Chapter Eleven
Lucy did her best not to giggle as her brother tugged awkwardly at his cravat, but it was amusing.
And delightful, honestly, to watch her brother suffer.
“I just don’t understand why we all have to go,” huffed Percy, wriggling his shoulders as though his shirt were too tight. “I understand why you two have to go—”
“Oh, yes, well, condemn me to ten years’ hard labor!” jested the Earl of Lindow with a wink for his son, before a look of instant remorse overtook him. “No offense meant you understand, Dixon.”
Lucy stifled a smile as Bernard snickered.
“None taken,” said their guest. “Here, Lord Percy, let me help you with—yes, it’s twisted. Give me a moment.”
They had been attempting to be ready for at least twenty minutes, but as far as Lucy could see, they were no closer to leaving to attend the Keystones’ ball than they had been an hour ago.
Her father couldn’t decide what cravat to wear, his valet hovering around him attempting to just tie one, any one around his neck; her brother had somehow managed to get his suspenders twisted with his cravat, which, as far as Lucy could tell, was a minor miracle; and her mother hadn’t come down yet.
“Dodo!” yelled the earl.
“Coming!”
“You said that twenty minutes ago!”
“I’m still technically correct!”
The earl muttered something under his breath that Lucy did not catch, but she did spot the soft smile on her father’s face.
Perhaps it was unusual, to have two parents who so evidently cared for each other. It was all Lucy had known, and it was exactly what she and Evelyn had both said they would want from their husbands.
If she married at all, that was.
Evelyn had, and Viscount Sempill treated her as though she could walk on water. And Bernard…
Lucy flushed as her thoughts meandered to the man who absolutely could not be her husband. He was laughing with Percy, who was jesting back, a natural ease between the two men that felt warm and yet not overstepping any boundaries.
Not that Lucy was particularly sure what the boundaries were supposed to be now.
The five of them had fallen into an easy rhythm that made Lucy wonder how they had ever lived without Bernard Dixon. The man was charming, easy to converse with, and a terrible charades player. He also had an exquisite taste in poetry.
Every day provided new opportunities to know him better…and to like him better.
Which was precisely the problem.
“Thank you, Dixon,” Percy was saying just as their father’s valet finally managed to get a cravat on him. “Ah, and here’s Mama!”
Lucy beamed at her mother. “You look lovely.”
She did. Her mother’s beauty had not faded with years, just deepened.
Her hair was silvering at the temples and there were lines around her eyes—laughter lines, the countess always said, evidence of all the joy her family gave her—but she was still recognizable as the woman who had caught the Earl of Lindow’s eye and never let him go.
“So do you, dear,” her mother returned, pulling on her gloves distractedly. “So do—goodness. You really have put in an effort.” She had made the final remark as she looked up and took Lucy in properly, which only made her daughter flush all the more.
So what if she had put it in a little more time with Beachem? It was only natural, after all. There were few balls in Brighton to which the Chances were not invited, but very few her parents could be persuaded to attend, and so it was worth the time, wasn’t it?
The fact that Mr. Bernard Dixon would be accompanying her?
Oh, that was neither here nor there.
Lucy had not yet managed to persuade herself of that particular truth, and she had a feeling her mother might be just as inconvincible. Not that the countess would seriously encourage a match between her daughter and a criminal.
She wondered, then, if the countess only hoped for some light flirtation. Perhaps to warm her daughter up to seek love from a more appropriate match.
Lucy sighed at the thought. She’d rather become a spinster than think of Bernard as a stepping stone to some pompous lord’s arrogant son. At least her causes would sustain her.
Ignorant of her daughter’s thoughts, the Countess of Lindow was practically dancing and darting her gaze to their guest as she said, “Doesn’t she look lovely, George?”
“—perhaps should have gone for the blue—what?” The earl looked up distractedly from his weary valet. “Good God, Lucy, are you wearing something fashionable?”
“It’s not that fashionable! It’s not new; it’s one of Evelyn’s—it’s just a gown,” Lucy said defensively, clasping her hands before her.
Precisely why she should feel so defensive about a blasted gown, she did not know. True, it was more fashionable than the typical fare she attired herself with. Most of her pin money was spent on the Prison Reform Society, and she was usually quite happy to make do with last Season’s style.
But for some reason, not today. No particular reason. No specific reason whatsoever.
