Page 40 of Scoundrel Take Me Away (Dukes in Disguise #3)

One barmaid had poured beer all over her bar while gazing at him.

The landlady at The Spotted Hart had nearly broken her ankle while walking backward to keep him in view.

A serving girl who’d brought them a hamper lunch had tripped over her own feet and would have come to grief if Gabriel hadn’t reacted with lightning-swift reflexes to steady her.

She’d thanked him with stars in her eyes, and Lucy was sure she herself sported the same glazed look of disbelieving wonder when she looked at Gabriel now.

But he was just so very, very handsome. It got worse every day, to Lucy’s disbelief—and no small amount of chagrin.

He’d started out objectively, almost offensively, handsome. It didn’t seem fair that the past days of getting to know him as he was now—or perhaps, as he had been, before life had warped him into the man she’d known as Thornecliff—rendered him even more attractive to Lucy.

Feeling out of sorts, Lucy tried to tell herself it was merely the discomfort of the long, cramped carriage ride.

Though the truth was that she, like Caroline, had traveled in far less commodious and convenient ways on her Grand Tour.

A large, well-sprung carriage that contained only people she knew and liked was a luxury.

The driver slowed the horses and pulled the carriage onto a well-maintained lane that wound through stands of ancient oaks and up a small hill. At the top of the rise, Thornecliff came into view.

Lucy blinked; it was far more magnificent than she’d been prepared for. Not that she hadn’t known Gabriel was a duke, and from a very old family with generations of wealth to support the title, but her own family’s holdings had nothing to compare to this splendor.

At the end of the wide lane stood the house, its Elizabethan facade somehow both quaint and imposing in its unembellished simplicity. Lucy snuck a glance at Gabriel, wondering what he felt when he saw his childhood home, but his black gaze was impenetrable.

“Will Lady Rosalie be there?” Caroline asked into the sudden silence. “I should have inquired before.”

“No, she is visiting a friend at present,” Gabriel replied calmly.

Caroline visibly relaxed and Lucy hid a smile; she wondered if her friend would have declined to join them had the answer been yes. She’d heard a bit about Caroline’s encounters with Lady Rosalie, and having met the lady in passing herself, Lucy could well believe the tales.

Lady Rosalie, along with her bosom friend, Lady Lavinia, Countess of Winterbury, had a particularly grating way about them. They each seemed only to care for one another, and to find every other human in their immediate vicinity to be far beneath them.

Including, it was rumored, their husbands.

Lucy’s opinion of Lady Rosalie hadn’t been improved by the fact that her only response to Lucy’s missive about her brother’s accident had been a short note to Gabriel expressing her sympathy for his condition and a hope that he would improve quickly.

She was quite unable to visit, she claimed, as she was much taken up with her sojourn at the Winterbury estate in the Lake District.

“Too busy promenading about Lake Windermere with Lady Lavinia, looking down their noses at the locals and congratulating themselves on their own superiority,” Lucy grumbled now.

Gabriel shot her an amused look. “So you have met my sister.”

“Yes, unfortunately.” Lucy sniffed. “Though she’s not much of a sister, if you ask me. I would never be able to stay away if Gemma or Nathaniel was hurt.”

“No,” Gabriel agreed, cocking his head to regard her warmly.

“You would rush to their side and ply them with novels and ginger biscuits and tales of your adventures. But your family is close; I hardly know my sister. We didn’t grow up together.

When our parents died, she was sent to live with a distant cousin’s family.

They had daughters, and it was considered a better situation for her than to be under the care of a bachelor uncle.

Though Uncle Roman wed not long after he arrived at Thornecliff to oversee my upbringing. ”

“You have an aunt?” For some reason, this surprised Lucy. Perhaps she’d assumed that for the relationship between uncle and nephew to devolve so completely, there must have been no sensible ladies present to calm the troubled waters.

“I did, but she died less than a year after their marriage. As far as I know, Uncle Roman never remarried.” But Gabriel frowned, clearly very aware that a great many things might have befallen his uncle without Gabriel’s knowledge, including matrimony.

“And your cousin, Dominic?” Lucy prompted, a little hesitant to poke at the sore spot but terribly curious all the same. “He was born before she died?”

“Dom is two years older than I am,” Gabriel corrected her absently, still staring at the fast-approaching manor house with a furrowed brow. “He was my aunt’s son from her first marriage. But Roman adopted him. Dom is legally a de Vere.”

