Page 47 of Give Him a Chance

“Ouch!”

“It’ll be more thanouchif you disturb that bandage,” she said menacingly, though there was a smile dancing about her lips as she sat in the chair by his bedside. “How do you feel?”

“‘Feel’?” repeated Bernard.

Like I’ve been whacked rather thoroughly on the head with a horse, was what he wanted to say.

But it was then that he spotted the fear in her eyes. Fear, for him.

Not of him.Forhim.

“Tired,” he said eventually, which was the truth. He felt like he hadn’t slept for a thousand years.

“That is to be expected. Only you,” Lucy said with a wry smile, “could go for a walk to stretch your legs in one of the most refined towns in all England and be set upon by Frenchmen within five minutes.”

Bernard smiled weakly. “Yes.”

“I suppose they wanted you to return to your criminal ways and undertake some—some nefarious task!” Lucy continued, her eyes bright.

Oh, this woman. It was still a game to her in so many ways, Bernard could see that—but in a way, he would like to keep it that way. She was genuine in her desire to do good and who knew, maybe she would save someone else’s life for real one of these days.

And she worried about him.

“I am not going to return to that way of life,” Bernard said aloud.

Which was true.

Lucy beamed. “I knew you wouldn’t be tempted back to your old ways—you fought them off, didn’t you? You could have gone along with them willingly.”

Bernard spent five seconds pondering precisely what would have happened if he had gone along with the four Frenchmen willingly.

Then he put the disturbing images out of his mind. “I was certainly not going to go with them.”

“I am proud of you, Bernard—Mr. Dixon, I mean,” Lucy corrected hastily, glancing over her shoulder at the surgeon, who appeared to be writing out a bill. “You had the opportunity, the temptation of crime, and you resisted. I am reforming you.”

Bernard smiled. “That you are.”

He couldn’t tell her. He could not burst her bubble and reveal that in actual fact, he was one of the most law-abiding citizens in the country. She was so…so happy to think that she had rescued him.

Who was he to take that away from her?

“I suppose you’re relieved,” he said aloud. “Perhaps you were worried Judge Bonner would fine you if he found out I broke the law again.”

“Oh, Judge Bonner could not care less what happened to you after he placed you in my custody,” Lucy said brightly, though she added hastily, “which, of course, is quite wrong. It’s… Well, it was me. I decided to follow you. I wanted to make sure—I mean, you could have come to harm. And you did. And it’s my pet project. You are, that is. My pet. My pet project.”

Bernard tried to feel upset about this but found that he couldn’t. Any attention this fine woman wanted to give him, he would take.

“Now, let me read to you,” Lucy said, jumping up to grab one of the books he had brought up from the library. “We oughtto be spending more time together. I mean,ourtime together…engaging in more beneficial, instructive activities. Poetry?”

Perhaps he had been killed in that alleyway and gone to heaven. Bernard smiled. “Wordsworth, please.”

Lucy smiled, opened up the book where his bookmark—a scrap of newspaper—had been, and began to read. “‘My heart leaps up when I behold / A rainbow in the sky…’”