Chapter Twenty
“I always knew that it would take a special one to tempt my Lucy to give up the Chance name.” The Earl of Lindow playfully nudged Bertram with such force, the younger man almost fell off his chair. “And here you are!”
“Yes, here he is,” quipped Percy from the other side of the dining table. “Criminal—”
“Spy,” interjected Benjamin with a wink to Bertram that he was almost certain no one else noticed.
“And viscount!” added the countess enthusiastically.
“And a very good man,” added Lucy with a roll of her eyes. “Honestly, you lot, you’re so fixated on the wrong things!”
Laughter rippled through the dining room as Percy and his sister got into a quibbling match and Benjamin leaned across the table to pass the wine, the footmen having been dismissed as soon as the food had been served.
“No need for them to have the whole story,” Bertram’s future father-in-law had quipped.
Bertram laughed with the others as Percy and Lucy continued to bicker, a little dazed at the power of such merriment.
He was here with his family.
His family.
Dear God, he could barely remember his birth family. He had no memories of laughing around a dining table, no jesting with a sibling, no ease with a parent.
It was all so new…and yet so welcome. So warming.
Belonging.
“And I have to say, I never truly believed you were a dastardly criminal with no morals,” said the earl formally.
“Thank you, my lord,” Bertram said with a chuckle. “Even if I don’t quite believe you.”
The mock outrage in the man’s face was accompanied by laughter from his wife on the other side of the table.
“He has you there, Lindow, right enough! I, on the other hand—”
“Don’t even try to pretend you all knew the truth,” Lucy interjected, her hand moving to take Bertram’s as the room echoed with laughter. “None of us had any idea.”
“It was a shock to us all,” said Benjamin gravely.
Bertram worked hard not to roll his eyes. The man was pushing it a tad, wasn’t he?
After all, Lucy and he had been sworn to secrecy by Benjamin, who was apparently going to continue his clandestine activities as Obadiah Hovell—something he was certain he could keep from the rest of the family.
Now, it wasn’t up to Bertram to disagree with the man…but this Chance family did not appear to be the best at keeping secrets. From what Bertram could see, it surely wouldn’t be long before the scandal of Benjamin’s secret activities would be out into the light…
“So tell me,” said Percy, interrupting Bertram’s thoughts as he waved a fork toward his future brother-in-law. “What did you get up to? You know, as a spy.”
Lucy groaned. “Perce! You can’t be that dense!”
“What?” said the man, wide-eyed and looking around for familial support.
“You are being a tad tense, dear,” said his mother fondly. “At least ten percent more dense than usual, in fact.”
Bertram laughed with the others as the earl said, “You can’t honestly think that the man is permitted to reveal such things?”
“Yes, spying is, I would imagine, a serious business,” Benjamin said lightly, sipping his red wine. “Not that I would know much about such things, of course.”
This time, Bertram could not help but roll his eyes, but he did so while catching Lucy’s gaze beside him and his insides melted.
Lucy. She was so beautiful. Not just on the outside, though Bertram would be the first to admit that he most definitely admired the outside of his bride-to-be…but it was her inner character that really drew him back to her again and again.
She was so kind. So utterly thoughtless when it came to herself. She willingly sacrificed her own time and at times, her own reputation for the causes she believed in.
Bertram swallowed. And one of those causes she believed in…was him.
“I don’t suppose you can even tell us a small story,” Percy was saying.
“If you don’t knock it off…” Lucy began threateningly.
“Has he told you any of it?”
Bertram squeezed Lucy’s hand under the table as she replied haughtily to her brother, “I would never expect him to betray the secrets he was entrusted with.”
Percy grinned. “So that’s a yes, then?”
“Percy!”
The mingled cry from Lucy and both parents made Bertram laugh, and that laughter was caught up by the rest of the table. Merriment flowed from person to person, and Bertram could hardly believe that for them, for the Chances, this was every day.
They had welcomed him in, believed his explanations, and been mostly respectful of his inability to go into details of the past. But the most important thing was that they were happy for Lucy to marry him.
“Right, that’s enough of that. We can’t pester the man all night,” said the earl firmly, finally forcing his son to quieten—though his eyes did twinkle. “We have the rest of our lives to do that, don’t we, Lucy?”
“We do, indeed, though I am not sure you’ll get much more out of him.” Lucy smiled prettily, evidently relieved for the redirection. “Benjamin, what news of the Aylesbury Chances?”
The chatter meandered into family matters, something Bertram could enjoy but did not particularly follow.
