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L ady Evelyn Chance sighed, rolled her eyes, and pulled a third lace handkerchief from her sleeve as she and the other bridesmaids took their seats.

“If I had known you were going to cry so much at Cousin Lilianna’s wedding, I would have brought a whole haberdashery,” she muttered, passing the handkerchief to her parent.

George Chance, Earl of Lindow, graying around the edges but still with a sharp jaw and an even sharper mind, sniffed. “It’s just—I remember holding your cousin the day after she was born! And here she is, getting married.”

“Shhh!”

Evelyn grinned as her mother glared sternly at her father.

“Will you hush!” whispered Lady Lindow sternly. “You’re disturbing people!”

“I am not disturbing people—I am genteelly dabbing at my eyes,” retorted the earl.

Lady Lindow, portlier now than she’d been when she had married but still possessed of that breathtaking beauty that made men stare, snorted. “Pull yourself together, man. She’s getting married, not murdered!”

“ Mama !”

“Well, the odds of a bride being killed on her wedding day must be astronomical… Hold on, I have a piece of paper somewhere in my reticule…”

Evelyn caught her cousin Lilianna’s eye and wished to goodness she had shepherded her parents to a less prominent pew.

Thankfully, the bride did not seem to mind.

In all honesty, the bride did not seem to notice.

The cursory glance she gave her congregation appeared to be mainly to ensure that she was not dreaming.

She had that sort of expression on her face, Evelyn thought critically. Focused—but focused on something else.

“…for better, for worse, for richer, for poorer, in sickness and in health…”

It was a beautiful sight. Even Evelyn had to admit her aunt and uncle, her father’s brother and his wife, had created a most picturesque setting for the wedding here inside the church.

A veritable bower of peonies arched over the altar and the bridesmaids were attired in a most pleasing shade of pink.

No—no, it was not quite a true pink. Perhaps a cherry blossom pink?

Evelyn would have to consider this later, when she was before her paint box.

In truth, she rather wished she could send everyone else away, bring her easel out, and attempt to capture the scene.

Recalling the exact way the light and shadows fell, the curve of her cousin’s cheek, the slightly embarrassed yet delighted face of the groom—

“—I now declare you man and wife,” said the vicar magnanimously.

There was a delighted sigh from the congregation, packed with the friends and family of the Earl of Taernsby, as the happy couple became… Well, a happy couple.

Evelyn sighed with them, but primarily at the streak of sunlight that poured across Lilianna’s chestnut hair.

She would never truly be able to recreate that on a canvas. Try as she might, there was something truly challenging about hair, especially when it curled like that. She had never quite managed it. In truth, she needed—

“Well, that was a beautiful ceremony,” her father said, dabbing delicately at the corners of his eyes as the congregation rose to welcome the Earl and Countess of Taernsby. “Truly beautiful.”

“One in fourteen million, four hundred and eleven,” said her mother.

Evelyn turned with a slight frown to her mother. “I beg your pardon?”

Lady Lindow grinned, clearly delighted with herself. “The likelihood of little Lilianna dying today!”

Ah. Right. Well, Evelyn was sure she should have been proud of the fact that her mother had a truly remarkable mathematical mind… but it was a tad difficult to feel that when strangers were turning to glare.

It was a little distasteful, to speculate on the death of a bride. Even if it had been for the pure joy in the calculation.

Absolutely certain that she would not be able to explain the eccentricities of her mother, and just as certain that she would not be able to reduce her mother’s eccentricities, Evelyn merely smiled. “Well calculated, Mama.”

Lady Lindow beamed. “It was easy! Once I realized Lilianna was riding here and back in a carriage, the numbers completed themselves! Then I had to—”

“Very impressive, Mama,” Evelyn interrupted. For goodness’s sake, wasn’t it supposed to be her parents attempting to keep her in line? “Lucy, why don’t you walk out with Mama and Papa and me?”

She gave a meaningful glare to her younger sister, who was dabbing at her own blue eyes. Help me change the conversation.

The glare did not do much good.

“I do not call Cousin Lilianna very clever, to wear so few jewels to her own wedding day,” Lucy said with a sigh, taking her father’s arm as the congregation started to spill into the aisle and follow the happy couple. “I suppose she wished us to focus on herself, not her jewelry.”

“She looked lovely,” said their father, his eyes misting over again.

