The Likelihood of Lucy

by Jenny Holiday

  “What I learned,” said Emily, glaring at Catharine while simultaneously trying not to smile, “is that sometimes one’s dearly held theories are…disrupted by the reality one finds oneself confronted with.”

  “Ha!” Catharine said. “She’s being all high-handed, but she’s talking about the very thing you asked about, Lucy! The crisis!”

  “No,” said Emily, growing serious. “I’m talking about love.”

  A pit opened in Lucy’s stomach. Love. That was the one thing she didn’t want. She had no argument against love. She cleared her throat. “But love is not…required, is it? For the crisis, I mean. For men and women to engage in intimate relations.”

  Emily glanced at Catharine. “I suppose not. But the thing to remember is that love has a way of sneaking up on you. And it changes everything.”

  “An evolution,” Lucy said, trying to keep the despair from her voice.

  “I would call it more of a revolution, myself,” said Catharine.

  Emily smiled. “Perhaps it’s both at the same time. It shouldn’t be possible, but in my experience, love can come upon you all at once. But then when you look back to try to make sense of it, you see that it had been seeping in gradually for quite some time.”

  Lucy very much feared Emily was correct. She was going to have to withdraw her proposal to Trevor.

  “Is everything all right?” Catharine asked, displaying uncharacteristic seriousness.

  “I’ve made a mistake, is all,” said Lucy, hoping they could not see the panic she truly felt. “A mistake I must undo.”

  …

  Hyde Park was a big place. At any given time, half of fashionable London was parading in the park.

  So just because Trevor was headed there didn’t mean anything.

  It certainly didn’t mean he was following Lucy. Or that he cared one whit about the Ladies’ Society in Support of Mary Wollstonecraft.

  Sometimes a person just needed to stroll in the fresh air.

  And if, on his stroll, he happened to spot some ladies of his acquaintance sitting on a rug beneath a tree—the same tree from their childhood, he thought with affection—there was nothing wrong with sitting on a bench a hundred yards away to take in the sunshine and the vista. Especially if one was partially obscured by a tree, and the ladies in question were too consumed with their own conversation to notice him.

  Trevor had to laugh as the three of them conversed animatedly. At one point Catharine collapsed on the rug as if she were playing the role of a swooning lady in a theatrical. Then Emily flopped down next to her, and there was much exclaiming and animated gesturing.

  It was gratifying to see Lucy develop friendships like this. Though she hadn’t outright said as much, he got the feeling that governessing had been a lonely experience. Someone as vital and vibrant as Lucy deserved friends, laughter, companionship. Especially because when he told her what he had to tell her—when he answered the unspoken question that had been looming between them since her shocking proposal yesterday—she was going to need friends. Society. Which apparently she’d found at this Mr. Lloyd’s salon, too, he reminded himself.

  Before he could allow himself to fall back into parsing the many qualities of the mysterious Mr. Lloyd, a sharp movement in his peripheral vision drew his attention. He was on his feet in an instant. The man had come from behind a tree not twenty feet from the women. It could have been a coincidence, but he had learned when a mission was underway, however straightforward it seemed, to be suspicious of everything. And Trevor wasn’t taking any chances where Lucy was concerned.

  The man emerged from the trees, allowing Trevor to resolve his indistinct dark coat and hat into a specific incarnation. His fingers twitched, and his blood ran cold. He was up in an instant, running.

  He wasn’t fast enough. Galsmith must have said something to the ladies, because they scrambled to their feet as the unwelcome visitor approached. He hadn’t heard what the viscount had said, but he did quite clearly hear Catharine’s answering “Excuse me?” delivered in her best wilting, aristocratic tone.

  Galsmith lunged toward Lucy then, and Catharine stepped in front of her. Then Emily stepped in front of Catharine, and even amidst the terror propelling him forward, he felt a rush of tenderness toward these women, as fierce in their loyalty to one another as to their causes.

  “Lucy!” he shouted. It was a mistake, because he drew everyone’s attention, including Galsmith’s.