“Legally and in all other ways, a de Vere,” pronounced Fitz dramatically.

“You’re much more like each other than I am like my brother, Robert.

Or at least you were at school. Though you shouldn’t have looked much alike, him so dark and you so fair, there was something about the two of you that was like peas in a pod. ”

Gabriel smiled, but it didn’t reach his eyes. “We both grew up trying—and mostly failing—to garner Uncle Roman’s approval. I suppose it created a certain commonality. I wonder what Dom is like now. He would be, what? Thirty-three? Perhaps he is married. Perhaps he has children of his own.”

Lucy and Fitz exchanged uneasy looks. When the storm clouds gathered over Gabriel’s head in this fashion, it could be quite difficult to jolly him out of the incipient dark mood.

“Why don’t you write to him and find out?” suggested Caroline, with the blithe unconcern of someone who tended not to notice other people’s moods.

Lucy held her breath, expecting Gabriel to react with curt dismissal at best, or with snarling anger at worst. But those were the responses of the closed off, complicated, difficult Thorne, with full access to his memories of the pain that shaped him.

Gabriel only regarded Caroline thoughtfully and said, “Perhaps I will.”

Lucy didn’t have time to contemplate whether this was a good or a terrible idea—this Mr. Dominic de Vere might well be able to spur Gabriel’s memories to return, but it was hard to imagine a more agitating way to go about it than for Gabriel to confront the cousin who had once been as close to him as a brother, and from whom he was now totally estranged.

The only thing she could think of that might be more explosive would be if his uncle, whom he’d clearly revered at one point and now couldn’t stand, showed up at Thornecliff.

But Gabriel had weathered the tiring days of travel well, Lucy thought. He seemed no more worn down than the rest of them, and the wound on his head had healed well. He hadn’t mentioned a headache since they left London. So perhaps it would be all right.

Or perhaps he would step foot into Thornecliff, on land his family had owned for five hundred years, and immediately regain all his memories.

She would find out soon enough, because they had arrived.

The carriage pulled sedately around the circular drive in front of the house, and an elderly man in the impeccable suit of a butler descended the steps to stand at attention in welcome.

Beside her, Gabriel suddenly reached for Lucy’s hand and gripped it tight. Concerned, she glanced up at his face. His mouth was pressed into a thin, worried line. His black eyes were trained on the butler.

The moment the carriage rolled to a stop, he leapt down and turned to help Lucy alight. Still hand in hand, he towed her directly to the elderly butler and said, “You there! Where is Farthingdale?”

The butler, an impassive white man with carefully erect posture and an unflappable air about him, evinced no surprise at this extraordinary greeting.

“Your Grace,” he intoned. “Welcome home. Allow me to introduce myself, as I have been informed you will not recollect my name. I am Joseph Spofford, and I have been the butler here at Thornecliff for the past dozen years or so.”

“Thank you,” Gabriel said impatiently, his hold on Lucy’s hand tight enough to bruise. She was becoming anxious. “The…previous butler. Albert Farthingdale. Where is he?”

Spofford didn’t blink. “I’m sure I could not say, my lord.”

“Can’t, or won’t?” Gabriel snarled, jerking his head to stare down at Lucy with wild eyes. “Did you tell them not to agitate me, too? I’m not a child, to be kept from the truth!”

“I didn’t,” Lucy cried, even as Spofford, gray eyes widening a bit in alarm, said, “My lord, I simply don’t know Mr. Farthingdale’s whereabouts now. It’s been twelve years! I beg your pardon, but perhaps you might ask Lord Roman?”

“My uncle?” Gabriel calmed a bit, loosening his hold on Lucy and giving her an apologetic grimace.

“Yes,” Spofford said, belatedly cautious. “I was given to understand that Mr. Farthingdale went with him, to care for Wolverton Chase, when Your Grace, er, came of age.”

Fitz, having finally extricated himself from the carriage, sauntered up on Gabriel’s other said with a wide, cheery smile.

“Spofford, how are you, old thing? Terribly good of you to make all ready for us. We are positively famished and near to expiring for want of tea. Would you be so kind? The second drawing room, perhaps? Thank you so much. Now come along, Thorne, let’s show Lucy what she has to look forward to when she becomes your bride. ”

Taking Gabriel’s other arm, he propelled all three of them up the steps and through the front door.

Gabriel shook him off. “What the devil are you playing at, Fitz?”

