Page 41 of Scoundrel Take Me Away (Dukes in Disguise #3)

Chapter Eighteen

Being back at Thornecliff was more surreal than Gabriel could have predicted. Around every corner was something he knew as intimately as the back of his own hand, yet everything was subtly different. Older. Shifted.

It was the same way he felt about his own body, which felt like his …and yet bore scars he didn’t recognize, marks of a life he’d lived but now couldn’t recall.

Being back at Thornecliff was like that. Familiar, on a level too deep for reason, but haunted by the absences of those who had once lived here with him.

He felt like the only survivor of a disaster, disoriented and shocked and vaguely guilty.

Gabriel was immeasurably grateful for Fitz and Caroline, and of course for Lucy. The Drakes kept the conversation going, bright and lively and endlessly interesting.

And Lucy… She was sunshine, streaming in through the darkened windows of this manor house full of ghosts, banishing the shadows and brightening every room she entered, he thought as he clattered down the grand staircase and out the front door to meet Fitz at the stables.

It had been about a fortnight since his fall, and though the nightmares came every night now, not a single memory had returned to Gabriel.

Lucy remained undaunted in her determination to see his full memory restored, but Gabriel had begun to consider that he might need to pick up the pieces left behind by whoever he had been, and cobble together a new life from the shattered remnants.

Now that his headaches had abated, the wound on the back of his skull healed over and his physical health returned, Gabriel planned to throw himself into learning all he could of the current state of affairs with the Thornecliff estate and holdings.

They’d gone unsupervised long enough during his convalescence.

He frowned, imaging what Uncle Roman would have to say about letting things go to the extent that Gabriel had while ill.

In his defense, though he’d been trained from early childhood to care for the many Thornecliff properties and concerns, he had no memory of doing so. But today he planned to tell Fitz their ride would be a circuit of the tenant farms, and later he would delve into the account books.

Having a solid plan did more to dispel his lingering dark mood than anything else, and he rushed through his kippers and eggs to get on with it. Lucy and Caroline joined them for breakfast, deep in discussion of some novel or other, and Gabriel relayed his intentions to Fitz.

Shrugging agreeably, Fitz swallowed his bite of toast and said, “That sounds very sober and respectable of you, dear fellow. You are to be commended, I’m sure.”

The lingering miasma of last night’s dream swept over him again like one of the waves that lapped incessantly against the inside of his head in the cold, cramped darkness of his nightmare.

“Don’t tell me,” Gabriel grated out. “In addition to all my other vices and sins, I’ve become the sort of landowner who neglects his tenants and ignores his estates.”

Fitz crunched down on another bite of toast, seeming not to notice Gabriel’s scowl.

“I’m not sure. I would’ve assumed so—you certainly never talked about them.

But you also never seem light in the purse so all your estates must be doing well enough.

I suppose at the very least, you must have hired a competent manager. ”

Blowing out a breath, Gabriel made a mental note to figure out who his man of business was, and to write to him for a full accounting of his properties.

In the meantime, he needed to sort out these nightmares. He hated feeling like this, as though he was one stray thought away from descending into a full-blown, furious melancholy at any moment.

“Are you all right?” Fitz asked, shooting a glance at the ladies who were still involved in their book conversation.

“Fine,” Gabriel said shortly, pushing the remains of his kippers about his plate. “Have you finished? The horses are waiting.”

Fitz hesitated, clearly thinking about pressing the matter, but when Gabriel pointedly pushed his chair back and stood, Fitz bounded up to join him.

He dropped a kiss on Caroline’s upturned lips—Gabriel chafed at not being able to do the same to Lucy but had to content himself with bowing over her hand and pressing a secret kiss to her knuckles.

Her pretty blush lifted his spirits, and Gabriel was feeling almost himself again as they strode down the path to the stables at the back of the house.

Until Fitz said, in his diffident way, “I say, old man, are you feeling quite the thing this morning? If you’ve a rotten head, we needn’t ride.”

“I told you I was fine,” Gabriel started, but deflated when he saw the way Fitz’s shoulders curled down a bit.

Christ, what sort of man abused his friends for having the audacity to inquire about his well-being?

“Or at least,” he amended, “I should like to be. But it’s nothing to stop us going for our ride. In fact, I think it will help.”

