Chapter Eight #3
“No, really lovely,” said Bernard, staring at her instead of where they were going. Such gorgeous hair, such a delicate mouth—
“Come on, almost there,” said Lucy in a bracing manner.
Was she holding him up? No, that couldn’t have been. He was a strong man—very strong. The strongest!
Bernard grinned lazily as they turned a corner onto her street. “Lovely Lucy. My lovely Lucy.”
“You might want to cease speaking such nonsense when we get in,” Lucy said darkly, though with a little puff in her voice.
Were they walking too fast? And why was the world tilting, anyway? Bernard could not understand it. He was certainly walking upright, had never walked more upright in his life, always been upright, always would be upright, upright was the very best—
“Bernard!”
All of a sudden, the disobliging world had tipped to its side. Most inconvenient, Bernard thought hazily as the world went a step further and blurred. Dashed inconvenient. Maybe if he just shut his eyes…
When he opened them, the world was the right way round. It was not blurred. But it was also now a bed.
“Rest, and plenty of broth, and keep an eye on that bandage,” a voice was saying from a long way away. “And send for me if he starts to speak nonsense again.”
“I shall try to tell what is regular nonsense and what is illness nonsense,” came Lucy’s voice, the laughter in her tones evident even from here.
Bernard blinked. Where was he?
The bedchamber came into focus. It was his bedchamber—at least, the room the Chances had kindly given him for his indefinite stay. He was in bed, he was in a set of nightclothes that were not his own, and his head hurt.
Bernard raised a hand to his head.
“Do not touch that!” Lucy strode across the bedchamber, snatched his hand, and forced it to his side.
“Ouch!”
“It’ll be more than ouch if you disturb that bandage,” she said menacingly, though there was a smile dancing about her lips as she sat in the chair by his bedside. “How do you feel?”
“‘Feel’?” repeated Bernard.
Like I’ve been whacked rather thoroughly on the head with a horse, was what he wanted to say.
But it was then that he spotted the fear in her eyes. Fear, for him.
Not of him. For him.
“Tired,” he said eventually, which was the truth. He felt like he hadn’t slept for a thousand years.
“That is to be expected. Only you,” Lucy said with a wry smile, “could go for a walk to stretch your legs in one of the most refined towns in all England and be set upon by Frenchmen within five minutes.”
Bernard smiled weakly. “Yes.”
“I suppose they wanted you to return to your criminal ways and undertake some—some nefarious task!” Lucy continued, her eyes bright.
Oh, this woman. It was still a game to her in so many ways, Bernard could see that—but in a way, he would like to keep it that way. She was genuine in her desire to do good and who knew, maybe she would save someone else’s life for real one of these days.
And she worried about him.
“I am not going to return to that way of life,” Bernard said aloud.
Which was true.
Lucy beamed. “I knew you wouldn’t be tempted back to your old ways—you fought them off, didn’t you? You could have gone along with them willingly.”
Bernard spent five seconds pondering precisely what would have happened if he had gone along with the four Frenchmen willingly.
Then he put the disturbing images out of his mind. “I was certainly not going to go with them.”
“I am proud of you, Bernard—Mr. Dixon, I mean,” Lucy corrected hastily, glancing over her shoulder at the surgeon, who appeared to be writing out a bill. “You had the opportunity, the temptation of crime, and you resisted. I am reforming you.”
Bernard smiled. “That you are.”
He couldn’t tell her. He could not burst her bubble and reveal that in actual fact, he was one of the most law-abiding citizens in the country. She was so…so happy to think that she had rescued him.
Who was he to take that away from her?
“I suppose you’re relieved,” he said aloud. “Perhaps you were worried Judge Bonner would fine you if he found out I broke the law again.”
“Oh, Judge Bonner could not care less what happened to you after he placed you in my custody,” Lucy said brightly, though she added hastily, “which, of course, is quite wrong. It’s…
Well, it was me. I decided to follow you.
I wanted to make sure—I mean, you could have come to harm.
And you did. And it’s my pet project. You are, that is. My pet. My pet project.”
Bernard tried to feel upset about this but found that he couldn’t. Any attention this fine woman wanted to give him, he would take.
“Now, let me read to you,” Lucy said, jumping up to grab one of the books he had brought up from the library. “We ought to be spending more time together. I mean, our time together…engaging in more beneficial, instructive activities. Poetry?”
Perhaps he had been killed in that alleyway and gone to heaven. Bernard smiled. “Wordsworth, please.”
Lucy smiled, opened up the book where his bookmark—a scrap of newspaper—had been, and began to read. “‘My heart leaps up when I behold / A rainbow in the sky…’”