Page 17 of Give Him a Chance

The earl rose to his feet so hastily, his chair fell to the carpet. “Out! Out, you damned liar, you criminal! Out before you ravish—”

Lucy’s brother burst into fits of giggles. “Oh, this is better even than Evelyn and her modeling viscount! Where do you two find them?”

Dixon closed his eyes and sighed in evident resigned horror, which perhaps was the most restrained response of the lot.

Lucy swallowed, her mouth dry and her sense of disgrace sharp in her throat. “I know I have let you all down—”

“You are too right you have,” snapped her father, looking for the first time in his life as though he had truly lost his temper. “What did you think you were doing? No wonder you abandoned your chaperone! Which I have told you, time and again, youmust not do, Lucy!”

“Ruined!” wailed her mother.

Percy grinned. “I can’t wait to tell Michael and Benjamin this.”

“Don’t you dare!” The words were spoken simultaneously by Lucy and her father, after which the latter turned his ire back to his daughter.

“I said from the very beginning, Lucy, that you could take part in this dratted Prison Reform Society if you werechaperoned, if you were careful of yourself and your reputation and the reputation of this family—”

“Excuse me,” said Dixon politely.

He was completely ignored.

“—but to take in a criminal into this very house?” The Earl of Lindow looked more bewildered now than angry, and somehow, that hurt Lucy even more. “I don’t understand you.”

Lucy was close to both her parents. It helped that they were remarkably pleasant people, and as she had grown older, their relationship had changed, and they had begun respecting her more and granting her more autonomy.

But they were looking at her now as though…as though they hardly knew her.

“I don’t understand,” her father repeated, his voice breaking as he stared, so clearly baffled at his second daughter. “Why would you do this?”

“I would like to say something,” came a voice from a long way away.

Lucy turned and saw, much to her astonishment, that Mr. Bernard Dixon still existed.

Of course he did. The man could not vanish merely from her wishing it.

“You,” Lucy’s father said menacingly, pointing a finger at the man, “will be quiet.”

“It is not my fault this situation has occurred,” Dixon continued calmly, in a manner even Lucy had to admit herself impressed by. There were few people, even few men who could stand up to her father when he was pushed to lose his temper. “Nor is it the Lady Lucy’s.”

Silence fell once again in the breakfast room.

That was, Lucy thought wryly, her mother’s sniffles continued, but they decreased both in volume and frequency.

Her brother leaned back in his chair. “How do you make that out?”

“Why, because it was Judge Bonner who decided on such a novel idea, the like I have never heard of,” replied Dixon calmly—verycalmly, Lucy could not help but notice.

How on earth is the man so calm?

“You are the benefactor of such a decision,” the earl pointed out sharply.

Lucy watched as Dixon inclined his head.

“I am. But that does not follow that the Lady Lucy should be castigated for—for her instinct to plead for mercy.”

It should not have rippled delight through Lucy’s very soul to hear the man praise her in such a manner. It should not have. It absolutely should not have.

The trouble was, so few people really understood her passion for the Prison Reform Society, or for prison reform in general. Most of them thought she was just being foolish, allowing her interests to cloud her judgment. She was certain that a few of the cousins thought she was mad to even be attending a few of the rallies, let alone campaigning and attempting to gain signatures on petitions.