“Oh, a thousand pardons—did you want to stand in your own drive, brangling about with the servants all day?” Fitz blinked innocently. “Or did you want to come inside and have some tea and get your bearings?”

“Damn you, Fitz,” Gabriel snarled. “You know, don’t you. Tell me!”

Fitz held up his hands, placating, but his eyes were full of sympathy. “He’s at Wolverton Chase.”

Gabriel frowned. “My family’s old hunting lodge? But why?—”

“He went with your uncle and Dom,” Fitz said, clearly choosing his words with some care. “When you… There’s really no nice way to put this. You banished them from Thornecliff.”

“But why—?” Gabriel cut himself off. “I know, I know. You weren’t there, and I wouldn’t speak of it.”

Looking relieved, Fitz nodded. “Exactly so. Now, you two go on to the drawing room, I’m going to go check on Caroline. No doubt she is giving detailed instructions on the handling of her trunk full of books.”

Moving like a wooden soldier, Gabriel led Lucy through the foyer with its enormous chandelier and domed ceiling, down the hall and into a well-appointed drawing room decorated in dove gray with rose-pink accents.

Running a hand through his hair, disordering the golden locks, Gabriel blew out a breath. “My apologies for that…outburst. It’s just, I’d been looking forward to seeing Farthingdale again. I imagined introducing you to him— And now, damn it to hell. For all I know, the man is dead.”

Lucy couldn’t stay silent. “But Gabriel, who is he? Your former butler?”

“Yes,” Gabriel said shortly, his eyes remote. “Just a servant; they come and go. Nothing to make a fuss over. I was only…surprised. I had expected him to be here.”

“Gabriel,” she said chidingly, “he sounds like he means much more to you than ‘just a servant.’”

He dropped her hand and Lucy immediately felt cold. Stalking over to a settee covered in silvery velvet, he dropped down onto it and put his face in his hands. “He was. Farthingdale was—is, I hope—the best of men.”

His voice was muffled, but Lucy could clearly hear the thread of pain running through it. Crossing to him, she nudged him over until she could perch beside him, close enough to lay her head on his shoulder if she wished.

“Tell me about him,” she requested softly.

So he did. In a slow, halting voice, Gabriel spoke of Albert Farthingdale’s patience. His roundabout way of giving advice, which involved asking questions rather than telling a young boy what to do. His kindnesses, both large and small.

Farthingdale had been the one to whom both Gabriel and his cousin, Dominic, had gone when they’d needed to be patched up after a scuffle or when they needed encouragement after one of Uncle Roman’s blistering lectures.

He’d never forgotten a birthday. He knew all their favorite treats and the best places to hunt for blackberries and the proper way to tie a fishing lure.

“He loved you,” Lucy murmured when Gabriel finally fell silent.

Lucy remembered a conversation she’d had once with Thornecliff about her habit of treating the servants as though they were human beings. No wonder he hadn’t thought her strange for it.

“Then where is he?” Gabriel demanded, his entire body a coiled spring of tension. “Did I banish him, along with my closest family—or did he choose to leave with them, because of the monster I became? Have I systematically destroyed every good thing in my life?”

Lucy ached for him. It made her reckless. More reckless even than usual.

She put her hands on his jaw and forced him to look at her. “Stop it. You haven’t destroyed everything good in your life.”

He reached up and circled her wrists with his hands, not to pull them away from him, but merely to hold on. As if she was the only thing keeping him afloat in a storm-tossed sea.

“No, I haven’t, have I? By some miracle, by the grace of something I’m not sure I can believe in, I’ve got you.”

For the first time since he fell, Lucy initiated the kiss. Pulling his head down to hers, she brushed their lips together, softly at first, then she opened her mouth and invited him inside.

Gabriel licked into her, tongue dancing and stroking, lighting Lucy up and making her want more. But the Drakes would be joining them any moment, and Spofford was meant to be organizing tea for them, so Lucy regretfully pulled back.

She stroked the hair away from his temples, searching the fathomless depths of his black eyes. “All right?”

“I will be,” he said, one corner of his mouth kicking up in a brief half smile. “As long as you stay. Everyone’s gone. You won’t leave, will you?”

“Not even if you banish me,” she said, trying for a lightness she didn’t feel.

But while as his smile grew, warming his eyes and bringing color to his lean cheeks, Lucy wondered if that was a promise she would be able to keep.