Page 38 of Scoundrel Take Me Away (Dukes in Disguise #3)

Lucy ignored that and forged ahead. “I am not being forced to wed Thornecliff, by him or by my own notions of propriety or by concern for my reputation, or anything so witless.”

“Then why have you agreed to marry him?”

Lucy swallowed. Bess had such a way of gently driving her point directly into one’s heart. Already feeling mired in lies, Lucy didn’t wish to add another.

So she said, “I’m honestly not sure. I suppose because there is something very tangled between us, and I think it may take a lifetime to unravel it.”

Thank goodness, that had caused Bess’s face to soften.

“Oh, Lucy. That feeling, of there never being quite enough time to spend with another person, always more you want to know and discover about each other—that is all I’ve ever wanted for you.

That, along with a ready sense of humor, is my exact recipe for a happy married life. ”

“I’m sure we’ll do very well together,” Lucy said uncomfortably. “Listen, Bess, could you please promise me not to mention the engagement to Mama and Gemma? And ask Nathaniel to keep mum also?”

Bess knit her brows. “Why?”

Because if there’s the smallest chance that they might never need to know—if Gabriel’s memories return and he casts me aside, or if I break it off, or, or, or…

“I would so like to have the chance to tell them myself, in person,” Lucy improvised, and was relieved when Bess agreed.

The questions had stopped after that, though Lucy caught Bess eyeing her curiously as the days passed and Lucy spent every waking hour playing with Kitty, reading to Bess or studying books about head injuries instead of sitting at Gabriel’s bedside.

As she settled there now, in her accustomed chair, Lucy forced herself to acknowledge that being this near to him calmed the frantic flutter of her nerves to an alarming extent.

Staying away from him during the day was getting harder. But every day that passed without his memories returning made Lucy more and more anxious that the blow he’d sustained might have damaged him irreparably.

It had been four days since the accident, and she worried that Gabriel was losing the will to fight; when she’d checked in on him after supper, instead of exerting all his charm to get her to stay longer with him, he’d barely acknowledged her presence.

His drawn, set features and air of abstraction filled Lucy with fear.

Even in sleep, when most people looked relaxed and calm, all cares and woes smoothed from their faces, Gabriel looked tense. His brows were lowered, his mouth a stern line that carved his face into something untouchable.

As she studied him in the dark, he twitched slightly, nostrils flaring. His chest began to rise and fall faster, as though he was dreaming about running or being chased.

In fact, she noticed with a pulse of unease that sweat appeared to have broken out along his hairline and at his temples. Was he ill?

She hesitated, not wanting to wake him, but ultimately couldn’t dissuade herself from reaching out to push back his mussed blond hair to check if his forehead felt feverishly hot.

But at the lightest touch of her hand, he twisted violently away from her, sitting up in bed with a choked-off shout that made Lucy flinch.

He stared at her for a moment without seeming to recognize her, panting and wild-eyed.

“Gabriel?” she whispered. Her fingers shook when she moved to light the candle on his nightstand.

He winced away from the light as though it hurt his head.

“It’s all right,” she said urgently, shielding the flame with her hand. “You were having a bad dream, I think.”

His chest heaved. His white nightshirt clung to him in patches where it was damp with sweat. He still seemed barely cognizant of his surroundings.

Concerned, Lucy moved from the chair to sit on the edge of the bed. He watched her, unblinking, jaw tight as though clenched on a cry. She wanted to touch him, to ground him in this moment here with her, to let him know he was no longer trapped in the nightmare, but she didn’t want to startle him.

The moment she reached out a tentative hand, however, he folded forward and caught her to him, burying his face in her shoulder.

He held her so tightly she could hardly breathe, but that didn’t matter since being in his arms like this rendered her breathless anyway.

The broad muscles of his back flexed and tightened under her hands. She felt the fine tremors running through him and the brush of his hair against her throat and the damp strikes of his breath at her shoulder.

“There now,” she crooned, stricken with tenderness in the face of his distress. “Gabriel, Gabriel. Come back to me.”

He shuddered once, his big body jarring hers with the involuntary motion, then seemed to breathe out a long sigh.

“Lucy,” he said, his hold gentling. “I’m here.”

“You’re here,” she confirmed, heart clenching. “With me.”

“I was someplace dark. I was alone.” He turned his face until it nestled in the crook of her neck.

Lucy shuddered in the grip of something deeper than satisfaction and stronger than pleasure. “It was only a dream. You’re not alone,” she told him, lifting one hand from his back to pet at the hair curling damply against the nape of his neck.

He would need a trim soon, she noted, and almost smiled at the soft domesticity of the thought.

“I’d been alone for a long time, in the dream.” His voice was ragged and slow, the words dredged up out of the depths of his chest. “I didn’t think I was ever getting out.”

Lucy wondered if it was some sort of dream metaphor for his injury—his memories, locked up somewhere inside his head, perhaps never to be released. “That sounds horrid,” she said, stroking his nape. “Now I’m glad I woke you.”

“Do I have nightmares often?”

“I don’t know,” Lucy admitted. “We only actually slept in the same bed the once, and you seemed to sleep unperturbed that night.”

“Only the once,” Gabriel sighed, lifting his head to blink slumberous dark eyes at her. “And I can’t remember it. Do you know, I think if I could get that one memory back, I’d be willing to forgo all the rest.”

Lucy’s heart snagged. “Don’t say that.”

“Why not? It’s the truth.”

Lucy became suddenly aware that she was all but sitting in his lap, her arms still loosely draped over his strong shoulders. The muscles bunched and shifted under her forearms as his hands smoothed down her back to frame her waist.

“I want you to get all your memories back,” she said breathlessly, the heat of his palms searing through the thin fabric of her dressing gown and night rail.

