Page 61 of Give Him a Chance

Bernard squeezed her hand. “You do look lovely.”

Or perhaps, Lucy thought as she melted,I can just keep him as a pet for the rest of my life.

“I just hope I shall remember all the steps you have taught me,” he continued, wincing. “It is far more complicated than it looks, isn’t it?”

“You’ll be marvelous,” Lucy said fondly, patting him on the arm and congratulating herself on preparing the man so well for such a genteel evening.

“Ah, Miss Eaton,” came Bernard’s voice, and this statement was not directed to her but to someone else, which jolted Lucy out of her reverie. “So lovely to see you again.”

It was only when her mind decided to get back into gear—Cousin Frank would have been proud of her—and Lucy saw who was approaching them that she realized just how quickly a ball could go from good to bad.

It was Miss Eaton. Miss Eaton, from Lady Romeril’s card party. The beauty, the woman no man present had been able to stop looking at.

And it was clear, Lucy saw with sinking spirits, that it was going to be just the same here at the Keystones’ ball.

Heads turned as Miss Eaton approached them with a woman who had to have been her mother.Also stunning, Lucy thought bitterly. Why was it that beauty was something one inherited and could not be worked on? Oh, Beachem could apply rouge here and there, some color for her lips, but no one could make anyone look likeher.

“Mr. Dixon,” said Miss Eaton in such a light, elegant voice that Lucy darkly wondered if she practiced in the looking glass. “How pleasant to see you. And Lady Lucy.”

“Miss Eaton,” Lucy said, as brightly as she could manage as she bobbed a curtsey.

Well, it wasn’t exactly a death threat, but still. Bernard glanced at her for a moment before returning to his conversational partner.

Perhaps his dance partner.

Perhaps his partner in life. Miss Eaton was not the daughter of an earl, bound by the strictures of Society to marry someone within the nobility or at least with a fortune to offer in a noble birthright’s stead, Lucy pondered bitterly as the two beautiful people talked cheerfully of the delightfulness of the party and the glee in attending balls. Miss Eaton could marry whom she pleased, and she came with a large enough dowry that she could supply any financial deficiencies in her partner. She wondered ifMiss Eatonwould care about the man’s criminal past should she discover it. Or if she’d boldly join the crowd of devotees who had shown up merely for a chance to see him paraded before a judge.

Why didn’t Bernard and Miss Eaton just announce their engagement and get it over with?

“Do you intend to dance, Mr. Dixon?” asked Miss Eaton enthusiastically, her clearly interested gaze flickering over the tall frame of the man before her as the musicians in the corner began to tune their instruments.

The gall of the woman, in essence being the one doing the asking. Lucy did her best not to glare; she really did. The trouble was, she was so focused on keeping her expression aloof that she’d stopped paying attention to her tongue. “Yes, he will be dancing with me. Come on, Mr. Dixon.”

Before she knew what she was doing, Lucy was dragging him to the center of the room, where a set was being made, the musicians striking up a merry tune for an old-fashioned country dance, performed in a line.

This was madness. Madness!

Young ladies couldn’t go about abducting young men from conversations with other, far prettier young ladies!

Yet when Lucy came to a halt and looked up at the gentleman still—just about—on her arm, it was to see not that he was irritated that he had been pulled away from a riveting conversation, but…a smile.

Bernard Dixon was smiling at her.

“Thank you,” he said with feeling. “I thought we would be stuck there for an age.”

Lucy blinked. “‘Stuck’? ‘Stuck there’?”

She must have misheard. That, or it was a piece of street slang utilized by criminals with which she was not familiar. Otherwise it rather appeared that Bernard was saying—

“As I told you before, she is vapid,” he continued in an undertone, giving a toss of his head. “I hope Miss Eaton is able to find a gentleman whose conversational requirements are significantly lower than my own.”

“‘Conversational requirements,’” Lucy said blankly as the dance began and all the other ladies stepped forward in unison. Except for her. She lurched forward just as the other ladies took a step back. “Lower than yours?”

Bernard’s eyes sparkled as he held out his hands and Lucy mutely took them. “You cannot think I would be so patheticas to notice Miss Eaton’s beauty, but not notice that she has absolutely nothing to talk about?”

He’d insisted all of that to her once before, but Lucy still couldn’t help herself from feeling jealous the moment Miss Eaton had set her sights on Bernard again. Gentlemen liked beauty, didn’t they? They preferred beauty above all else. Wasn’t that right?

“No, if—whenI am to fall in love,” Bernard said as they loosed their hands and waited for the couples either side of them to move in a circle, before continuing as they stepped together, “I hope it is with the conversation, the wit, the opinions—the very soul of a woman. That is what loves means to me.”