Page 3 of Give Him a Chance

Lucy held her head high. “Your Honor, I think you’ll find if you just consider some of my proposals—”

“I have considered your nonsense for far too long, my lady,” Judge Bonner said, lifting his gavel.

Her stomach twisted.No—no, she had come so far. She had worked so hard! She could not lose her opportunity now! “Please, just a few more minutes of your time!”

The gavel came down hard on the block, the noise ringing around the courtroom and eliciting even more jeers from the spectators at the gallery. “Lady Lucy, your time—which you should never have been given—is up.”

“But, Judge Bonner—”

“Sit down, Lady Lucy,” came the indictment from above.

Frustration prickled within her, refusing to allow her to give in. “I only wished to say—”

“Sit down or find yourself in the dock yourself!” thundered Judge Bonner.

Lucy’s breath caught in her throat as she stared over at the dock—or at least, the chair that was operating as a dock, to which prisoners had been dragged to hear their fates before being dragged out again.

It had obviously been something she had considered. Would she risk her very life and liberty for what she believed in? Would she take the stand herself if it could mean making a difference for others?

For a moment, Lucy’s head swam as she looked at it as that foreboding threat. A seat of judgment: a seat where one’s fate, forever, could be decided.

A seat from which she could be sent to prison, and she had seen the sorts of circumstances in which she might find herself. Why, when she had visited the Clink with the other ladies who were advocating for prison reform, it had been quite overwhelming: the stench, the darkness, the way that rats had scuttled by them nipping at their heels…

Lucy’s head swam. Could she do it? Could she be brave, could she force herself forward and sit elegantly in that seat?

Could I do it?

Her knees wobbled, just for a moment, and entirely uninvited, a hand grasped her arm.

“My lady, sit by me,” came the voice of the solicitor who had recommended she keep her identity quiet.

Lucy allowed herself to be helped a few steps backward before collapsing onto a hard, wooden chair beside the man, her shoulders slumped.

Well, if she had ever needed a test, there it had been: and she had failed.

“Next prisoner!” yelled the judge, and the bailiffs by the door scrambled to obey as Lucy watched them dully from her seat beside the solicitor.

She’d had an opportunity, a real one, to put her own life on the line and challenge the system, demonstrate just how ridiculous it was that so many of these fine people had merely found themselves in unfortunate circumstances…and she had failed to take it.

She had failed to be brave.

Disappointment seared through her like a burning poker. How could she ever look at herself in a looking glass again, eyebrow sternness practice notwithstanding?

How many times had she passionately told another person about prison reform, about how she would risk her very life and limb, her freedom, to make it happen?

And now, Lucy thought dully,I have to sit here until the next recess, watching more and more prisoners accept terrible fates merely for the crime of being born in the wrong part of town.

“Dixon, Bernard,” called out the bailiff at the door. “Incoming prisoner, Dixon, Bernard!”

Poor man, Lucy thought reflexively before the man appeared in the doorway. A young rapscallion, probably, who’d stolen a loaf of bread to feed his sickly mother. Or an elderly gentleman fallen on hard times, forced to steal a pie after starving for days.Or, and here Lucy’s imagination really started to fly, perhaps he was a disgraced man of a profession, who had been forced under duress to—

The man who stepped through the doorway, his wrists handcuffed together and two bailiffs standing either side of him grasping his arms, was not a young rapscallion.

He had certainly been one once, Lucy was certain, as her gaze fell upon him. The man had the air of a rascal about him, the sense he had tried his luck in the past and it had always gone his way.

Until very recently, that was.

And this man was no elderly gentleman. No, he was in the fine flush of strength and youth, vigor clear in his arched brow, in the way he held his shoulders, in the breadth of his chest.