Page 49 of Scoundrel Take Me Away (Dukes in Disguise #3)

Chapter Twenty-One

Lucy wasn’t sure what she expected to find when she burst into Thornecliff, but it certainly wasn’t Gabriel standing sullenly by while an army of servants swarmed around Lord Roman de Vere, trying to get his nose to stop bleeding all over the tufted leather sofa.

“What happened?” she cried, hurrying to Gabriel’s side.

“I hit him,” Gabriel muttered, his beautiful mouth set in a mulish line. His arms were crossed over his chest, and Lucy immediately focused on the raw, swollen state of the knuckles on his right hand.

“How hard did you hit him?” she murmured back, taking his poor hand in hers and gesturing to the nearest maid for one of the cloths they were using to try to stem the tide of blood from Lord Roman’s face.

“A bit harder than I meant to,” Gabriel admitted, wincing as she pressed the damp cloth to his sore knuckles. “I have more muscle on me now. I’m not entirely accustomed to it yet.”

“What were you fighting about?” Lucy wanted to know.

But before he could reply, a gruff voice sounded from the depths of the sofa. “All right, that’s enough. Leave me be, I can handle the rest.”

The butler, Mr. Spofford, reluctantly led the excited gaggle of maids and footmen away, leaving Lord Roman de Vere with his head tilted back and a crimson-stained handkerchief pressed to his nose.

It was a measure of the man’s natural air of authority that Lucy felt the urge to dip a polite curtsey, even as he regarded her irritably over the top of his balled-up handkerchief.

“We were fighting, as you put it, over you,” he informed her coldly. “Though for my part, I don’t see what there is to fight about. The facts speak for themselves.”

“Facts,” scoffed Gabriel before Lucy could even draw in an indignant breath. “The only fact that matters is that Lucy will be my wife, and there’s nothing you can do to stop it.”

Lucy’s heart expanded until her chest felt as though it would burst, but Lord Roman snorted.

“Certainly not, if you won’t even hear what I have to say. I had hoped to find you more reasonable than this.”

“You mean you hoped to find him more tractable,” Lucy corrected sharply, glaring down at Lord Roman. “You heard Gabriel had been ill, that he’d suffered a fall and a head wound, and you thought that was the perfect opportunity to swoop back into his life and take control of him once more.”

“And is that not exactly what you are doing?” Lord Roman riposted.

His eyes were like ice chips. “You saw your own opportunity and took it, didn’t you, Lady Lucy?

Or are you truly asking me to believe the convenient story that my nephew had proposed to you in secret, and told no one anything about it until after he happened to hit his head—with yourself as the only witness to the so-called accident?

For all we know, you pushed him from that window. ”

Lucy gasped. Beside her, Gabriel gave absolutely no warning before he exploded into movement, rushing forward to haul his uncle up off the sofa and throw him bodily in the direction of the door.

“Get out,” Gabriel roared, eyes like burning coals in his rage-white face. “You will not speak to my wife that way.”

“She’s not your wife,” Lord Roman snarled, catching himself against the doorway and drawing himself up tall. The bruises on his face emphasized the stark fury burning in his glare. “Not yet. But this woman will never be Duchess of Thornecliff.”

“Lucy has been by my side for this entire ordeal,” Gabriel said through clenched teeth.

He put his arm around Lucy’s shoulders, and she found herself leaning gratefully into the shelter of his strength.

“She has never faltered. She has been patient, and kind, and caring, and there . Which is more than you can say.”

“You made it very clear to me, years ago, that you no longer welcomed kindness or caring from me.” The bitter edge to Lord Roman’s tone could have curdled milk, but Lucy couldn’t let that stand.

“Kindness,” she scoffed. “When were you ever kind to Gabriel? When did you show you cared? When you forced him to sleep in his dead father’s bed, ripping a six-year-old child away from the nursery and all his toys and anything that could have provided him a moment’s comfort amidst his grief?”

Both men froze, then turned to look at her as though she’s suddenly started speaking in Italian. Gabriel’s brows went up, surprised, while Lord Roman’s brows lowered. Angry.

“He was—is—Thornecliff,” Lord Roman said. The words had the weight of a prophecy handed down from a mountaintop.

Lucy narrowed her eyes. “He was a small boy who had lost his parents.”

“Lucy,” Gabriel murmured.

