Chapter Three #2
“You old rogue,” said Percy. “We’ve heard all the stories! Mother was hardly ever chaperoned herself while you were courting!”
Though the earl blubbered in response, the countess didn’t even flinch.
“It was different for me in comparison with the expectations for the daughters of an earl. According to the rank of one’s birth, the statistical possibility of scandal…
” began her mother, taking a deep inhale as she always did before a long mathematical speech.
“I have something to say,” Lucy said quietly.
The breakfast table stilled. Percy and their father turned to her with arched brows, and the countess paused with a piece of toast halfway to her mouth.
Lucy swallowed as her pulse raced. Yes, this was the only way to do it: straight away, as soon as possible. She could not allow this charade to go on any longer.
“I… I think the footmen should be excused, Papa,” she said quietly, her voice weak and her resolve fading with every passing second. She waited as her father nodded at Cawthorne and the servants cleared out.
She could not do this. She could not!
It would be to admit a terrible lapse of judgment, that she had put herself—or rather, been put—in an impossible situation.
And the gossip! Even if the judge had evicted the gallery before his proclamation, there had still been witnesses. Once the news got out that Lady Lucy Chance had been handed, or gifted, or whatever had happened…given a criminal?
The whole family would be implicated in crime. Crime!
Her position at the Prison Reform Society would be over. Her father would never look at her in the same way again. And Dixon—
“Sorry I’m late for breakfast.” Dixon clapped his hands together as he entered the breakfast room, inclining his head to the lady of the house.
Oh, my, but he cleaned up very nicely. He looked quite the gentleman in the old suit of her father’s, and his complexion had brightened after a bath and a shave.
“I wasn’t entirely sure what time you…you…
” His voice faltered as he took in the expressions of everyone in the room. “Have I interrupted something?”
Yes, blast you, Lucy wanted to say, but she did not for three reasons.
Firstly, because her father had views on ladies cursing, and it was in and of itself a curse.
Secondly, because her pulse had skipped a beat when the irritatingly charming man had entered the room, and that was most annoying of him.
Thirdly, because she had completely forgotten what words were and so could only utter sounds.
“Uhhh,” Lucy said.
“Ah, Mr. Dixon, not at all. Sit yourself down,” said her mother, ever the gracious host. “There is a variance in breakfast times amongst the nobility, is there not? I once calculated—”
“Not now, Mama.” Percy groaned, reaching for the teapot. “Tea, Mr. Dixon? We’re having to help ourselves, Lucy has thrown out the servants—”
“I haven’t—I didn’t,” whispered Lucy, utterly mortified.
“And she has something important to tell us,” said her father, smiling at his guest. “Sit down, please, and you can hear all about it with us. Lucy?”
Lucy smiled helplessly as the entirety of the room looked expectantly at her.
Oh, this was a nightmare. This was a literal nightmare, precisely what she had most dreaded. This was, in fact, moment for moment an exact mirror of what she had dreamed last night when she had finally managed to fall asleep, down to the—
Well, there wasn’t a gaping hole in the floor and fire raining down from the ceiling.
But other than that, it was the same.
“I-I…” she said, her voice breaking. “I…”
“The tea should be left to sit, man, don’t you know that?” interjected Percy with a snort. “I thought everyone knew that!”
Oh, God. Everyone might know that in their circles, but naturally, Dixon was not from their sort of circles. He was not from anyone’s circles. The only circles he knew were handcuffs.
Her voice quavered. “I…have to tell you all something.”
Try as she might, Lucy could not help but catch the eye of Dixon, who was seated opposite her. He had a hunted look in his eye, and with the merest of movements, shook his head.
No.
He did not want her to tell them.
Unsurprisingly, he doesn’t, Lucy thought darkly.
The man had managed to escape not only a criminal conviction, but being sent to Australia to work for the rest of his days!
The man had gained freedom, and more than that, the freedom to live in an earl’s house and off an earl’s income.
Forever, as far as Judge Bonner was evidently concerned.
And that was why she had to say something.
She might have been foolish enough to get involved in the Prison Reform Society and risk her own reputation, Lucy realized wildly, but her family had not.
