Page 14 of Scoundrel Take Me Away (Dukes in Disguise #3)

Lucy shot Bess a helpless glance. “That does sound naughty!”

“Luckily,” Bess said with a grin, “in this family, we love naughty children the most!” Kitty lit up, throwing her arms around her mother, and Bess laughed.

“Lucy, would you be a dear and fetch Nathaniel? He promised to take Kitty to the park this afternoon. I’m sure he’ll be checking on us soon enough, but you might let him know Kitty is up from her nap. ”

“Yes, Papa will want to hear all about the dream cake I made,” Kitty agreed, snuggling into Bess’s side.

As Lucy picked up her book and made her way to the door, she glanced back to see Kitty put a tentative hand on the swell of Bess’s stomach, clearly wary of being kicked.

Laughing to herself, Lucy escaped into the hall. Children were odd, she thought. Odd and surprising and lovely.

Gemma had gone first, producing a tiny heir to the impoverished dukedom of Havilocke, and Lucy had done well enough with an infant. All they did was drool and burble and make funny faces, and when they began to smell unpleasant, one could hand them back to their parents and hastily flee the scene.

Toddlers appeared to be a whole other animal.

Of course, Lucy loved Kitty. She had since the moment she was born. But for quite a long time, Kitty had represented more of an abstract concept to Lucy than a real person.

Being here, being near Kitty and hearing the hilarious things she said in that sweet, piping voice, it was impossible not to recognize Kitty as very much her own person.

A small, adorable, imperious, somewhat violent person.

Thinking of the moment when Kitty had nonchalantly expressed her intention to bin any boy children who dared to appear, Lucy grinned.

Perhaps she ought to suggest a family outing, something that wouldn’t tire Bess out too much—a sedate picnic, perhaps. Yes, that was just the thing!

Passing the open door of her chamber as she strode down the hall to beard her brother in his den and demand that he tell his terrifying chef to make a hamper for them, Lucy determinedly averted her gaze.

If she didn’t look into her room, she wouldn’t have to notice her traveling writing desk and the sheaf of empty, blank pages scattered across it.

She didn’t have an ending for her novel yet anyway. She might as well fritter away her time on a blanket in a meadow, trying to make a toddler giggle.

Maybe after tomorrow night’s promised excursion to Sharpe’s, the gaming hell Thornecliff had mentioned, Lucy would have spent enough time with the duke to make The Gentle Rogue happy. Maybe then she’d get to see him again.

Maybe he’d kiss her again.

Shivering with delightful anticipation, Lucy hugged her arms around herself and hurried downstairs to organize a picnic.

* * *

It was a surprisingly lovely, sunny spring afternoon and everyone who was anyone in London was strolling, riding, or being driven through Hyde Park.

Which was why Thorne was kneeing his second-favorite mount, a chestnut gelding named Samson, into a flying canter across Hampstead Heath.

Sometimes Thorne played the game according to the Ton’s rules, exhibiting himself alongside all the other wealthy, highborn lords and ladies and assorted well-heeled onlookers strutting like peacocks in their finery.

But on those rare occasions when he wearied of being observed, of being constantly scrutinized and emulated and lusted over—usually after a night when he’d failed to avoid the worst of his dreams—Thorne came to Hampstead Heath.

A large area of astonishing natural beauty a stone’s throw from London, the heath was constantly under threat of development by whatever peer currently had the rights to it.

But thus far it had been saved from that indignity, largely through the efforts of a small handful of influential people—including the gentleman riding at Thorne’s side.

With his boyishly tousled hair and almost foolishly good-natured smile, Lord Fitzwilliam Drake—Fitz, to his friends—did not appear the sort of serious-minded young man who would bestir himself over the fate of a public recreation area.

But he had argued tirelessly against the proposed housing development, shouting down men of twice his consequence in the House of Lords, and had ultimately won the day.

Thorne, who’d known Fitz since school and had never found him to be overly endowed with brains, had been confounded.

He’d always been aware that marriage changed a man, Thorne mused. But he’d never thought it would have the power to increase intelligence.

Not that Fitz was a dunce, exactly. He was handsome and charming, always game for a laugh, an excellent shot and even better horseman. But Thorne was well aware that Fitz had only gone along with half the schemes Thorne had dragged him into because he hadn’t fully understood what they were about.

