Page 57 of Scoundrel Take Me Away (Dukes in Disguise #3)

Chapter Twenty-Four

Three months later

Holding a baby, breathing in his sweet, milky baby smell and feeling his chubby hand close around her finger was not a cure-all, Lucy had found.

But it did help.

Bess had sailed through the last third of her pregnancy with such ease that no one had been entirely prepared for how difficult the birth proved to be.

In the end, while Nathaniel, Dr. Perry, Henrietta, and Gemma crowded around Bess…

it had been Lucy who was the first to hold August Alexander Martin Lively in her arms.

The perfection of his tiny fingernails squeezed her heart. His round, bitable cheeks, his button of a nose, his squalling indignation at the cold new world in which he suddenly found himself.

Lucy could relate.

She missed Gabriel with every beat of her heart.

Well. He was Thorne, again now, she supposed. He was all over the papers these days, tearing up London, throwing parties and gambling all night and getting into fights at The Nemesis.

Lucy hated herself for it, but she devoured every salacious article, every breathless, scandalized piece of tittle-tattle she could find.

She dreaded the moment she read his name in print, linked with the name of some courtesan or society widow or demirep. She didn’t know how she would bear it.

But she would bear it, Lucy told herself firmly while pulling faces at August to make him blow bubbles back at her.

She would bear it, as she had borne the weeks of shocked surprise, recriminations, and tears at Five Mile House as her mother and Gemma expressed their various and voluble feelings about Lucy’s entanglement with the Duke of Thornecliff.

She had borne her sister’s comments about Lucy’s abysmal taste in men, and their mother’s tearful hand-wringing about Lucy’s wan complexion, during all the long journey from Little Kissington back to London, to be present for August’s birth.

She had borne the long, dull days and endless, empty nights without Gabriel, and she knew she would have to bear many, many more. But bear it, she would.

Lucy would have a future. She would survive this, though in the dead of night, alone in her bed, it didn’t seem possible. But it was, and August was the proof.

Life went on. Broken heart or no. And there was still sweetness in it, even if any sweetness Lucy found these days was tinged bitter with heartbreak.

Even these moments, playing with August while Bess looked on with a serenely joyful smile, were bittersweet.

Gabriel had been so careful with her, so careful not to spend inside her and risk giving her a babe. Until that last night.

“Did I tell you that I cried,” Lucy said softly. “When my courses came.”

She could only say these things to Bess, and by extension to Nathaniel. He had learned to see Lucy as her own person—something Gemma still struggled with. And as much as Lucy loved and depended on her mother, she found it easier to speak to Bess about the most deeply held secrets of her heart.

Perhaps because Bess, too, had seen through the Thorne mask to the man he was beneath. Or perhaps it was because Bess, unlike Gemma and Henrietta, could be counted on to respond calmly and thoughtfully, no matter the topic.

For instance, she now said, “Ah, did you, then?”

The empathy in Bess’s warm gaze brought a lump to Lucy’s throat, like an echo of the storm of sobs that had racked her for hours when she realized there was no chance at all that she was carrying Gabriel’s child.

Hugging August close, Lucy said, “Silly of me, obviously. What a disaster that would have been. I’d have had to raise a child on my own, probably in exile to avoid letting the scandal touch the rest of you.”

“You don’t think Thorne would have done the right thing?”

Lucy’s heart clenched hard. “I don’t know. I don’t know how I would have told him. It would have killed me if he only married me to give our child a name.”

“That wouldn’t be why.” Bess gave Lucy a sympathetic look. “Not the only reason, anyhow.”

Bess still held out hope; as one half of a blissfully happy couple, herself, she couldn’t seem to believe it might not work out as perfectly for Lucy and Thorne.

“We won’t have to find out,” Lucy said, attempting a smile. “I’m not pregnant. And without that inducement, I doubt Thornecliff will ever speak to me again. I’m not the sort of woman to inspire a man to forgive all sins and brave all dangers—that’s more in my sister’s line than mine.”

“Lucy,” Bess admonished gently, but Lucy shook her head.

She’d believed for a while that she could inspire that kind of feeling in a man. But it had only been a fantasy all along. “It’s fine,” Lucy insisted. “I’m fine. Or I shall be.”

Love, for all that Lucy had chased it and dreamed of it and gone to extraordinary lengths to find it—love wasn’t enough.

Love hadn’t cured Gabriel. It hadn’t saved him. And now that he’d gotten better, he didn’t want it.

