an adventure…”

Carefully, without disturbing the conversation that was ongoing, Leopold stepped away from his father and future sister-in-law and moved to Kathleen’s side. “See. I told you.”

His words had been spoken in a hush, but he had to fight not to groan loudly as Kathleen’s elbow met his side.

“You did not.”

“I told you all would be well,” Leopold protested in a mutter, “and I was right. See? My father has quite accepted her, now that he knows the full story.”

The full story was not exactly what he had told William Chance, but Leopold had… Well, edited it to become a much more palatable tale. He knew his father would frown even at the simple misunderstanding the country gossip had witnessed—though Leopold was certainly guilty of worse.

The tale was that Miss Andilet and Sir Paul, growing up in the same village, had fallen in love.

An agreement had been made between them for matrimony, but just when the engagement had been about to be announced, Sir Paul had been called away on family business, and wicked gossips had quite misconstrued the whole thing.

The lovers had managed to make contact and thereafter corresponded secretly through a solicitor, and as Sir Paul’s mother had since been reconciled to the match, assured of its propriety all along, it was now going ahead at full speed.

“The point is, with your sister accepted by the former and current Dukes of Cothrom, no drawing room should hold any fear for her,” Leopold murmured, smiling as his sister approached Miss Andilet and warmly complimented her on her gown.

“Just as long as she manages to stay away from my sister, all shall be well.”

Kathleen’s smile was warm. “I cannot think what you mean. Lady Maude is the picture of propriety.”

Leopold considered the scuffs on his sister’s boots, the way Maudy hadn’t quite mastered clambering up the apple tree at the back of the house to creep into the house through his bedchamber, and her gambling debts, which he had paid off not once, but thrice.

“Yes,” he said carefully. “The picture of propriety.”

He watched for a few moments as his family welcomed the woman who had been the scandal of London. There was possibility for change, then. Reputations could be salvaged. Wrongs could be righted.