  He was still twenty feet away when Galsmith took off at a run. Trevor sped past the women, who were exclaiming and calling his name in a flutter of feminine chaos. When the viscount reached his horse, swung himself up, and galloped away without a look back, Trevor cursed.

  “Trevor?”

  He sensed her behind him and was caught, suspended for a moment between the almost overwhelming desire to follow the viscount and to turn toward the sweet, bewildered voice he knew so well. But of course there wasn’t really a choice. There never had been. Galsmith was going to pay, but he could wait.

  “Lucy,” he answered, forcing a smile. The other two ladies came clattering over, and he didn’t miss the disconcerted look that Catharine gave him. She responded to his bow by leaning in to whisper in his ear, “Well, isn’t this getting interesting?”

  Ignoring her, he led the ladies back to their rug, his mind still in pursuit of the viscount. “What did he want? What did he say?”

  “I’m afraid the time has quite gotten away from me,” said Catharine, smiling apologetically. “I’ll leave you two to discuss the matter of that…man.”

  “I thought we were going to go for ices,” Lucy said.

  “Yes, well, I’m suddenly feeling quite fatigued.” Catharine raised her eyebrows at Emily.

  “Oh, my goodness, Catharine, do let me escort you home where you can rest,” said Emily, putting her arm around her friend’s waist. “Another time, Lucy. Or perhaps you can prevail upon Trevor to take you. It’s a fine day for it. We’ll pack up the rug so you’re unencumbered.”

  And with that, they were gone, but not before Catharine shot him a smirk he couldn’t make sense of.

  Lucy eyed him apprehensively.

  “What did he say?” He couldn’t help it. Her answer wasn’t going to change anything. The moment he saw Galsmith emerge from behind that tree, he’d set his mind to what he had to do—what he should have done the day he returned the money to Galsmith. Still, he couldn’t not ask the question. Couldn’t let it go.

  “More of the same descriptions of my moral character, with the charming addition this time that he wouldn’t rest until I burned. What I find frustrating is that even if I was what he said—”

  “You’re not.”

  “I think that might be debatable given what I was about to suggest to you yesterday, but for the sake of argument—”

  “You are not what he said.” He hated to keep interrupting her, but it was necessary.

  “Then how do you explain everything that’s happened between us in the last few weeks, Trevor?” Her voice rose, and her eyes flashed defiantly.

  “It’s nothing to do with you. I blame myself.”

  “You blame yourself.”

  He nodded. How could he explain that he’d failed in his most important mission—to protect her?

  “Because I am an ill fate you’re subject to. Because it was all so awful that blame must be assigned.”

  “No, of course not. You’re twisting my words—”

  It was her turn to interrupt. “It’s all right. I wanted to speak to you about this anyway.” She lifted her chin and pressed her lips together before continuing. “You will recall yesterday, before we went out to the cemetery, I, ah, made a suggestion.”

  Here it was, the reckoning. He was going to have to tell her no. Find a way to explain that he, the gutter rat, could never have her.

  She gazed at him evenly. “I find I must withdraw my suggestion.”

  He reared back a bit, blinking rapidly. This was what he wanted. So why
did he feel as if she’d struck him? Gaining control of himself, he cleared his throat and nodded. “I think it’s for the best.”

  Her face betrayed no emotion as she nodded. In fact, it reminded him of that blank canvas she had been when she first arrived at the Jade, no hint of the old spark in her eyes. “Now, as to the Viscount Galsmith, let’s just say for the sake of argument that I was the worst sort of lightskirt.” She held up a hand to forestall the protest she must have known was coming. “I’m not teaching his daughters anymore. What does it matter to him?”

  “Some men can’t bear to think that women are beyond their control.”

  She nodded, thoughtful. “I think you’re exactly right.” When he didn’t answer immediately, she added, “I am going for an ice. I’ve never had one, and I’m not going to let him ruin this lovely afternoon.” Then she turned and began walking.

