Page 54 of Scoundrel Take Me Away (Dukes in Disguise #3)

Chapter Twenty-Three

Gabriel woke with the sun pouring in from the floor-to-ceiling drawing room windows, making him squint and mutter a curse as he struggled upright.

He was alone.

For the best, he told himself as he hastily dressed in last night’s clothes before a maid could wander in and find him in the altogether. Or, worse, his uncle.

Gabriel didn’t know quite where he stood with Uncle Roman this morning, he thought, taking the stairs two at a time.

Roman had come here with the intent to stop Gabriel’s engagement—but he’d stayed to help them obstruct the sworn duty of an agent of the Crown, something Gabriel would never, in a hundred years, have suspected Roman would do.

He paused as he passed the door to the room Lucy had been given but decided to let her sleep. She’d earned a lie-in, if anyone ever had.

Whistling a tune under his breath, Gabriel hurried through his ablutions and let his valet shave and dress him. He found he was starving and was very glad to see the baskets of sweet rolls and dishes of kippers still set out on the sideboard in the breakfast room.

Gabriel helped himself quickly, piling his plate high with bread and jam, coddled eggs, rashers of bacon, and a cluster of grapes from the hothouse, and sat down to his feast.

He was halfway through his mountain of breakfast when Dominic strolled in.

Dom hesitated in the doorway, their eyes meeting across the Aubusson carpet.

But if Gabriel was uncertain of how he would react to seeing his uncle in the clear light of a new day, he felt less conflicted about his cousin.

So he smiled and gestured with his fork at the repast laid out for their morning meal.

“There’s apricot marmalade,” he said, and Dom grinned.

“My favorite.”

“I know.” Gabriel went back to eating, but he was conscious of every movement his cousin made as he filled his own plate and brought it over to sit at Gabriel’s right hand.

They ate for a few minutes in a silence that wasn’t entirely companionable—though it wasn’t quite antagonistic either.

In the end, it was Dom who broke it by remarking, “It’s strange to be back here. At Thornecliff.”

For me, too . Gabriel took a sip of tea. “Where have you been living? At Wolverton Chase, with Roman?”

“I suppose you could call that my most permanent address,” Dom allowed. “Though I’m not there much. I…travel quite a bit. For work.”

“And what is it you do?”

“This and that.”

Gabriel rolled his eyes. “Being vague doesn’t make you sound mysterious, you know. It just makes you sound like an arsehole.”

It felt intensely awkward and strange to be making small talk with this man who had been a brother to him—brother, best friend, confidant, conspirator and rival, all rolled into one.

But that was a long time ago; he couldn’t begrudge Dominic his secrets now.

Though it seemed Gabriel hadn’t managed to keep any secrets of his own. “I’m still angry with you,” he said.

At his side, Dominic stilled for a moment. “Are you?”

Wincing a bit at having accidentally strayed too close to the deep chasm that splintered their family—closer than he’d meant to come over tea and kippers, anyway—Gabriel hastened to add, “I can’t believe you let Lucy convince you she was the one who ought to don the black and ride out as The Gentle Rogue.

She could’ve been hurt. Or caught! How could you let her do it? ”

Dominic looked askance. “How do you propose I should’ve stopped her?

Have you met your wife-to-be? She’s a woman who knows her own mind.

If we hadn’t helped her, she only would’ve snuck off and done it on her own.

And this way we could play for time. We had Fitz and his wife drag out their interviews with Sir Colin to give Lucy a chance to make it back to Thornecliff.

From the sounds of things, you and I would both be locked up in neighboring gaol cells right about now, because Sir Colin anticipated exactly the scheme you thought we were pulling. ”

“Instead, here we are eating bacon. All because of Lucy.” Gabriel thought of her upstairs, sleeping the sleep of the deeply exhausted, and smiled. God, but he loved her.

“Oi, I did have a little something to do with it,” Dom protested, spearing a piece of kipper. “I had to play boring whist for hours, to keep you from suspecting anything and scuppering the whole plot.”

Gabriel snorted. “Please. I know you. You loved every second of last night, you confidence trickster, getting to run two simultaneous schemes to fool both me and an agent of the Crown.”

“You do know me.”

The low intensity of Dominic’s voice brought Gabriel up short. He met his cousin’s eyes, tawny gold like a cat’s, with the same bright, inquisitive alertness.

Dom had grown up and filled out, his big, rangy body replacing the lanky young man Gabriel remembered.

