Page 13 of Give Him a Chance
Chapter Three
May 3, 1841
Lady Lucy Chancestared at her own reflection in her looking glass and tried very hard not to panic.
It was not easy. It had been a restless night she had spent, tossing and turning, trying to think how on earth she was going to explain this to her parents.
That she would have to explain things to her parents had been quite clear from the moment she and Dixon had arrived at the Lindow Chance townhouse yesterday afternoon.
Oh, the man had been intelligent enough to plead a headache and had spent the rest of the day and evening in the guest bedchamber, which Mrs. Macdonald, their housekeeper, had hastily made up for him—but it could not be avoided forever.
Hecould not be avoided forever.
Lucy swallowed and saw the tiredness in her eyes, the tension around her mouth.
Well, it had finally happened. Her sister, Evelyn, had always said she would find herself in a scrape one day, and it had happened.
She had inadvertently come into the possession of a criminal, and now she didn’t know what to do with him.
Thank goodness her parents had merely accepted her statement that Dixon was a Prison Reform Society member, orelse she would have been forced to concoct some sort of story—or perhaps she would have just told the truth.
Perhaps that would have been the better idea.
For here she now sat, owner—well, not owner, but the person responsible for—a criminal, utterly out of her depth, and not really sure what she was supposed to do with him.
And she did not even know what he had been about to be found guilty of.
“M’lady?”
Lucy blinked. Her lady’s maid was smiling at her in the looking glass. Even after all the times Lucy had given her the slip, the woman was kind to her. Perhaps her parents had not expected that when they’d hired a burly, middle-aged woman with a stern, lined face, but Lucy knew by now that Beachem actually considered herself a bit of a romantic.
“I… I am sorry, Beachem,” Lucy said weakly, hating that her own problems had caused her to be rude, especially after how she’d snuck off from the park the day before. “I was not paying attention—what did you say?”
“I said, that Mr. Dixon is a very handsome man,” the maid said with a wink. “Friend of yours, is he? Not courting you, is he? Is that why you escaped my watchful eye yesterday?”
“Absolutely not!”
Maybe she should not have been so firm in her denial, for all it caused with a sparkle of mischief in the maid’s eye. “‘Absolutely not,’ eh?”
That’s the problem with being the younger sister, Lucy thought to herself.
Oh, she loved Evelyn. The two sisters had always been close, and it was only the elder’s marriage last year that had divided them. Not that they did not see a great deal of Evelyn, when they were all in London or Bath. But still. It wasn’t the same.
But being the younger sister meant that no matter how much older one became, you were always treated like the… Well. The baby of the family.
“Mr. Dixon is staying with us as a guest for…for a time. Nothing more,” Lucy forced herself to say with as much nonchalance and complete disinterest as possible. “I suppose he will depart when he has business elsewhere.”
And that was another thing no one at court had ever answered; precisely how long was she supposed to be looking after this…this rake? What kind ofcriminalhad impassioned devotees show up at courthouses to ask him to elope with them?
“I see,” said Beachem, who evidently didn’t.
Who could possibly guess at the truth?
And that was why, Lucy knew, she would have to tell her family. Her parents at least deserved to know they had a criminal in their midst.
Now, she was all for the rehabilitation of prisoners, and she truly believed it was possible for a man to change the direction of his life and reform his ways.
But those around him deserved to know the truth…did they not?