“Ah, but additional jewels would have disfavored her odds!” came their mother’s voice above the growing hubbub. “The risk of theft, you see! Tempting a criminal with shiny baubles is not very wise.”

“Mama, how could you! You cannot assume that seeing jewels is likely to make a man a thief!”

Evelyn groaned. That was the plaintive voice of Lucy, and of course they had managed to find the one topic in the world that would make her absolutely intolerable.

All she needed now was—

“The sooner we return to Uncle John’s, the sooner we can enjoy some of that delightful French champagne I’ve heard he has shipped in especially,” said her brother in a clear tone. “Here, Mama, take my arm.”

Evelyn glanced gratefully at her brother…

only to find that much to her chagrin but not at all to her surprise, her brother—Percy, tall and handsome in a shamefully effortless way—was glancing about in the evident hope that his offer to take his mother’s arm had attracted the notice of…

say, a rich and beautiful debutante. For example.

Well, at least all the members of her family had played to form.

Her father had wept, her mother had calculated, her sister had gotten on her high horse about prison reform, and Percy was attempting to fleece a young lady of a kiss.

Evelyn supposed she should not have expected much else; they were Chances, and that meant they had been swiftly set in their ways from a young age.

Still. She had hoped they could all behave like respectable members of Society for the single hour that Cousin Lilianna’s wedding required.

Though there was still the wedding reception…

At first, Evelyn had thought she had managed the impossible. Her father had stopped crying, for one, and had only accosted his brother, the father of the bride, with a hearty handshake and a long speech about how it was an honor to see one of his dear nieces married for—oh, about ten minutes.

So far, so good.

Her mother was trickier. After waylaying an elderly, wispy-haired gentleman who was drinking port quite happily, until Lady Lindow informed him dryly that at his age, every sip would decrease his longevity by a factor of several months, Evelyn had managed to steer her toward the card room.

That was always a good bet with her mother.

If she returned home with less than a tenfold increase on the pennies in her reticule, Evelyn would be very much mistaken.

That was her parents taken care of.

Grasping hold of a cool glass of champagne for a moment and wondering why on earth being the eldest daughter meant she had to take care of everyone all the time, Evelyn cast an eye around the packed wedding reception.

It was most elegant. Uncle John and Aunt Florence had thought of everything. The place was full of the very best and most respectable people—as well as her brother—and Cousin Lilianna appeared to be…

That was interesting. Cousin Lilianna appeared to be missing. But then, so did her husband, so Evelyn was not too worried about that.

Then there was only the matter of her siblings. Evelyn preened as she deposited her sister, Lucy, in a group of ladies interested in social justice, setting them off with a question about prison reform and then slowly backing away, and Percy—well. Percy was the most difficult one.

“I do not need to be dealt with!” her brother protested as Evelyn attempted to march him across the ballroom floor. “I’m not that bad!”

Not that bad. Evelyn swallowed down the retort that his latest betrayal had cut her to the quick and tried to smile. “You are all exhausting at times, and this time is now,” she said sternly. “You wander off, Perce—you know you do—and you can’t be trusted to be left alone.”

He wrinkled his nose. “Hark at you, with your inappropriate questions, always asking people to be your models!”

“And that is why I have asked Miss Quintrell if she will dance with you,” said Evelyn firmly, drawing them to a halt before a simpering, buxom young lady who stared at her brother as though he were a Greek god.

Most unaccountable. Her brother did not have a Grecian profile, for one thing.

Also, he was her brother. Grotesque.

“Miss… Miss Quintrell?” her brother repeated vaguely, his eyes locked on the young lady’s—

Evelyn looked away with pink tinged cheeks. Honestly! Were men only interested in one thing?!

Well. Two things.

“It would be my honor, Miss Quintrell, if you would grace me with this next dance,” Percy was saying.

At least, he was saying something like that. Evelyn had ceased paying attention, her focus caught by quite another young lady.

Oh, she was fascinating. Not beautiful—not in the traditional sense, anyway, and Evelyn knew most of Society was interested only in symmetry and balance and large eyes and tiny waists.

But she was interested in something quite different: form.

Just looking at her made Evelyn’s fingers itch to get out her charcoal. Why, the woman’s dark brow and dark eyes were perfect for a charcoal drawing. All she would have to do was place the woman in some impressive light—overhead, yes—and the shadows would be exquisite.