Page 9 of Give Him a Chance

“You can do with him what you wilt, my lady,” Judge Bonner was saying, and even Bernard had to admit he was impressed at how well the man was acting. “Perhaps next time you appear in my courtroom gallery,shouldyou ever appear again, it will be with a chaperone, and you will stay humble and meek, as aladyought.”

With spittle flying out of his mouth, the older man truly looked furious at having to deal with Lady Lucy. Impressive.

“And now, if you wouldn’t mind exiting my courtroom, I have a few hundred other cases to deal with,” the judge continued in a voice clearly immediately bored by the whole proceedings. “Bailiffs, if you would do the honors?”

“But I can’t—what will people say? What shall I do with him? I cannot put him in a pocket and forget about him,” protested Lady Lucy, wringing her hands in a most clever affection of a woman in genuine confusion and distress. “No! No, you cannot!”

“Over here, m’lady,” called the bailiff on Bernard’s right-hand side.

He was tugged to his feet and half-pulled, half-dragged away from the dock—which, Bernard had to admit, was a relief. It was never pleasant being in the judicial system, especially when one had done nothing but ensure he was caught on some minor infraction to gain access to the prison inmates and win their trust.

No, it was high time he got himself a bath and a hot meal, and then he could then return to the life he’d abandoned all those years ago.

A sudden twist of regret seared his gut. If hewantedto return to that sort of life.

Lady Lucy had finished making her great show of how awful it was that she had been given the possession of a convict—well, a supposed convict—and had now stomped hastily across the courtroom with her rosebud mouth open in a perfect ‘O,’ her eyebrows furrowed, the juxtaposition of it all making it clear she was experiencing terror, fury, and frustration all at once.

Good God, she was expressive.

“The man is yours, Lady Lucy,” the bailiff said, unlocking the handcuffs and freeing Bernard’s wrists.

It was all he could do not to wave his hands in the air in relief. By Jove, but it was unpleasant to have one’s hands restricted. Itmade everything that much more difficult, more demeaning. It reminded one that you were entirely at another’s mercy.

Not the sort of thing Bernard had ever relished.

“B-But,” stammered the supposed Lady Lucy, “I can’t! How long is this ridiculous guardianship supposed to be for? Surely, not his entire life! In the eyes of the law, is he my brother? Myward? He looks older than I am!”

Bernard had to stop himself from laughing at the particular nature of her questions. The square-jawed bailiff wouldn’t have the answers, nor did he seem the least bit amused.

“Out the door, please. Use the one on the left; it’s the only exit,” intoned the bailiff, reeling off the instructions Bernard was certain he gave to every prisoner who was permitted to walk free.

Which, now that he came to think about it, probably wasn’t very often at all.

Lady Lucy swallowed as she looked up at him, her lips trembling. Her acting conveyed sheer terror for a moment.

Enough of this. He wanted a hot meal. “Come on, then, Lady Lucy,” Bernard said brightly, offering the woman his arm. “I suppose we shall just have to make shift for ourselves!”

The woman glared, and even the refined air and the supposed nobility of the woman did not preclude her from looking at him as though he were a bit of mud on her shoe.

Brava, Bernard thought as the woman stalked out of the courthouse without a look back at him, his arm stuck awkwardly akimbo for nothing. She truly was impressive.

Through the door, down a corridor, around a corner and down a flight of stairs, Bernard hurried after the woman who could have another career as a racehorse if she ever wished to give up the acting. Not once did she look back at him. Not once did she consider him at all. In a way, it were as though he were not there.

It was only when the ‘Lady Lucy’ wrenched open a door and the two of them stepped out into the brilliant daylight of a spring day in Brighton that she halted. And then it was only to twist and glare.

“Well,” she said sharply, “I suppose I am stuck with you now.”

Bernard opened his mouth to retort that she only had to put up with him until Hovell arrived and put it all right, but he hesitated.

She was beautiful. Those dark lashes. That pale complexion, perfectly complemented by lips that were not so much red, as a dark pink sharpening to red when her temper—her supposed temper—got up.

She was taller than he had thought, the angles of a courtroom making it a tad difficult to precisely tell, and she held herself with a poise that Bernard would have said would have had to have been bred in, rather than taught.

She had been the perfect choice.

“You don’t have to worry; this will soon be over,” Bernard said quietly, almost regretful that it would be.

Lucy, for that was perhaps her true name, snorted. “Easy for you to say!”