Chapter Three
Lady Lucy Chance stared at her own reflection in her looking glass and tried very hard not to panic.
It was not easy. It had been a restless night she had spent, tossing and turning, trying to think how on earth she was going to explain this to her parents.
That she would have to explain things to her parents had been quite clear from the moment she and Dixon had arrived at the Lindow Chance townhouse yesterday afternoon.
Oh, the man had been intelligent enough to plead a headache and had spent the rest of the day and evening in the guest bedchamber, which Mrs. Macdonald, their housekeeper, had hastily made up for him—but it could not be avoided forever.
He could not be avoided forever.
Lucy swallowed and saw the tiredness in her eyes, the tension around her mouth.
Well, it had finally happened. Her sister, Evelyn, had always said she would find herself in a scrape one day, and it had happened.
She had inadvertently come into the possession of a criminal, and now she didn’t know what to do with him.
Thank goodness her parents had merely accepted her statement that Dixon was a Prison Reform Society member, or else she would have been forced to concoct some sort of story—or perhaps she would have just told the truth.
Perhaps that would have been the better idea.
For here she now sat, owner—well, not owner, but the person responsible for—a criminal, utterly out of her depth, and not really sure what she was supposed to do with him.
And she did not even know what he had been about to be found guilty of.
“M’lady?”
Lucy blinked. Her lady’s maid was smiling at her in the looking glass.
Even after all the times Lucy had given her the slip, the woman was kind to her.
Perhaps her parents had not expected that when they’d hired a burly, middle-aged woman with a stern, lined face, but Lucy knew by now that Beachem actually considered herself a bit of a romantic.
“I… I am sorry, Beachem,” Lucy said weakly, hating that her own problems had caused her to be rude, especially after how she’d snuck off from the park the day before. “I was not paying attention—what did you say?”
“I said, that Mr. Dixon is a very handsome man,” the maid said with a wink. “Friend of yours, is he? Not courting you, is he? Is that why you escaped my watchful eye yesterday?”
“Absolutely not!”
Maybe she should not have been so firm in her denial, for all it caused with a sparkle of mischief in the maid’s eye. “‘Absolutely not,’ eh?”
That’s the problem with being the younger sister, Lucy thought to herself.
Oh, she loved Evelyn. The two sisters had always been close, and it was only the elder’s marriage last year that had divided them. Not that they did not see a great deal of Evelyn, when they were all in London or Bath. But still. It wasn’t the same.
But being the younger sister meant that no matter how much older one became, you were always treated like the… Well. The baby of the family.
“Mr. Dixon is staying with us as a guest for…for a time. Nothing more,” Lucy forced herself to say with as much nonchalance and complete disinterest as possible. “I suppose he will depart when he has business elsewhere.”
And that was another thing no one at court had ever answered; precisely how long was she supposed to be looking after this…this rake? What kind of criminal had impassioned devotees show up at courthouses to ask him to elope with them?
“I see,” said Beachem, who evidently didn’t.
Who could possibly guess at the truth?
And that was why, Lucy knew, she would have to tell her family. Her parents at least deserved to know they had a criminal in their midst.
Now, she was all for the rehabilitation of prisoners, and she truly believed it was possible for a man to change the direction of his life and reform his ways.
But those around him deserved to know the truth…did they not?
“Well, breakfast started about five minutes ago,” Beachem said, turning away from her and starting to bustle about the bedchamber tidying up the detritus of that morning’s dressing. Ribbons, pins, and the like were carefully put away in boxes as Lucy merely sat there.
Sat there, wondering how on earth she was going to explain to her parents that she had not only brought a dastardly criminal into their midst, but she was now somehow responsible for him. How was one supposed to begin?
“Mama, Papa, Mr. Dixon is not part of the Prison Reform Society—that is, he might be, but from the other direction, as it were.”
“Papa, you know how I feel about transportation to Australia, and when I heard that Mr. Dixon—yes, he is a criminal—that Mr. Dixon was about to be…”
“It’s a funny thing, isn’t it, Mama, that just when you think you’re going to a courthouse to argue for prison reform with a judge, you end up being given a criminal as a gift! Isn’t that funny!”
Lucy groaned, dropping her head into her hands. No, none of those approaches would work; none of the ideas she’d toyed with had been up to muster.
How on earth was she going to tell them about this?
“My lady?”
