Page 70 of Give Him a Chance
Chapter Thirteen
“Lucy, I… I’ma spy.”
Lucy stared as the words the man had just said echoed through her mind.
A spy. A spy.
A spy?
“No,” she whispered, unable to tear her gaze away from Bernard Dixon.
Bernard Dixon, criminal: that was a man with whom she could fall in love, even though everything Society had ever taught her about such men told her it was a mistake.
But Bernard Dixon…spy?
No. It wasn’t possible. This sort of thing didn’t just happen. It didn’t! This sort of thing wasn’t real, it was…
A memory flashed through her mind. Bernard on a walk, whistling down an alleyway and being attacked by four…Frenchmen.
Frenchmen. Was it not typical for spies to live dangerously? Had he had a secret assignation with them, then, and it had gone wrong? And the way he had fought them… Lucy had presumed Bernard had once found himself in a rather dangerous situation in a prison, which from all she had read was relatively common.
But if he were a spy…
“Lucy?” Bernard said quietly.
Lucy nodded vaguely as her mind attempted to take in this lifechanging information.
A spy. Bernard.
Her Bernard. A spy.
“So…” Lucy wet her lips, her mouth so dry, she hardly knew how she’d managed it. “So… So you are not a criminal.”
“Quite the opposite, in fact,” Bernard said cheerfully, his voice low. “If I’d been sentenced to a life in Australia, the plan was to get me out before I’d actually set foot on the ship. Not that the judge knew that. Obviously.”
‘Quite the opposite.’ Right. “And… And you’re not a ruffian.”
“I’ve had to play the part of ruffian often enough to be passably good at it,” came his level reply. “But no, I am not a ruffian at heart.”
Lucy swallowed, trying to take this all in and knowing she could not quite grasp it all yet. “And… And you’re not born of the working classes into a desolate and demanding family where you had to work to the bone before the age of five and turned to a life of crime to escape the torpor of poverty?”
There was no need for him to laugh about it. “Where do you get these ideas?”
“Well, it’s not as though you were particularly forthcoming with details about your past!” Lucy protested hotly, shame burning through her even as a single barking laugh escaped her at the sight of Bernard’s amused expression. “You didn’t tell me a thing about yourself!”
“Yes, and I am sorry about that,” he said ruefully, and he did look apologetic as he flinched. “It was necessary, you see. I did not know how long my handler would leave me here, and I thought, the less you knew—”
“‘Handler,’” murmured Lucy in wonder.
So it really was true. The man she had thought was a prisoner, whom she had been reforming into becoming a better man…was in fact a man who had served his country.
It simply wasn’t possible.
But there wasn’t a better explanation.
“And although I am not going to tell you my full story,” Bernard said, leaning back in his dining chair, “I will say that I was born and raised…a gentleman.”
Lucy’s hopes soared. A gentleman. A man on a social level with her, then—and that would mean her father would—
