Page 60 of Give Him a Chance

She wondered, then, if the countess only hoped for some light flirtation. Perhaps to warm her daughter up to seek love from a more appropriate match.

Lucy sighed at the thought. She’d rather become a spinster than think of Bernard as a stepping stone to some pompous lord’s arrogant son. At least her causes would sustain her.

Ignorant of her daughter’s thoughts, the Countess of Lindow was practically dancing and darting her gaze to their guest as she said, “Doesn’t she look lovely, George?”

“—perhaps should have gone for the blue—what?” The earl looked up distractedly from his weary valet. “Good God, Lucy, are you wearing something fashionable?”

“It’s not that fashionable! It’s not new; it’s one of Evelyn’s—it’s just a gown,” Lucy said defensively, clasping her hands before her.

Precisely why she should feel so defensive about a blasted gown, she did not know. True, it was more fashionable than the typical fare she attired herself with. Most of her pin money was spent on the Prison Reform Society, and she was usually quite happy to make do with last Season’s style.

But for some reason, not today. No particular reason. No specific reason whatsoever.

“I’ll be fighting young men off for you with a stick,” opined Percy generously as he nudged Bernard. “Don’t you think, Dixon?”

Lucy felt the burning heat rise past her décolletage, up her neck, into her face, but there did not appear to be anything she could do to prevent the unpleasant heat prickling across her skin.

She would just have to hope she didn’t look like a strawberry.

She certainly did notappearto look like a strawberry if Bernard’s response was anything to go by.

He had turned, cast his attention up and down her in a way that was scintillating, and murmured words that could have been, “Very nice.”

Or perhaps she was so hot she was hallucinating any word that rhymed like ice.

‘Very nice’? ‘Very nice’?

Was that all? After Beachem had spent hours crimping and prepping and tidying and pinning—

“Right, well, that’s us ready,” her father said, cutting into her thoughts. “Now, we’ve got two carriages, too many of us for one. You young things take the second, and we’ll be there in no time.”

They were there in half an hour. Percy had forgotten his gloves, the countess had taken an absolute age calculating the best possible route and instructing their weary driver, and by the time they’d arrived outside the Keystones’ townhouse, it was to discover that everyone else who’d been invited had also beenrunning late, and so about fifty carriages were all attempting to drop off their inhabitants at the same time.

“Absolute rabble,” Lucy’s father was saying by the time they stepped into the hallway and gave a trio of harassed-looking footmen their outer garments. “I don’t know why the Keystones thought they needed to invite so many people. A smaller gathering is always preferable.”

“Oh, you’re getting old, dear,” Lucy’s mother said brightly, making Lucy grin and Percy snort. “The young people like to have plenty of people to talk to and admire, don’t they, children?”

“I’m seven and twenty years old, Mama,” Percy reminded her in a mutter as the five of them stepped into the ballroom.

“And you’ll always be my baby, dear,” said Lady Lindow fondly.

The conversation probably continued, but Lucy did not continue following it. That was because she was lost in the eyes of the most handsome man she had ever met.

Bernard Dixon had taken her arm.

It was not a casual movement. It was purposeful, almost possessive in the way he drew her to himself, and Lucy allowed herself to be pulled. It was somehow wonderful, a man taking charge of her like this, in public. It marked her out as his, in a way so subtle, she was not even sure she entirely understood it.

Lucy glanced up and caught his eye, and Bernard’s small smile was enough to vibrate something new through her that she had never known before.

Except that one time he had kissed her.

Lucy swallowed.I am not going to lose my head, she told herself firmly. No, not in the slightest. She was not going to allow herself to be overtaken by desire, and she certainly was not going to trick herself into believing there was a future here.

At some point, and that point would have to come soon, she would need to sit down with Bernard—with Dixon, and make a plan.

“And if you just give them money, well, it makes them think they can just expect money from anyone, at any time—but particularly you. They need to work for it. They need to learn how to earn it.”

It had been playing on her mind since their conversation in the study. Was she not guilty of doing precisely what she had said people must not do—giving him a comfortable life and not giving him the opportunity to earn it? To respect himself?