Page 4 of Scoundrel Take Me Away (Dukes in Disguise #3)

“I’m four and twenty,” she shot back, and took her place at the table purely to annoy him.

Though in truth, she wouldn’t have minded a quiet tray in the nursery if it came with the chance to see the niece she’d barely spent any time with.

“You’ll have to devise something new to mock me for.

My height, perhaps, or my lack of a husband. ”

“Awfully generous of you to provide me with ideas for future insults,” Thornecliff drawled, his eyes never leaving her.

The quality of his regard made Lucy sharply aware of how disheveled and travel-worn she must look. “I know as one ages, one begins to fall back more and more upon things that are familiar and simple,” Lucy said kindly. “I wouldn’t wish for you to strain yourself.”

“How was your journey?” Bess cut in, her gaze darting between Lucy and Thornecliff as though they were a pair of fencers facing off with foils. “I can’t wait to hear all about Tuscany.”

The Duchess of Ashbourn had been born a farmer’s daughter with dreams of travel, but to date she’d only made it as far as London. Her dreams appeared to have changed, somewhat, since her marriage.

Lucy noted the way Bess’s hand strayed to the barely perceptible bump of her stomach, where Lucy knew her next niece or nephew was baking like one of the cakes Bess used to mix up and serve to the appreciative customers at Five Mile House.

This pregnancy was harder on her than the first had been, according to Nathaniel, and Lucy had come home from Italy to do whatever she could to help.

“You’d love it,” Lucy told her. “The sun shines every day, even when it rains. The air is soft and warm and smells of lemons. Nathaniel, you should take her.”

“I’ll take Bess anywhere she wishes to go,” Nathaniel said, making Bess’s eyes go shiny even as she smiled at him.

“Perhaps in a few years,” Bess replied. “When Kitty and the new baby are old enough to travel.”

Attempting the notoriously choppy Channel crossing with any traveling companion under the age of twenty sounded most unpleasant to Lucy, but she held her tongue.

“And how is the writing going?” Bess asked.

Lucy controlled a wince. Her writing wasn’t exactly a secret; it was openly talked about by all the family. But her work was published under a pseudonym for a reason, and she had absolutely no desire to discuss anything about it in Thornecliff’s presence.

But showing that on her face would be akin to offering her vulnerable underbelly for Thornecliff to carve up with his fish knife, so Lucy waved a breezy hand that unfortunately coincided with the footman stepping forward to offer to serve her from the platter of filet of sole.

She nearly upended the silver dish but managed to steady it at the last moment.

The ensuing round of apologies and reassurances that no harm had been done was so comprehensively British that Lucy felt immediately and fully welcomed home.

Though if she’d hoped that a skirmish with a footman would be enough to move the conversation on to another topic, she was doomed to be disappointed.

“What is it you write, Lady Lucy?” Thornecliff inquired when they had all been served their portions of slightly messy fish.

She shot him a look. His words were entirely polite and correct, but the way he said them made her palm itch to slap the mocking half smile off his face.

“Oh, nothing much,” she said quickly, to forestall any of Bess or even Nathaniel’s proud interjections about her serialized novel. “Only a little journal about my travels. Descriptions of places I saw, my impressions of the Italian temperament, that sort of thing. Nothing that would interest you.”

“You have no idea what interests me,” Thornecliff said.

Then, as if feeling the arrested pause in the conversation as the other three diners stared at his unexpected intensity, he broke the moment with a rakish grin.

“My last mistress was Spanish; perhaps I ought to be in the market for an Italian signorina next.”

“You’re disgusting,” Lucy told him, cheeks blazing.

“That’s enough, Thornecliff,” Nathaniel said firmly. “I will remind you that there are ladies present.”

“A duchess and a worldly woman just back from her Grand Tour,” Thornecliff protested lazily. “Hardly delicate flowers of femininity who must be shielded from life’s best bits. Miss Lucy here is all of four and twenty, after all. Immune to shock, surely.”

How did he make everything he said sound simultaneously insinuating and mocking?

“I’m not shocked at a dissolute gentleman keeping a mistress,” Lucy said. “I’m shocked that any woman would put up with you for longer than an evening. Although now I think about it, perhaps I do understand it.”

“Do you?” he replied. He held his fish knife and fork delicately, his thumb rubbing along the silver shaft of the knife in a smooth, hypnotic motion that made Lucy feel an unwilling warmth in her belly.

“Yes. Those women put up with you because you pay them handsomely to do so.”

