Chapter Seven #2
This was ridiculous! Working-class confidence men, for that was surely Dixon’s crime, did not go about charming doyennes of Society!
“Your Mr. Dixon is a very interesting man,” said her father from just behind her.
Lucy smiled weakly. She could smile now, couldn’t she? Was the danger over? “Yes. Yes, I suppose he is.”
“And you told him about what we were to tell people?”
Lucy nodded, hardly trusting her voice. “A visitor from London. A friend of the family.”
And in a way now, was that not true? Was not Dixon a friend of the family?
A half hour passed in a manner Lucy did not fully understand.
She was shepherded to a card table and given a hand to play Whist, with which she did very poorly, and then her mother—apologizing to the table quite profusely—moved her to a table to play Rummy, which Lucy had always thought was an easy game, though she appeared to have forgotten the rules.
“Your mind appears to be elsewhere, Lady Lucy,” came the dour pronouncement from Mrs. Pullman, a sharp look in her dark eyes that belied the irritation in her voice. “You lose again, I fear.”
“Oh, that’s quite all right,” said Lucy vaguely.
From where she was seated, she could just make out the back of Dixon. He was seated with Lady Romeril, a duke whose name she had momentarily forgotten, and a young woman of such extraordinary beauty, Lucy was finding it difficult to remember her own name.
Why it should be so painful, to see Dixon seated with a woman of such radiance, Lucy did not know.
Why it should feel so personal, even, that Dixon should seek out the company of attractive ladies and not be satisfied with her plain manner of dressing and entirely distracted toilette and coiffure, she could not articulate.
It did make her want to punch a wall, though.
“Lady Lucy, please, attend!”
Lucy blinked. Her table—Mrs. Pullman, her youngest daughter, and a gentleman whose name she had definitely forgotten but who was making such eyes at the young Miss Pullman that Lucy had already forgiven herself—were all staring.
She smiled weakly. “Would—Would you excuse me? I seem to have forgotten my…my…”
My Bernard Dixon.
That was not the sort of thing one could admit to in public, however, and so Lucy merely rose from the table—in the middle of a run, which was simply not done—abandoning her cards and thinking nothing of the six shillings she had already lost.
What did money matter? She had plenty, and now her Cousin Samuel was the richest man in the world or something like it, she wasn’t really worried about the Chance family as a whole going bankrupt.
No, she wanted to talk to Dixon. That was all she wanted.
Wait a moment. Is it possible that the man robbed a bank? Have I read of any bank robberies recently?
It was frustrating beyond belief not to know what the man had done to end up in Brighton prison, but Judge Bonner had been most circumspect about the particulars and Lucy had run out of ideas as to how to find out the truth.
Asking Mr. Dixon got her nowhere.
And heat poured through her body as Lucy stared at him across the room, laughing with that woman. Miss Whatever Her Name Was. She was laughing, and he was laughing, and was that not his hand close to hers?
She couldn’t stand it. She had to get out of here.
Lucy did not know how she managed to stumble out of Lady Romeril’s drawing room, but she found herself not in the hallway, but in what appeared to be a music room.
It was cool, and dark, and it was precisely the place she needed to be to stop thinking about—
“Lady Lucy?”
Dixon’s voice was far too close and Lucy started, astonished to find he was a mere foot behind her. How he had managed to cross the drawing room, slip through the door behind her, and close it without her hearing—and all in a heartbeat—she did not know.
Perhaps a burglar, then?
“Dixon,” she said aloud, a little breathlessly, it had to be said, but he had given her a fright.
That was the only reason. Definitely the only reason.
“I do wish you would call me ‘Ber’—” He halted, pressing his lips together and staring wide-eyed, as if startled that the words had come from his own mouth.
Lucy didn’t know what to do with her hands. She couldn’t have them lying about here, could she? What, just hanging by her sides? What had she always done with them? Oh, dear God, what were hands even for?
“Call me ‘Bernard,’” Dixon said quietly, a wry smile lilting his lips. “If I am truly and legally your ward, there’s no need for the distance between us. The least you can do is treat me like a real friend.”
A real friend.
The trouble was, Lucy didn’t want the man to be her friend. No, she had read sufficient romance novels to realize that the affections stirring within her for this rascal—he had to have been a rascal; he was a criminal—was far more than friendship.
Which was ridiculous. She had a justice system to dismantle and rebuild, and the transportation of criminals to end!
She couldn’t waste time, going about falling in love! And the scandal… No earl’s daughter ever married a criminal. Not knowingly, anyway.
“Then you should call me ‘Lucy,’” her treacherous mouth said.
He clamped his lips together a moment but couldn’t help himself. “Not ‘Mother’?”
“Definitely not ‘Mother.’” She swallowed. “And I’ve yet to see any legal paperwork, so I will stop thinking of you as my ward. F-Friends, then. But even as a friend, I will honor your request and call you ‘Bernard.’ When not around others, of course.”
Bernard smiled, and all she wanted to do was drag her sister into this room and get her to encapsulate the moment in a painting. Evelyn was so talented with a brush, and Lucy wanted to save this moment, this connection between them, forever.
Her stomach lurched. Or maybe she did not want her sister—or anyone else—in the room at just this moment.
“You have been very kind, you know,” Bernard said, stepping toward her.
Lucy took a step back unconsciously, not because she did not wish to be close to him, but because she so desperately wished to be close to him. That was probably not a good instinct to follow.
The back of her legs hit something. A piano stool. She was standing by a pianoforte. “Oh, I haven’t done much. Really, I meant to do more than just bathe and clean you up, b-but there hasn’t been time. That is, you’re already…” She paused.
“Already what?”
“Already so… gentlemanly.” She did not dare mention how he’d charmed at least two women at this very party.
“I see.” He nodded slowly, as if thinking it over. “You know, you said all you’ve done is bathe and clean me—”
She squeaked, realizing her mistake. “Our servants did!”
He chuckled, the sound deep and throaty. “Yes, of course. But you’ve done more than that. You’re among the best people I’ve ever met.”
Lucy’s breath hitched.
“You and your family, I mean,” Bernard said.
Lucy’s spirits deflated. “Oh. Yes. Right.”
And it was right, she told herself sternly, that he recognize what her family had done for him. It wasn’t as though she had a townhouse with spare bedchambers to offer criminals who should by all rights have been on a journey to Australia in this moment.
“But I… I also meant you.”
Was it her imagination, or was Dixon…was Bernard looking at her in a most curious way?