Page 104 of Give Him a Chance

And he smelled like her Bernard, and he looked…

He was looking at her as though she were the center of the world.

Lucy’s stomach flipped over. She didn’t actuallyknowher Bernard. Even Benjamin hadn’t given her the man’s proper name. “I suppose we haven’t been.”

“No,” said the man before her quietly. “No, not properly. So I thought… I thought I would do that now.”

Excitement fluttered within her. “You did?”

The man she had known as Bernard Dixon bowed with a flourish that was most unlike him, and when he straightened, there was a smile on his face. “My name is Bertram James Moray, the fourteenth Viscount Moray. I hate swimming, love a fried egg sandwich, and have recently retired from my profession and am looking to marry.”

Hope and shock spiraled through Lucy as she stared. “You… You are?”

“I am, indeed,” said Lord Moray with a grin.

“And you have retired,” Lucy said, her voice catching slightly as she lowered it, “from…from spying?”

“My friend and yours, a man I’ve known as Mr. Obadiah Hovell, has officially written me out of the service,” said Bertram with a wry smile. “So I couldn’t even go back if I wanted. Which I don’t want.”

“End transportation! End transportation! End transportation!”

“And,” continued Lucy, her nerves somehow catching up with her as she looked up into his eyes, suddenly conscious of how close he was, how near he was, how she could just reach out and touch him, “and you are looking to…to marry?”

“Very soon,” murmured the Viscount Moray as he stepped toward her, leaving but an inch between them. “And you are? I do not think we have been formally introduced.”

A laugh escaped her before Lucy could call it back, but it felt natural, it felt right, that here, outside the courthouse where they had first meet, they should meet again for the second time.

“My name is Lucy Alice Chance. Lady Lucy, to those who don’t know me,” Lucy said, her nerves jangling in her lungs as she spoke. “I love swimming, haven’t met a sandwich I don’t like, have recently decided to never retire from campaigning for justice, and am also looking to marry.”

“Oh, is that right?” The Viscount Moray arched a brow.

Lucy nodded, not quite trusting her voice to speak. “Very… Very soon.”

He was so close—so close, she could breathe him in, but it was not close enough and yet Lucy was so painfully aware that they were in public, right on the street, and even if he wanted to kiss her, there was nothing she could—

Bertram kissed her.

It was a gentle kiss, a gentle movement, but Lucy wasn’t having any of that. If she was going to be kissed in public by a gentleman who had a criminal record and who smelled of cedarwood, it was going to be a proper kiss.

Launching herself into his arms, Lucy moaned at the intensity of the sensations of being with him once more. Oh, she had missed this: the way his arm curled perfectly around her waist, the way his tongue sparked pleasure burning through her body, the urgent need tugging between her legs—

“We shouldn’t,” murmured Bertram in a ragged voice as he broke the kiss, though Lucy could not help but notice—through a haze of ardor—that he kept her in his arms.

“We should,” she returned, lifting up her lips again.

“End transportation! End transportation!”

“But all those people—your mother—”

“Bertram Moray, you are going to marry me, aren’t you?” Lucy asked archly, doing her best to raise only one eyebrow but failing miserably.

That probably wasn’t the thing to focus on right now.

His smile was everything. “Try to stop me.”

“Then I think a kiss or two in public is acceptable,” she said smartly, pressing her lips against his own and claiming him for herself.

He was hers. Oh, he had been given into her keeping by Judge Bonner over a month ago, but this was different. Now Lucy was absolutely sure that no matter what happened, no matter what they had to face, not only would they face it together, but they would face it as man and wife.