Those intrigues were some years behind them now, however.

Thorne had found better ways to access the bursts of risk, danger, and reward that served as crucial—if temporary—distractions from his moods.

And Fitz…well, Fitz had somehow gotten himself leg-shackled to the brainiest woman Thorne had ever met.

Certainly Caroline, Lady Fitzwilliam Drake, had always been far too intelligent to trust Thorne with her husband.

“I’m surprised the lovely Caroline let you come riding with me today,” Thorne remarked as they topped Parliament Hill and paused to take in the view. London crouched at their feet wreathed in coal smoke and fog, but the breeze that caught at Thorne’s hair was fresh and clean.

“Caroline is immersed in polishing a new paper she intends to present to some society or other, perhaps that Linnean one? I can’t keep track.

Anyway, she wouldn’t take notice of anything I did today even if I burned the house down around her,” Fitz relayed cheerfully, “so I’m entirely at your service. ”

“I suppose you’ll be punished for it later, but better to ask forgiveness than permission, eh?” Thorne baited his oldest friend.

Fitz looked at him in genial bewilderment. “Not sure what you think marriage is like, old chap, but I can tell you permission don’t enter into it much. Caroline’s not my mother.”

“Good,” Thorne couldn’t help but say with too much vehemence. The late Marchioness of Huntingdon had been awful. Caroline might be bookish and awkwardly direct, but at least she seemed to adore Fitz. Unlike his mother, who’d barely given him the time of day.

From what Thorne had seen, having living parents was decidedly overrated. Uncle Roman hadn’t treated his stepson with much more warmth than he’d shown his ward. Though Dominic had proved remarkably loyal to the man who had eventually adopted him and given him his name.

Quite suddenly, Thorne felt the cold, encroaching fingers of one of his black moods reaching for him. A flash of his dream from the night before overtook his thoughts, bleeding the life from the charming vista before his eyes.

In the dream, Gabriel was cold, his limbs shaky and weak from weeks of forced inactivity followed by a long, exhausting trek, but he was home.

Thornecliff. The ancient hall nestled like a pale jewel in the rolling green hills of Buckinghamshire—hills Gabriel had spent the past two days traversing on foot, weary and sore and desperate.

He’d finally made it home…but where was everyone?

He mounted the front steps to the entrance and pushed at the door, which creaked as it swung inward. Where was Uncle Roman? Where was Dom? Farthingdale? No one was there to greet Gabriel.

No one had even noticed he was gone.

Thorne’s fists tightened on the reins. At least it hadn’t been the other—the stinking hold of the ship, pitch-black except for what light found its way through the cracks in the deck above.

Sitting in his own filth, the eternal pitch and sway of the ocean, all that water rushing in his ears and so thirsty his stomach cramped over and over…

Attempting to shake it off, he said, “After all, your mother adored me. Whereas your wife, never one to bow to fashion, doesn’t like me in the slightest.”

“It’s not that she doesn’t like you,” Fitz protested. Always so earnest. How had he survived amongst the pack of wolves Thorne counted as his inner circle? “She doesn’t know you. We’ve hardly been back in London at all since we wed.”

And over the past eight years when they had visited, they’d spent most of their time with Fitz’s father, the Marquess of Huntingdon, and his recently acquired second wife, who also happened to be Caroline’s mother. Their domestic arrangements seemed a bit of a tangle to Thorne.

He gave his friend a mocking smile. “I’m sorry, are you implying that if your lady wife became better acquainted with me, she would…what? Discover some hitherto unrevealed depths in my character that would allow her to think well of me?”

“If anyone could, it would be Caroline,” Fitz declared, loyal to a fault. His smile took on a mischief familiar to Thorne from countless pranks and scrapes they’d gotten into as boys. “You are something of an acquired taste, Thorne.”

Fitz had lost that happy gleam somewhere in their twenties, Thorne realized only now that he saw it returned. Perhaps when the pranks graduated from schoolboy nonsense to the twistier schemes Thorne had pursued after he’d banished his uncle from his life.

“Well,” Thorne said, forcing his mind out of that well-worn path, “now that you’re back in Town, perhaps she will have time to acquire a taste for me.”

He thought his tone was admirably light. Careless, even. But Fitz shot him a look.