Page 53 of Scoundrel Take Me Away (Dukes in Disguise #3)

“I haven’t the faintest idea,” Gabriel replied, entirely truthfully. He narrowed his gaze upon his cousin, who gave him a slow, very deliberate wink of the eye furthest from Sir Colin before turning back to the king’s man with a dire frown.

“I don’t believe we’ve been introduced,” Dom said dubiously, not bothering to hold out his hand. “But I can’t say I’m eager to become acquainted.”

“This is Sir Colin Semple,” Fitz explained, wiping ineffectually at the butter stain on his sleeve. “He thinks you’re The Gentle Rogue.”

“But that’s ridiculous,” Dom protested.

“No, I do not,” seethed Sir Colin, pacing the length of the dining table and back.

“Beg pardon,” Fitz said, looking confused. “Then do you think Thorne is The Gentle Rogue?”

“That’s even more ridiculous.” Dom laughed, and Gabriel was seized with the familiar urge to laugh with him and throttle him at the same time.

What the bloody blazes was happening? How had Dom got back here so quickly, and why had he given the name of one of Gabriel’s neighbors as his alibi when it would be so easy for Sir Colin to verify that Dom hadn’t been anywhere near the pub or the man who happened to be the local magistrate , for God’s sake.

Except when the footman returned nearly an hour later with a somewhat potted Sir Winston, it turned out Dom had been at The Prancing Pony all evening.

“Won twenty pounds off me, the rogue,” cried Sir Winston, his cravat askew beneath his ruddy face. “And I, for one, would like a rematch!”

Gabriel barely noticed his cousin’s genial agreement and thanks for coming up to Thornecliff at this late hour to satisfy Sir Colin’s curiosity.

He barely noticed when Sir Colin called his operative on the carpet and made him go through the report about the evening’s robbery step by step, an exercise that only confirmed there was no way Dom could have committed the theft at the hour and location reported and then made it all the way back to Thornecliff by the time he’d shown up.

He barely even noticed Sir Colin’s increasing ire as he demanded they all stay in the house so he could question them individually.

Gabriel made it through his own interrogation in a state of bemused bewilderment, able to answer nearly every question in complete honesty because he had no. Earthly. Idea. Of what was going on.

The only question that reverberated through his mind, echoing like a shout in an empty room, was the same one Sir Colin kept asking, over and over: If Dominic de Vere wasn’t the masked man who robbed a coach as The Gentle Rogue tonight…who was?

It was approaching midnight. Nobody had gone to bed. They were all gathered in the drawing room, sitting in tense silence as Sir Colin called them into Gabriel’s study, one at a time.

Gabriel wanted nothing more than to collar his cousin and drag him someplace private to demand answers, but until Sir Colin gave up and went away, he couldn’t risk it.

So, they sat. Uncle Roman pretended to read but only remembered to turn the pages every ten minutes or so. Dom and Fitz played a desultory hand of commerce, the way they had at school.

Gabriel just sat, mind churning and head aching.

When it was Fitz’s turn to be questioned, he was gone a long time, far longer than Sir Colin had spent with any of the others. He emerged very cheerful, with a spring in his step, while Sir Colin stomped into the drawing room after him looking as though he’d been through the wars.

“Lady Fitzwilliam next,” he all but snarled, and Fitz gave him a jaunty bow and went to fetch her.

Caroline came downstairs on his arm, still dressed in her evening gown from dinner but with her white-blonde hair in a loose braid that swung all the way down her back.

“What a lot of nonsense,” she said, not bothering to hide a yawn. “Well? Let’s get this over with. I’m tired.”

But her interview also lasted quite a long time. When she swept back into the drawing room nearly an hour later, Sir Colin was the color of a ripe plum. He looked close to apoplexy as he clipped out, “I will now question Lady Lucy.”

“She’s asleep,” Caroline said, twitching her braid over her shoulder with an irritated gesture. “She was unwell.”

“I don’t care.” Sir Colin’s tone implied that he wished them all to the very devil. “Get her down here. At once.”

