Chapter Five #3
Dixon’s expression was softer too. “Now what do you mean by that?”
“Oh, nothing,” Lucy said darkly, leaning forward to grab the unfinished letter from his hands.
“Only that if I had been born a man, like my brother, Percy, there would be a great number of things I could do to better humankind. I could go to Parliament, like my father, and try to enact bills to help the poor and destitute. I could own a factory like my cousin Alexander, who is improving working conditions there, or an orphanage like my cousin Thomas to help children who have no one to help them, or a retirement home for actors and actresses like my cousin Samuel—”
“You have a lot of cousins,” interjected Dixon quietly.
Lucy snorted. “You have no idea. My point is…”
“Your point is that you are a woman and therefore unable to do anything of meaning,” he finished for her. “Of purpose.”
“Worse,” Lucy retorted, fury rising up in her as it always did when she spoke on such a topic. “I am not only unable, it is expected of me that I should do nothing! Nothing but sit around and—and embroider cushions or knit doilies or smile inanely at what hemline is the newest fashion!”
“Do they truly change that often?” Now Dixon looked bewildered, his brows arched, and Lucy had to laugh.
“You know, I never pay attention?” she said wistfully. “I did visit a modiste yesterday, but to track down whether it would have been possible for Mrs. Marithorpe to have stolen a bolt of fabric.”
Perhaps she should not have spoken so honestly. Dixon was looking at her as though she had admitted to running away not to join a circus, but to lead one.
“You… You are investigating a crime?”
“Oh, nothing so specific,” Lucy hastened to correct. The last thing she needed was her father hearing that sort of thing. “I simply thought, if I am to write a letter attempting to exonerate her—”
“You go to such trouble for people you do not even know,” Dixon said in evident wonder, his head shaking slightly as he examined her like a rare bird. “Why?”
Why?
It was a ridiculous question, and an answer slipped from her lips as easily as breath. “Because someone should.”
For a moment, they just sat there in the cool of the study, Lucy looking at him with what she assumed was a determined and unfatigued face, and Dixon staring as though she were utterly mad.
Perhaps she was. There were few ladies of nobility in the Prison Reform Society, and Lucy was more than aware of that. But it mattered. Could the world not see that it mattered?
“‘Because someone should,’” Dixon repeated.
Lucy swallowed, unsure exactly how to convince a person that people mattered.
“They have no one. The world has forgotten them, and that is because it is easier to forget about the poor, and the disenfranchised, than do actually do something about it. And I—I want my time on this Earth to matter. To have done something, changed something, meant something to someone.”
Meant something to someone.
She had never articulated it like that before, yet it was true.
Lucy knew she might never marry. She might never have children. She would certainly never work.
This was her legacy.
“Well, I have to say,” said Dixon slowly, “I am impressed. Impressed, and surprised.”
A flicker of discontent warred with delight within Lucy. “Surprised a woman like me would think of others?”
His steady stare met hers and the room somehow became warm, despite its westerly setting.
“No. Surprised you would do so much for people who can never truly thank you. Surprised that you, a daughter of an earl, has seen that duty to one’s country can be performed by anyone.
Anyone, if they have determination enough to find it. ”
It was stifling, the room. Lucy wondered vaguely, as her stomach lurched, whether she had ever been cool in her life.
Dixon’s smile was enough to burn a hole through her and he was very close to doing such a thing. A man’s praise should not matter, Lucy told herself furiously. She did not do it for praise…and yet it was nice. More than nice, it was wonderful to hear herself admired so by a man like—
“And I will keep you no longer,” Dixon said brightly, rising from the seat before Lucy could call him back. “The library?”
“‘Library’?” Lucy repeated blankly.
Library? What on earth does he want the library? Oh, yes, we’ve gone through this.
Poetry. Poetry declaimed in the most wonderful voice…
“Lady Lucy? The library?”
“‘Library,’” Lucy repeated, then just about managing to get a hold of herself, “Yes, the library! It’s—It’s next door. To the left. My left. Your right. Your left as you leave.”
Oh, dear Lord, she had entirely lost her head.
Dixon ran a hand through his hair with a smirk, and she was liable to lose more than that—heart, body, soul—if he did that again. “Thank you, Lady Lucy. I won’t take up any more of your precious time.”
And he was gone in an instant, leaving Lucy to fan herself with the incomplete letter advocating for Miss Sharpe and wondering how on earth she was ever going to write again.