Page 47 of Scoundrel Take Me Away (Dukes in Disguise #3)

Chapter Twenty

Gabriel sat in the tufted leather armchair behind the big oak desk in the Thornecliff study for a long time after his man of business departed.

The estate’s books lay open on the desk, line after meticulous line in the financial shorthand he’d learned at his uncle’s knee—but these books told a story Gabriel couldn’t seem to parse.

He’d almost missed the meeting entirely. Waking after the deepest sleep he could remember with Lucy still wrapped in his arms and not a single nightmare image swirling in his head, Gabriel had been in no hurry to rise.

But the latitude given to a duke and the woman he intended to make his duchess didn’t extend to being found naked in bed together by the servants. So when the house began to stir, he’d kissed Lucy awake and bundled her into her wrapper and back down the empty hallway to her bedchamber.

She was beautiful in the morning, he knew now.

Sleep-warm and soft, with her hair a tumble of mahogany waves and the slight marks of his fingers still showing on her creamy thighs.

He’d tried to apologize, but she’d raised a brow along with one corner of her lips and said, “Don’t you dare. I love them. I’ll feel you all day.”

Gabriel palmed absently at his swelling prick beneath the desk. How had he gotten so lucky?

Lucy was with the Drakes, who had taken her on a long walk to visit the nesting grounds of some local birds Gabriel had forgotten the name of. They ought to be back soon, and Gabriel found himself staring into space and wishing for Lucy’s swift return like a bloody mooncalf.

Ridiculous, yet he couldn’t bring himself to mind it too much. After all, the woman he yearned for was his, or promised to be.

Now if only he could make sense of these bloody account books. Gabriel bent back to his work, checking and rechecking the ledgers, and he became absorbed enough that he almost missed the sound of the front door opening and closing.

But some part of him was so attuned to Lucy, the noise registered in his distracted mind enough to have him dropping his pen and starting for the door of the study with a smile on his face.

He reached it just as the butler-who-wasn’t-Farthingdale opened it. Startled, Gabriel stopped. Why was he announcing Lucy and showing her in, as if she hadn’t been staying in the house for days?

But when Not-Farthingdale opened his mouth, what he said was, “Lord Roman de Vere to see you, Your Grace.”

Gabriel fell back a step. Staggered, was more like it. He couldn’t imagine what he looked like, but Not-Farthingdale seemed to consider it above his pay grade to notice. Eyes studiously trained on the middle distance, he crisply opened the study door and stood aside.

Uncle Roman filled the doorway, the same way he’d filled every room in Gabriel’s childhood.

He looked older, Gabriel thought blankly, then clenched his jaw. He was older.

Roman de Vere had to be in his early forties by now. More than a decade had added those silver streaks at his temples and the additional grooves bracketing his unsmiling mouth, though time had done little to bend the unyielding line of his shoulders.

But Gabriel was older now, too. He wasn’t a newly orphaned child, or even a young man desperate for approval, desperate for attention. Desperate to matter.

He was a grown man, a duke in his own ancestral home. And Roman de Vere had not been welcomed here in years.

Everything Gabriel had learned about his abduction swirled in his head, the multitude of questions he still harbored cramming into his throat and stopping his tongue.

Not-Farthingdale disappeared, leaving Gabriel standing like a block in the doorway, everything he wanted to say choking him silent.

He stood there long enough to realize there must have been something warm in his uncle’s watchful gray eyes, because Gabriel saw the moment they chilled to the color of a winter storm.

“Thornecliff,” Roman said with rigid formality. His voice, at least, was the same. Deep and deliberate, with an air of authority no amount of courtesy could quite extinguish. “May I come in.”

It was phrased as a question, though he did a poor job of making it sound like one. Wordlessly, Gabriel stood back to allow his uncle to stalk into the study as though he owned it.

This had been his uncle’s domain, once, Gabriel realized.

All those years before Gabriel went off to school, it had been Uncle Roman who saw to the management of the estates.

It had been in this very room that he’d undertaken to teach Gabriel how to steer the enormous, unwieldy ship that was the Thornecliff dukedom.

The past overlaid the present in a hazy jumble. He had looked up to this man; Roman de Vere was the god who ruled over every moment of Gabriel’s childhood.

He hadn’t been a gentle, benevolent god, exactly—he’d been a demanding taskmaster, single-minded in his pursuit of his duty. Which, as he saw it, was to safeguard the legacy of Thornecliff.