Caroline scowled, but she went.

For some reason, Gabriel found himself on his feet. His heart was pounding, his ears straining for the sound of Lucy’s soft footsteps on the stairs.

There.

Caroline opened the door and Lucy walked in.

She did look a bit unsteady, in a hastily donned dress that was a bit rumpled, as though she’d been wearing her night rail and had changed quickly when her presence was required downstairs.

Her hair was tied in a messy chignon that looked like it could tumble down around her shoulders at any moment.

Gabriel went to meet her, worry clutching at his heart. Was she ill? Her eyes were brilliant, like sapphires glittering in her flushed face. She took his arm gratefully and leaned on him as they walked over to where Sir Colin waiting impatiently.

“You wished to see me?” she said calmly, but Gabriel felt anything but calm.

“Enough,” he said abruptly, keeping Lucy close against his side. He glared down at Sir Colin. “We have been more than accommodating, playing out this little farce of yours. But it’s time for you to go.”

“I’m not leaving until I’ve proved that the robbery tonight was not carried out by the true Gentle Rogue.” Sir Colin’s chest heaved.

“Well,” Lucy said in reasonable tones, “I don’t really understand what’s going on here. But as you once pointed out, I am something of an expert on The Gentle Rogue. Why don’t I go through the evidence with you?”

Evidently, this was what it took to push Sir Colin to the brink of madness. He clutched at his mousy brown hair, making it stand on end. “ Someone robbed a coach on the Bath Road tonight. But it couldn’t have been The Gentle Rogue!”

“Why not?” Lucy was so nonchalant, Gabriel could almost forget this had all been her idea. “Let’s be methodical about this. Did he approach humming a tune?”

“Yes,” said Sir Colin, grinding his teeth. “The young lady, a Miss Graves, reported hearing the strains of ‘Molly Brown’ after the carriage was stopped.”

“Molly Brown.” Something tugged at Gabriel’s mind.

Lucy nodded as though ticking items off a list. “And did he steal a kiss from Miss Graves?”

“Kissed her hand,” Sir Colin spat. “While relieving the young lady of?—”

“A ring,” Lucy said, as if it was a foregone conclusion. “Of course. And was he riding a black horse?”

Gabriel tensed. Why would she ask that? He’d chosen a bay gelding for Dom to ride, as the next best thing, because no one but Gabriel could get near Dante, the stallion he apparently always rode when he went out as The Gentle Rogue.

But Sir Colin was nodding. Reluctantly, but definitely nodding.

Gabriel’s head felt as though it was floating two feet above his body.

“A large black Thoroughbred,” Sir Colin confirmed briefly. His color was starting to come down. Lucy’s calm recitation of the facts seemed to soothe him. “Same one mentioned in all the other reports.”

Dante wasn’t the only large black Thoroughbred stallion in England, Gabriel told himself, but there it was again. That sharp, jabbing sensation in his brain, like a spike through his left eye.

“I don’t know, Sir Colin,” Lucy was saying as she let go of Gabriel’s arm and walked forward to take Sir Colin’s. “It sounds very much to me as though The Gentle Rogue has struck again. But don’t despair, I’m sure you’ll catch him eventually.”

“But. But. I,” Sir Colin mumbled, seeming dazed. He didn’t put up a fight as Lucy steered him gently to the door that led to the hallway.

Lucy darted a glance over her shoulder at Gabriel, her smile flashing like lightning, and as she turned back to say a firm, “Good night, Sir Colin,” Gabriel’s eyes fell to the curve where her long, slender neck met her shoulder.

There was a smudge of dirt. Brown, like road grit.

Like the dust kicked up by a horse’s hooves, galloping along the Bath Road.

She shut the door behind Sir Colin and turned around, her bright, wide smile lighting up Gabriel’s chest, the entire house, all of England.

He strode to her as though no one else in the room existed, catching her to him as she gasped in delight. One hand held her close, the other went straight to her throat.

Gabriel brushed at that smudge of dirt, lifting his fingers to rub away the evidence of her adventure. The proof that she’d risked her lovely neck…for him.

