Chapter Nineteen #2
Bernard’s jaw tightened, then he handed his placard to a lady near him and stepped toward Lucy. Every step that he took heightened the tension in her shoulder blades, and she brought her hands together before her in an attempt to prevent herself from launching into his arms.
He’s here.
But is he here for me?
Finally, he had reached her, and excitement welled within Lucy as he cleared his throat, not doubt about to say something truly important.
This was it. This was the moment that decided the rest of her life. What he said to her now was going to dramatically affect the—
“Good afternoon,” Bernard said politely.
“And I love—I beg your pardon?” Lucy said quickly, embarrassment burning through her.
How had she been so foolish as to think that the man had been about to declare his undying love to her! Had she not been the one to tell him to go, had she not been the one to disbelieve and distrust?
What on earth would have changed, Lucy thought frantically, that he would wish to be with me now?
“I said, good afternoon,” repeated Bernard quietly.
A little too quietly. The chant was growing in volume, making it difficult to hear the man.
Ignoring all social niceties, knowing her mother would be keeping a keen eye on her but would hopefully not be able to hear her, Lucy grabbed Bernard’s arm and pulled him along the street away from the protest.
“End transportation! End transportation! End…”
“There,” she said firmly, “we can actually hear each other now.”
“I don’t think we’ve been introduced,” said the man before her lightly.
Lucy blinked. Surely… Surely, this man was Bernard Dixon? There couldn’t have been that many men in the world who were that tall and had that particular flicker of green in their brown eyes?
And he smelled like her Bernard, and he looked…
He was looking at her as though she were the center of the world.
Lucy’s stomach flipped over. She didn’t actually know her Bernard. Even Benjamin hadn’t given her the man’s proper name. “I suppose we haven’t been.”
“No,” said the man before her quietly. “No, not properly. So I thought… I thought I would do that now.”
Excitement fluttered within her. “You did?”
The man she had known as Bernard Dixon bowed with a flourish that was most unlike him, and when he straightened, there was a smile on his face.
“My name is Bertram James Moray, the fourteenth Viscount Moray. I hate swimming, love a fried egg sandwich, and have recently retired from my profession and am looking to marry.”
Hope and shock spiraled through Lucy as she stared. “You… You are?”
“I am, indeed,” said Lord Moray with a grin.
“And you have retired,” Lucy said, her voice catching slightly as she lowered it, “from…from spying?”
“My friend and yours, a man I’ve known as Mr. Obadiah Hovell, has officially written me out of the service,” said Bertram with a wry smile. “So I couldn’t even go back if I wanted. Which I don’t want.”
“End transportation! End transportation! End transportation!”
“And,” continued Lucy, her nerves somehow catching up with her as she looked up into his eyes, suddenly conscious of how close he was, how near he was, how she could just reach out and touch him, “and you are looking to…to marry?”
“Very soon,” murmured the Viscount Moray as he stepped toward her, leaving but an inch between them. “And you are? I do not think we have been formally introduced.”
A laugh escaped her before Lucy could call it back, but it felt natural, it felt right, that here, outside the courthouse where they had first meet, they should meet again for the second time.
“My name is Lucy Alice Chance. Lady Lucy, to those who don’t know me,” Lucy said, her nerves jangling in her lungs as she spoke. “I love swimming, haven’t met a sandwich I don’t like, have recently decided to never retire from campaigning for justice, and am also looking to marry.”
“Oh, is that right?” The Viscount Moray arched a brow.
Lucy nodded, not quite trusting her voice to speak. “Very… Very soon.”
He was so close—so close, she could breathe him in, but it was not close enough and yet Lucy was so painfully aware that they were in public, right on the street, and even if he wanted to kiss her, there was nothing she could—
Bertram kissed her.
It was a gentle kiss, a gentle movement, but Lucy wasn’t having any of that. If she was going to be kissed in public by a gentleman who had a criminal record and who smelled of cedarwood, it was going to be a proper kiss.
