Page 10 of Scoundrel Take Me Away (Dukes in Disguise #3)

All perfectly proper, and yet the way Thornecliff lounged in his corner of the tufted leather cushions made the back of Lucy’s neck flush hot with some combination of embarrassment, irritation, and an awareness she wished she could take up her pen and scratch out, like a poorly judged turn of phrase.

Thornecliff’s dark gaze was sharp, but he gave her a lazy smile. His long limbs sprawled with casual ease in a way that should have appeared ungainly, but instead drew her attention to the powerful line of his thighs encased in tight buff trousers.

Where did a good-for-nothing wastrel of a rake like Thornecliff get thighs like that? Was copulation truly that athletic a pursuit?

“Lady Lucy.” He nodded at her, black eyes half lidded and glittering. “Imagine my shock at receiving your charming communication. What a way to greet the day.”

“I didn’t send my note until well after eleven,” Lucy remarked, seating herself as far from him as she could manage without hanging over the side of the barouche.

“Oh, I tend not to leave my bed until well past noon. Nothing good happens before one o’clock, in my experience.”

Lucy snorted and pretended she wasn’t discomfited by the reference to his bed. It wasn’t strictly the sort of thing a gentleman should really say to a young lady—but hadn’t she been at pains to remind all and sundry that she was no longer a sweet, untried debutante?

Determined to take no notice of Thornecliff’s provocations and doubly determined not to picture him lounging amongst his bed linens, golden hair tousled upon his pillow, Lucy folded her gloved hands primly in her lap.

“I’m not surprised to hear that you sleep the day away, Your Grace.

What else should you be doing? There are no balls, no routs, no scandalous salons or masquerades or drunken revelries during the daylight hours. ”

If she’d intended to annoy him with her implication that he did nothing of importance with his time, she failed. He only arched a brow and murmured, “Yes, my point exactly. What a bore.”

God, such a waste he was. A waste of what had undoubtedly been a good education, and what were—to her everlasting dismay—equally undoubtedly good looks.

All the privilege and wealth and opportunity and choice in the world, and what did Thornecliff choose to do? Sleep. Eat. Dance. Gossip. Fornicate.

He was everything Lucy deplored and abhorred about the English aristocracy.

How could her darling Rogue possibly think this man, this duke, was more fit company for her?

“I’m sorry to drag you from your boudoir at the ungodly hour of two o’clock,” she said tartly, staring straight ahead as the well-sprung wheels rolled over the cobblestones as smoothly as if the road were covered in silk. “You needn’t have bestirred yourself if you didn’t like to.”

“Oh, but how could I not?” He was all but purring in smug satisfaction, the wretch. “When you were so eloquent in your appeal for my escort? A true gentleman never allows a lady to beg.”

Now the blush burning her cheeks was mostly anger. “I did not beg.”

“Of course.” He laid his arm along the open side of the carriage.

The move pulled his fitted coat open to expose the lean musculature of his chest and the taut lines of his torso in the ornately embroidered waistcoat.

It was a deep blue today, she noted distractedly, a blue so dark it was nearly purple, with a delicate tracery of green leaves picked out along the placard and the hem. “I misspoke. It was more of a command.”

“It was nothing of the sort,” Lucy argued, “and I will thank you not to imply to my brother or Bess that I have been anything less than polite to you. For some reason, they seem to care about your feelings. God knows why.”

He made a small movement, a jerk of his head, that brought Lucy’s attention to him at once. For an instant, there was a look in his cruelly perfect face that she couldn’t place.

Something about the tilt of his dark golden brows over those black eyes that made him seem…lost.

Seeming to notice her regard, Thornecliff shook off whatever odd start he’d been experiencing. He gave her a shark’s smile, all teeth. “Quite right. I have no feelings.”

“What a thing to boast about.” Lucy shook her head.

She must have imagined that brief glimpse of vulnerability.

One of the hazards of being a writer, she’d found, was that she was always trying to see to the core of a person, to find out what animated them and made them who they were.

That tendency had led her to some of her dearest friendships—but it had also occasionally led her astray.

Not everyone, at their core, was someone worth knowing.

“Ah, of course,” he said with an amused curl to his handsome lips. “You would prefer everyone around you to be constantly proclaiming their emotions at top volume.”

“It would certainly eliminate a lot of confusion,” Lucy retorted. “I’ve noticed a good deal of trouble results from people deliberately obfuscating their feelings. But don’t worry, I won’t expect it of you . It takes courage to be open and unguarded.”

“Courage or foolhardiness, so often two sides of the same coin. But do not let me dissuade you. It’s charming to be in the company of one so full of romantic sensibilities.”

Lucy felt heat scorch her neck. He saw her a touch too clearly, and she didn’t care for it.

“My sensibilities are perfectly normal and natural. What is unnatural is the level of cynicism affected by the so-called style leaders of the English Ton. It’s not like this in Italy!

Even in France, passion is prized and celebrated.

But not here. Oh, no. The upper classes in England are always so above it all, so unaffected—in the most affected way possible.

I find it to be a very tedious attitude, with little wisdom or insight to recommend it.

I refuse to pretend to be bored by everything and everyone. ”

“Tell me more about what you learned in your travels. I am all aflutter to discover what the French and Italians taught you about passion.”

Lucy rolled her eyes and sat back in her seat. She didn’t flop. That would be inelegant. “You’re so predictable. I’m not talking about that kind of passion—or at least, not only that kind.”