Which included molding his nephew into the perfect duke.

Gabriel, in turn, had sought his uncle’s approbation with all the focus and fervor of his somewhat intense personality. The introduction of a rival and comrade in the form of a step-cousin, when Roman married Dominic’s mother, had only increased Gabriel’s drive.

It seemed he and his uncle had both failed. The thought hurt more than he wanted to admit.

He wondered briefly where Dominic was. If he knew Roman was here, if he’d asked after Gabriel.

Stupid. But he couldn’t help a stab of disappointment that Dom hadn’t come.

A pulse of pain behind Gabriel’s left eye made him set his jaw against a grimace. Perfect timing for my first headache in days , he thought grimly.

“Reports have reached me that you suffered an injury.” His uncle’s clipped voice broke the silence. “I must know, at once, if it’s true that you have lost your memory.”

Gabriel’s jaw unlocked. “You must already know it’s true, or you wouldn’t have expected to be admitted into my home.”

Roman’s eyes flickered. He put his hands behind his back, and Gabriel knew without looking that he’d clasped one wrist in the opposite hand, as though shackling himself.

It was the same pose he’d adopted innumerable times during Gabriel’s childhood, and the sight of him standing that way now sent a complicated cascade of emotions washing through Gabriel.

“So it’s true,” Roman said quietly, his stare locked on his nephew’s face. “But you have not lost all your memories. You know who I am.”

“I know who you were,” Gabriel corrected him sharply, eyes dry and burning. “I had to be told why you are no longer in my life.”

A muscle in Roman’s square jaw worked. “You don’t remember the events of your twentieth year.”

“As near as I can tell, my memories stop around age eighteen.” Gabriel managed a faint, mirthless smile. “It’s been…an adjustment.”

“Yes. Well.” Roman appeared to hesitate for a moment, a sight so unusual that Gabriel felt his brows climbing toward his hairline. “I’m sure you have questions.”

“I do?—”

“ But ,” his uncle spoke over him, holding up a staying hand, “I am not here to mull over the past.”

Gabriel narrowed his eyes, anger simmering. “What are you here for, then?”

Roman pinned him with a cold stare. “Why, to stop you from committing the grievous error of marrying Lady Lucy Lively, of course.”

* * *

Lucy took another sip of her ale and glanced around The Prancing Pony with the professional interest of someone who had spent a few very formative years working in her family’s coaching inn.

The only pub in Hazlemere, and therefore the only pub within walking distance of both Thornecliff and the Roman ruins where Fitz and Caroline were still spying on birds, The Prancing Pony had a delightfully worn-in feel.

Clearly a favorite with the locals, it boasted a long, copper bar upon which sat casks of ales brewed nearby from grain grown on the Thornecliff estate.

Or so the friendly, voluble Mrs. Crumple had informed her as she pulled Lucy a pint of their best bitter. Mrs. Crumple had been vastly interested to meet “her ladyship,” and of course the entire village knew that she was engaged to the Duke of Thornecliff.

Lucy, familiar with the incredibly efficient information apparatus that was a village tavern, had expected that. What she had not expected was the locals’ warmth and proprietary pride in the Duke of Thornecliff.

She would have assumed, based on all she knew of Thorne and his activities of the past few years, that he would be an indifferent landlord at best. She couldn’t imagine the exquisitely dressed, dedicatedly decadent man she’d known spending any time caring about his tenants or the latest developments in agricultural methods.

On her own for however long it took Caroline to finally become bored with her dusty-throated wobblers or whatever those birds had been, Lucy had refused Mrs. Crumple’s generous offer of a seat in the private room reserved for high-status guests and settled in for a comfortable chat.

She sat mulling the extraordinary things she’d learned from the excellently informed Mrs. Crumple and kicking herself for spending a moment poking about a manor house when she knew very well that all the best gossip was to be had at the pub.

Her reverie broke when a gentleman sauntered up to her table and made her a long, elegant bow.

“Lady Lucy?”

Lucy blinked up at a tall man with the athletic build and vigorous air of someone who had more energy to burn than most gentlemen expended in a year.

He had hair as dark as hers, a brown so dark it was almost black, and when he met her surprised gaze with a wide grin, she saw that his eyes were a striking amber color.

He was good-looking in a rugged sort of way that made Lucy think of Fitz.

She held out her hand to shake. “Hullo. Are you a friend of Lord Fitzwilliam’s?”