Page 20 of Scoundrel Take Me Away (Dukes in Disguise #3)

Flicking a glance in the direction of the table where Thornecliff still sat, Sir Colin arched a brow.

“By all means,” Lucy exclaimed, out of patience. “Bother the Duke of Thornecliff with your silly nonsense and see where that gets you.”

Giving Lucy another infuriatingly mild smile, Sir Colin bowed and murmured, “My lady. I shall certainly be seeing you again soon.”

Then he was gone.

More shaken than she wished to admit, Lucy groped for the doorway and let herself through it without thinking. She breathed in a calming draught of the quiet that blanketed the back hallway in which she found herself.

It was well lit and empty, for the moment, and Lucy took a second to calm herself. Was she still going through with this, knowing an agent of the Crown was skulking about, trying to unmask the very same man Lucy was?

She didn’t have long to decide. Thornecliff would notice if she took too long in the “ladies’ retiring room” and come searching for her.

She hated to give up on her plans, but as she moved farther down the corridor to peer up the stairs that no doubt led to Mr. Rook’s office, Lucy’s heart sank.

She couldn’t risk it, not knowing that she was being watched. If she found anything, Sir Colin would swoop in and then what would she have accomplished but The Gentle Rogue’s downfall?

Lucy sighed and turned to go back to the card room. But a heavy hand landed upon her shoulder.

Cursing silently, Lucy turned, expecting to see the grim face of the gaming hell owner glaring down at her, demanding to know why she was trespassing in the private areas of the club.

Instead, a man she’d never seen before gazed down at her blearily, his bloodshot eyes half lidded in his ruddy face.

Good God, could a woman not walk two steps unaccompanied in this place without being accosted? Thornecliff was correct to warn her. Intolerable .

“Caught you,” the drunk crowed, dropping his meaty paw from her shoulder to her arm and pulling the bodice of her dress askew as he went.

Lucy gave an outraged growl, her hands flying to pull her gown back into place.

“No need for that, pretty,” he slurred, pawing ineffectually at her chest. “These bubbies ain’t much, but what’s there is choice! Ha! Ha!”

Jerking back, Lucy stumbled away from the stairs and nearly fell over. A sense of the danger she was in crashed over her; they were alone in this corridor frequented by the women who worked for the club, a corridor where Lucy absolutely wasn’t supposed to be.

From the way Thorne had spoken of Mr. Simon Rook, it didn’t sound as if he was the sort of man a girl should run to when in distress. There was unlikely to be any help at the top of those stairs.

She was on her own.

If she screamed the house down, someone would probably come to her aid.

But once she caused a scene here, it would be all but impossible to get anyone to speak with her quietly and secretly about the goings-on of the club and one of its more infamous members, even if she came back on a different night.

In a flash, Lucy decided she would only scream as a last resort. In the meantime, surely she could outwit this inebriated lout.

Putting a hand on her hip, Lucy adopted a flirtatious smile that felt only a little strained at the edges. “Ah, ah! Don’t be cheeky. I’m not allowed to take gentleman callers back here—rules are rules! But if you’ll just follow me back out to the card room?—”

“Rules don’t apply to viscounts, ’s I was jus’ explaining to Rook up there.” The man gave an imperious hiccup. “I’ll have you here and now.”

Keeping her back to the wall, Lucy shifted slowly to her left. To her relief, the drunken viscount squinted at her and shuffled his feet as well to keep her in his sights. “You don’t want to be entertained here in a nasty, drafty stairwell, my lord! Let me show you to a comfortable bedchamber.”

All she had to do was get him back out onto the floor, in public, where she could draw Thornecliff’s attention.

She didn’t wish to examine her bone-deep trust that Thornecliff would step in and rescue her. There was a time, not so very long ago, when she would have presumed he couldn’t be bothered to lift a finger in aid of someone else.

Something had changed, but now was not the moment for Lucy to figure out what.

“A bedchamber, by Jove,” the man slurred, red-rimmed eyes flaring with lust.

Lucy fought to keep the anger and disgust off her face. Only a few more feet…

Her hand behind her back found the doorjamb. The card room was behind that door. Quick as a flash, she whirled and scrabbled for the door handle but the viscount caught her just as her straining fingertips reached it.

With a breathless shout, she flung the door open. The viscount, unsteady on his feet, slammed into her, thrusting both of them through the open doorway in a tumble of peacock silk and whisky fumes.

Lucy righted herself, wincing at the way the man’s tenacious grip on her arm wrenched at her wrist. The tables nearest them turned to stare.

