Page 16 of Scoundrel Take Me Away (Dukes in Disguise #3)

Chapter Seven

Lucy couldn’t concentrate on Fitz’s amusing story about discovering a spider the size of his palm hiding in one of his boots—all she could see, hear, or think about was Thornecliff, sitting with Kitty and treating the little girl as though she was the most important, interesting person he’d ever encountered.

Kitty had been shy at first, but she’d overcome it quickly when Thornecliff smiled at her and gravely complimented her taste in cakes. Kitty was holding a sultana-studded tea cake she’d scavenged from the hamper, and she had immediately held out the half-eaten treat to share.

To Lucy’s everlasting shock, instead of recoiling in disgust, Thornecliff had thanked her and broken off a small piece of cake, which he’d then eaten. From there, Kitty had evidently decided they would be the best of friends, or perhaps soulmates.

At one point, she had put her arms out to him, confidently expecting to be lifted into his lap, and he had done it!

Now he sat listening intently to Kitty prattle, occasionally exchanging amused comments with Bess and Nathaniel, who looked on indulgently.

As though they were perfectly comfortable with the most notorious rake in all of England dandling their daughter upon his knee.

As though they weren’t even surprised at his wish to do so!

He was truly a complicated man, with more facets to him than a gemstone. He seemed quite deliberate about how and to whom he presented his disparate aspects. It frustrated her to no end to realize that she was no closer to understanding him than when they first met.

“Well, that’s a sight I never thought I’d see,” Fitz commented, evidently as distracted by Thorne’s performance as Lucy.

“What is he playing at?” Lucy demanded in an undertone, relieved to have someone to discuss this with who seemed as perplexed as she.

“I can’t be certain.” Fitz squinted. “But it looks like pat-a-cake?”

“No! I mean what is he trying to accomplish? He’s been making up to my brother and sister-in-law for years, apparently, insinuating himself into their good graces, and I cannot make out his purpose. It must be something dastardly, but what?”

“Must it?” Fitz said. “I mean to say, mightn’t Thorne simply be trying to be friends with your family?”

“But why, is the question,” Lucy fumed, watching as Kitty wiped jam in Thornecliff’s hair. He affected not to notice.

“Hmm. I can think of one possible explanation.” Fitz smiled at Lucy, who reared back.

“What? No, it has nothing to do with me! He started this long before I came back to England.”

“Is that so? Well, perhaps it’s something else, then. Thorne has always been a deep one. Wheels within wheels, if that is the expression I’m thinking of.”

“How long have you known him?”

“Oh, a donkey’s age,” Fitz said, settling his long body comfortably along the edge of the blanket. He propped himself up on his elbows and continued, “Thorne and I have been friends since we were little sprogs.”

Lucy struggled to make the many, varied pieces of Thornecliff fit together in her mind. “How could someone as nice as you be friends with a man like that?” she burst out.

“Well, we were at school together,” Fitz explained. “Creates a bond, you know. And Thorne wasn’t always…what he became, when we left school and went to London, after all that rotten business with his uncle.”

Despite herself, Lucy felt the deep burn of curiosity. “His uncle?”

“Raised him after Thorne’s parents died,” Fitz said, uncharacteristically brief, his habitually sunny expression clouding over. “They had a falling out.”

“What happened?”

“Don’t know the particulars,” Fitz hedged. “Thorne never liked to talk about it, and one doesn’t want to pry.”

Sensing she wouldn’t get more out of him on that topic, Lucy asked, “What was Thornecliff like as a boy?”

“Intense,” Fitz remembered. “He and his cousin, Dominic, always had to be the best at everything. They fought all the time, in constant competition, but they were inseparable. Do you know, I wasn’t terribly happy at school, at the start, away from home for the first time and all that, and Thorne always knew how to buck me up.

We’d sneak out and go for a ramble in the woods, or a punt on the river.

He was…kind, in his own way. Huh. I hadn’t thought of that in a long time. ”

Lucy shook her head, bewildered. How had that competitive, driven boy who’d taken a homesick friend under his wing turned into the selfish, useless, spiteful, preening creature who’d nearly destroyed her sister’s life on a whim?

Was it possible that version of Thornecliff was the mask…and there was a whole other man underneath?

She wondered if Fitz knew about what Thornecliff had done to Gemma, or about him saving Nathaniel from a burning building.

Lucy had followed the gossip rags embarrassingly closely as a girl, and she couldn’t recall seeing Fitz’s name mentioned alongside Thornecliff’s in the tales of his scandalous exploits.

