Page 105 of Give Him a Chance

“Lucy Chance, put that man down!”

It was Lucy this time who broke their kiss, and she did so with a wry smile on her lips. “My mother is here.”

“Yes, she’s waving a notebook at me and mouthing something that could be ‘Kindness is forty percent better,’ but that can’t possibly be right,” said Bertram, shaking his head and evidently quite dazed, though whether from Lucy’s kissing or her mother’s mathematics, she could not tell.

Lucy giggled, stepping just out of his arms to be socially acceptable but keeping close to him. She needed to be close to him. She never wanted to be parted from him again.

The words she had flung at him merely days ago reverberated in her mind.

“I think it is fair to say that you have overstayed your welcome.”

Her smile faltered. “I—I said some terrible things to you.”

Bertram’s own smile did not falter, exactly, but it softened as he looked down at her and said quietly, “We were both overwrought.”

“No, I must apologize. I must make amends,” Lucy said, her sense of justice not allowing her to simply let the moment lie. “When I said—”

“I am not going to rehash the entire discussion from the past,” interrupted Bertram, his gaze affectionate but a strength in his voice that she had never heard before. “It’s our future that concerns me, Lucy, not our past.”

“But… But…” Lucy swallowed.

It did not seem right. She had done wrong, and though she was naturally advocating for judicial reform, she had never gone so far as to argue that there should never be any punishment for wrongs.

Wrongs had to be righted, did they not?

“They do,” replied Bertram quietly, and Lucy flushed to think that she had said at least some of that aloud. “But what did you do wrong but wish to love me? What did you do that was so terrible but request the truth?”

Lucy sighed as the protest chant went on. “I could have asked in a better way.”

“You could’ve, perhaps.” There was a teasing look in his eye now. “And don’t think that I am going to let you forget it. But asfor forgiveness… Lucy, I forgave you the instant you spoke. I am not one to hold a grudge. Not anymore.”

And there was a look of peace within him that was again new. Lucy could not help but stare. Was this what love was, then? Always growing, always loving the change, choosing to love, choosing to adore the person to whom you made promises?

Would she be getting to know a new Bernard—a new Bertram every few years? Every few months? Was the excitement of a new connection, a new intimacy, going to be ever present with this man?

“Something has changed,” she said quietly.

Bertram nodded, a wry grin creasing his lips. “I think it’s finally time for me to go back. Back to Moray, back to my past—face it, not flee from it. Become the viscount that my people there need me to be.”

And there it was, that look of peace. Of uncertainty, yes, but also of hope.

Lucy slipped her hand into his and almost sighed aloud at how right it felt. “I cannot wait to see it.”

He looked down at her with a wry arch of his brow. “They may not be that happy to see me. I’ve been gone for so long, and… Well, I did not get the impression that my father treated our servants or tenants very well. It could be an unpleasant homecoming.”

“I’ll be at your side,” Lucy promised, excitement at a new project, a new challenge rising within. “I’m sure ifIcan give you a chance, they can.”

Wecan. Her hand went to her stomach. But she couldn’t tell him. Not yet. For now, she wanted to bask in the present. There would someday soon be a more perfect moment to let him know.