Page 22 of Give Him a Chance

It would be his downfall.

Bernard tried not to look about himself too much as Lady Lucy opened the gate and walked through it, but old habits die hard. The streets were not exactly empty, but it was early and so only those who had to be out and about were there. Fishermen striding toward their boats, delivery boys dropping off their wares…and a woman who rushed into situations without thought and would cause a small scandal if Society knew she was walking the streets with a man to whom she was not related.

Oh hell. What on earth am I getting myself in for?

“I always find the sea so calming, don’t you?”

“Yes, very,” Bernard said, the answer the one he would have given no matter the question.

Lady Lucy glanced at him sideways in what she probably thought was a very offhand manner. “Have you ever lived by the seaside before?”

So, it begins, Bernard thought with a smile that he quickly repressed.The interrogation.

At least it was more pleasant than the one he had endured in the prison.

“Not really, no,” he said quietly.

That was it.Don’t rush to answer; it will look like you’re lying. Don’t hesitate; otherwise, it will seem that you’reconcocting a story. Just a steady response, giving almost nothing away—

“My brother adores it. He and I swim whenever possible,” Lady Lucy said genially as they turned a corner and the smell of salt drifted on the air. “Do… Do you have any brothers?”

The trouble was, Bernard could not help but realize, daughters of earls were not typically instructed in the interrogatory arts. It made them excellent dinner companions, but absolutely awful investigators.

She really thought she was being clever, wasn’t she?

“I don’t have any brothers,” Bernard said easily, and as he caught a glance of her smile, he smiled wistfully back. “Not anymore.”

Oh, blast.

He froze, his footsteps jarring, and he almost fell.

How on earth had he managed to let that slip? What the hell did he think he was doing here?

“I am sorry for your loss,” Lady Lucy said quietly as they turned around another corner and the sea came into view. “Losing a brother must have been awful.”

Itwasawful, Bernard could have said.It was a disaster, was the response he could have given.

Instead, he said, “It was a long time ago.”

Yes, that was almost exactly right. There was no need to go into details, after all.

Lady Lucy inhaled deeply and spread her arms wide. “Isn’t it wonderful? The sea, I mean, not your brother’s death.”

The words in another person’s mouth would have been quite callous, but Bernard could see in the woman’s expression that there was nothing there but a distracted nature.

And it was easy to see why she was distracted. The ocean rolled before them, the tide coming in at a fair pace and the shingle beach rattling and roaring with the waves. Seagullsscreeched above them and the sunshine was scattered across the shifting waters, the salt in the air bracing and yet comforting, all the world behind them—Brighton, that was—able to be forgotten as one simply stared into the depths of the sea.

“Sometimes I come here just to look at it.”

Bernard turned. Lady Lucy was staring into the ocean, her gaze unfocused, her arms folded before her.

“So many people are transported across that ocean, never to see their families again. We did it with slavery and that was wrong, and we know that,” Lady Lucy said quietly. “But still we do it. Still we separate families and refuse justice to those who need it the most.”

There was a quiet intensity in the woman’s face that was almost a little intimidating.

Bernard was no novice when it came to women. He knew women. Some of his favorite informants were woman. He’d even bedded a few in his time, though mostly for physical release with no emotional entanglements that could distract or endanger.

But this woman?