Something kindled in the depths of those black eyes. Lucy couldn’t tell if it was anger or admiration, or some complicated amalgam of the two. It was gone before she could decide, swallowed up by Thornecliff’s usual air of bored disdain.

“Haven’t you heard, Lady Lucy? I’m reformed.”

“Reformed! I’m surprised you can pronounce the word with a straight face.”

“Some might even say…” He paused to take a small bite and chew it thoroughly. “A hero.”

“Oh, please. No one is saying that.”

“I can only speak to what I’ve heard,” he said placidly, spearing another morsel of fish.

“I know I’ve been away from England for some time,” Lucy gritted out, “but I cannot

believe the English language has altered so substantially as to allow the definition of ‘hero’ to encompass a man who is a known despoiler of innocents! A rumormongering, manipulative, lying rake of the first order!”

“I did save your brother from a burning building,” he pointed out. “And I’ve been quite taken up with charitable concerns of late, including the fate of all the dear little orphans and foundlings. Isn’t that right, Ashbourn?”

“You have certainly donated a quantity of money to the Augusta Lively Home for Orphaned Children,” Ashbourn agreed dryly.

Lucy could not believe her ears. How was anyone swallowing this twaddle? Saved her brother from a burning building, indeed. One brave act committed under extraordinary circumstances didn’t wipe away a lifetime of selfish cruelty.

The Duke of Thornecliff was a villain. He had always been a villain. He was currently still a villain. And he would be a villain forever and ever, amen. “Two good deeds, for which I’m sure you have ulterior motives that I will discover now that I’m home, do not wipe clean a lifetime of evil deeds!”

“Evil deeds such as ensuring your sister’s little coaching inn became the talk of the Ton?” Thornecliff gazed at Lucy inquiringly. “Enabling her to succeed in her scheme of wedding a duke?”

Lucy nearly choked on her sole. “That is not what happened!”

Actually, it sort of was. But the manner in which he’d done it had caused untold heartbreak and humiliation along the way.

“I suppose we must agree to disagree,” Thornecliff replied, still wearing that air of cool detachment that made Lucy long to stand up and yank the table linens out from under the dishes, just to force him to change his expression.

“I daresay we don’t agree on anything,” Lucy shot back. “And we never shall.”

“On one point, I’m afraid, we must come to some accord, Lady Lucy,” Thornecliff said. “I have never despoiled an innocent and I cannot have you besmirching my reputation by saying so.”

“Of course you have,” Lucy protested, taken aback. “As if you would scruple at seducing a virgin.”

“Name one.”

“What?”

“Name an innocent virgin I have supposedly seduced.” Thornecliff lifted his brows expectantly. “I’ll wait.”

Heat scorched Lucy’s cheekbones. “You… I mean…”

“You cannot. Shall I tell you how I know you cannot?” He leaned back in his chair and eyed her across the table. “Because innocent girls are entirely too much work. Can you picture me? Working?”

“All right,” Bess broke in calmly. “I believe that’s quite enough from you two. Talking of virgins and matters of finance at the dinner table—even I know better than that, and I was brought up on a farm!”

A bolt of fear shot through Lucy at Bess’s casual reference to the circumstances of her birth. Rounding on Thornecliff in a protective fury, she hissed, “You’d better not go running to your Fleet Street friends with that!”

Visions of the ugly, demeaning caricatures of her sister cavorted through Lucy’s head—caricatures Thornecliff had all but commissioned when he carried tales of Gemma’s doings back to London.

Those cruel drawings had nearly broken Gemma’s spirit and ruined everything between her and Hal, the man she loved, and that close brush with disaster was directly attributable to the man across the table.

So Lucy could hardly credit it when Bess huffed out an exasperated breath and said, “Lucy, he wouldn’t! Thorne has changed.”

Thorne. She’d called him by his ridiculous nickname, the name his bosom friends and intimates and repulsive, toadying minions called him.

Lucy shook her head in disbelief. Across from her, Thornecliff allowed Lucy a view of the taunting curl of his upper lip, before rearranging his angelic features to polite agreeableness when he glanced back at Bess.

“He hasn’t changed,” Lucy seethed. “He’s up to something. Bess, I know your kind and generous nature leads you to believe the best of everyone. But Nathaniel, surely you have not been taken in!”

“Peace, Lucy,” her brother said, giving her a quelling look. “I understand your feelings and your concerns, but you must put your trust in our judgment. You have been away from England for five years. Things have changed in your absence. It will no doubt take you some time to adjust to being home.”

Though Nathaniel spoke gently, Lucy felt the words like a slap.