He’d always been the more gregarious and carefree of the two of them, without Gabriel’s tendency toward bleak humors, but Dom’s ready smile hid a sharply analytical mind and a loyal streak a mile wide.

This older version appeared much the same, though Gabriel noted that his cousin held himself differently from the easy, casual athleticism of his youth. This Dominic carried himself like a man who knew how to handle himself in a fight.

Despite everything, Gabriel hoped he wouldn’t have to find out firsthand whether he or Dominic would win in a fistfight these days. “In all seriousness,” he said quietly, “thank you for last night.”

Dom quirked a smile at him, the edge of mischief in it so familiar that it made Gabriel’s throat tighten. “Ah, it was a dream come true.”

A sound like the ocean crashing against the side of a ship filled Gabriel’s ears.

“But now it’s time to wake up,” Gabriel said, then frowned, bewildered.

Why had he said that? Why did he hear it echoing in his head, in Lucy’s voice, low and aching with sadness?

Gabriel staggered to his feet, his grip on the tablecloth pulling dishware to the floor with a cacophony of shattering plates and glasses.

His head split with the worst pain he’d ever felt. He couldn’t see through it, couldn’t breathe through it.

Dimly, he heard Dominic’s alarmed voice saying, “Gabriel? Gabriel!” but he couldn’t answer.

All he could do was crash to his knees as wave after wave of memory crowded into his head in a single instant.

A night out with friends, though Dominic had declined the invitation, citing the need to study. He was always so worried about not doing anything to disappoint Uncle Roman, he ought to live a little. What Uncle Roman didn’t know, wouldn’t hurt him.

Stumbling away from the tavern to cast up his accounts in the dank lane behind. Hearing footsteps just before a dirty burlap sack closed over his head and several pairs of brawny arms pulled him off his unsteady feet, subduing his struggles with humiliating, terrifying ease.

Waking up in the hold of a ship, the creaking of the timbers and the lap of waves against the hull not loud enough to drown out the raised voices of the men who took him.

They were arguing about how Uncle Roman hadn’t paid, and how best to compel him to put up the ransom.

They should start cutting pieces off, one of the men suggested, and send them to him by post. That’d get his purse strings untangled quick enough.

Realizing the man was talking about cutting off pieces of Gabriel and having to twist his body painfully against the bonds tying his arms behind his back so he didn’t heave bile all over himself.

Realizing he’d been in the hold of that ship for some indeterminate length of time that could have been weeks or years, but that no one was coming to save him.

His captors had begun fighting amongst themselves, forgetting to feed him half the time, drunk and getting restless and frustrated and very free with their fists when they did remember to bring Gabriel a cup of water and a piece of hardtack to chew on.

The day he finally managed to saw through the rough rope binding his wrists using the sharp corner of the square pole to which he’d been lashed.

The lance of pain in his shoulders, the horror of feeling how weak and useless his arms were after being tied up so long.

But he’d been strong enough to overpower a man who stank of fish and cheap rotgut, grown careless after weeks of tossing scraps to a helpless victim.

Gabriel wasn’t helpless anymore. He was fueled by rage that lent him enough power to knock the man out and escape the hold.

Shocking cold water closing over his head—a moment of panic that he didn’t possess the coordination or the strength to swim to shore. Salt burning his nose and eyes, choking him, but he forced himself to kick.

Pushing himself up onto the shore, his clothes ragged and stained with God knew what, his hair a tangled mass and raw welts circling his wrists.

He looked like an escaped convict. People shied away from him, and Gabriel felt as wary as they.

He’d never seen most of the men who’d abducted him.

Anyone he passed could be one of his captors, there to retake him.

He avoided crowds and villages, keeping to the hedgerows that ran alongside the country roads and lanes, and made his slow, painful way north.

The rush of joy at seeing Thornecliff in the distance. The disbelief and confusion of finding it empty. No one there to welcome him home except the skeleton staff of servants left behind when the family removed to London.

Sitting in his first proper bath, alone, because he hadn’t wanted help. Shaving himself after, with shaking hands, nicking his jaw and staring into the hollow eyes of the young man in the looking glass, because he couldn’t bear to be touched.

Arriving at Wycombe House, the Thornecliff residence in London, to find Uncle Roman embroiled in a battle with Parliament to wrest control of the estate into his own hands.

Shock. Betrayal.

Rage.