Chapter Twenty #2
It was going to take a while to get used to that.
“Lucy and Percy’s sister, Evelyn, has been married these last twelve months,” said Benjamin in an undertone as the father and son started bickering about the latter’s marital prospects. “And there has been no child.”
Bertram’s stomach lurched. “Oh.”
“It is not much talked of. I don’t even know if they want a family,” said Benjamin with a shrug.
He couldn’t help it. “You haven’t espied that information yet?”
Perhaps it was going too far, but his old spy handler merely gave him a grin. “Not yet.”
“Oh, blast, there’s no brandy,” the earl was saying, glancing about the dining room. “Percy, tug on the bell pull, will you, and Cawthorne—”
“No need to bother Cawthorne. I’ll get it.
The brandy is in the drawing room, isn’t it?
” said Bertram, rising to his feet. When he saw the gentlemen’s slackened jaws, he had to bite his lower lip to keep from laughing.
“I’m so accustomed to living without servants, I’m not quite sure what the Moray household will make of me. ”
“They’ll like you well enough if you pay them well enough,” said the earl sagely. “But thank you, Moray. Most kind.”
The chatter continued in the dining room as Bertram stepped out. It was only a few steps across the hallway to the drawing room, and in truth, he had volunteered to retrieve the liquor so that he could be gifted a few moments with Lucy.
As it turned out, he did not need to step forward to gain them.
“Oh, you’re out early,” she said brightly, stepping out of the drawing room with the decanter of brandy in her hand. The door snapped shut behind her. “Mama thought that you menfolk might want a drink.”
“She didn’t want to keep it for herself?” quipped Bertram, his spirits rising as they always did whenever he was in Lucy’s presence.
Her smile grew. “What makes you think she hasn’t already had a taste?”
He laughed as he stepped before her, and Lucy placed the brandy on the console table by the door to offer out her hands.
Bertram took them and could have wept at the warmth that spread through him at the merest contact. Going home was not something he had ever looked forward to, but he understood why now. Returning to Moray wasn’t going home. Being with Lucy was.
“I am so grateful to you,” he said quietly as the murmur of the men’s chatter in the dining room continued behind him.
“‘Grateful’?” Lucy blinked up at him, evidently confused. “What on earth are you grateful to me for?”
“You have seen me and loved me for who I am, not—not what I am. Does that make sense?” It barely made sense to Bertram, and it was his thought.
Her expression softened. “Sort of. But I think really I am the one who should be thanking you.”
“Me?” Bertram could not conceive of a single thing he had done for the woman before him that would require thanks.
Lucy nodded slowly. “Yes. You… You make me see the world differently. You open it up, change it somehow to make it… Oh, I don’t know. Friendlier. More intriguing.”
His low chuckle was hopefully not audible to either the drawing or the dining room. “I am flattered.”
“Good. You should be.” Lucy’s smile faded. “There’s… There’s something you’re not telling me, isn’t there?”
Bertram’s stomach lurched.
Yes, he wanted to say. Yes, how much I adore you.
How I would give my life for you. How I’m afraid that when I take you to Moray, it’s not going to be perfect, and you deserve perfection.
How I’m worried that when we go up to the north and you’ll be far from your family, that you’ll miss them so much that your love for me will be overcome by missing them.
But it wasn’t that which was weighing on him. It was something quite different, something that Hovell—that Benjamin had said.
And he had to tell her.
“Yes,” he said quietly.
Lucy’s features arranged themselves into a picture of calm that he knew was not exactly false, but most definitely designed to prepare herself for something truly terrible.
Which, in a way, it was.
“I am ready,” said Lucy quietly, then her eyes widened. “No, wait, I’m not.”
Turning away from him, she picked up the decanter of brandy from the console table, took out the stopper, took a large inhale, winced, then replaced the stopper before returning the decanter to the table.
Bertram stared.
“What?” said Lucy, more than a spot defensively. “Fine, now I’m ready.”
Good God, he could spend the rest of his life with this woman and he would still never truly understand her…
“It’s just…when Hovell came to see me in London—”
“Ah, yes, our good friend Obadiah,” said Lucy with a grin, her gaze flickering for a moment away from him and to the dining room door behind him. Then she returned her focus to him, and once again, it was concerned. “You’re not going back to spying, are you?”