“I’ll be fighting young men off for you with a stick,” opined Percy generously as he nudged Bernard. “Don’t you think, Dixon?”
Lucy felt the burning heat rise past her décolletage, up her neck, into her face, but there did not appear to be anything she could do to prevent the unpleasant heat prickling across her skin.
She would just have to hope she didn’t look like a strawberry.
She certainly did not appear to look like a strawberry if Bernard’s response was anything to go by.
He had turned, cast his attention up and down her in a way that was scintillating, and murmured words that could have been, “Very nice.”
Or perhaps she was so hot she was hallucinating any word that rhymed like ice.
‘Very nice’? ‘Very nice’?
Was that all? After Beachem had spent hours crimping and prepping and tidying and pinning—
“Right, well, that’s us ready,” her father said, cutting into her thoughts. “Now, we’ve got two carriages, too many of us for one. You young things take the second, and we’ll be there in no time.”
They were there in half an hour. Percy had forgotten his gloves, the countess had taken an absolute age calculating the best possible route and instructing their weary driver, and by the time they’d arrived outside the Keystones’ townhouse, it was to discover that everyone else who’d been invited had also been running late, and so about fifty carriages were all attempting to drop off their inhabitants at the same time.
“Absolute rabble,” Lucy’s father was saying by the time they stepped into the hallway and gave a trio of harassed-looking footmen their outer garments. “I don’t know why the Keystones thought they needed to invite so many people. A smaller gathering is always preferable.”
“Oh, you’re getting old, dear,” Lucy’s mother said brightly, making Lucy grin and Percy snort. “The young people like to have plenty of people to talk to and admire, don’t they, children?”
“I’m seven and twenty years old, Mama,” Percy reminded her in a mutter as the five of them stepped into the ballroom.
“And you’ll always be my baby, dear,” said Lady Lindow fondly.
The conversation probably continued, but Lucy did not continue following it. That was because she was lost in the eyes of the most handsome man she had ever met.
Bernard Dixon had taken her arm.
It was not a casual movement. It was purposeful, almost possessive in the way he drew her to himself, and Lucy allowed herself to be pulled.
It was somehow wonderful, a man taking charge of her like this, in public.
It marked her out as his, in a way so subtle, she was not even sure she entirely understood it.
Lucy glanced up and caught his eye, and Bernard’s small smile was enough to vibrate something new through her that she had never known before.
Except that one time he had kissed her.
Lucy swallowed. I am not going to lose my head, she told herself firmly. No, not in the slightest. She was not going to allow herself to be overtaken by desire, and she certainly was not going to trick herself into believing there was a future here.
At some point, and that point would have to come soon, she would need to sit down with Bernard—with Dixon, and make a plan.
“And if you just give them money, well, it makes them think they can just expect money from anyone, at any time—but particularly you. They need to work for it. They need to learn how to earn it.”
It had been playing on her mind since their conversation in the study. Was she not guilty of doing precisely what she had said people must not do—giving him a comfortable life and not giving him the opportunity to earn it? To respect himself?
Bernard squeezed her hand. “You do look lovely.”
Or perhaps, Lucy thought as she melted, I can just keep him as a pet for the rest of my life.
“I just hope I shall remember all the steps you have taught me,” he continued, wincing. “It is far more complicated than it looks, isn’t it?”
“You’ll be marvelous,” Lucy said fondly, patting him on the arm and congratulating herself on preparing the man so well for such a genteel evening.
“Ah, Miss Eaton,” came Bernard’s voice, and this statement was not directed to her but to someone else, which jolted Lucy out of her reverie. “So lovely to see you again.”
It was only when her mind decided to get back into gear—Cousin Frank would have been proud of her—and Lucy saw who was approaching them that she realized just how quickly a ball could go from good to bad.
It was Miss Eaton. Miss Eaton, from Lady Romeril’s card party. The beauty, the woman no man present had been able to stop looking at.
And it was clear, Lucy saw with sinking spirits, that it was going to be just the same here at the Keystones’ ball.
Heads turned as Miss Eaton approached them with a woman who had to have been her mother.
Also stunning, Lucy thought bitterly. Why was it that beauty was something one inherited and could not be worked on?
Oh, Beachem could apply rouge here and there, some color for her lips, but no one could make anyone look like her.