“When did you first meet Caroline and leave England?” she asked.

Unfazed by the abrupt change of subject, Fitz laced his fingers behind his head and lay back on the blanket to blink dreamily up at the puffy, white clouds. “Almost eight years ago now.”

Lucy bit her lip. Fitz had already been abroad before Thornecliff ever made his ill-fated stop at Five Mile House.

A part of her wanted to lay it all out for Fitz, but when she glanced back at Thornecliff, the corner of his lips curled in a sly half smile at whatever he’d just said to make Bess laugh, she found it hard to say anything.

There were times when Lucy felt as if the whole world wanted her to simply forget everything that had happened. To move on, as though it was enough to simply say Thorne was a changed man because he’d done one or two not-horrendous things.

When she wasn’t sure any of them truly knew Thorne at all.

“When we met in Paris, Fitz,” Lucy said slowly, “you were so kind as to inquire after my sister, Gemma, and our mother. You had kept in touch with people back home enough to have heard the bare bones of what happened when my father died. But did you never chance to hear anything of the circumstances surrounding Gemma’s engagement? ”

Frowning, Fitz sat up and hooked his arms around his bent knees. “I can’t say that I did.”

“Well, it almost didn’t happen,” Lucy said, her heart squeezing at the memory of her sister’s shocked, humiliated face. “Because of that man sitting over there, playing with my niece.”

Instead of looking surprised, Fitz blew out a resigned sigh. “What did he do?”

“When he came to Five Mile House, the coaching inn we inherited, he recognized that the barman pulling pints, whom my sister only knew as Hal, was actually the Duke of Havilocke. Thornecliff must have told every gossipmonger and satirist in London, making Gemma out to be a bumbling fool slavering after a wealthy husband when there was a duke under her nose all the time. It nearly tore Gemma and Hal apart!”

Fitz cocked his head like a quizzical spaniel. “Forgive me, but it sounds as if what nearly tore them apart was Hal’s deception.”

“Well, that’s true,” Lucy said, a little flustered.

“But she shouldn’t have had to find out that way—and it was certainly no one else’s business!

To have her most private affairs splashed across the Ton, page after page of gleefully vicious commentary and grossly insulting cartoon drawings—and for what?

Because Thornecliff thought it all a good joke?

Would you have laughed, if you’d been in London to see it? ”

Fitz winced. “I hope not. Gemma was a friend of ours—I hate to think of Thorne being so careless with her feelings, and with her reputation…but I can well believe it. He can be callous.”

“Heartless, I would say.” Lucy felt a bit better. “And now he expects us all to forget what he’s done and be friends!”

“Oh, no, I couldn’t advise you to forget.

” Fitz shook his head, looking troubled.

“Thorne’s waters run deep, as I said, and there be dragons, if you catch my meaning.

He has behaved abominably, and he will likely behave abominably again.

He’s not a tame animal, Lucy. You’d do well to remember that, even if I hope you will also consider that he may be trying to do better. To be better.”

“You’re a more forgiving friend than he deserves,” Lucy told Fitz. “And more optimistic about human nature than I think I can be, at least in this instance.”

“I tend to hope for the best. Which I’ve noticed a lot of people seem to apologize for, as though it’s a failing, or a foolish way to be? But I’ve never known anyone to benefit from hoping for the worst.”

“You are a philosopher, Fitz,” Lucy said with an unwilling smile. “But that doesn’t mean you’re right about Thornecliff.”

“Well, as my perfect, exquisite, clever wife would say, I’m only observing the data and drawing conclusions.” Fitz grinned, lifting his chin to indicate the others. “This is not the same Thorne I left behind all those years ago. A new variable has been introduced.”

Lucy followed his gaze across the blanket to where Kitty had fallen asleep with her head on Thornecliff’s shoulder. His large, bare hand was splayed across her back, holding her gently in place, and as Lucy’s heart stuttered in her chest, he glanced up and locked eyes with her.

Something sizzled down Lucy’s spine, a shock of awareness she didn’t want, but couldn’t deny.

“I wonder,” Fitz mused in her ear. “What could that new variable be?”

* * *

Lucy had barely been able to look at Thornecliff for the rest of the picnic. She was afraid she must have seemed terribly sullen and out of sorts—Bess said as much, and Nathaniel silently gave the same impression—but the truth was, Lucy was shaken.

When Thorne first declared his intention to seduce her, in that careless, cocksure way of his, she had scoffed.