Chapter Ten
Bernard forced down the panic and attempted to act like a rational human being.
“Lucy!” he bellowed.
The Lindow Chance townhouse echoed with the two syllables he had just roared—which now that he came to think about it, was perhaps not the most rational way to go about finding someone.
But it was uncanny; sometimes the woman was completely impossible to find, which made absolutely no sense. The place was only so large!
Fine, it was quite large, Bernard observed frantically as he opened the door to the drawing room and took in its emptiness for the third time in a row. Most townhouses were not double-fronted. Most townhouses did not have a morning room and a drawing room and a library and—
“Mr. Dixon?” came a refined, slightly confused voice. “Are you quite well?”
Ah. Yes, the bellowing had definitely been too much.
He had not initially noticed that the drawing room was in fact not actually empty. Curled up in the window seat was a woman of mature years who was smiling with a look that was far too knowing.
“Lady Lindow,” Bernard said awkwardly, stepping into the room and bowing to the countess. “I… I did not see you there.”
“No doubt, as you are clearly not in the hunt for me,” came the lady’s lighthearted reply.
“You know, with fourteen rooms in this house, but obviously with a different usage distribution accounting both for room use and time of day, you actually had an eighteen percent chance of finding her in here.”
Bernard blinked as he stepped over to the seated woman. “Oh. Right. Good?”
It was one of the quirks of the countess, he had discovered shortly after moving into the Lindow household. Mathematics. Not a subject he had relished at Eton—not that he had let slip to any of the Chances that he had been at Eton.
It was a good thing, really, that his hair had darkened from the white blond of youth to this chestnut brown, or else he was worried Percy might have recognized him.
But the countess could not drag herself away from mathematics, offering statistics and numbers at every possible juncture.
“Eighteen percent.” She nodded sagely, holding up the book she had been reading—or not reading, as Bernard had initially thought, but writing in. A notebook. “Would you like to see my working?”
“No, thank you,” Bernard said hastily. If he never saw an equation again, he would be all the better for it. “No, I… I was looking for Lucy. Lady Lucy.”
“Yes, I gathered that.” Her mother regarded him curiously, and it was with a twist within him that he realized he was in great danger here of giving quite the wrong impression.
That was, the right impression, but he certainly did not wish anyone to know about his feelings for Lady Lindow’s daughter. His feelings he did not quite understand, refused to investigate, and was attempting to ignore.
Pathetically, as it turned out.
But what was he going to do, offer marriage?
Marriage to Bernard Dixon, a false name for a person who did not legally exist? A criminal no earl would want marrying his daughter?
Oh, perhaps the heir to the Viscount Moray could approach an earl and ask for his daughter’s hand in marriage…but Bernard had said goodbye that to that life long ago, and even after he was done with Hovell, he could not go back to it.
If he was done with Hovell, that was. When was the blaggard going to contact him?
“We had an appointment to walk along the beach with Lord Percy,” Bernard said aloud, hoping that if he spoke in a calm and rational manner, then he would start to think calm and rational thoughts. “But I cannot find her for the life of me.”
“Well, it is near the end of the month, isn’t it?” the countess said lightly, turning a page in her notebook.
Bernard blinked. “It is? I mean, yes, it is, but—”
“So given that it is around luncheon, I would suggest you have the best odds trying George’s study,” finished Lady Lindow with a smile.
Bernard blinked again, the conversation somehow slipping away from him. “‘George’?”
“The Earl of Lindow.” His wife grinned. “I am almost certain she is in there. She usually is, about this time.”
Which made absolutely no sense to Bernard. True, he had found her writing letters there a few times, but that was typically after her father had finished in there. Why on earth it being luncheon, and near the end of the month, mattered, Bernard could not say.
“Right. Well, thank you,” said Bernard helplessly.
There was only one thing to do. Try the study.
He could hear her voice before he even opened the door—before he even reached it. There was a lightness to Lucy’s voice that Bernard had never heard in another. That, or he had just never noticed it before.
He was not going to interrogate precisely what that meant.
“—and that’s a shilling extra because I know—no, I know you deserve it and I won’t take a penny of it back,” came Lucy’s voice, cheerful and stern all at the same time.
Bernard smirked. No one gave orders like Lucy.
“And Miss Sharp, here’s half a crown, and I hope that you will…in the future?”
