Page 42 of Scoundrel Take Me Away (Dukes in Disguise #3)

The house itself was quirky, and entirely lovely in all its quirks.

The housekeeper, Mrs. Brimley, was a jowly, dour-faced woman who appeared to view the running of the household as something akin to putting on a daily funeral, but Lucy had begun work on drawing her out the moment she met her.

She thought she’d detected the slightest crinkling of approval at the corners of Mrs. Brimley’s eyes that morning, when she’d praised the menus flower arrangements in the drawing room.

When Lucy had begged for a tour of the house, Mrs. Brimley unbent enough to offer some fascinating tidbits about its history.

For instance, most of the main house was Elizabethan in origin, but one tower in the west wing seemed to have survived from an even earlier period and was made out of something delightfully called clunch.

Peculiar to this part of England, clunch was a mixture of chalk and mud that was somehow strong enough to last through hundreds of years.

From her spot in the thriving kitchen garden, under a plum tree in full flower, Lucy could just make out the pointed tip of the clunch tower.

Thornecliff possessed very fine and extensive decorative gardens, of course, complete with a marble fountain at the center that spouted jets ringing a sculpture of Cupid and Psyche.

Lucy had been impressed by the impeccable rows of flowers and shrubs lining the perfectly symmetrical pathways, and by the quiet, constant industry of the army of gardeners required to maintain it.

But it was the kitchen garden she loved the best. Round the side of the house, nearer to the kitchens and walled in to protect the fruits and vegetables Mrs. Philpott, the cook, would use to create the wonderful meals they’d enjoyed, the kitchen garden was where Lucy felt the most comfortable.

She’d discovered this delightful spot soon after they’d arrived, and in the four days since, she’d spent quite a bit of time sitting and thinking on the wooden bench with white petals drifting softly around her every time a breeze danced through the garden.

Lucy thought about her Midnight Rider novel, and the unfortunate fact that she still had no idea how to end it. She thought about her mother and sister, and how she both wished to see them and also did not want to explain what she was doing with Gabriel.

Gabriel. Of course, she thought about Gabriel.

He hadn’t regained a single memory, and Lucy was beginning to despair of ever having the chance to ask him all her questions about his time spent as The Gentle Rogue.

How had he started? Why had he started? And, perhaps most pressingly, what had made him come to her room that night, to kiss her and hold her and make her feel so confused at suddenly being given what she’d always wanted…and finding that she wished another man were there in his place.

Oh, except he was the other man. God. It made Lucy’s eyes cross if she thought about it too hard.

In desperation, Lucy had begun to poke around the house for answers.

She’d searched the study the second day, when Gabriel and Fitz rode out to exorcise their manly spirits with vigorous activity.

Unfortunately, the massive oak desk had been locked, all papers and any other incriminating clues tidied neatly away.

She’d looked through the books in the library next, hoping for a handy diary or journal that might have shed some light on Gabriel’s thought processes.

She longed for an entry that would spell everything out, something like, I woke up this morning bored.

I had to take drastic action. Then I thought, why not become a highwayman?

Alas, nothing of the sort turned up.

In desperation, she had even crept into Gabriel’s bedchamber to look through his personal effects, but she’d become distracted almost at once by the gloriously huge bed that dominated the center of the room.

It was the sort of bed that begged to be jumped on, and if it hadn’t been so perfectly and crisply made up, Lucy might not have been able to resist. As it was, she had confined herself to carefully feeling about between the mattresses for any concealed items.

All she’d found was a small wooden horse figure behind the carved headboard, its black paint chipping off and a white blaze on its nose where the paint had been worn away entirely.

Heart squeezing dangerously, Lucy had put it back where she found it and snuck out of the room before Gabriel’s slightly terrifying valet, Avery, could catch her rooting about in his undergarments.

Today, she’d decided to take a break from sleuthing.

Caroline had retired to her rooms to work on her next paper delving into the odd nesting habits of the brown-headed cowbird.

Wishing to be inspired by her industrious friend, Lucy had gathered a ream of paper and her favorite pen with the nib that made the most perfect scratching sound, and hied herself to the kitchen garden to write.

