Page 31 of Scoundrel Take Me Away (Dukes in Disguise #3)

Charlie turned worried eyes up to Lucy. “Should we move him inside? It can’t be doing him any good to be lying out here in the cold and damp.”

Lucy wrung her hands together. “I don’t know! I wish Dr. Perry would arrive.”

A commotion at the garden doors caught Lucy’s attention. Oh God, her brother and Bess. Lucy’s fingertips began to tingle and she gulped in a breath to stop herself from keeling over in a faint.

I’m going to have to explain what Thornecliff is doing here , she realized mere moments before Nathaniel strode into the garden and demanded, “Why the hell is the Duke of Thornecliff on my lawn at the crack of dawn?”

Bess bustled past him, a worried frown creasing her forehead. “Oh, Nathaniel, he’s hurt! There’s blood!”

“Lucy, what is going on here?” Her brother turned that stern glare on her, and Lucy immediately did the only thing she could think of to delay the conversation that was bearing down on her like a runaway carriage.

She burst into tears.

Nathaniel’s eyes went wide and pained. He couldn’t stand it when the women he cared for cried, which Lucy knew very well. And used only very, very sparingly. And which was honestly so sweet, it only made her cry all the harder as everything caught up with her at once.

Her brother wrapped an awkward arm around her shoulders with a panicked murmur of “There, there.”

Bess gave Lucy a narrow glance—she was also aware of her husband’s marshmallow tendencies when confronted with weeping—but as she studied Lucy, an expression of true sympathy softened her pretty face.

“Oh, my dear Lucy,” she breathed, and Lucy turned her face into her brother’s shoulder and let out a wail she was really not proud of.

And everything turned to chaos.

Nathaniel barked contradictory orders at the footmen who rushed to help Charlie attempt to lift all fourteen stone of Thornecliff’s solid muscle, while Bess directed them into the drawing room and called for the maids to bring hot water and clean rags and to stoke up the fire before they all caught their deaths of a chill, and Lucy stood looking on with her shoulders shaking and her insides liquid with fear and confusion and anger and she knew not what else, because he wasn’t. Waking. Up.

Dr. Perry arrived and examined Thornecliff, whose head seemed to have stopped bleeding but now sported an impressive lump the size of a goose egg.

“And he hasn’t regained consciousness at any point since the injury?” Dr. Perry peered over the tops of his half-moon spectacles at Nathaniel, who immediately turned to Lucy.

“I don’t think so.” She went round the chaise longue upon which the footman had deposited Thornecliff’s unresponsive body and sat down on his other side.

The longer he remained unconscious, the further any other consideration was pushed into the background of Lucy’s mind.

She would have traded all she possessed to see him blink open those black-as-sin eyes and give her that supercilious sneer.

“And how did he come by the injury?” Dr. Perry inquired delicately.

Lucy took Thornecliff’s large hand between her own smaller palms, unable to stop staring at him. A thick white bandage wrapped around his head, the plain linen an insult to his gorgeousness. Lucy pressed his hand and longed to feel a return pressure, but there was nothing.

It was surreal to see a man so full of life and vigor, and sheer, radiating force of personality like this.

A shell.

She shuddered, tears threatening once more and thickening her voice as she replied, “He fell. From my window.”

She held her breath, trepidation shivering through her. From the corner of her eye, she saw the silent look exchanged between Nathaniel and Bess. In the next instant, Bess was sweetly but firmly shepherding out everyone who was not patient, family, or doctor.

Dr. Perry appeared not to notice that anything was amiss. “And that would be on the second story? I see, I see. Well, the wound has been cleaned and bandaged, and His Grace appears to be resting comfortably. I believe that’s all I can do for the moment.”

“All you can do!” Lucy managed to tear her gaze away from Thornecliff to stare at the doctor, aghast. “What do you mean? He is still asleep!”

Dr. Perry blinked behind his spectacles. “I can’t force him to wake up. He must do that in his own time.”

“Meaning what? In a few hours?”

“Perhaps. Or it could be longer.” His round face registered a scientific interest that struck Lucy as cruelly uncaring.

“I have seen cases like these where the patient came round in the same afternoon, and ones where it took weeks for the patient to wake up, or even months. Head wounds are terribly unpredictable.”

“Months,” she breathed, stunned.

“Yes, and that leads me to my next suggestion…” Dr. Perry’s voice faded from Lucy’s awareness as he rose and crossed the drawing room to speak with her brother and sister-in-law.

Months. He might be like this for months. It was unthinkable.

Her hands tightened spasmodically on Thornecliff’s fingers—and for the first time, he squeezed back.

Only a slight pressure, a mere reflex, but it was a response.

Lucy’s heart battered against her rib cage. She half started up out of her chair, gaze fixed on Thornecliff’s slack face, in time to see his unfairly long eyelashes blink open to reveal his eyes.

Black as sin. And at the moment, hazy with bewilderment and mostly likely pain.

Lucy lifted a shaking hand to cup his cheek, feeling the bristle of golden whiskers tickle her palm. All her senses were strangely heightened.

The teal watered silk that covered the chaise was bright enough to sear her eyes. She could smell the freshness of crushed grass and the copper tang of blood on the highwayman’s black garments he still wore.

He blinked, focusing on her, and Lucy could only stare back at him with her breath lodged in her lungs.

The enormity of the situation crashed over her like a wave.

This man had deceived her. On every level, and to what ends she could hardly bear to guess. But at least partly—he had lied his way into her bed.

Into her body.

Anger rose up, swamping the relief she might have felt at his recovery. Anger and a devastating sense of loss, because in one fell swoop the only two men with whom Lucy had ever felt a genuine connection had proved to be…not genuine at all.

Lucy dragged in a shuddering breath. Thornecliff’s brows drew together. He looked as painfully blank and overwhelmed as she felt.

She managed to speak over the shattering of her heart. “It’s all right. You’re going to be well. The doctor is here, he’s seen you, let me get him?—”

His long, strong fingers tightened irresistibly on hers when she would have pulled away. Lucy paused, hovering over him. That frown had deepened.

He gazed up at her and said, “Who are you?”