Chapter Fifteen #2
It only took Cawthorne a few minutes to retrieve two bottles of champagne, kept cool in the depths of the house’s cellars, and Lucy cheered with the rest of the family as the corks popped and her pulse pounded.
Am I truly going to do this?
Her gaze slipped to Bernard, who was regaling her mother with a hilarious tale about champagne. Her stomach twisted, but it was a wonderful sensation. The sort of sensation she wanted to feel for the rest of her life.
Yes. This was right. She didn’t even need to discuss this with Bernard; she knew he would understand her need to bring her family into the secret of their commitment to each other. After all, it didn’t feel right to keep it from them, the five of them living together in such harmony.
So this was it. Her moment.
Cawthorne handed around the glasses and Lucy rose to her feet, her knees somehow trembling.
Well. Here goes nothing. “I… I have an announcement.”
“Lucy,” Bernard said quietly.
She ignored him as her father said, “Goodness, do you?”
“Have you secured the release of your one hundredth prisoner?” her mother asked brightly. “I said from the start, you needed to keep a tally.”
“Lucy,” Bernard repeated, and there was a warning in his tone this time.
Lucy continued to ignore him, but she could not ignore the rising excitement within her, nor the fading smile on her brother’s face as he looked between her and Bernard.
“Lucy,” said Percy quietly, and somehow in the same serious tone Bernard had. “Don’t say anything you can’t take back.”
But couldn’t they see that she didn’t want to take it back! She wanted the whole world to know she was in love with Bernard Dixon, and they were to be married. Was there anything so very wrong about that?
“I wanted to tell you, Mama and Papa, and Percy,” Lucy added, “though I am not sure now whether he needs to be formally told—”
Bernard rose to his feet, stepping between her and her family, his brow furrowed and his lips pinched. “Lucy, I think we need to talk about this before—”
“I wanted you all to be the first to know, because you all mean so much to me and, well, with us all living together—”
“Lucy,” Bernard said quietly, his eyes urgent.
But Lucy couldn’t stop now, even if she’d wanted to. She was barreling forward toward a path, a future she could not wait to start. Everything in her life had brought her to this moment and she was no coward. She was not going to shy away from the truth.
This was it.
Stomach churning and pulse fluttering, Lucy lifted her glass of champagne—only spilling a few drops as her hand shook—and said, “I’d like to propose a toast to…to myself and Bernard.”
“Lucy,” Bernard hissed.
“We are to be married,” said Lucy happily.
There was not a single movement in the room.
Not a jot. Not an iota. Percy was staring with jaw dropped, his expression one of shock and mild admiration.
Lucy’s mother had been writing something in her notebook, champagne on a console table beside her already forgotten, and she was stock-still, focused on the page.
Lucy’s father was staring, his expression wooden, not a twitch in his face to suggest whether or not he had even heard her.
Cawthorne dropped the bottle of champagne.
Lucy’s pulse thumped in her ears, and from a long distance away, she heard herself say as Cawthorne quietly directed a poor footman to mop up the champagne with his cuff, “Well, I know it’s bad form to drink to your own toast, but there it is!
” She gulped the deliciously sweet and delightfully cold liquid, and perhaps it gave her further courage, for she continued, “We will marry as soon as we can.”
“Lucy,” Bernard said urgently, taking the glass from her unresisting fingers. “I wish you had spoken to me about this.”
“‘Married’? I don’t understand,” said the countess quietly, lifting her focus from her notebook and looking between them. “I don’t understand at all.”
Bernard muttered a curse as he turned to face her mother. “Lady Lindow—”
“I don’t understand, either,” said the earl bluntly, no favor in his face whatsoever. “And you would have thought I would have been informed ahead of time, at the very least. If not requested permission. Not that I would give it. Considering his…history.”
Lucy didn’t understand; they should have been happy for her. Why weren’t they happy?
Oh. She’d almost forgotten. Bernard’s ‘history.’ Still, even that comment made her blood boil.
She was one and twenty, for goodness’s sake!
If she wanted to marry a criminal, she was free to, whatever her parents said.
I mean, it would have been a scandal, for certain, except she knew it wouldn’t be a scandal in the end.
She just wished her parents would care more about her happiness than the prospect of being dragged in the papers!
Percy cleared his throat and she jerked her attention toward him. Yes, her brother, he at least wouldn’t care about class in a marriage. He would congratulate her, wouldn’t he?
“Lucy,” he said quietly. “Are you quite sure you’ve thought this through?”
“I love Bernard Dixon, and I will marry him,” Lucy said, hating the petulance that came into her voice as she stood firm on her decision. “We fell in love and—well, we don’t see any point in hiding it, do we? Do we, Bernard?”
Bernard turned slowly on the spot to face her and there was such a strange, hollow sort of expression on the man’s face that it quite took her breath away.
He looked… Well. Not happy.
Confusion blurred Lucy’s thoughts as she stared bereft into Bernard’s face. Why wasn’t he happy? Wasn’t this what he wanted—had they not been clear with each other from the start? Wasn’t it all leading to this place, this happiness, this thrill?
Otherwise, what had it all been for?
“The man looks utterly bewildered,” her father was saying gruffly. “Oh, leave that, Cawthorne, Jacob. We can get a housemaid to look at it later. Leave us, will you?”
The butler and footman half-walked, half-ran out of the drawing room heavy with tension, and as the door slammed behind him Lucy reached out and took Bernard’s hand.