So she had to protect them from her own reasonably foolish mistake.
“I have to—to tell you about what happened yesterday,” Lucy stammered.
“Lucy,” said Dixon quietly.
Oh, blast the man, did he want her entire family to get the wrong end of the stick? She could see the way her brother’s eyes widened and her mother’s lips immediately start curling into a smile…
“That’s Lady Lucy, as I told you yesterday,” she said sharply, trying to give the man a warning glare. “And it is precisely because of that sort of thing that I have to tell them.”
“‘Tell’ us?” echoed her mother. “Tell us what?”
“Lady Lucy, I urge you,” said Dixon in a low voice.
But she would not be urged. She had to tell them.
“And that is why I must tell you,” Lucy said, heart in her mouth and knowing full well she was about to bring shame upon her family, “that I lied yesterday. Mr. Dixon is a…a criminal.”
The earl blinked. Then stared. Then blinked again. “A—A what?”
“A criminal, Papa,” she replied wretchedly, wishing to goodness she had never gone to that courtroom. “Judge Bonner handed him over to my…my personal custody. I find myself responsible for him.”
A moment of silence…then absolute bedlam.
The countess burst into tears. “My precious daughter, reputation ruined—”
The earl rose to his feet so hastily, his chair fell to the carpet. “Out! Out, you damned liar, you criminal! Out before you ravish—”
Lucy’s brother burst into fits of giggles. “Oh, this is better even than Evelyn and her modeling viscount! Where do you two find them?”
Dixon closed his eyes and sighed in evident resigned horror, which perhaps was the most restrained response of the lot.
Lucy swallowed, her mouth dry and her sense of disgrace sharp in her throat. “I know I have let you all down—”
“You are too right you have,” snapped her father, looking for the first time in his life as though he had truly lost his temper. “What did you think you were doing? No wonder you abandoned your chaperone! Which I have told you, time and again, you must not do, Lucy!”
“Ruined!” wailed her mother.
Percy grinned. “I can’t wait to tell Michael and Benjamin this.”
“Don’t you dare!” The words were spoken simultaneously by Lucy and her father, after which the latter turned his ire back to his daughter.
“I said from the very beginning, Lucy, that you could take part in this dratted Prison Reform Society if you were chaperoned, if you were careful of yourself and your reputation and the reputation of this family—”
“Excuse me,” said Dixon politely.
He was completely ignored.
“—but to take in a criminal into this very house?” The Earl of Lindow looked more bewildered now than angry, and somehow, that hurt Lucy even more. “I don’t understand you.”
Lucy was close to both her parents. It helped that they were remarkably pleasant people, and as she had grown older, their relationship had changed, and they had begun respecting her more and granting her more autonomy.
But they were looking at her now as though…as though they hardly knew her.
“I don’t understand,” her father repeated, his voice breaking as he stared, so clearly baffled at his second daughter. “Why would you do this?”
“I would like to say something,” came a voice from a long way away.
Lucy turned and saw, much to her astonishment, that Mr. Bernard Dixon still existed.
Of course he did. The man could not vanish merely from her wishing it.
“You,” Lucy’s father said menacingly, pointing a finger at the man, “will be quiet.”
“It is not my fault this situation has occurred,” Dixon continued calmly, in a manner even Lucy had to admit herself impressed by. There were few people, even few men who could stand up to her father when he was pushed to lose his temper. “Nor is it the Lady Lucy’s.”
Silence fell once again in the breakfast room.
That was, Lucy thought wryly, her mother’s sniffles continued, but they decreased both in volume and frequency.
Her brother leaned back in his chair. “How do you make that out?”
“Why, because it was Judge Bonner who decided on such a novel idea, the like I have never heard of,” replied Dixon calmly—very calmly, Lucy could not help but notice.
How on earth is the man so calm?
“You are the benefactor of such a decision,” the earl pointed out sharply.
Lucy watched as Dixon inclined his head.
“I am. But that does not follow that the Lady Lucy should be castigated for—for her instinct to plead for mercy.”
It should not have rippled delight through Lucy’s very soul to hear the man praise her in such a manner. It should not have. It absolutely should not have.