Page 76 of Give Him a Chance
And she spoke the truth, Bernard knew—but he couldn’t tell her. He couldn’t speak of it; he had never spoken about it with anyone. But she had caught wind of something, and if there was one thing he knew about Lucy, it was that she was relentless in the pursuit of what she wanted.
He still had the sore wrist to prove it.
After writing all those letters. Obviously.
Bernard sighed. That meant there was only one way to ward off the questions.Damn it all to hell. “Fine. Let’s go swimming.”
Her squeal of delight continued as she raced upstairs to pull towels from the linen cupboard, then carefully slipped out of the side door with Bernard, Lucy telling him to hush when he bumped his head on the gate.
“For it would be a true scandal if we were caught,” she said unnecessarily. “You know what would happen then!”
Yes, Bernard knew, not entirely sure that it would be so bad. A wedding.
It was a thought that stirred him in ways he had not expected. A wedding—marriage, to Lucy.
Obviously, it was what he wanted, but so many things had to be resolved before that could even be a dream. He needed to find Hovell. He needed to get the man to agree to the end of his service as a spy. He needed to go back to Moray, claim his title before some distant cousin got it in his absence, organize all the nonsense that came with such a thing.
He would need to return, reintroduce himself to the Earl of Lindow as a completely different man, and ask for his daughter’s hand in marriage. Then the three weeks of waiting while the banns were read.
It was a significant process, and Bernard was not foolish enough to believe that it could be achieved in a few days.
“Oh, isn’t the night air wonderful?” Lucy whispered as the two of them walked along the empty, dark street. “Isn’t it glorious to be truly free?”
Free.
Bernard supposed hewasfree, or would be very soon. The life he had chosen for himself had been one apart from his family, far from the land of his people, of his name.
And now…now he felt a strange tug to return, if only to leave again and claim his bride.
His Lucy.
His Lucy was squealing with delight as they turned a corner and Brighton beach came into view. “Isn’t it gorgeous?”
Bernard had to disagree. The ocean was dangerous—deadly, did she not know that? There it lay, shifting and ever changing, untrustworthy. Even though its tides were ostensibly predictable, there was nothing dependable about the thing.
All it did was take.
Lucy was already slipping off her shoes and stockings. “Will you go in naked, do you think?”
There was a long of hunger in her eyes that sparked a little interest in Bernard, deadly sea notwithstanding. “Are you?”
“No, worse luck—just on the off chance we need to make a break for it,” said Lucy with a wink. “But I can swim in stays and my chemise and drawers. What about you?”
“I don’t swim,” Bernard said woodenly.
“But you said—”
“I said,let’s go swimming,” he said, tension burying itself between his shoulder blades. “But I didn’t mean me. Off you go.”
“But—”
“Lucy, I am not coming in with you,” Bernard snapped, pushed beyond patience and immediately regretting his tone.
Lucy halted, her gown mostly unbuttoned and her eyes filled with concern. It was the same look she had given him when they had first met, in the courtroom. She had looked at him like that because she had believed he had been guilty of a crime and likely to suffer the agonies of transportation.
And now…now she was looking at him like—
“Why, Bernard Dixon,” she said slowly, stepping over to him and placing her hands on his chest, “why didn’t you say you couldn’t swim?”
