Page 53 of Give Him a Chance

Chapter Ten

May 24, 1841

Bernard forced downthe panic and attempted to act like a rational human being.

“Lucy!” he bellowed.

The Lindow Chance townhouse echoed with the two syllables he had just roared—which now that he came to think about it, was perhaps not the most rational way to go about finding someone.

But it was uncanny; sometimes the woman was completely impossible to find, which made absolutely no sense. The place was only so large!

Fine, it wasquitelarge, Bernard observed frantically as he opened the door to the drawing room and took in its emptiness for the third time in a row. Most townhouses were not double-fronted. Most townhouses did not have a morning room and a drawing room and a library and—

“Mr. Dixon?” came a refined, slightly confused voice. “Are you quite well?”

Ah. Yes, the bellowing had definitely been too much.

He had not initially noticed that the drawing room was in fact not actually empty. Curled up in the window seat was a woman of mature years who was smiling with a look that was far too knowing.

“Lady Lindow,” Bernard said awkwardly, stepping into the room and bowing to the countess. “I… I did not see you there.”

“No doubt, as you are clearly not in the hunt for me,” came the lady’s lighthearted reply. “You know, with fourteen rooms in this house, but obviously with a different usage distribution accounting both for room use and time of day, you actually had an eighteen percent chance of finding her in here.”

Bernard blinked as he stepped over to the seated woman. “Oh. Right. Good?”

It was one of the quirks of the countess, he had discovered shortly after moving into the Lindow household. Mathematics. Not a subject he had relished at Eton—not that he had let slip to any of the Chances that he hadbeenat Eton.

It was a good thing, really, that his hair had darkened from the white blond of youth to this chestnut brown, or else he was worried Percy might have recognized him.

But the countess could not drag herself away from mathematics, offering statistics and numbers at every possible juncture.

“Eighteen percent.” She nodded sagely, holding up the book she had been reading—or not reading, as Bernard had initially thought, but writing in. A notebook. “Would you like to see my working?”

“No, thank you,” Bernard said hastily. If he never saw an equation again, he would be all the better for it. “No, I… I was looking for Lucy. Lady Lucy.”

“Yes, I gathered that.” Her mother regarded him curiously, and it was with a twist within him that he realized he was in great danger here of giving quite the wrong impression.

That was, the right impression, but he certainly did not wish anyone to know about his feelings for Lady Lindow’s daughter. His feelings he did not quite understand, refused to investigate, and was attempting to ignore.

Pathetically, as it turned out.

But what was he going to do, offer marriage?

Marriage to Bernard Dixon, a false name for a person who did not legally exist? Acriminalno earl would want marrying his daughter?

Oh, perhaps the heir to the Viscount Moray could approach an earl and ask for his daughter’s hand in marriage…but Bernard had said goodbye that to that life long ago, and even after he was done with Hovell, he could not go back to it.

Ifhe was done with Hovell, that was. When was the blaggard going to contact him?

“We had an appointment to walk along the beach with Lord Percy,” Bernard said aloud, hoping that if he spoke in a calm and rational manner, then he would start to think calm and rational thoughts. “But I cannot find her for the life of me.”

“Well, it is near the end of the month, isn’t it?” the countess said lightly, turning a page in her notebook.

Bernard blinked. “It is? I mean, yes, it is, but—”

“So given that it is around luncheon, I would suggest you have the best odds trying George’s study,” finished Lady Lindow with a smile.

Bernard blinked again, the conversation somehow slipping away from him. “‘George’?”