Page 35 of Scoundrel Take Me Away (Dukes in Disguise #3)

Given that they’d almost certainly anticipated their marriage vows, at least to some degree, Gabriel thought it was not a stretch to assume that Lucy cared for him.

Her caring felt like a gift he hadn’t earned.

All he could do was attempt to cherish and protect that gift until his memories came back, and he could once more be the man she’d agreed to wed.

Until then, she’d expressed a wish that they get to know one another. And he, for one, had a lot of questions.

“Enough. Let us abide by Dr. Perry’s rules and remain unagitated.” The smile felt unfamiliar on his face, but it made her smile back at him, so he counted it as a triumph. “I’m tired of thinking about all the things I’ve forgotten. Tell me something new, something I didn’t know before.”

* * *

Right around the moment she felt her heart crack in two at the expression on Gabriel’s face when he spoke about learning of his parents’ deaths, that was when Lucy realized this whole faux betrothal was going to be a lot more complicated than she’d anticipated.

She wanted to hang on to her anger, her sense of betrayal, but he was making it awfully difficult.

Gabriel was just so different from either The Gentle Rogue or the Thornecliff Lucy had thought she knew. Still sharply clever and with a wicked bent to his wit, but less cynical and cutting. And so much more open—yet everything she’d learned from him today left her with more questions than answers.

What had happened between him and his last remaining family members? Fitz had implied that Thorne had changed after that falling out, and Lucy could now attest to that fact. The Gabriel before her, free of those memories, was a different man.

Except, he wasn’t. This man was always at the core, though his experiences had clearly influenced the way he presented himself to the world.

But Lucy could already tell that getting to know Gabriel, this version of him, was going to alter everything she thought and felt about the man.

God. When he told her she had to be honest with him, that he trusted her… Every time she thought of it, her stomach tied itself in knots anew.

What am I doing? she wondered, not for the first or even hundredth time.

But the only way out was through, so she said, “What do you want to hear about? We won the war with France. King George died finally, poor man, and the Prince Regent acceded to the throne.”

“Not that sort of thing.” Gabriel shook his head, the gold of his hair glinting in the dim light that leaked in around the edges of the heavy velvet curtains. “I want to know about you.”

Lucy’s throat felt dry and scratchy. Clearing it, she poured herself a glass of water from the pitcher on his nightstand and took a long drink.

“I’m not terribly interesting,” she tried, but the look Gabriel gave her was so chiding, so mock-disappointed, Lucy had to laugh.

“All right, fine,” she grumbled, pulling her feet up onto the seat of the chair so she could wrap her arms around her raised knees.

“But you already knew quite a lot about me—if you want a new tidbit, I’m going to need to think for a moment. ”

Gabriel obediently lay back against the pillows, his glittering black gaze never leaving her face.

Lucy became aware of the silence between them, more comfortable than she would have imagined, punctuated only by the sounds of London traffic rumbling through Grosvenor Square outside his window, and the little domestic noises of life at Ashbourn House carrying on within.

“Is it all right that we’re alone in here?” he asked suddenly. “Your brother is clearly protective of you; I don’t wish to cause problems between you.”

“Nathaniel is not my keeper,” Lucy said firmly, “and anyway, the door to the hallway is open. Proper enough, considering you’re a bedridden invalid.”

He quirked a brow, mischief dimpling one of his lean cheeks. “Your brother is right to be wary. I’d have to be dead not to want you.”

Abruptly, the air between them felt thick and warm, crackling with tension. Lucy licked her lips, and his eyes dropped to track the movement like a predator tracking prey.

Avid , her writer’s brain supplied. It was the perfect word. He looked avid.

Feeling overheated and breathless, Lucy held his stare and blurted out the first thing that sprang to mind.

“I told you we began as enemies, but that’s not the whole story.

What I never told you before—and I can’t believe I’m about to tell you now—is that I was infatuated with you before I even met you. ”

Where was her composure? Where was her steely determination to make this man pay for the wrongs he’d done her?

But as she watched his handsome face light up with a wicked grin, Lucy couldn’t help feeling that this version of this man didn’t deserve her animosity.

“Ah, that’s more like it,” he said with relish. “Tell me everything!”