  She had to know he wouldn’t just be dismissed like that, that he would follow. And, indeed, she didn’t argue as he fell into step beside her. They walked in silence for a while. Trevor listened to her breath gradually deepen, sneaked glances at her and watched her jaw unclench little by little. It seemed as if she was willfully shedding the bad experience she’d had with Galsmith—and, hell, probably the uncomfortable exchange she’d had with Trevor just now, too. When they stopped at the edge of the park to allow a line of carriages to pass, she closed her eyes and tilted her face toward the sun.

  “It really is a fine day, is it not?” he ventured quietly, apprehensive about beginning a new conversation, half expecting her to ignore him or to deliver a setdown he would utterly deserve.

  She smiled but kept her eyes closed and her face angled toward the sun. “Yes.

  “You are partial to the outdoors, aren’t you?” he said, suddenly realizing that there was a consistent vitality about her when they were out of doors, whether it was in the park or merely skulking around a graveyard.

  “I am!” she exclaimed, amber eyes popping open as she reached a hand out and stroked the bark of a tree. “I do love the park. I think it is the one aspect of governessing that I miss. I used to take my girls here nearly every day. It makes one feel…calmer somehow to be in the natural world. Of course the park is only a pale substitute for the real thing, but it has to do.”

  “The real thing?” he asked, relieved that they seemed to be establishing new, neutral ground on which to converse.

  “Nature. The wild. As on Lord Blackstone’s estate, for example.”

  Yes. There had been a kind of peace about her there, a contentment that had, at that point, seemed out of character. But perhaps that was her natural state, and everything else was out of character.

  “Or, I imagine, lots of other places—not merely the estates of the aristocracy. The cliffs of Dover, for example. I would love to see those. Or the wilds of Scotland.”

  “Does it follow that you dislike the city?”

  “No, that’s too strong. Strangely, I think it’s our childhood in the city that inculcated my love of nature. We lived in man-made squalor, to be sure, but we spent so much time outside.”

  He thought of picnics that lasted until well after the sun went down. Of that incongruous pink-flowered vine growing under their bridge. Of trying to make out the dim stars amid the city lights. Of Lucy nursing a wounded finch back to health when he had suggested roasting it and having it for dinner. “Yes, I suppose we found every bit of what you might call nature that was available to be discovered in our world.”

  “It’s not even about nature itself. Not inherently. It’s about a feeling of wildness. Of freedom. Of not being caged in.”

  Her words agitated him. Wildness. Freedom. What would Lucy look like if she were being truly wild? He would never know. “Yet your salons, your intellectual community—are not these made possible only by the proximity and adjacency that a large metropolis allows?”

  “Yes, I suppose you’re right! I contradict myself, don’t I?”

  He patted her arm. “It’s no matter. Let’s get ices.”

  “Ices! Another thing I imagine they don’t have in the country! See, I’m being wildly inconsistent!”

  They strolled east toward Gunter’s, where Trevor watched Lucy eat a bergamot ice at a table under the trees that shaded Berkeley Square. The dappled shade made by the sun dotted her face with irregular spots of light. As she squealed her delight at her first bite of the cold treat, his heart wrenched, and he was transported back in time. She might as well have been her nine-year-old self, in raptures over one of the pilfered lemon biscuits he brought her as often as he could.

  “Oh, I forgot to tell you,” she said, scrunching up her nose as if she’d smelled something unpleasant. “I had to sack one of the maids. I caught her stealing some silver,” she went on, oblivious to the fact that he had been woolgathering. “And not subtly at all! You could have taught her a thing or two!”

  “How did we ever make it out?” he said, wondering if she remembered the conversation they’d had a week ago. He was repeating the same question she’d asked him. He hadn’t answered then because he hadn’t known what to say. But today, on such a gorgeous summer afternoon, he could set aside the mission—he could even set aside Galsmith, temporarily—and simply ask the question in order to marvel at the incredible occasion of sitting with Lucy, eating an ice, and talking about firing a maid at the hotel they ran together.