Embarrassment scorched across Lucy’s cheeks and all the way down to her chest, which infuriated her—why should she be embarrassed!

This mannerless pig thought he was entitled to take liberties with any woman who crossed his path—he was the one who ought to be ashamed.

Yet it was Lucy who blushed and felt unwanted tears burning at the backs of her eyes.

After years of living on her own, taking care of herself and relishing her freedom, it was galling to be made to feel small and weak. Helpless.

Incensed, she rounded on the drunken viscount, who appeared taken aback for a moment by what must surely have been incandescent rage on Lucy’s face.

But he recovered quickly enough when the men watching began to jeer and shout encouragement, including suggestions about what he should do with Lucy that made her want to box all their ears.

“Let go of me at once,” Lucy hissed, pulling at her wrist.

But the red-faced gentleman clung with the tenacity of a man who’d all but forgotten what he was doing and was damned well going to keep doing it until he remembered.

“Nothing doing,” he crowed, loudly enough for the onlookers to hear.

“I’m of a mind to tup. So show me to that bedchamber you was talking about, and let’s get to it! ”

Of course, that was the exact moment that a silken voice filtered through the chaos. “What on earth do you think you’re about, Chicheley?”

“Ah, Thornecliff,” the drunk cried. Viscount Chicheley, Lucy supposed. “Caught myself a bird of the night, what? She’s offered to take me to one of the upstairs rooms, but I shan’t be long about it. Happy to hand her off to you when I’m finished.”

“I’m not a bird of the night,” Lucy burst out furiously, twisting her arm in his grip. “Tell him, Thornecliff.”

That made Chicheley pause for an instant, a bewildered expression on his broad, florid face. “I mean, you’re a demirep. A lightskirt,” he clarified helpfully. “A whore.”

“I’m not!” Lucy pinned Thornecliff with a glare as he finally took a lazy, gliding step forward. “Tell him I’m not a whore!”

“She’s not a whore,” Thornecliff parroted calmly.

Looking even more confused, Chicheley belched. “But…she’s here at Sharpe’s. She must be a whore. She offered to take me up to a room.”

Thornecliff eyed Lucy with interest. “Did you?”

That mocking drawl. Lucy hated it. She hadn’t the faintest notion what was going on in his head. Was the cad enjoying this? “What are you playing at? Make this swine let me?—”

Chicheley cut her off with an aggrieved, “That’s how it works at Sharpe’s! Everybody knows. Everything on the floor is up for grabs, to the man who bids the highest for it, and I’m willing to pay!”

“That’s hard to argue.” Thornecliff cocked his head, his black gaze never leaving the other man’s face, but Lucy saw the tic of the muscle in his jaw.

Abruptly, Lucy realized Thornecliff was absolutely not enjoying this. He wasn’t lazy or careless at all.

He was furious.

And when he turned those devil’s eyes on her, blazing like twin coals in the calm marble of his face, Lucy understood that some of his fury was reserved for her.

She’d broken his rule.

Was he angry enough to leave Lucy to suffer the consequences of defying him?

Fear raked down her spine. Before she could do more than draw a breath, Thornecliff had turned back to Chicheley, dismissing Lucy as though she had nothing more to do with the conversation.

“I can certainly understand your position, Chicheley, but the fact is, the woman is here with me. She wandered off to powder her legs or something and I suppose she got lost. But she is not an employee of Sharpe’s.”

“I don’t care who employs her.” Chicheley was a dog with a bone. “And I don’t care who brung her. I’ve got her now and I’m keeping her.”

“For the next fifteen minutes, at least,” cackled a man at the nearest table, reminding Lucy that they had a small audience for this little spectacle.

Thornecliff was keenly aware of that, Lucy saw by the way his nostrils flared at the interruption.

“I don’t know how much plainer I can be. She is not for sale,” he said, the words beginning to sound ground out of him by the way he was clenching his jaw.

“You lost her,” Chicheley said stubbornly, too addled by drink to register the change that was overtaking Thornecliff.

It was like looking at a lake on a calm day, smooth as glass…but with something lurking beneath the surface, circling, huge and ominous and rising from the depths.

“She is mine,” he said, so gently that Lucy barely knew why she flinched.

But Chicheley’s bottom lip jutted out, heedless of the danger. “You lost her. Said so. At Sharpe’s, losers get nothing. Winner takes all.”

The something under Thornecliff’s smooth surface shifted, burgeoned, threatening to break free…then subsided once more. Lucy’s breath was lodged somewhere near her breastbone.

“Then I suppose I’ll just have to win her back, won’t I?”