Chapter Four #3
This woman was unlike any other he had ever met. She—well, she felt things so deeply, things that did not touch her and yet touched her heart so profoundly.
“And I love the sea.” Her wry smile grew as she glanced at Bernard, who stood beside her. “I’ve always loved the sea. I hate that it facilitates such cruelty.”
“Bernard—Bernard, don’t go in!”
“My mother always loved the sea,” Bernard said, pushing aside the memory that threatened to burst open a scar. “She… She used to say that messages could be taken by the sea between two people who cared about each other. That the waves would carry the love.”
Dear God, where had that come from?
Lady Lucy laid a hand over her heart wistfully. “I like that.”
His mother. How long had it been since he had thought about his mother? How long since he had thought about any of them, that day up there on the Northumberland coast?
Too long. Not long enough.
“Your mother sounds like just the sort of person I would like to meet,” continued Lady Lucy lightly, staring back at the sea now, removing her far-too-intelligent gaze from Bernard’s face. “Does she live here, in Brighton?”
“No.” And Bernard could hear the pain in his voice, hear the sharpness, the growl in his throat as he managed to say, “She died.”
She died.
It was an understatement. No man ever truly survived the death of his mother. It was—it was against nature. It was against God. To see the end of the person who brought you into the world…
Bernard knew it would happen to nearly all, and that he was not special. He knew that. Had known that all his life, had had it made very clear to him by his father, the man who had seemed incapable of love—but his mother had been special.
And she had been taken from him.
“I am sorry.”
Bernard took a long, slow breath and did not bother attempting to smile. This was not a conversation for smiles. “So am I.”
“I suppose that is how you descended into this situation. A life of crime, I mean,” Lady Lucy continued seriously, her eyes now raking over him as though attempting to understand precisely how he could have fallen into such a thing.
This time, the smile was genuine, and it flowed up from within Bernard, impossible to stop. “Something like that.”
Well, she isn’t wrong.
And that was what was so disconcerting, wasn’t it?
This woman had managed to draw out more truth about him, about his family, than any interrogator he had ever encountered.
Even when he’d entered that rather unfortunate drinking competition with that smuggler to gain insight into his habits, Bernard had managed to keep most of his private life… well, private.
But not with her.
Not with the daughter of an earl who smiled so sweetly and did not so much ask questions, but talk toward them.
Perhaps she could teach an interrogator a thing or two.
“You don’t miss them, do you?” Lady Lucy swallowed briefly. “Your family, I mean.”
“Now how the devil do you know that?” Bernard asked, turning now to face her, utterly lost. “Woman, I’ve told you almost nothing about myself!”
“I don’t need to be told. I can see,” she said simply. “It’s written all over your face, Dixon.”
‘Dixon’? Who the hell was—
Oh. Right. He was Dixon. He had been Dixon for years.
How was it that a mere half an hour in the presence of this woman he had forgotten that?
“Well, I suppose I shall have to be careful what I think whenever I am around you, Lady Lucy,” Bernard said as lightly as he could manage.
It was impressive he could speak at all, considering just how heavy his shoulders were. Weighted with the knowledge of his last assignment, burdened by the certainty that Hovell would be looking for him, not completely sure how he could keep up this ‘criminal’ facade with a daughter of an earl…
And speaking of his family to boot. Damn it.
“Do you swim?”
The question should not have gained such a violent response, but Bernard flinched, stepping back from the ocean, though it was several yards away. “No.”
“‘No’?” Lady Lucy, for all her insight, did not appear to have noticed his vehement reaction. “I often find—”
“I don’t swim. I never have and I never will.” Not after…
But Bernard was not going to permit himself to think about it. That was painful. He would not do it.
“You won’t?” She frowned. Why was it that such disappointment seared across her face—why was it that such disappointment mattered to him?
Fear thrummed through Bernard as his focus was pulled inexorably back to the waves. The all-consuming, the hungry waves. “No.”
He expected her to ask for more details. This was a woman who lived on curiosity, it seemed, who could not help but see anything but wish to know about it, to become involved in it. How else had she ended up in that courtroom?
But perhaps there was even more fiery intelligence in Lady Lucy than he had expected, for though Bernard braced himself for further questioning, none came.
No, instead, she stepped toward him, slipped her hand into his unrelenting arm, and said lightly, “Shall we return for breakfast, Dixon?”