Though she had certainly learned some interesting things about the pleasures of the body, and about herself, on the Continent.

“You wound me,” he murmured. “ Predictable . A mortal blow.”

“The world is big and complex and fascinating,” Lucy pursued, unsure why it felt so vital that she get through to him. “Much bigger than London society. You should see a bit more of the world for yourself. Perhaps you will discover something to have a feeling about.”

“I’m no sailor; sea voyages are not for me,” he said airily, though an odd tension strung his frame taut. “I shall have to content myself with those parts of the world I can reach by land. Not that it matters. In my experience, people are dull everywhere one goes.”

“Then I feel sorry for you,” Lucy told him, and if she hadn’t been watching closely, she would have missed the moment his lazy derision hardened into something much sharper.

“You may keep your pity,” he said softly, looking away to stare at the passersby, many of whom were staring back, eyes wide and hiding their mouths behind their hands. The Duke of Thornecliff was famous—most would say, infamous—and turned heads wherever he went.

Lucy studied his averted face. His profile was like a Roman coin, at once decadent and pure. Something about it riveted her, tugging at her mind with a sensation like trying to remember a word that was on the top of one’s tongue. She couldn’t stop puzzling at it.

Because it was an illusion, Lucy decided. His masculine beauty was an illusion to trap the unwary. Luckily, she had met many handsome men in her travels. She would not be swayed by a strong jawline and a perfectly carved cheekbone.

“Where are you taking me, then?” she asked briskly into the somewhat fraught silence that enveloped the carriage.

“I thought we’d go to Gunter’s,” he said in a moody way that instantly annoyed Lucy.

“I’ve lived in Italy for the past two years,” she pointed out. “They have gelato. You think I’ve been missing English ices?”

“Gunter’s also serves confections and pastries.”

“Before Italy, I lived in France. But certainly, let us partake of these fine British sweets. I’m sure nothing in any Parisian patisserie could rival them.”

She thought she detected the jump of a muscle in his jaw, as though he was grinding his teeth. “Is there somewhere you’d prefer to go?”

For a moment, Lucy felt badly about being so difficult. Then she looked at Thornecliff, who had thought nothing of publicly humiliating her sister. She remembered the way he’d mocked and demeaned Lucy in front of his laughing friends. And suddenly she felt fine about being difficult.

Thornecliff might have saved her brother’s life in that awful fire, and he might have donated money to the children’s home, but he’d never once apologized for the way he’d made sport of Lucy, to the delight of his cronies. He’d even insulted her mother.

No, Lucy was not ready to fall at Thornecliff’s feet and declare him a changed man.

Though there was something about sitting here with him in this carriage that felt oddly…familiar? Intimate, in a way that should be impossible between two people who were practically strangers.

Frowning when her heart gave a frantic flutter like a forest animal caught in a trap, Lucy told herself firmly to calm down.

It was only that Thornecliff was so overwhelming, his powerful presence almost suffocating even when he was sitting silently at her side. And when he spoke, when he challenged her and taunted her and listened to her, it was ten times worse.

Well, she would simply have to avoid the apoplexy brought on by his enraging moods and attitudes as best she could. Perhaps it would help if she could infuriate him a tenth as much as he infuriated her.

To that end, Lucy decided to test him.

“The sort of place I’d like to go isn’t open in the afternoon,” she informed him airily, folding her hands in her lap and gazing nonchalantly out her side of the carriage.

She felt him stir beside her. “What sort of place would that be, exactly?”

“The sort of place my brother has never stepped foot in his life.”

The sort of place my brother seems to believe you no longer frequent.

For some reason, he snorted. “You might be surprised.”

Lucy bristled. “And just what is that supposed to signify?”

“Nothing. Only that older brothers have lives, you know.”

Not hers, Lucy wanted to argue. Instead, she said, “I think it’s quite telling that for you, ‘living a life’ can only mean whatever sordid place you’re imagining I’m speaking of.”

“I could never imagine you any place sordid, Lady Lucy.” He turned those demon eyes on her, black pools so deep and hypnotic, if she fell into them she would surely drown.

“Indeed, if you stepped one dainty foot into a place like The Nemesis or Sharpe’s, you would instantly rid it of every low, debased, degenerate connotation, simply by the power of your presence. ”

The way he looked at her made Lucy’s breath push hard and fast against the stays of her short corset. What did he mean by observing her so intently?

Fumbling for a cool response when she felt strangely overheated, Lucy said, “Why? Because I’m so pure, I would instantly purify any den of iniquity?”

It was the sort of compliment Lucy loathed—as though the most interesting, praise-worthy thing about her was her supposed virgin purity. Ugh.

A fleeting smile flashed across his features, animating them with wickedness as he said, “Why no, Lady Lucy. Because any man in search of a good time would flee the area the instant he saw you coming.”

Lucy’s jaw dropped open. Entirely against her will, a laugh barked out of her.

He grinned back, enjoying her reaction, and for a strange moment Lucy felt as though she’d just met the real Duke of Thornecliff for the first time. As though the cynical, moody, too-charming aristocrat was merely a facade, a mask he put on. And in this moment of shared humor, the mask had dropped.

Lucy experienced a sudden frisson of misgiving.

It might be harder to hold on to her animosity for this man if he kept dropping that mask.