“No! No, not at all,” Bertram said hastily, taking her hands in his and glorifying in the connection that immediately steadied him. Just tell her. “There was a letter from Hovell waiting for me and… Well, it turned out the plans for my mission had not entirely gone to…gone to…”
“Plan?” added Lucy helpfully.
Bertram smiled ruefully. “Just so. It seems that if you had not been there in that courtroom, facing down that judge and demanding the end to transportation… Well. It is very likely no one would have rescued me.”
Lucy’s brow furrowed. “I don’t understand.”
“The plan was always that Hovell would come and rescue me before I was actually shipped out,” Bertram said slowly, a shiver running through him at the very thought. “But his message had been mislaid. No one was coming to save me. Without you, I would have been halfway to Australia right now.”
The expression on Lucy’s face was one of absolute horror. “No.”
“I’m afraid so,” said Bertram, his own stomach twisting in dread at what could have been.
No one would have believed him. Who would believe a convicted criminal who would clearly have been lying in an attempt to escape the condemnation of transportation?
“You saved me,” he said quietly, lifting a hand to push a curl back behind Lucy’s ear and marveling at the fact that he was to be given the honor of being this woman’s husband for the rest of his life. “You saved me, Lucy.”
The kiss was gentle, and earnest, and needed in that moment. Bertram had to be close to her, had to know she was there, that he had not dreamed her—though she was far more than he could ever have hoped.
Lucy clung to him as though he were still about to be dragged away to be transported, and when the kiss ended, she held on to his lapels tightly as she said fiercely, “Well, then, all the more reason—I mean, we cannot have anyone having to face that! It’s barbaric!”
“It absolutely is,” Bertram agreed gravely.
“And to think that you—I could have lost you,” she whispered, her large eyes searching his own as though reminding herself that he really did stand there.
His pulse skipped a beat at the sight of her affection. “You see, this is one of the many reasons I love you. Your heart for others.”
“Right now, all my heart wants to do is take you upstairs,” Lucy murmured.
“Lucy!” Bertram hissed, glancing both at the drawing room door and the dining room door. “You can’t go about saying things like that!”
But there was a glitter of mischief in her eyes he could not help but adore, and there was also a corresponding stirring in his downstairs region that was begging him to take her at her word and take her upstairs.
“My mother won’t miss me for another twenty minutes or so. I often sit with Papa and Percy when they smoke and we don’t have any visitors,” Lucy whispered, her eyes dancing with far more than mischief now.
Bertram tried to be responsible. “Well, the men are expecting their brandy, and—”
“Oh, brandy,” Lucy said with a roll of her eyes. “Give me one moment—stand over there, will you?”
Utterly speechless as she carefully maneuvered him to stand directly behind the dining room door, Bertram could only watch as Lucy blithely picked up the brandy decanter, opened the dining room door, and stuck her head in.
“Mama and I thought you might want the brandy,” came her voice, slightly muffled on the other side of the door.
“Ah, we sent Moray out for that,” came the voice of Lord Lindow. “Where the dickens has he got to?”
“I think he’s going upstairs for a lie down,” came the easy words of Lady Lucy Chance, such innocence in them that even Bertram had to admit, he was impressed. “All the excitement, you know.”
“Oh, well, it’s been a wild few days,” were the words of Percy. “Hand over that decanter, Papa, I’m gasping.”
Lucy exited the dining room, shut the door behind her, and grinned. “There.”
“I… You… What…?” breathed Bertram, hardly able to believe his eyes.
His beautiful wife-to-be laughed as she took his hand. “Do you think I would make an excellent spy?”
“Well, yes,” Bertram had to admit. “And you didn’t even lie.”
All the excitement had gotten to him, one way or another…and he was about to enjoy a lie down…
Bertram pulled Lucy forward and the two of them started to rush up the staircase, their muffled laughter echoing down the hallway.
Only when they had half-stepped, half-stumbled into his bedchamber did Bertram halt and look seriously at the woman he loved. “If you’d rather wait—the wedding, I mean. Now that we have your father’s blessing and connections, we’re getting a special license. We only have to wait a week—”
Lucy closed the door behind her and leaned against it with the most openly desirous expression in her face. Bertram immediately started unbuttoning his trousers. “If you think I am going to wait another week before having you, Bertram Moray, Viscount Moray, you are quite wrong.”
Bertram’s breath hitched as he reached for the woman he adored. “Never happier to be more so…”