Page 38 of Give Him a Chance

Oh, it was going from bad to worse. That particular intonation was designed, Lucy well knew, to bring men to their knees and women to the ground. It was perfected with a trill at the end that made it absolutely clear that you were a peasant and fortunate enough to be in the presence of…well, not quite royalty, but something very similar.

Something with a lot of power.

And there was Dixon, grinning as he said, “Why, I heard tell that the Lady Romeril was the most beautiful woman in every room she was in. And so here you are.”

One could have heard a pin drop.

That was, if someone had been foolish enough to drop a pin in Lady Romeril’s presence.

Lucy’s attention darted between their hostess and the man who appeared to have a death wish, no matter how she had already attempted to avert it.

Well, there was no helping him now. Judge Bonner was nothing compared to the ire of—

“You are a delightfully charming man and I demand to know you better,” simpered Lady Romeril, stepping forward and monopolizing Dixon immediately by grabbing his arm. “Promenade the room with me and let us get to know…”

Lucy did not hear the rest of the sentence as the pair meandered away from her to take a turn about the room, wending their way through card tables set out throughout the cavernous drawing rom.

What… What on earth?

How had that happened? The man had charmed the—well, Lucy had been about to think a particularly rude thought which she had once heard her brother say, but even in the privacy of her own mind, she was not certain she should say such a thing.

This was ridiculous! Working-class confidence men, for that was surely Dixon’s crime, did not go about charming doyennes of Society!

“Your Mr. Dixon is a very interesting man,” said her father from just behind her.

Lucy smiled weakly. She could smile now, couldn’t she? Was the danger over? “Yes. Yes, I suppose he is.”

“And you told him about what we were to tell people?”

Lucy nodded, hardly trusting her voice. “A visitor from London. A friend of the family.”

And in a way now, was that not true? Was not Dixon a friend of the family?

A half hour passed in a manner Lucy did not fully understand. She was shepherded to a card table and given a hand to play Whist, with which she did very poorly, and then her mother—apologizing to the table quite profusely—moved her to a table to play Rummy, which Lucy had always thought was an easy game, though she appeared to have forgotten the rules.

“Your mind appears to be elsewhere, Lady Lucy,” came the dour pronouncement from Mrs. Pullman, a sharp look in her dark eyes that belied the irritation in her voice. “You lose again, I fear.”

“Oh, that’s quite all right,” said Lucy vaguely.

From where she was seated, she could just make out the back of Dixon. He was seated with Lady Romeril, a duke whose name she had momentarily forgotten, and a young woman of such extraordinary beauty, Lucy was finding it difficult to remember her own name.

Why it should be so painful, to see Dixon seated with a woman of such radiance, Lucy did not know. Why it should feel so personal, even, that Dixon should seek out the company of attractive ladies and not be satisfied with her plain manner of dressing and entirely distracted toilette and coiffure, she could not articulate.

It did make her want to punch a wall, though.

“Lady Lucy, please, attend!”

Lucy blinked. Her table—Mrs. Pullman, her youngest daughter, and a gentleman whose name she had definitely forgotten but who was making such eyes at the young Miss Pullman that Lucy had already forgiven herself—were all staring.

She smiled weakly. “Would—Would you excuse me? I seem to have forgotten my…my…”

My Bernard Dixon.

That was not the sort of thing one could admit to in public, however, and so Lucy merely rose from the table—in the middle of a run, which was simply not done—abandoning her cards and thinking nothing of the six shillings she had already lost.

What did money matter? She had plenty, and now her Cousin Samuel was the richest man in the world or something like it, she wasn’t really worried about the Chance family as a whole going bankrupt.

No, she wanted to talk to Dixon. That was all she wanted.