Page 21 of Give Him a Chance
She was gazing up at him with parted lips, and Bernard half-wished he were still on a mission. That would have permitted him to do more, to transgress more of Society’s rules, to gain what he wanted.
The trouble was, what he wanted in this moment wasn’t news of the French or murmurings from the Glasshand Gang, or even to know which jewelers would be hit next week.
No, it was Lady Lucy.
And he mustn’t take her. He mustn’t. He shouldn’t.
Which didn’t exactly explain why he was leaning close to her, and she appeared—yes, she was leaning close to him, and those lips of hers were still parted, wetted now, and her eyelashes were fluttering—
Bernard half-walked, half-staggered back. “No.”
He had not intended to utter the word, but it was more an instruction to himself than anything else.
No. He was not one of those men—he never would be. Not with women ofSociety. Ladies of a certain rank loved when he showed up in court, but that was the extent of it. Gossip at his rugged initial appearance had created a little club of devotees, that was all. They never could find him when not on his way in or out of prison.
He could take her, he knew that now; she was intrigued by him, and this nonsensical social parade she was on, helping prisoners and the like, was going to get her into trouble.
In a way, she was fortunate, indeed, it was someone like him she had rescued. The bugger could have been anyone.
“‘No’?” Lady Lucy repeated, the haze disappearing from her eyes and a sharpness returning that was astonishingly piercing. “What do you mean,no? I told you, you can’t go, not yet. I… I need to work out what to do with you first.”
And that was when Bernard’s shoulders relaxed.
Of course.This was all a pet project of hers, wasn’t it? A lady, a child of a nobleman, she must have been bored out of her skull. Bernard certainly had been when he’d been her age.
Yes, all this Prison Reform Society stuff, it was to occupy her time. That time would soon fill with other things, the womanwould get bored, and he could slip off into the night—not via the drainpipe, he could see that now—and disappear into the darkness, never to darken her doorway again.
Right. That was easy. A few days living in luxury with an earl and his family, a pretty face about the place, and Bernard could spend that time planning his next move and waiting for Hovell to get in touch.
“Right,” he said aloud, as though that confirmed it. “I’ll stay.”
“You’ll stay?”
Why on earth is it, Bernard thought furiously,that a lady can speak in such a way to boil the blood and stiffen the sinews?
Some sinews significantly more stiffened than others?
Lady Lucy obviously had absolutely no idea what she was doing to him, but in a way, that was worse. It was bad enough when ladies purposefully used their feminine wiles to attempt something, but Bernard could see that this Lady Lucy, who had, as her father had stated, only just reached the age of majority, had absolutely no idea how alluring she was.
And they were alone. Without a chaperone. In the garden.
Bernard took a hasty step backward. “I think I had better get back to my room.”
“I was actually about to go on a walk along the beach,” Lady Lucy said lightly, as though daughters of earls meandered along seafronts alone quite regularly. “Would you like to accompany me?”
Accompany her?
It was all he could do not to laugh. She had to have been joking! A lady of her birth—any lady of any sort of gentility would surely never consider walking about the place with a man! And without her maid?
“No one will be about. No one of consequence, anyway,” Lucy said with a brief laugh. “And we can return before my parents ever know.”
Bernard swallowed. This was ridiculous. Just how free-spirited was this woman?
“You don’t have to, naturally.” Her cheeks were pinking now, her hands twisting together before her. “If you don’t want to.”
There were those green eyes again, and by God, they were beautiful. What was it? The shade of them? The way they shimmered? The strange warmth rising within him whenever he looked into them?
And before Bernard precisely knew what he was saying, he was saying, “It would be my honor.”
