Chapter Three #3
The trouble was, so few people really understood her passion for the Prison Reform Society, or for prison reform in general.
Most of them thought she was just being foolish, allowing her interests to cloud her judgment.
She was certain that a few of the cousins thought she was mad to even be attending a few of the rallies, let alone campaigning and attempting to gain signatures on petitions.
Perhaps they had been right. All that had led to…this.
Mr. Bernard Dixon, a rake of a criminal if ever there was one, in her keeping and at her breakfast table.
“We shall have to put this right,” Lucy’s father said heavily, turning to his daughter.
“I shall speak to my solicitors. What a ridiculous notion! You are a lady and have only just reached the age of majority. To have you to take responsibility for a man? A criminal? What could you have done to bring about a judge’s ire, Lucy? !”
And in that moment, something very strange happened.
A surge of defiance roared through her body. She was being critiqued, and for what? For being in the wrong place at the wrong time? For advocating for someone who clearly had found himself at a difficult stage of life? For trying to help another?
No, she would not allow it. She could be criticized for many things—her wardrobe, for example, was not fashionable, and she had no skill like her sister with the paintbrush. In fact she had done very little with her life these one and twenty years, except this.
Except save a man from a terrible fate.
That was not something for which she should be apologizing.
Her father was still speaking. “And then, once this is sorted, we shall reevaluate everything—everything we’ve been allowing. No more political meetings. No more gadding about without your chaperone. You must take responsibility for your actions.”
“I have taken responsibility for him,” Lucy said boldly, far more boldly than she felt, but knowing she had to interject. “And as you pointed out, Father, I am one and twenty. You cannot forbid me anything. He’s my ward, and I will prove to you that I am perfectly capable.”
Blast. That wasn’t what she’d wanted at all.
She should have welcomed help from her father’s solicitors to figure out what her legal responsibilities to Bernard Dixon actually were—if the judge had bothered to have his clerks draw up a formal decree in the first place.
She should have wanted the solicitors to help her ascertain what the charges against Dixon had been, to make sure he wasn’t the sort to put her family in any danger.
She would hope the judge would have had better sense than to send a murderer home with a lady, but after the many, many letters she had addressed to him pleading on behalf of the accused, she knew Judge Bonner was no admirer of Lady Lucy Chance, so she could not be certain.
But she could not pay the price of her freedom once it was all over.
She could not bear to look at Dixon’s reaction at her words, so she stared straight at her father, neither backing down.
“But, my dear,” said her mother, “you cannot understand what it is to—I mean no offense, Mr. Dixon, but you are a man, and men are most difficult, Lucy.”
Lucy forced down a smile as her father bristled.
“I am not difficult!”
“Whatever you say, dear,” said Lucy’s mother fondly without even looking at the man beside her. No, her attention was focused on their…for want of a better word, ‘guest.’ “Mr. Dixon, forgive me, but you are a criminal. You have broken the law.”
It was not really a question, as far as Lucy could make out, so she was not surprised that the man did not reply. It was galling, however, to see him incline his head with a little flourish with his hands, as though he were claiming a great title.
“You cannot reform such a man, Lucy,” her mother said gently, as though breaking it to her that the horse she wanted to ride when she’d been five years old was far too big. “He is a criminal. He has broken the law. Such a man cannot change—”
“Why not?” Lucy interjected, pulse hammering and knowing that once again she was about to make a mistake but unable to help herself. “Why not?”
The Countess of Lindow blinked and looked helplessly to her husband. “Why not, Lindow?”
“Because,” the earl said firmly, “what a man is born as is what he always remains.”
Lucy’s stomach twisted.
Oh, she knew where that thought came from.
Her father was one of four brothers, though for years he would only admit to two.
The fourth and youngest was the Viscount Pernrith, their father’s bastard.
There had been, the family tale went, enmity between Lindow and Pernrith for years, decades, the former believing that the latter could never be a true part of the family.
A man cannot change.
Well she did not believe that. A man could change, and she would prove it to them.
She would prove it to them all.
“Well, I don’t agree, Papa,” Lucy said in a ringing voice, pushing her chair back from the table as she rose and pointing a finger at the wide-eyed man seated across from her. “That man may be a criminal—”
“Actually…” said Dixon apologetically.
Lucy ignored him. “But I will reform him, Papa! I will make him ready for Society and change his ways! I know I can do it, so just you watch me!”