“Nothing,” Lucy said reflexively, rising to her feet and giving the maid a bright smile she certainly did not feel. “Thank you, Beachem. That will be all.”
“Are you certain? You have no places to be, no plans without your parents or brother as chaperone?”
Lucy actually wasn’t sure yet, but whatever the day held for her, she knew it would be more difficult with a chaperone breathing down her neck. “No, you may spend the day as you please. Get some mending done. Take a break. Have a lovely day.”
A lovely day. The weather certainly agreed with her, sunlight streaming through the windows on the landing as Lucy descended the stairs.
It was going to be another hot day, from what she could tell, which would mean her brother might attempt to drag her to the beach in the hope of bathing, and she would wish to do nothing more than lie in the garden and do nothing.
But she couldn’t do nothing. She had a criminal to keep.
Lucy groaned as she reached the bottom of the stairs, causing the thin-faced family butler to raise an eyebrow.
How on earth did he do it? No matter what she tried, she could not get the look of imperiousness right.
Perhaps she should ask Cousin Lilianna how she did it. No one could look imperious like Lilianna.
“Good morning, Lady Lucy,” said Cawthorne with a bow.
“Good morning,” replied Lucy, not bothering to point out that it was not a good morning, that there had never been a worse morning, and that it was only going to get worse. “Is everyone else up?”
“Your mother decided to take breakfast with you and your guest, Mr. Dixon,” said the butler quietly. “Though I regret to inform you he has not descended yet. Your father—er, sent his valet to him with some old attire. Seeing as how your guest arrived without luggage.”
Lucy’s spirits rose. Well, that was all to the good. The servants would get Dixon cleaned up so he could be on his way. Meanwhile, if she could have this conversation with her parents without her would-be ward present, that would surely only help.
It would be most awkward to reveal the man’s skullduggery—whatever it was—in front of him. Besides, he was a most irritatingly charming man. She was liable to tangle her tongue if she tried to speak for long periods of time before him.
Most annoyingly.
“Right,” Lucy said, steeling herself for the worst.
The man who had known her from birth smiled. “Ready?”
The man could not know, of course. Unless Dixon had told him, but Lucy had to presume a man escaping a criminal conviction would want as few people as possible to know the truth of his past.
Perhaps it was just her air of doom that made the butler smile in such a way.
Lucy nodded, shoulders back and fears forward. “Ready.”
The breakfast room was light and airy, re-decorated recently in the French style and with a pair of footmen sedately circling the table, assisting the family in accessing their breakfast needs.
“There she is!” Lucy’s mother smiled as she nudged her husband, removing her disliked spectacles and absentmindedly dropping them off the table. “I told you, the odds were that she would be down before Mr. Dixon. She is most attentive to her guest.”
“A male guest,” the Earl of Lindow said pointedly as he looked over at his daughter approaching the table. “Just when were you going to tell us that you had befriended a gentleman to such an extent that you would extend an invitation for him to stay without asking me first?”
Ah. Right.
Lucy smiled weakly. “Er, now, Papa?”
The man held her gaze sternly, then melted and held out a hand. “You are the most darling thing, you know that? Blessed, I am, blessed with two daughters.”
“Now, you’re not allowed to start weeping again,” teased his only son and Lucy’s brother, Percy. “It used to be that you’d only cry at weddings, but now it’s every morning over breakfast.”
“A man can’t help it if he feels a great deal!” pointed out the earl hotly as Lucy took a seat opposite her father, her stomach tingling in anticipation. “Besides, you’d prefer to have a father who cares about you, who is interested in your lives, yes?”
“I’m just saying—”
“And I’m just saying—”
“Cousin Benjamin’s being sued again,” Percy said conversationally.
The entire table, including Lucy, groaned. “What has he done this time?”
“Some sort of financial complication.” Percy chuckled. He and two of his cousins, Michael and Benjamin, had been close for many years, Lucy knew, though he was thankfully perhaps the most innocent of the trio. “It’s always something, isn’t it?”
“I must say, we’re very fortunate to have a son who doesn’t court scandal in such a way,” her father said sagely. “Though I wish my unwed daughters were a little more circumspect with their chaperones.”
Lucy knew the comment was for her, of course. Evelyn was married now, and she may have been a little mischievous at times when under the earl’s roof, but she had never so brazenly gone out in public alone like Lucy did.