Page 93 of Give Him a Chance

“Oh, I just wondered if you were still advancing the Prison Reform Society cause,” he said lightly, all tension and gravitas dissipating in the warmth of his smile. “I know you like to keep busy. You’re like Frank.”

“If I had your sister’s brains, I would be doing far more than advocating for judicial reform,” Lucy retorted, “but yes. Yes, I have lots to keep me occupied. Lots. And I’m very happy. Very happy to make a difference.”

Never mind that she had cried herself to sleep last night and wished she had not run away from him and could take it back but also make him tell her—

“It’s easy to get entangled, isn’t it?” Benjamin said lightly.

Lucy narrowed her eyes.So there is something going on. “Why are you here, Benjamin?”

“Came to spend time with Percy, obviously,” he said nonchalantly.

And it was true, the three cousins—Percy, Michael, and Benjamin—were close. But there was something else, something he wasn’t telling her.

Irritation flared within Lucy. Why was it that so many men around her thought it was perfectly acceptable not to tell her things? Why? Was she not to be trusted? Did they think she would fall apart at the first sign of difficulty?

It was galling!

“Luce.”

“Benny,” she shot back, trying to smirk. “Look, I can see you’re trying to cheer me up—”

“I heard about Bernard Dixon.”

Lucy froze, staring at the unnervingly compassionate expression—the eyebrows drawn together, the steady eyes—on her cousin’s face. “You… You did?”

Benjamin nodded slowly. “I did.”

Her shoulders slumped, all efforts at pretense fading now that she knew he was aware of the whole damned thing. “Oh.”

There was nothing more to say, now that she realized her parents had told Benjamin the whole story.

Which, Lucy thought with a small groan,means the entire family will know soon.After all, Cousin Benjamin was hardly known for his discretion. By the time he had returned to London, or Bath, or wherever else the Aylesbury Chances were, Benjamin would have told Michael, and Michael would tell his four sisters, and at that point, it would be impossible for the Cothrom Chances not to have heard…

Lucy dropped her head into his hands. “I didn’t want people to know.”

“I was told,” Benjamin said quietly.

“Oh, I know you didn’t go ferreting about for the story,” Lucy said darkly. “But I didn’t really wish for the whole world to know I’d fallen in love with a—”

“So you do love him, then?”

The question was asked quietly, calmly, and with no hint of judgment. If Lucy had not been so swept up in her inner turmoil, she might have noticed that.

That was odd.

“Oh. Love, I don’t even know what it means anymore,” she said wearily, wishing to goodness that the world would right itself and she could just go on not thinking about him. “Benjamin, I hardly know the man! He came here as a criminal—”

“Yes, I thought that was fairly amusing,” came the brighter response from her kindly cousin.

Lucy threw the scrunched-up letter at him. The idiot caught it.

“I’ve only known him a matter of—well, a month!” she said helplessly. “I didn’t think it could happen this quickly. I didn’t know these feelings… Thisneedfor him—”

All too late, she realized she had said the last few words aloud.

Her cousin’s cheeks were beetroot red. “Steady on there, Lucy!”

“My point is,” Lucy said hastily, her own cheeks probably not looking too dissimilar from Benjamin’s, “it is utterly ridiculous that I fell in love with a man I hardly know, and… And dash it all, Benjamin, but I think… I think…”