Page 40 of Give Him a Chance

She squeaked, realizing her mistake. “Our servants did!”

He chuckled, the sound deep and throaty. “Yes, of course. But you’ve done more than that. You’re among the best people I’ve ever met.”

Lucy’s breath hitched.

“You and your family, I mean,” Bernard said.

Lucy’s spirits deflated. “Oh. Yes. Right.”

And it was right, she told herself sternly, that he recognize what her family had done for him. It wasn’t as thoughshehad a townhouse with spare bedchambers to offer criminals who should by all rights have been on a journey to Australia in this moment.

“But I… I also meant you.”

Was it her imagination, or was Dixon…wasBernardlooking at her in a most curious way?

Lucy tried to smile. Then she tried to remember what smiling was. “Oh?”

“You. You rescued me,” Bernard said quietly, and he took another step toward her. “I cannot thank you enough.”

“Oh.” Blast it all, she wrote eloquent letters every day of the week. She must be able to say something more riveting than the fifteenth letter of the alphabet!

“And you have introduced me to Lady Romeril, and to Miss Eaton, a most charming woman,” Bernard continued.

Lucy’s stomach plummeted. “Oh.”

Of course.

Of course the man had taken one look at Miss Eaton, for that must have been what her name was, and realized that next to her, Lady Lucy Chance was absolutely nothing.

That is the trouble with men, Lucy thought viciously.They only think with their eyes. Their eyes or their…their trousers!

Oh, God, do not look at his trousers…

“Yes, she is very beautiful, very charming, of an excellent family,” Bernard said lightly with a shrug as he stepped closer. Now he was standing but inches away from her, and Lucy wondered how she was still standing up. Perhaps she would not have been, if she did not have a handy pianoforte behind her. “But she’s not you.”

Four words.

That was all it took, Lucy realized as she smiled up at the man like a complete idiot. Four words, and she was utterly at his mercy.

This man had to be a confidence trickster, that had to have been his crime of choice. Lucy could well believe the man would have ladies handing over their jewels in their droves. Ladies had shown up to support himat court, even.

Right now, she would hand him almost anything he wanted. Anything.

“You’re smiling.”

Lucy’s smile immediately vanished. “No, I’m not.”

“But you were, and when I said that Miss Eaton was not you,” Bernard pointed out, his voice a low, gravelly husk that was absolutely not making her knees weak.

“Well, it’s true.”That’s it. Stick with the facts. “Miss Eaton isn’t me, and I’m not Miss Eaton.”

“No. No, by God, you are not.” And it was a growl now; there was no other word for what had been uttered through Bernard’slips. “She is vapid, Lucy. She is interested in nothing but herself and her own interests, and she has no conversation and no wit and—and she’s not you, Lucy.”

If he does not stop saying my name like that, Lucy thought, her mind spinning,then I’m going to do something drastic.

Bernard leaned closer, his nose grazing hers, and though his hands remained at his sides, it could not have been more clear by the fire within his eyes that he wanted to take hold of her and pull her into his embrace. “Lucy…”

And that was when Lucy kissed him.