Page 109 of Give Him a Chance

Perhaps it was going too far, but his old spy handler merely gave him a grin. “Not yet.”

“Oh, blast, there’s no brandy,” the earl was saying, glancing about the dining room. “Percy, tug on the bell pull, will you, and Cawthorne—”

“No need to bother Cawthorne. I’ll get it. The brandy is in the drawing room, isn’t it?” said Bertram, rising to his feet. Whenhe saw the gentlemen’s slackened jaws, he had to bite his lower lip to keep from laughing. “I’m so accustomed to living without servants, I’m not quite sure what the Moray household will make of me.”

“They’ll like you well enough if you pay them well enough,” said the earl sagely. “But thank you, Moray. Most kind.”

The chatter continued in the dining room as Bertram stepped out. It was only a few steps across the hallway to the drawing room, and in truth, he had volunteered to retrieve the liquor so that he could be gifted a few moments with Lucy.

As it turned out, he did not need to step forward to gain them.

“Oh, you’re out early,” she said brightly, stepping out of the drawing room with the decanter of brandy in her hand. The door snapped shut behind her. “Mama thought that you menfolk might want a drink.”

“She didn’t want to keep it for herself?” quipped Bertram, his spirits rising as they always did whenever he was in Lucy’s presence.

Her smile grew. “What makes you think she hasn’t already had a taste?”

He laughed as he stepped before her, and Lucy placed the brandy on the console table by the door to offer out her hands.

Bertram took them and could have wept at the warmth that spread through him at the merest contact. Going home was not something he had ever looked forward to, but he understood why now. Returning to Moray wasn’t going home. Being with Lucy was.

“I am so grateful to you,” he said quietly as the murmur of the men’s chatter in the dining room continued behind him.

“‘Grateful’?” Lucy blinked up at him, evidently confused. “What on earth are you grateful to me for?”

“You have seen me and loved me for who I am, not—notwhatI am. Does that make sense?” It barely made sense to Bertram, and it was his thought.

Her expression softened. “Sort of. But I think really I am the one who should be thanking you.”

“Me?” Bertram could not conceive of a single thing he had done for the woman before him that would require thanks.

Lucy nodded slowly. “Yes. You… You make me see the world differently. You open it up, change it somehow to make it… Oh, I don’t know. Friendlier. More intriguing.”

His low chuckle was hopefully not audible to either the drawing or the dining room. “I am flattered.”

“Good. You should be.” Lucy’s smile faded. “There’s… There’s something you’re not telling me, isn’t there?”

Bertram’s stomach lurched.

Yes, he wanted to say.Yes, how much I adore you. How I would give my life for you. How I’m afraid that when I take you to Moray, it’s not going to be perfect, and you deserve perfection. How I’m worried that when we go up to the north and you’ll be far from your family, that you’ll miss them so much that your love for me will be overcome by missing them.

But it wasn’t that which was weighing on him. It was something quite different, something that Hovell—that Benjamin had said.

And he had to tell her.

“Yes,” he said quietly.

Lucy’s features arranged themselves into a picture of calm that he knew was not exactly false, but most definitely designed to prepare herself for something truly terrible.

Which, in a way, it was.

“I am ready,” said Lucy quietly, then her eyes widened. “No, wait, I’m not.”

Turning away from him, she picked up the decanter of brandy from the console table, took out the stopper, took a large inhale, winced, then replaced the stopper before returning the decanter to the table.

Bertram stared.

“What?” said Lucy, more than a spot defensively. “Fine, now I’m ready.”