  She took another bite, turning the spoon over and letting it sit on her tongue for a moment while she regarded him. “I sometimes wonder if the better question is why?”

  “Why did we make it out, you mean?”

  “Yes. Given how impossibly unlikely it was, perhaps the better question is why. For what reason?” She took another bite and did that rolling thing with the spoon again. “For example, was I supposed to become a great teacher, and I’ve fallen short of my calling?” She grinned, and he laughed. “Jesting aside, though, I just wonder if there were some greater purpose.”

  “What do you think?”

  She pulled the spoon out of her mouth and it made a little pop. Laughing, she did it again. “I have no earthly idea! What about you?”

  He stared at her for a moment before speaking. “I have no idea, either.”

  But it wasn’t true. He was starting to think—to fear—that he did, in fact, know why little Trevor and Lucy had survived. Why he had sent her away. The likelihood of Lucy, here in this place with him, alive and thriving in 1815, was practically nonexistent. It should have been impossible.

  “La!” she went on, “Don’t listen to me. I’m sure you’re the sort of person who does not believe in providence. And I’m fairly certain I don’t either, so I’m just speaking nonsense. We make our own luck, don’t you think?”

  “Yes,” he said, but it was a lie. He didn’t know what to think anymore.

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  “Ah,” said Blackstone when Lucy stepped inside Trevor’s library early that same evening, having been informed by a footman that her presence was requested. “You’re here—good.”

  The men had risen when she came in but appeared to have been sitting side by side at Trevor’s desk, which was strewn with a great deal more paper than usual. “I’m glad you’re here, my lord,” she said. “I’ve been wanting to speak to both of you.” Probably the other investors should be told, too, but she would leave it to them. Even though she’d been informed that Galsmith was no longer among them, the investors made her nervous, these men with so much power over the Jade. Glancing at Trevor, she pasted on a smile. “But I’ve interrupted.”

  “Please, you go first, Miss Greenleaf,” said Blackstone. “Come. We’ll all sit over here.” He gestured to the settee and Windsor chairs flanking the unlit fire.

  Trevor nodded his agreement, and she took a deep breath as she settled herself in her seat. Why was she so nervous? It wasn’t as if the numbers were solely her responsibility. “I’m concerned about the Jade.”

  Trevor glanced at Blackstone before returning his
attention to her.

  “We were off to a smashing start after the party, but bookings have been decreasing in recent days. We’re only at one-third capacity tonight, in fact.”

  “There was bound to be a drop-off, wasn’t there?” asked Trevor. “After the initial novelty wears off, new ventures often founder a bit.”

  “Yes, but we’ve had a number of cancellations, too, of previously confirmed guests,” she said. “It concerns me.”

  “Have you any theories as to why business would suddenly drop off?” asked Blackstone, shooting a look at Trevor.

  She shook her head. She’d been hoping that since the pair of them had so much experience in trade, they would be able to shed some light on the problem.

  “I suggest we meet with Catharine,” said Trevor, smiling in a way that rang a touch false to Lucy. “She will have some ideas about how to lure customers.”

  Lucy looked at the earl, who said nothing.

  Trevor went on. “I do thank you for bringing the matter to our attention, but I suggest we move on now. Blackstone has a theory about the mission.”

  “Should I be hearing this?” she asked, relieved but a little unsettled that no one was blaming her for the downturn in business. She was the manager, after all, ultimately responsible for the hotel’s day-to-day operations. “You know that I’m happy—honored, in fact—to help you with this mission, but you needn’t tell me anything you shouldn’t.”

  “I want you to hear it,” said Trevor. “You’re part of this. You’re the reason we’ve gotten this far.”

  She had to make an effort not to grin like an idiot at the praise. As it was, warmth flooded her belly at the commendation.

  “John Hammond retired at the rank of captain,” Blackstone began. “His last campaign was the Second Battle of Copenhagen—in 1807.”

  “And you’ll recall,” said Trevor, “that Major General Burton Clark, whose grave we saw yesterday, died September 3, 1814. He was also at the Second Battle of Copenhagen.”