Names such as Samuel, Rose, and Frank—that name of Lady Frank, he would not soon forget—flittered into the conversation, the news of Jessica and Kathleen both with child drawing cheers of delight from the family, and a brief mention of a Michael causing dark looks between the elder couple and a flush of concern in the brother.
Interesting.
Bertram caught himself just in time. He was no longer a spy; he did not have to be gathering information at every moment, constantly noting down where people were sitting and all the little flickers of nuance that passed them.
He was free from that life, free from the tension that he could be attacked at any time, free from living in prisons to gather information and reporting back to Hovell—to Benjamin.
Now that was a confusion he would have to keep an eye on. It would never do to reveal that particular connection to the family.
“He’s a tad discontented, to my mind,” Benjamin was saying with a shrug. “But I am sure old Michael will get back to his old ways soon enough.”
Bertram was not imagining it; there was a look of concern shared between the Earl and Countess of Lindow.
Perhaps Lucy had seen it too, for she leaned forward and asked nonchalantly, “You saw Uncle Frederick and Aunt Edie back at Stanphrey Lacey. Did they mention Michael?”
Definitely a look of concern.
“No, not at all, not even a little bit,” said the earl hastily.
Far too hastily.
It was his wife who rolled her eyes. “Oh, yes, that is most reassuring, Lindow.”
“But all I said was—”
“Fifteen percent too eager,” interrupted the countess, winking at Bertram. “Don’t you think, Lord Moray?”
Lord Moray.
It was strange, being addressed like that, by his title. Bertram was sure he would grow accustomed to it in time, but Lord Moray had always been his father, a distant man to whom he could not talk and whom he had not seen in the last few years of the man’s life.
To be spoken to as Lord Moray now…it tied a line to him and his family that Bertram had ignored for many years.
He smiled. “Exactly fifteen percent too eager, I would say. If you want someone to believe you—”
“Here we go; here’s the good stuff!” said Percy eagerly.
“Percy!”
Bertram chuckled as Lucy chastised her brother most excellently with just two syllables.
“To be believed, you must speak steadily. Don’t hesitate; that sounds like you’re about to make something up.
Don’t rush, though, because that clearly shows you are attempting to rush to the end and escape the lies. ”
“All these things we can learn,” said Benjamin quietly, leaning back in his chair. “What an education.”
Oh, really!
But Bertram could not complain, really, as the conversation meandered around him, Percy and his mother discussing whether she had ever caught him out in a lie as a youth, and Benjamin, Lucy, and her father chatting about precisely when the various branches of the Chance family would go back to Stanphrey Lacey.
They had welcomed him in. They had taken the news that the man they had thought had been a criminal was actually a spy—oh, and a viscount—and they had accepted it all.
They had accepted him.
“Right, that’s enough of the men’s nonsense,” said Lady Lindow happily, kissing her husband on the cheek. “I think it’s time to withdraw, don’t you, Lucy?”
“Anything to get away from this rabble.” Her daughter smirked before she kissed Bertram on the cheek. “Except you, obviously.”
Percy crowed as Bertram flushed, but he could hardly argue with the woman.
“Well, we are delighted to be rid of you,” the Lord Lindow said brightly as the two ladies rose in a rush of silks and started to make their way to the door. “Delighted!”
Bertram smirked as the countess halted by the door. “Are you actually?”
Her husband’s eye twinkled. “Fifty-fifty chance I’m lying.”
The room was filled with laughter again and though Bertram joined it, it was with a twinge of sadness that Lucy had departed from the room.
That was the trouble with being so damned in love with the woman. He wanted to spend every single moment with her. Any moment not with her, in fact, was a moment wasted.
“Cigar?” his future father-in-law offered, and as Bertram politely declined, he said, “You know, I am dashed happy to see my daughter so happy. One worries about one’s children, you know—”
“Papa!”
“And I worry about my son the most,” the earl continued with a grin. “Oh don’t give me that look, Percy. You’ve not courted a woman for ages and I want grandchildren!”
“So no pressure,” Benjamin said in an undertone even as the older man’s face flushed.
“I didn’t… Damn it, I didn’t mean…” The earl sighed. “I suppose I should be grateful that your mother wasn’t here to hear that.”
“Yes, you should,” said Percy quietly.
Bertram looked between them, utterly at sea. Something had been said, clearly, that had pained the three men seated around the table with him, and yet he could not spot it. It did not exactly bode well for his status as a spy—his old status.