The middle of her sentence had become muffled, overcome by the cries of delight from a woman who sounded young—very young. A child.
Bernard stepped to the door of the study, which was slightly ajar, his eyes widening as he looked through it.
There was Lucy, seated in the chair behind the desk, imperious and yet warm like an empress. And there were—goodness, at least five other women in there, ranging in ages and all attired in clothing more akin to a servant. A servant who had fallen on hard times.
What on earth is going on?
“And here’s a crown for you, Mrs. Marithorpe,” Lucy said, handing over something that glittered in the streaming sunlight, “and can I entrust you with these three shillings for Miss Simons? I see she was unable to be here today.”
The clink of coins, and murmured thanks, and gratitude pouring off the women… Bernard groaned.
She was giving them money.
Oh, he was all for the support of the poor. He’d known poor people, especially since he had started working for Hovell, and most of them were good sorts born to poor parents or fallen on hard times themselves and having to work laborious jobs to make any sort of shift for themselves.
They were not bad people. They were in bad situations.
But just handing over money like that—oh, Lucy. That was not the way to do it.
She’s making herself a target.
The thought flickered through Bernard’s mind before he could call it back, but it was true.
If the woman started handing over money at a moment’s notice—and based on the small amount of time he had been standing out here, she was giving away a great deal—it would not be long before someone, and it would be an unpleasant someone, decided to relieve her of all such coin in one go.
Bernard leaned his head against the doorframe and winced. She meant well. Oh, he had never met anyone who meant better.
But she was a danger to herself, his Lucy.
Not his Lucy. Obviously.
Bernard straightened up and cleared his throat. Definitely not his Lucy.
“And I have three extra pennies here, so whom have I forgotten?”
Well, time to end this charade. It couldn’t go on. Her parents certainly could not know the danger she was putting herself in, Bernard observed darkly, or else they would have forbidden such a thing.
Charity was all very well, but it did not begin at home.
Wait a moment. He’d gotten tangled there.
“Ah, Bernard!”
Bernard stiffened. So much for being a clever spy and skulking about the place. He’d been spotted.
Opening the study door, he smiled weakly at the gaggle of ladies who peered at him curiously. “Good afternoon.”
The study was just as it had been the last time he had visited. A relatively small room that felt smaller thanks to the number of people within it, but big enough for a desk, a chair either side, two bookcases, a globe, and a cabinet that presumably was used for paperwork.
Just like his father’s study.
Do not think about that.
“Let me introduce you,” Lucy said eagerly, as though these poor people were some sort of pets. Rather like himself, now that he came to think of it. “This is Mrs. John Marithorpe, and Miss Mildred Sharpe and…”
The names rolled in and out of Bernard’s mind in a moment. All he could do was look at Lucy and sigh.
The brightness in her eyes, the clear joy in her mouth, the relaxation on her brow: yes, she thought she was doing something wonderful, and in a way, she was. These ladies would be able to feed themselves and their families today thanks to Lady Lucy Chance’s munificence.
A munificence which could end quite sharply if it were Lucy stuck in an alleyway, and not Bernard Dixon.
The fear of such a thing occurring rose swiftly within his mind, but Bernard used it, twisted it into determination, and let it burn within him. He would have to have a little talk with Lady Lucy.
“Until next month, then,” Lucy was saying, inclining her head to the women who were dropping deep curtseys to the pair of them. “Good day, and thank you.”
‘Thank you’? She was thanking them for allowing her to give them money?
Bernard could not help but shake his head as the door closed behind the last of them and he dropped into the chair opposite her. “Oh, Lucy.”
“You were listening? You know, as part of your gentlemanly education, I shall have to add a lesson on listening at doors,” Lucy said with a grin. “Honestly, Bernard!”
Honestly, Bernard thought that was the least of their worries. “Oh, Lucy, I have so much to teach you.”
All too late, he heard the suggestive nature of his statement.
Lucy raised both eyebrows. “Goodness. When is this lesson to begin?”
Do not think about it. Do not think about it. “Right now.”
The damned minx wiggled in her seat and looked at him with wide, expectant eyes.
Did she have any idea—
But of course she didn’t, Bernard reminded himself sternly. She was an innocent. She was the daughter of an earl. Though she did her best with this Prison Reform Society business, she was never truly going to understand the plight of the unfortunate.
No matter how many shillings she gave them.