Page 114 of Give Him a Chance

Bertram snorted. “We promised we weren’t going to talk about that.”

“I know, I know,” Lucy said quickly, squeezing his hand and rising to her feet. “Come on. I want to talk to you properly.”

Her husband’s eyes glittered. “Oh, goody!”

Lucy whacked him in the stomach. “Notthat!”

They had, after all, ravished one another late last night on the shores of the lake, and early that morning before Beachem had come to wake her up. The man could notstillbe desperate for her, could he?

Lucy glanced at him as they inclined their heads to her family and departed from the gaggle of chairs underneath the largest tent. She swallowed, heat rising to her cheeks.

Oh. As it turned out, hecouldbe desperate for it.

“I just think,” Bertram said in an undertone as they walked sedately arm in arm around the cluster of blankets, “that we are very lucky. And your cousin is very fortunate I didn’t garrote him when he finally told me the truth.”

Lucy snorted. “You’re just upset that you never guessed Obadiah Hovell wasn’t his actual name!”

“I should have guessed it was false right from the start,” said her husband ruefully as they slowly walked around the croquet players. Gwen had stormed off in a huff after being accused of cheating, as far as Lucy could tell, and her Uncle John may no longer have been the Marquess of Aylesbury, having given up that title to his eldest son, but that had not improved his croquet game. “Obadiah Hovell, honestly!”

Lucy joined him in his laughter as they continued slowly walking, though her stomach lurched and she placed a quick hand upon it before swiftly removing it. After all, the last thing she wanted was for anyone to find out before she told him…

“I’m still getting accustomed to your actual name,” she teased, squeezing her husband’s arm and reveling in the fact that she could call him ‘her husband.’ “Bertram!”

“It’s not so different from Bernard!” he protested, a grin creasing his lips.

“Yes, which makes no sense to me,” Lucy pointed out as a croquet ball whizzed past their shins.

“Fore!”

“‘No sense’?” Bertram continued, as though they had not almost been kneecapped by her cousin Samuel.

“No,” Lucy said lightly as they reached the house and stood in its shade, grateful for the momentary relief. “No, if I was going by an alias, then I would want a name completely different from my own. Get into character, you know.”

“Funny, that is what your cousin Rose said,” Bertram mused with a shrug. “She would know, I suppose. She is the actress, isn’t she? I will be honest, I am starting to lose track. There are a great deal of you.”

Lucy giggled. “Right on the actress front, but she’s not my cousin.”

His face flickered. “But she’s a Chance—”

“She married one. And nowI’mnot a Chance,” Lucy said thoughtfully. “Which is a very strange experience, indeed.”

Lucy Moray, Viscountess Moray.

It was not that she had ever specifically wanted to marry a particular title. In a way, she had not thought much of matrimony at all. That was for the future, perhaps, but in the present, there was always a letter to write or a judge to pester or an event for the Prison Reform Society to host.

Matrimony to anyone would have to come after all that. That was what she had thought.

And now she was a viscountess and would soon depart with her husband to visit the home he had left years ago, planning never to return. That would be interesting.

“I still think I made the right call.”

Lucy blinked. “With what?”

“With my false name, obviously,” Bertram said happily, squeezing her hand. “To tell the truth, I wanted something to which I could adjust if I accidentally slipped up and started saying my actual name.”

And she laughed, his chuckles joining hers and causing a few of their wedding guests to look over in curiosity before returning to their conversations, or their games to the death—that was, to the croquet game.

“You really are ridiculous, you know that,” Lucy said lightly.