Page 32 of Scoundrel Take Me Away (Dukes in Disguise #3)

Chapter Fourteen

Gabriel saw the way his words caused the dark-haired beauty to flinch, and he wished he could call them back.

But he so desperately wanted to know who she was. And for that matter, where he was.

The drawing room was spacious and elegantly appointed, with soaring windows and graceful furniture covered in figured silk. He was quite sure he’d never seen it before in his life.

He never seen the woman bending over him before, either.

When he’d first opened his eyes, the sight of her had struck him like a bolt of lightning from a clear sky, something utterly unexpected. Life changing.

Her hair was so dark a brown it appeared black until hit by the sunlight flooding through a set of open French doors into the unfamiliar sitting room.

The thick waves of it tumbled about her shoulders, framing a delicate, almost elfin face with a rosebud mouth and eyes of the deepest blue he’d ever seen.

Those eyes were currently fixed on him in a look of anxious dismay, her sweet pink lips pressed tightly together as though she was holding in a cry.

It wasn’t only the loveliness of her features that drew him in as if she was the only point of light in the darkness. It was the intensity that moved through the depths of her eyes, a sense of undercurrents and riptides he didn’t understand but was compelled to track.

There was a brightness to her that was at odds with the worried frown that knit her straight, dark brows. A spark he wanted to see fanned into flame.

Wishing to see her smile instead of frown, Gabriel tried to sit up—but the sudden stab of pain in his temples had him subsiding against the cushions instead. His whole body hurt, in fact, but his head was the worst.

His head ached as though he’d been trampled by wild horses. How much had he had to drink the night before…

…and why couldn’t he remember the night before?

Panic, sharp and nauseating, surged up the back of his throat.

“Where am I?” he demanded, voice cracking through the room like a shot. “What’s happening? Who are you?”

Her lips parted, but before she could speak a flock of strangers surrounded them, squawking various things like, “You’re awake!” and “Thank goodness!” and “Your Grace, I pray you will not agitate yourself.”

The dark-haired beauty attempted to pull away once more, but Gabriel kept a firm grip on her slender wrist.

She was his only safety in the storm-tossed sea of unknown faces and unfamiliar voices. He couldn’t lose her.

A speccy, round-faced gentleman bustled over. He had an officious look about him, and Gabriel frown and flinched back from the spectacled fellow’s probing touch to his sore head.

“As I said,” the man pronounced with satisfaction, “many patients resume consciousness quite quickly. How are you feeling, Your Grace?”

“Head hurts,” Gabriel grated out, scowling around the group. Who were these people? A man and woman flanked the rotund gentleman who must be a doctor.

The other man was built along the lines of a mountain, tall and broad, with a craggy face to match. The woman was blonde and pretty in a very English way, all cream and rose complexion and honey-blonde hair. She was gently rounded with pregnancy, he noticed.

“Just lie still, Thorne,” the English rose said soothingly. Thorne. He liked that. “There’s no rush to leave here. Gracious, I’m glad to have you back with us!”

Before he could ask again where “here” was, the dark-haired beauty said, “He’s not—that is…Dr. Perry, I’m afraid something is terribly wrong!”

“A headache is to be expected after sustaining such a blow.” The doctor pushed up his glasses, looking as though he disapproved of these dramatics. “His Grace will be right as rain in a day or two.”

“I’m not sure he will,” the younger lady insisted, darting a frantic glance at Gabriel. “When he woke up, he said?—”

Fed up with being spoken about as though he hadn’t the sense to follow the conversation, Gabriel said, “I don’t mean to seem overly inquisitive, but can any of you explain what exactly is going on?”

The mountain frowned and crossed his arms over his chest, straining the seams of his tailored coat. “I believe you owe me the explanation, Thornecliff. What, precisely, were you doing prior to falling from my sister’s window at dawn this morning?”

The barrage of information made Gabriel’s vision blur. They knew who Gabriel was. His heart thudded nervously. Was he supposed to know them?

He felt so strange . If he could only think past this damnable sore head.

“Don’t badger him, my love.” The English rose placed a restraining hand on the man’s bulging bicep.

“Yes,” agreed the doctor, slapping his thighs before rising to begin packing up his black leather medical case. “Best to let him recover at his own pace, with as little disturbance as possible until the headache subsides. I can leave you with a draught for the pain, if you like?—”

“He doesn’t know me,” the dark-haired beauty blurted out, her voice high and thin.