Sadly, her inspiration turned out to be more wishful thinking than actually productive, and she’d spent most of the morning gazing up at the blue sky through a bower of white plum tree branches and, once again, thinking about Gabriel.

Lucy lost herself in a very pleasant fantasy of kissing him in this very garden, shedding their garments the way the plum tree shed blossoms, and pulling him down to lie on a sunlit bed of petals that released the sweetest fragrance as they rolled about.

She was so happily engaged in imagining the bared planes of Gabriel’s finely sculpted chest glowing golden under the brilliant spring sunshine that she nearly fell off the bench when she heard him call her name.

“Lucy? Are you out here?”

Flushed and a little short of breath, Lucy righted herself and shaded her eyes to see him striding up the path from the stables. He was alone.

“I’m here,” she called back. “Where has Fitz got to? Did you lose him in the cherry orchard?”

Gabriel let himself in by the back gate, and Lucy could see at once that something had happened. The stiff set of his shoulders, like a man shielding himself from a blow, made her heart tumble into her stomach.

Had he remembered something? Oh, God.

Did he know she’d lied about the engagement?

“Fitz went to find Caroline,” he said quietly when he got close enough not to shout. Then he stood there just outside the circle of shade cast by the plum tree and stared at her. He stared so long and so silently, Lucy felt her heart climb back up and into her throat.

“Is everything all right?” she finally had to ask.

“You look like the Goddess of Spring,” he said, “strayed out of a book of myths and legends.”

Lucy relaxed a tiny bit. That didn’t sound like a man who’d realized his fiancée was a fake. But she kept a watchful gaze on his blank face. He didn’t sound quite like himself, either.

“If I’m a goddess,” she said lightly, “then I command you to come here and sit with me for a while. It’s lovely in the garden.”

“It is.” He lifted his face to the sun, as she’d seen him do often before, and she caught her breath at the way the light gilded his features to match the shining gold of his hair. “I love the sun.”

“You should go to Italy,” Lucy said without thinking. “We should, I mean. Perhaps for our honeymoon. The sun shines there so often you could soak it up like a sponge and carry it back with you to gloomy old England.”

“Is that where you got your sunshine?” He smiled a bit, but his eyes were troubled. “I would love to see Italy. To go with you, and have you show me the places you loved there. But when I think about the journey, about stepping foot on a ship to make the Channel crossing?—”

He shuddered, a reflexive jerk of his broad shoulders that looked almost painful.

“Of course.” Lucy bit her lip remorsefully. “You lost your parents in a storm over the Channel. No wonder you’ve never wished to embark on a Grand Tour.”

“That’s not why.” He shook his head. “Or perhaps that is part of it, but it’s not the whole reason.”

Lucy’s feeling of foreboding doubled. “Gabriel. Have you remembered something?”

“No. But Fitz finally told me…” Gabriel’s throat moved as he swallowed.

Lucy left her bench and went to his side as though she’d been propelled.

The sun felt very warm after sitting in the shade, but when Lucy hesitantly reached for Gabriel’s hand, his skin was chilled as if he’d just plunged it into the cold waters of the fountain.

“Gabriel?” Her voice was small, a faint, frightened thing, but the look on his face had scared her. He looked dazed, as though he hardly knew where he was.

“I was taken,” he said, not looking at her. “Abducted. Fitz said I simply disappeared from Cambridge one night and no one knew where I’d gone. For months.”

“Good God.” Lucy was shocked. How had she never heard of this? The abduction of a duke should have been in all the papers. It should’ve been all anyone spoke about. But she’d never heard a word breathed of it. “Who were they?”

Gabriel shook his head. “Fitz didn’t know, and I still don’t remember. I only know what he told me, but…none of it makes sense. I don’t understand.”

“It must be terrible to find out something like this,” Lucy tried, curling her fingers more tightly around his unresponsive hand. “To know that this happened to you and not be able to remember any of the details.”

“Not that,” he said with an impatient slash of his other hand through the air. “I mean, yes, that. All Fitz could tell me was, whoever they were, they apparently kept me in the hold of a ship anchored off the southern coast.”

His hand turned in hers, clutching at her, and Lucy brought both of her hands around his clenched fist and raised it to her lips with tears burning in her eyes. “Oh, Gabriel.”