Chapter Eighteen #3
“I am no expert in the ways of love, you understand, never having been foolish enough to have encountered it,” Hovell said with a amused shake of his head. “But I know Lucy. She cares for you, Moray. She cares for you deeply. If the two of you were only to talk—”
That was when Bernard noticed it.
Moray. Not Dixon, not even Bernard, but Moray.
His title.
“Why the devil are you addressing me like that?” he asked quietly.
Hovell’s eyes glittered. “You would prefer that I bow when I speak to you, as my social superior?”
“I would prefer to know what the hell is going on,” retorted Bernard, irritation flaring. “I’ve lost the love of my life, I’m about to lose my life’s purpose by leaving the service, and now you turn up looking…looking—hell, looking a gentleman, and you’re telling me about Lucy?”
“Lady Lucy,” corrected Hovell quietly.
Bernard forced down the insult he had been about to throw at the man and snapped, “Oh, so you can call her ‘Lucy,’ but I can’t?”
“Well, yes,” Hovell said lightly, folding his hands in his lap and considering him with a serious expression. “Family has its privileges.”
Family has its privileges.
Bernard stared. He’d been right.
Until mere moments ago, he’d always thought Hovell had been a working man. He’d told him that the very first time they’d met!
Or… Or had he?
“I’ve worked hard to move up in the service.”
Wasn’t that the same thing?
Bernard groaned. What an idiot he’d been. “Obadiah Hovell… or should I say, Mr. Chance?”
“No, actually, my lord, but you’re not far off. Good God, man, I presumed you knew Hovell was an alias from the start.” The man who was apparently not Obadiah Hovell chuckled. “After all, you’re not really Bernard Dixon, are you?”
Utterly bewildered, Bernard clung to the few facts he could be absolutely sure of.
Mostly sure of.
“So I’m not Bernard Dixon, you’re not Obadiah Hovell, but you are a Chance, just not Mr. Chance,” he said slowly, “and…and Lucy loves me?”
“Absolutely besotted with you,” Hovell said brightly, as though discussing the romantic feelings of another came quite naturally to him. “She was weeping when I last met with her”—Bernard groaned, dropping his head into his hands—“but I was able to cheer her up with a fascinating piece of news.”
“Oh, yes?” Bernard said into his hands, his spirits sinking at yet another revelation that was about to turn his life around.
Dear God, I can’t keep up with all this…
“Yes, I told her that I was Hovell.”
That was enough to make Bernard sit up and stare at the man opposite him. “But… But you are Hovell.”
“Yes, I know that,” replied the man politely.
“No, but I mean—I mean, if you had to tell her that you were Hovell, that means she had no idea,” Bernard said slowly, staring in utter confusion at the man who could well have been from Timbuctoo for all he knew of him. “No idea what you do.”
“No, I haven’t been in the habit of telling my family what I do. Most spies don’t. In fact, Lucy is the first to know, but needs must, and I suppose I am a bit of a romantic.” And there was a look of hesitancy, just for a moment, before Hovell—or not Hovell—said, “You must go back to her, Moray.”
“Why? What is it to you?” Bernard shot back, rising to his feet now, his frustration and confusion all tumbling out of his mouth.
“Because I care about her happiness. Dear God, I may even care about yours.” Hovell the mysterious Chance cousin did not stand and merely looked up at him with a wry smile. “Do I have your word that you will go back to her?”
Somehow, this had transformed into a negotiation, and Bernard tugged a hand through his wild hair and wished to goodness that someone would start making sense, him or Hovell. Not Hovell. Damn it!
“Because if you don’t want to go back to her, I need to know now so I can start to make…
preparations,” said the Chance, and now he had risen and dropped his smile.
He looked serious, far more serious than Bernard had ever seen him.
“Lucy matters to me, she matters to all of us, and if you are not going to marry her—”
“I would marry Lady Lucy Chance tomorrow if the opportunity presented itself, but she doesn’t want me, man!
” Bernard burst out, his shame and pain at her rejection making it all the more worse as he couldn’t yell the man’s proper title.
“And forgive me, but if you’re not a Mr. Chance, then who are you, sir?
Lucy mentioned cousins, but there were always so many… ”
“I knew you’d get it. Can’t blame you for not picking out the exact name and title, though.” The man chuckled, placing a hand on Bernard’s shoulder and shaking his head slowly. “You know, I can’t wait to attend your wedding. I think it’s going to be brilliant. My favorite yet.”
“Damn it, man, which one are you?!” Bernard ground out, twisting his shoulder away from the man’s touch and glaring at the knowing smile.
The man’s smile broadened. “Why, I am Lord Benjamin Chance, second son to the former Marquess of Aylesbury…and I told Lucy just yesterday, ‘He loves you. Give him a chance.’”