Page 108 of Give Him a Chance

To be spoken to as Lord Moray now…it tied a line to him and his family that Bertram had ignored for many years.

He smiled. “Exactly fifteen percent too eager, I would say. If you want someone to believe you—”

“Here we go; here’s the good stuff!” said Percy eagerly.

“Percy!”

Bertram chuckled as Lucy chastised her brother most excellently with just two syllables. “To be believed, you must speak steadily. Don’t hesitate; that sounds like you’re about to make something up. Don’t rush, though, because that clearly shows you are attempting to rush to the end and escape the lies.”

“All these things we can learn,” said Benjamin quietly, leaning back in his chair. “What an education.”

Oh, really!

But Bertram could not complain, really, as the conversation meandered around him, Percy and his mother discussing whether she had ever caught him out in a lie as a youth, and Benjamin, Lucy, and her father chatting about precisely when the various branches of the Chance family would go back to Stanphrey Lacey.

They had welcomed him in. They had taken the news that the man they had thought had been a criminal was actually a spy—oh, and a viscount—and they had accepted it all.

They had accepted him.

“Right, that’s enough of the men’s nonsense,” said Lady Lindow happily, kissing her husband on the cheek. “I think it’s time to withdraw, don’t you, Lucy?”

“Anything to get away from this rabble.” Her daughter smirked before she kissed Bertram on the cheek. “Except you, obviously.”

Percy crowed as Bertram flushed, but he could hardly argue with the woman.

“Well, we are delighted to be rid of you,” the Lord Lindow said brightly as the two ladies rose in a rush of silks and started to make their way to the door. “Delighted!”

Bertram smirked as the countess halted by the door. “Are you actually?”

Her husband’s eye twinkled. “Fifty-fifty chance I’m lying.”

The room was filled with laughter again and though Bertram joined it, it was with a twinge of sadness that Lucy had departed from the room.

That was the trouble with being so damned in love with the woman. He wanted to spend every single moment with her. Any moment not with her, in fact, was a moment wasted.

“Cigar?” his future father-in-law offered, and as Bertram politely declined, he said, “You know, I am dashed happy to seemy daughter so happy. One worries about one’s children, you know—”

“Papa!”

“And I worry about my son the most,” the earl continued with a grin. “Oh don’t give me that look, Percy. You’ve not courted a woman for ages and I want grandchildren!”

“So no pressure,” Benjamin said in an undertone even as the older man’s face flushed.

“I didn’t… Damn it, I didn’t mean…” The earl sighed. “I suppose I should be grateful that your mother wasn’t here to hear that.”

“Yes, you should,” said Percy quietly.

Bertram looked between them, utterly at sea. Something had been said, clearly, that had pained the three men seated around the table with him, and yet he could not spot it. It did not exactly bode well for his status as a spy—his old status.

It was going to take a while to get used to that.

“Lucy and Percy’s sister, Evelyn, has been married these last twelve months,” said Benjamin in an undertone as the father and son started bickering about the latter’s marital prospects. “And there has been no child.”

Bertram’s stomach lurched. “Oh.”

“It is not much talked of. I don’t even know if they want a family,” said Benjamin with a shrug.

He couldn’t help it. “You haven’tespiedthat information yet?”