“Lucy,” he growled, headache subsiding and the fiercest desire he’d ever known rising to take its place, pushing out everything that wasn’t this strong, thrumming need for her.

“Yes?” She was breathless, almost laughing, jubilant with her success. It was like holding an armful of firecrackers, ready to spiral off in sparks with the touch of a flame.

He wanted to be that flame.

“It’s late,” he said, never taking his eyes off her. “Thank you all, for everything. I’ll want to thank you again in the morning. But for now…”

“We’re going.” Dom laughed, clapping him on the shoulder as he edged past them and out the door. “My old bedroom open? I know the way.”

The Drakes slipped out with sleepy, conspiratorial smiles, and Uncle Roman followed them. He paused for a moment, his back to them, to say, “You did well tonight, my lady. Thank you.”

“I didn’t do it for you,” Lucy retorted, gazing up at Gabriel. Her eyes glowed, stars lighting their depths. Gabriel could have looked at her for a hundred years without growing tired of the view.

“I know,” Uncle Roman said gruffly. “All the same.”

Then he was gone, and they were alone in the drawing room.

“I don’t know whether to thank you,” Gabriel said, “or spank you. You marvel.”

Lucy colored prettily and wound her arms around his neck. “You could do both,” she suggested with a naughty grin that reached right down into Gabriel’s breeches and squeezed.

“Whatever you want, Lively,” he said, relishing her shiver and the way she squeaked when he bent to lift her into his arms and carry her to the settee.

They made love in front of the dying fire, the candles in the drawing room guttering out one by one as Gabriel checked every inch of Lucy’s body and shuddered anew at the risks she’d taken, the danger she’d been in.

But when he pulled her over him to lie on his chest and said, “Lucy, promise me, never again—” she put her fingers to his lips and wouldn’t let him finish.

The steely resolve in her blue eyes made his throat burn. “I can’t promise anything of the sort. I’d go on a hundred midnight rides to save you.”

He had to kiss her then, craning up to take her luscious mouth which opened for him like her long, slim thighs opened to straddle his hips on the settee.

“Like this?” she moaned against his lips as his straining cock nudged at her soft, wet core.

“Are you too tired?” he crooned, smoothing her hair back and trailing kisses across the small, taut breasts so tantalizingly near his face. “Too tired for one more midnight ride?”

She laughed breathlessly and sat up, eyes flashing. “I’m never too tired for this.”

And then she lifted up and sank back down, swallowing every inch of his rigid prick with agonizing slowness that stole the very breath from his lungs.

Gabriel stared up at her, his Valkyrie, hair loose and flying around her shoulders as she rode him to her own bliss, hips rocking in a deep, filthy grind until she shook and cried out.

Gabriel held on until her tremors stopped, then gritted his teeth and made to pull out. But Lucy clamped her thighs to his hips and said, “No. Stay. I want to feel it.”

That was more than Gabriel could withstand. He surged up and tumbled her beneath him, his own hips driving in savage thrusts until the mounting pleasure burst over him in a torrent of bliss.

He tucked her against him, adoring the way she curled her hands around his biceps, holding him in return.

She was so sleepy in the aftermath, a warm snuggly bundle, and though Gabriel knew he should carry her upstairs to her own bedchamber, he gave himself one more minute to enjoy the trusting weight of her against his chest.

“I shouldn’t have done that,” he whispered. “You’re a temptress. You make me forget everything but you, and how much I need you.”

He felt her smile against the curve of his neck. “I’ve always dreamed of being wanted like that, but I never thought it would happen.”

Pressing a kiss to her hair, breathing in her sweet-tart lemon scent, mixed now with the familiar smells of horse and leather and night air, Gabriel smiled. In that moment, he truly didn’t care if he never got his memories back.

He had everything he needed, right there in his arms.

Lucy’s voice was soft and clear in the darkness. “I love you, Gabriel.”

“I want you more than anything on this earth. I love you,” he whispered back, heart full, and sank into sleep knowing the nightmares wouldn’t touch him so long as she was there.