Lucy had to figure out a way to move on with her life.

Her family all had their own opinions on that, of course. Henrietta and Gemma both believed Lucy was better off without Thorne, and did not hesitate to tell her so before they left Ashbourn House, a fortnight after August’s birth.

Gemma, the champion grudge-holder of the family, hated Thornecliff with all the deep, fiery passion of her nature. Forgiveness was not her strong suit, and she was even less inclined to forgive slights against those she loved.

“Good riddance to bad rubbish,” she’d sniffed while packing her bags to return home to Hal and her own children. “He doesn’t deserve you.”

But what did deserving have to do with it? They had both made mistakes. They had both been dishonest and afraid.

Henrietta had taken Lucy in her arms, soft and generous and overflowing with sympathy. “Oh, my darling girl, you have had an adventure, to be sure! Why don’t you come back to Little Kissington with Gemma and me? It would do you good to be surrounded by familiar people and things again!”

But Lucy had waved them farewell and stayed. Officially, she was not yet ready to leave August, and she thought Bess might still be glad of her help and company.

Unofficially? Lucy couldn’t bear to leave London. Because he was in London.

God, she was pathetic.

Out of all of them, Nathaniel was the only one who told Lucy what she truly did not wish to hear.

Joining Bess and Lucy in the parlor for his afternoon ration of staring besottedly at August while their whirlwind of a daughter napped, Nathaniel said, “What are we talking about?”

Without missing a beat, Bess smoothly said, “We’re discussing Lucy’s future plans.”

Nathaniel looked up at Lucy from the blanket they’d spread of the floor to let baby August practice lying on his back and waving his fat little arms and legs.

“You can stay here as long as you like, of course,” Nathaniel said to Lucy. “There will always be a place for you in my home. But, Lucy, you’re not someone who can be happy floating through life with no sense of purpose. I know, because I’m the same way.”

“I have a purpose,” she protested, jumping to her feet and marching over to the side table to pour herself a cup of tea she didn’t want. “I’m a writer.”

“A writer who finished her novel,” he pointed out mildly.

She had, finally. Somehow her broken heart had blown the lid off her writer’s block, and she’d poured every ounce of her frustration, unhappiness, and pain into The Midnight Rider ’s final chapter, knowing Gabriel would never see it because The Gentle Rogue had retired.

“Your engagement is off—fine,” Nathaniel continued, pitilessly ignoring Lucy’s restless pacing with her teacup.

“But now it’s time to find your next purpose.

And as much as we love having you with us, as much as August and Kitty and Bess and I will miss you, I don’t think your purpose is to be a companion and aunt to my children. ”

And he was right, of course. Still, it wasn’t until the day her final chapter of The Midnight Rider came out in The London Observator , running concurrently with a piece detailing the Duke of Thornecliff’s latest descent into hedonistic excess, that Lucy finally started making plans.

She threw down the paper, with its satirical drawing of Thorne, complete with devil horns, surrounded by swooning ladies whose gowns clung to propriety by the tips of their breasts, and went upstairs to pack.

She’d always wanted to see Constantinople. Maybe that would be far enough away to outrun the pain of having given her heart to a man who proudly proclaimed he had none.

* * *

“Did you see the papers this morning?”

Thorne groaned, shading his eyes against the sudden blast of sunlight from the curtains being flung open by an overenthusiastic hand.

“Remind me how long you intend to stay with me,” he glowered at his unrepentant cousin.

“Until you’re back on your feet,” was Dominic’s cheery reply.

Thorne grunted and hauled himself up against the pillows. “I thought that’s what I was proving last night. I’m back to normal. Everything is back to normal.”

So you can leave me in peace was heavily implied.

“You don’t look normal to me,” Dom countered, giving him a critical once-over. “In fact, you look terrible.”

“Out of practice,” Thorne grumbled, throwing back the blankets and ignoring Dom’s squawk of protest in favor of stalking nude across the room to splash cold water from the basin into his gritty eyes.

If Dom didn’t like the view, he could bloody well find someone else to annoy.

The irony didn’t escape Thorne. He’d spent years blaming his family for leaving him alone, and now it was all he wanted.

Uncle Roman had certainly complied readily enough, once it became clear Thorne had regained the full use of his faculties and the full scope of his memories.

He’d gone back to Wolverton Chase, the family hunting lodge in the north of England, and Thorne told himself he’d been glad to see the back of him.