Even though it would mean the end of this faux betrothal and he’d probably never speak to her again, it was true, she realized. She did want him to get his memories back.

“Why?” He glanced down, shadows flickering across his face. “Maybe I’m better off without them.”

“Because,” Lucy said, “you deserve to feel whole again.”

“Maybe I don’t need my memories to feel whole.” His thumbs moved in soft circles at the bottom of her rib cage; Lucy’s breath sped. “Maybe all I need is you.”

He looked up and into her eyes for only a heartbeat before tilting his head to claim her lips in a deep, drugging kiss.

But one glance was enough for Lucy to be bowled over by the pain in that midnight-dark gaze.

His lips moved over hers hungrily, desperately, and Lucy couldn’t help but respond. She curled her arms tighter, hitching herself closer, feeling as though she couldn’t ever get close enough.

They kissed with the desperation of star-crossed lovers, as if they would soon be parted and never see each other again. He made Lucy’s head ignite, setting fire to every reasonable, sane objection before it could reach her lips.

It was lowering to realize she would have let him press her back into the mattress and take her, without so much as a whimper of protest, if he hadn’t pulled back from the kiss on his own.

“My apologies,” he said, strained and hoarse as he eased her away from him. “I forgot myself for a moment. You’re far too tempting for your own good, Lively.”

Tears abruptly threatened. As if reading it on her face, his expression went from rueful to terrified.

“What’s wrong? Did I hurt you, or?—?”

“You used to call me Lively,” she croaked, trying not to sniffle. “Before. To tease me. I didn’t realize how much I missed it.”

A complicated look passed behind his eyes. “I suppose that’s reason enough to want all my memories back. Cursed though they might be.”

That reminded Lucy of her theory about his dream, that perhaps it represented the memories he seemed to both want and fear. “Earlier, why did you ask if you suffered from frequent nightmares?”

He looked away, frowning. “It felt…familiar, somehow. The place where I was trapped. It was so dark, but I knew every inch of the place intimately, as though I’d explored it all, over and over, trying to find a way to escape. But there was no escape.” Remembered horror suffused his tone.

A chill stiffened Lucy’s spine. “You did escape,” she reminded him, running her hands up and down his arms as if to ward off the cold. “You’re here with me. How is your head?”

“Fine. Except for the fact that I’m still missing more than a decade of my life.”

All her worries for his recovery bubbled up inside her. “This isn’t working. You’re not getting better.”

“The headaches are much less frequent,” he pointed out. “I only had one today, and it didn’t last long. And I managed to get out of bed and move around a bit. I’d like to do more of that.”

She could only imagine. This was a man used to galloping his horse across Hampstead Heath in the afternoon, then riding out under cover of darkness to rob carriages at gunpoint all night.

Maybe that dream was simply about him feeling confined to the bedchamber.

“I think we need to make a change,” she decided, sitting up on her knees beside him. “All my reading suggests that once the physical effects of the head injury are healed, there are several things one can do to spur the healing of the brain and aid the memories in returning.”

He raised his brows. “Such as?”

“Such as surrounding the patient with the familiar trappings of his old life. Of course you can’t recuperate well here; you’ve never lived at Ashbourn House. You need to be in your own home.”

“Fitz mentioned a set of bachelor apartments at The Albany when he offered to bring me some of my things,” he said, frowning. “But I must have moved in there at some point fairly recently. It doesn’t sound familiar at all.”

Lucy considered this, nibbling on her lower lip in thought.

She wondered if his rooms at The Albany would hold clues about his activities as The Gentle Rogue.

And while Lucy was, of course, terrifically curious to find out more about that area of his life, she also wasn’t entirely prepared to explain The Gentle Rogue to Gabriel.

What would she do if he pulled open his wardrobe and found racks of black clothing, black scarves, and black domino masks? He’d seemed so shocked at Thorne’s antics. She couldn’t imagine how he’d react to finding out he was a wanted criminal.

Surely that would count as agitating the patient.

He would recover better in a place that tapped into the deepest of his core memories, Lucy told herself. Like the place where he grew up.

And as an added inducement, it would remove Gabriel from London, putting him farther from the reach of Sir Colin Semple.

During her days avoiding Gabriel, Lucy had begun to fear that her known association with both The Gentle Rogue and the Duke of Thornecliff would lead Sir Colin directly to the correct conclusion—that they were one and the same man.

Leaving London felt like a good strategic move, a way for her to protect Gabriel without having to explain the dangers Sir Colin threatened.

“I don’t know why I don’t live at Wycombe House when I’m in Town,” he was saying. “That’s been the London residence of the de Veres for generations.”

“We could try there,” Lucy said, warming to her idea. “Or, ideally…I think you would do best at Thornecliff. The ducal estate.”

“In the country.” He smiled at her, but his eyes were watchful and shadowed. “Trying to get rid of me?”

“What?” Lucy blinked, surprised. “Oh, no. I’ll be coming with you, of course. No matter where you choose to go.”

His smile grew, taking on some of the sparkle and wickedness Lucy could admit to herself that she’d missed. “Wherever I choose to go.” Reeling her in with one of his long arms, he deftly manhandled her into a laughing swoon leaned back over his other arm. “I like the sound of that.”

When he kissed her once more, Lucy gave herself up to it, knowing he would stop them before they went too far.

It was a strange sensation, she thought dazedly as her eyes slipped closed and desire thrummed warmly through her—trusting him.

She’d never trusted Thornecliff, not really. And she’d always known The Gentle Rogue had an entire life he kept separate from their encounters. But Gabriel… Gabriel was hers, in a way neither of the other incarnations of this man had ever been.

And, God help her, Lucy was beginning to fear very much that she was his .