She was embarrassing him, Lucy thought with a pang, but she couldn’t stop now. She wanted to make Lord Roman see what he’d done—she wanted to make sure Gabriel saw it, too.

If she was about to be banished from his life, she at least wanted to leave him with the knowledge that he deserved to be loved for who he was, rather than molded into something that didn’t ultimately matter at all, in the grand scheme of things.

“I know what this family lost,” Lord Roman grated out, his tone wintry.

It occurred to Lucy, unwillingly, that he had lost his elder brother when Gabriel lost his father. She wondered if they had been close.

“It was up to me to ensure that we held the line,” Lord Roman continued, still in that cold, controlled way that made Lucy want to throw something at him to provoke a human reaction.

“To ensure that the Duke of Thornecliff was prepared to carry on our family’s name and legacy. Not that I succeeded.”

Lord Roman looked at Gabriel, and the expression on his face made Lucy want to put her body between the two men as a shield. Lord Roman gazed at his nephew as though Gabriel was his own, personal tragedy.

“You are my life’s greatest failure,” Roman said, quiet and devastating, and Lucy felt the full-body flinch that tore through Gabriel.

“How dare you?” she said, her voice trembling dangerously.

“If there is something about the way Gabriel lives his life that you don’t like, you have no one to blame but yourself.

You are the one who taught him he had no worth outside of the title of Duke of Thornecliff—and you are the one who taught him that even that wouldn’t be enough to save him.

Wasn’t enough to make you care enough for him to save his life when he was taken by kidnappers.

You set him on this path, and you have no right to stand there and look down your nose at anything Gabriel has done to survive a life without the smallest hint of love. ”

“Love.” Lord Roman sneered the word, his mouth curled into a wolf snarl of frustrated rage. “I suppose that’s what you call it when you indulge my nephew’s worst impulses and keep his disastrous secrets.”

“What secrets?” Gabriel said, his voice hoarse and cracking with emotion. “It can’t be a surprise to you that my childhood was devoid of love.”

An odd spasm crossed Lord Roman’s face. He paused. “Not that, I meant secrets like?—”

But Gabriel was still speaking. “I may not remember everything, but I remember my childhood. I thought it was normal, the way you spoke to Dom and me as though we were miniature adults, with an adult’s understanding of the world.

I thought it was normal to be expected to do everything perfectly, and to punish myself for falling short, over and over again, until I would have done anything— anything —for a word of approval from you. ”

Lucy clutched at Gabriel’s hand. His body was a rigid line of tension at her side as they stared at Lord Roman, whose demeanor had hardened to rough-hewn granite.

“If it hadn’t been for Farthingdale,” Gabriel finished, “there wouldn’t have been an ounce of softness in our lives at all.

And I thought that was normal, and that you loved us in your own way—but the uncle I thought loved me, the uncle of my memories, would never have left me to sit, chained in the dark, for months.

The uncle I thought loved me would never come here to try to shatter the best thing in my life. ”

He gazed down at Lucy, and she met his look with a tremulous smile.

Lord Roman’s voice lashed like a whip over Lucy. “She hasn’t told you, has she.”

Lucy’s insides shriveled. How could he know about the faux betrothal?

“It’s not a question,” Lord Roman went on implacably. “I know she has not. But you need to hear the truth, and I need you to believe it, though it comes from me, because you are in danger.”

Danger? Lucy’s head jerked around. In danger of what—marrying a woman Gabriel had never intended to wed?

“What do you mean?” Gabriel seemed as confused as she. “Lucy? What is he talking about?”

Lucy thought she was ready for whatever explosive secret Lord Roman was about to detonate in the sitting room. But she could never have predicted he was about to say, “She hasn’t told you yet about your nighttime activities.”

Gabriel looked appalled at the turn the conversation had taken.

“Uncle, please. I’ve been made aware that I’ve become something of a scoundrel, but I hardly think Lucy would be the one to know the full extent of it, or to discuss it with me.

I realize you’re disappointed in how I’ve turned out, but I’m surprised at you bringing it up in front of her. ”

“That’s not what I—” Roman broke off, exasperated.

A terrible sensation of dread gripped Lucy’s middle.

“I don’t mean the whoring and gambling and all the rest of it, though it is certainly behavior that is beneath the dignity of the Duke of Thornecliff, or should be.

I mean your other nighttime activities. The even more illicit ones. ”

Oh God , Lucy realized blankly. This wasn’t about the false engagement at all. This was about?—