Fitz let it lie until they’d greeted the stableboy, Tom, and thanked him for readying the horses. Once they’d swung into the saddles and trotted away from the stables, out toward the rolling green hills, Fitz said, “So if it isn’t your head…?”

Gabriel grimaced. “That’s the thing. It is in my head, in a way—but it’s not the injury. At least, I don’t think so.”

He struggled for a moment, feeling like a mewling pup to be conversing on this topic, but hadn’t he just resolved to find some way to conquer these horrible dreams? And Fitz’s face was nothing but open and receptive. Gabriel knew his friend was not the sort to judge.

“The truth is, I’ve been having these…nightmares, I suppose you’d call them. Every night. Only they’re strange, not the usual sort of ‘forgot to do my lines and the headmaster is feeling twitchy’ or ‘naked in the Great Hall’ type of dreams.”

“I have that one, too!” Fitz cried. “The headmaster one. Dear old Dr. Keate and his whippy little birch rod. What a rotter, and yet one feels strangely sentimental about it now, lo these many years later. But you were saying you’re not having that one?”

Shaking his head, Gabriel had to concentrate on keeping his grip on the reins loose and supple.

His mount was a sweetheart of a chestnut mare who was much feistier than her name—Poppet—suggested.

She didn’t deserve to have her sensitive mouth sawed at because Gabriel was throwing a strop over a few unpleasant dreams.

He gritted his teeth. “I’m in the dark. I don’t know where I am, exactly, but I know every feature of the space, every corner, every empty inch of it.

I’ve been there a long time. I’ve lost all hope that I’ll ever get out.

In the dream, I know that I used to believe I would be rescued but now I’m certain… no one is coming.”

Fitz pulled up short. His gelding, Arrow, snorted at the sudden stop. When Gabriel turned to give his friend a questioning frown, Fitz’s face was nearly as white as the cravat at his neck.

“Thorne,” he began, then swallowed hard and continued, in a gentler tone that instantly set Gabriel’s teeth on edge, “Gabriel. You haven’t asked me again, about what happened to you. When we were at Cambridge, before your falling out with your family.”

“You said you didn’t know what happened between Uncle Roman and me.” Gabriel didn’t recognize his own voice. He sounded like he’d eaten rocks for breakfast.

“I don’t,” Fitz was quick to say. “I wasn’t on hand for the fireworks, as it were, but I think I know what lit the fuse.”

“When I was taken.” Gabriel had stopped his mount too, though he had no awareness of having done so.

Those words had plagued him. The mystery behind them gnawed at Gabriel, incessant and sharp—so why hadn’t he pursued the question?

He’d been aware that Fitz knew more than he let on. Once Gabriel’s health had improved enough to travel, once he’d been beyond Dr. Perry’s exhortations that he must remain calm at all times, surely Gabriel could have prevailed upon his friend for further details.

You were taken , Fitz had said. Gabriel had thought of it a hundred times in the days since, and every time, his heart had frozen in his chest while sweat broke out along his brow line.

This was going to be bad.

Feeling as though he might leap out of his skin, Gabriel forced himself to be still and wait for Fitz to speak.

“You didn’t press me to know more about that,” Fitz said, at length. “I expected you would. Dreaded it, really.”

That same dread, or something like it, coiled around Gabriel’s lower ribs and stifled him. His head began to pound, but there was no turning back now.

“Tell me,” he rasped.

Fitz pressed his lips together for an agonized moment before he visibly screwed his courage to the sticking point and said, “I don’t think those are nightmares. I mean, I’m sure they’re dreams and they’re bad, but what I mean to say is, I think those are memories. Trying to surface.”

“Memories of what?” Gabriel managed to ask, through clenched teeth and a choked throat.

So, Fitz told him.

* * *

Lucy loved Gabriel’s childhood home.

It was a shock to her, somehow, because she’d never spent a lot of time in a big country manor house. Growing up, her father had balked at any suggestion of leaving London, which he felt to be the center of all life, regardless of time of year.

So even when most of Lucy’s friends decamped with their families to their country houses as the Season wound down in July, not to be seen again until the spring, the Lively family stayed on in Town. Lucy had never even been to the Ashbourn ducal seat, which was somewhere in Sussex.

If it was anything like as nice as Thornecliff, she retroactively resented every sooty, congested Christmas they’d sniffled through in London.