Every head swiveled to face her, then all eyes immediately darted to Gabriel, who felt his mouth set in a stubborn line. “Should I? I’m afraid I don’t know any of you.”

Pandemonium.

The doctor reopened his medical bag with some excitement, intent on examining Gabriel more closely, while the couple made shocked noises and watched the dark-haired girl closely, as though she might be about to let fly with another startling revelation at any moment.

“What do you remember?” the doctor asked, peering into Gabriel’s eyes. “Do you know who you are?”

“Gabriel Lucien Wolverton de Vere, Duke of Thornecliff,” he recited automatically.

“Pleased to make your acquaintance, Your Grace. I am Dr. Francis Perry. A few more questions to establish mental competency: Can you please tell me the date?”

Such a basic, simple question, but the answer seemed to evaporate into mist when Gabriel reached for it. “Not…with any degree of certainty,” he said, feeling stupid and hating it.

“The year, even?” the doctor probed.

Gabriel’s head throbbed. “Eighteen…thirteen?”

He didn’t mean for it to be a question, or a particularly thrilling answer, but beside him the dark-haired girl took a sharp breath.

Gaze flying to her, he saw her cover her trembling lips with the hand not currently being held in a death grip by his increasingly tense fingers.

“Is that not correct?” he said hoarsely. Gabriel glanced about the silent sitting room at the others.

“The year is eighteen twenty-six,” the mountain rumbled.

Gabriel felt his stomach roll as if he’d had too much brandy. “It can’t be.”

But he sensed that it was the truth. On a certain level, it even made sense of some of the strangeness that had been assaulting him since he awoke. For instance, his body—sore and battered as it was—was not the body of a teenaged boy. And he didn’t feel young.

Gabriel knew instinctively that he was a fully grown man…he just had no memory of becoming one.

Reeling, he looked back to the dark-haired woman. He didn’t know what he was hoping for—some reassurance? Answers about why this was happening? A comprehensive accounting of everything that had happened in the past ten plus years?

But she only stared down at him as though she barely comprehended more than he. Her midnight-blue eyes glittered, sheened with tears she would not let fall. Absurdly, Gabriel felt the urge to reach up and brush her cheeks. To comfort her.

“Fascinating,” the doctor was gushing, “simply fascinating. Amnesia! I’ve heard of cases of memory loss but I’ve never encountered one in my own practice.”

“Amnesia,” the dark-haired beauty echoed. “But it’s only temporary, surely. His memory will return? When his injury heals?”

“Possibly, possibly,” said Dr. Perry, rubbing his hands.

“I shall have to do some research, but my understanding is that sometimes the memory returns when the swelling of the head goes down, and sometimes it does not. We will have to see how the patient progresses! Well, that settles it! The Duke of Thornecliff will accompany me back to my surgery, as I was discussing earlier with Your Graces.”

He nodded to the mountain and the English rose, evidently a duke and duchess in their own right, and Gabriel felt the already untenable situation spiraling even further out of control.

But before he could protest, the dark-haired beauty said, “No. I don’t want him to go.”

Gabriel’s chest filled with warmth. He shot her a grateful look, even as the mountain-sized duke growled, “I think perhaps it would be for the best.”

The authoritative note in his deep voice made Gabriel bristle. It reminded him unpleasantly of his Uncle Roman’s laying-down-the-law tone, but this duke was not Gabriel’s guardian and mentor.

Gabriel didn’t know who this man was or why he felt free to give Gabriel orders, but he didn’t like it.

“I’m not going anywhere until someone explains—where are we?” Gabriel demanded, at the end of his patience. “Who are all of you to me?”

“We’re your friends,” the blonde duchess assured him at once. “I’m Bess. Well, Duchess of Ashbourn, but you call me Bess. And this is my husband, also your friend, the Duke of Ashbourn. Nathaniel, but you generally call him Ashbourn.”

He called this pretty duchess by her Christian name, and she had a nickname for him. He was allowed into their home while she was clearly with child and probably limiting her social interactions to only the closest of family and friends.

It must be true, he concluded grimly. They must be friends. So why could he not remember them?

The panic he’d been holding at bay began to claw at the back of his throat.

“And…how did I come to be injured?” he asked, less steadily than he would have liked.

“I would like the answer to that question as well,” said the mountain—Ashbourn. He really had perfected that stern glower of his, hadn’t he?

For some reason, everyone was now looking at the dark-haired beauty, the only one in the room whose name he did not yet know.