“I was a very foolish, silly, ignorant girl,” Lucy said sternly, unable to entirely conquer her own urge to smile.

“And I was obsessed with reading the gossip columns. At the time, I felt quite…isolated, I suppose, within my own family. My parents were deeply, wildly in love, with each other and with life at the center of London’s social whirl.

My mother is not considered at all respectable by the Haute Ton, I should mention—she was a nursemaid when she married my father. ”

She watched him closely to see how he would react to that, unwilling to admit to herself that her palms felt a bit clammy with nerves.

“A duke who married his son’s nanny.” Gabriel’s brows climbed his high forehead. “Yes, I can imagine the jealous biddies of Polite Society didn’t care for that.”

“They did not care for it,” Lucy confirmed, relaxing a bit at his tone, which was free of judgment and censure.

“Nor did they care for my sister, Gemma, and me, as the issue of that scandalously unequal union. Gemma is five years older than I am, so she was out in society while I was still in the schoolroom. Our parents were very popular, however, in the less rarified circles of society. They spent most of their evenings out and about, at parties and balls and entertainments of all sorts. And then when she came out, Gemma was gone every night, too—and there was I, stuck at home in my pigtails and short skirts, waiting for my life to begin. That’s how it started, my obsession with the gossip columns. ”

“You wanted to know what your family was doing, when they left you behind.”

The wealth of understanding in his deep voice gave Lucy a queer feeling in her middle.

“Gemma seemed to live the most glamorous, exciting life, and the only way I could be a part of it was to follow her exploits in the broadsheets. She ran in some very fast circles, indeed—she was part of your set, in fact.”

Gabriel frowned a bit. “My set? My set is the scandalous, fast set?”

Lucy paused. “Does that surprise you?”

“My uncle, who raised me—he has exceedingly high standards,” he mused, a far-off look in his eye. “And he sets his expectations of us to match what he thinks we’re capable of. What can have happened between us that would make me rebel so openly against Uncle Roman’s ideals?”

“I don’t know, but if your uncle raised you to be an upstanding member of society, you defied his expectations rather thoroughly,” Lucy informed him frankly.

“Were I to give you a stack of newspapers to catch up on the notable events of the past decade, you would find the scandal sheets positively rife with your escapades. And I devoured them all. I scoured every broadsheet for your name; I couldn’t wait to find out what you’d been up to week after week. ”

“What sorts of things?” Gabriel sounded interested, but Lucy could see that he still didn’t entirely believe her.

“You once played a prank on the previous Marchioness of Huntingdon that involved engaging upward of fifty separate modistes to show up at her townhouse bearing outlandish gowns they swore she had ordered. There was the most outrageous row about it; at one point, they clogged the street in front of the townhouse so badly that traffic was stopped in Berkeley Square for three hours. Fifty dressmakers milling about, waving dress patterns and half-finished garments, shouting for payment.”

He laughed, his shoulders relaxing. “That sounds like something I could imagine doing. I strongly disliked the Marchioness of Huntingdon. She was the mother of one of my dearest friends, and she treated him abominably. Is that the worst of it? Youthful hijinks and silly pranks are not, perhaps, the most admirable things to have in one’s past, but surely I have moved beyond that by this point in my life. ”

“Oh, you moved beyond harmless pranks, all right.” Lucy bit her lip. Now that it came to it, she was finding it remarkably unpleasant to tarnish the image Gabriel seemed to have of himself. He seemed so far removed from the unrepentant rogue she had come to know.

But a resigned look had come over his perfect features. “Come on, out with it. What else did I do to land myself in the scandal sheets?”

What hadn’t he done? Lucy shook her head, wishing she could revel in this moment but entirely unable to. “It…it doesn’t really matter now, does it? It’s in the past.”

“Not for me,” he pointed out. “Just because I can’t remember it doesn’t mean it didn’t happen. I need to know who I am now, and those experiences must have shaped who I became.”

She swallowed hard. “You have ruled the fast set for years. The dandies and rakes of the Ton, younger sons and scapegraces and ne’er-do-wells flock to you, emulate your fashions and mannerisms and turns of phrase. You have many friends.”

Did he, though? Or did he have hangers-on?

Did any of them truly know him? Lucy was no longer sure that anyone did.