Launching herself into his arms, Lucy moaned at the intensity of the sensations of being with him once more. Oh, she had missed this: the way his arm curled perfectly around her waist, the way his tongue sparked pleasure burning through her body, the urgent need tugging between her legs—
“We shouldn’t,” murmured Bertram in a ragged voice as he broke the kiss, though Lucy could not help but notice—through a haze of ardor—that he kept her in his arms.
“We should,” she returned, lifting up her lips again.
“End transportation! End transportation!”
“But all those people—your mother—”
“Bertram Moray, you are going to marry me, aren’t you?” Lucy asked archly, doing her best to raise only one eyebrow but failing miserably.
That probably wasn’t the thing to focus on right now.
His smile was everything. “Try to stop me.”
“Then I think a kiss or two in public is acceptable,” she said smartly, pressing her lips against his own and claiming him for herself.
He was hers. Oh, he had been given into her keeping by Judge Bonner over a month ago, but this was different. Now Lucy was absolutely sure that no matter what happened, no matter what they had to face, not only would they face it together, but they would face it as man and wife.
“Lucy Chance, put that man down!”
It was Lucy this time who broke their kiss, and she did so with a wry smile on her lips. “My mother is here.”
“Yes, she’s waving a notebook at me and mouthing something that could be ‘Kindness is forty percent better,’ but that can’t possibly be right,” said Bertram, shaking his head and evidently quite dazed, though whether from Lucy’s kissing or her mother’s mathematics, she could not tell.
Lucy giggled, stepping just out of his arms to be socially acceptable but keeping close to him. She needed to be close to him. She never wanted to be parted from him again.
The words she had flung at him merely days ago reverberated in her mind.
“I think it is fair to say that you have overstayed your welcome.”
Her smile faltered. “I—I said some terrible things to you.”
Bertram’s own smile did not falter, exactly, but it softened as he looked down at her and said quietly, “We were both overwrought.”
“No, I must apologize. I must make amends,” Lucy said, her sense of justice not allowing her to simply let the moment lie. “When I said—”
“I am not going to rehash the entire discussion from the past,” interrupted Bertram, his gaze affectionate but a strength in his voice that she had never heard before. “It’s our future that concerns me, Lucy, not our past.”
“But… But…” Lucy swallowed.
It did not seem right. She had done wrong, and though she was naturally advocating for judicial reform, she had never gone so far as to argue that there should never be any punishment for wrongs.
Wrongs had to be righted, did they not?
“They do,” replied Bertram quietly, and Lucy flushed to think that she had said at least some of that aloud. “But what did you do wrong but wish to love me? What did you do that was so terrible but request the truth?”
Lucy sighed as the protest chant went on. “I could have asked in a better way.”
“You could’ve, perhaps.” There was a teasing look in his eye now. “And don’t think that I am going to let you forget it. But as for forgiveness… Lucy, I forgave you the instant you spoke. I am not one to hold a grudge. Not anymore.”
And there was a look of peace within him that was again new. Lucy could not help but stare. Was this what love was, then? Always growing, always loving the change, choosing to love, choosing to adore the person to whom you made promises?
Would she be getting to know a new Bernard—a new Bertram every few years? Every few months? Was the excitement of a new connection, a new intimacy, going to be ever present with this man?
“Something has changed,” she said quietly.
Bertram nodded, a wry grin creasing his lips. “I think it’s finally time for me to go back. Back to Moray, back to my past—face it, not flee from it. Become the viscount that my people there need me to be.”
And there it was, that look of peace. Of uncertainty, yes, but also of hope.
Lucy slipped her hand into his and almost sighed aloud at how right it felt. “I cannot wait to see it.”
He looked down at her with a wry arch of his brow. “They may not be that happy to see me. I’ve been gone for so long, and… Well, I did not get the impression that my father treated our servants or tenants very well. It could be an unpleasant homecoming.”
“I’ll be at your side,” Lucy promised, excitement at a new project, a new challenge rising within. “I’m sure if I can give you a chance, they can.”
We can. Her hand went to her stomach. But she couldn’t tell him. Not yet. For now, she wanted to bask in the present. There would someday soon be a more perfect moment to let him know.