Page 20 of Give Him a Chance

Bernard stepped forward toward a likely looking gate but was prevented in advancing more than two paces by a barrier in his path.

A barrier made of soft, welcoming woman.

“Ouch!” said Lady Lucy in astonishment.

“Well, you did rather walk into me,” Bernard could not help but point out, almost laughing at the indignation on her face.

“Butyouwalked intome!”

“You stepped quite literally into my path,” he indicated sharply.

Lady Lucy did not look very impressed. “But you were the one walking, and you could have stopped—stop!”

He had stepped around her and continued to make for the gate—that was, he had attempted to step around her. Lady Lucy had swiftly made it very clear she was not going to put up with such things and had grabbed him arm most decidedly.

Bernard looked down.

Her hand was smaller than his. Her fingers only just stretched around his arm where she had grabbed him, just above his elbow, and he could feel there was no strength in her. He could wrench himself free if he wanted and would cause very little permanent injury.

But the idea of manhandling this woman, this innocent who had thought she was saving a man from transportation and who had in fact invited not a criminal, but a spy into her home…

Those wide eyes. That trusting mouth.

Bernard swallowed. He ceased struggling to get to the door.

Some of the tension faded from Lady Lucy’s eyes. “You must see that you cannot go.”

‘Cannot’?

The word was unmistakably clear in his face, for she smiled and continued ruefully, “Look, I am the last person to fully understand what happened, but even I can see that Judge Bonner has given you up into my keeping.”

“But your father said—”

“And while I morally oppose the idea of owning a person as property,” the Lady Lucy continued, as though he had notspoken, “I will admit that I have been born into a family that understands duty and respect of one’s people.”

Bernard blinked. “‘One’s…people’?”

“Oh, you know.” Lady Lucy waved a hand as a blackbird started singing in a tree to his right. “Servants, and tenants, and the like. People who depend on us. People who belong to us.”

His stomach lurched at her words.

“People who belong to us.”

It was a strange sort of way to think about it, but he had to admit, he quite liked it. His father had never approached the matter at hand like that. No, people were always there as a means to an end, a way of getting something from them.

The idea that one had a responsibility to them… No, that had been an alien thought to the Viscount Moray.

“So you do see, don’t you? You can’t just leave,” Lady Lucy was continuing, as though Bernard had not become lost in his thoughts. “It’s just not possible.”

Bernard had to admit, being Lady Lucy Chance’s ward—her prisoner, even—compared to lying in a dark cell at Her Majesty’s leisure was quite an improvement.

The view was better, for a start.

“Why—Why are you looking at me like that?” asked Lady Lucy uncertainly. “What do you want?”

He wasn’t quite sure. He did know that the woman hadn’t let go of his arm and was standing incredibly close. It wasn’t a flower in the garden that smelled that good, it was her; a strange concoction of soap and a fragrance he didn’t recognize, along with something that had to have been utterly her.

Lady Lucy.