Page 59 of Scoundrel Take Me Away (Dukes in Disguise #3)

Thorne smiled faintly. “I wonder what it means that of all the things Uncle Roman drilled into us as boys, that’s the one we remember the most vividly. What sad bastards we all are.”

“He did his best,” Dominic said, setting his jaw.

“You really can’t stop defending him, can you?” Thorne found himself genuinely curious.

“It goes both directions,” Dominic said sullenly. “When Roman goes on a rant about your latest misadventure, I defend you.”

Despite knowing that was an unfair position for Dominic to be thrust into, the thought of it made Thorne feel… He didn’t know. Grateful, perhaps.

The atmosphere between them lightened gradually, like the sun rising in the sky to stream into the open window. It was good to understand, finally. Good to be able to lay some of his longest-standing grudges and resentments to rest.

Perhaps he ought to feel self-loathing for the fact that he’d been too furious and blinded by emotion to see the truth when it would have made a difference to the way his life unfolded, but Thorne found he couldn’t.

His recent experiences, living those few precious weeks as Gabriel, had produced an aching, grudging sympathy for that past version of himself.

He’d been young. He’d been in pain. And he’d felt hideously, horribly, entirely alone.

“Have you ever thought about the fact that Roman was eighteen when his brother died,” Dom said musingly, “and he was given guardianship of the next Duke of Thornecliff? Eighteen. Younger than you were when you were taken.”

Thorne held up a placating hand, amused that their minds had been running along such similar lines. “Enough. I concede, out of the three of us sad bastards, Roman wins the prize for being saddest.”

To his surprise, Dominic grinned and waggled his brows impishly. “Maybe that would have been true, once upon a time. But just recently? You’ve got him beat.”

Black weariness swept over Thorne once more. He picked up his cup of cooling coffee and tossed it back, grimacing. “Yes, well. If my mood isn’t to your liking, you may feel free to leave at any time.”

He’d made the same comment, or something similar, several times since Dominic had followed him to London and installed himself in his blandly luxurious apartments on Piccadilly, but this was the first time he’d said it knowing that Dominic wouldn’t take him seriously.

Knowing that Dominic understood he didn’t mean it.

“Oh, I don’t think I’m the one who will be leaving,” Dom replied in an annoyingly mysterious tone. He brandished the forgotten paper in Thorne’s face until Thorne took it with a huff.

“For God’s sake,” he complained, “where is this piece of gossip I absolutely must see? Let me read it so we can dispense with this paper and all your hinting.”

“It’s not gossip.” Dom stood and leaned over to point to the piece that ran alongside the gossip column. “It’s this. I think you’re ready to read it now.”

Thorne’s throat clenched shut. Lucy’s story, the one she’d used to subtly steer The Gentle Rogue’s actions so she could know how to find him.

The story inspired by Thorne, though she hadn’t known that when she began it.

The story that had parallelled their story, with a highwayman who fell in love with an innkeeper’s daughter.

The story she’d finally finished.

Thorne’s eyes raced over the small type, devouring Lucy’s lyrical prose, hungry for the sound of her voice that came through in every line as though she was whispering it into his ear.

When he got to the end, his mind was a blur of racing thoughts and unanswered questions. He went back to the beginning and read it again, more carefully this time, but he reached the same conclusion at the bottom of the page.

Jumping up from his seat, he opened his mouth to shout for his valet only to find the man already laying out clothes on the bed. Dominic leaned against one of the bedposts, looking smug.

“I took the liberty of ringing for Avery,” he said, crossing his arms over his chest. “Thought you might be in a hurry to leave, once you’d finished reading.”

Thorne strode over to his cousin; it took everything he had not to grab the man by the lapels and shake him for emphasis. “You saw it too. And you think?—”

Dominic arched a brow. “You mean, did I see that the innkeeper’s daughter found out the highwayman’s secret identity and proclaimed her love for him no matter his name?

Then when he callously sent her away, she took to the high seas herself, to become a pirate queen?

And do I think that means Lucy loves you, no matter what you call yourself, and is about to board a ship leaving England? ”

“It doesn’t change anything.” Thorne felt numb. He let Avery help him into his clothes mechanically, with barely any awareness of what his body was doing. “I don’t know why you think I’m going after her.”

“Because you’re letting Avery dress you?” Dominic’s tone was mild, but it still made Thorne flinch. “You have to go after her.”

“She doesn’t want me,” Thorne said desperately, shaking Avery off when he was too slow about tying his cravat. “She only thinks she does.”

“God, you’re impossible.” Dominic propped his hands on his lean hips, exasperated. “Luckily, I already knew that about you. So, I called for reinforcements.”

“What do you mean?” Thorne asked warily.

There was a discreet knock at the outer door of the apartment.

“And his timing is impeccable,” Dominic grinned. “As usual.”

In something of a shambles, Thorne trailed Dom out to the flat’s foyer and waited while he opened the door. He had no idea what he was expecting, but it wasn’t the slightly stooped, elegant figure that greeted him.

Albert Farthingdale.

His hair was silvery white now, but he still wore it carefully combed and styled in the gentle waves that complemented his lean, angular face. A few more wrinkles showed at the corners of his kind hazel eyes, but the light in them was as bright and shrewd as ever.

Those eyes creased now, gazing at Thorne with a wealth of emotion that nearly undid him.

“My dear boy,” Farthingdale said in the same softspoken, deliberate tones that had soothed Gabriel’s childhood hurts and read him stories when he couldn’t sleep.

Thorne swallowed hard, throat clicking, and Dom gave him a commiserating punch in the arm. “I’ll just leave you to it then, shall I, Farthingdale?”

“Yes, Master Dominic, go. If you please,” Farthingdale replied, eyes twinkling. “We’ll sort everything out.”

“Where are you going?” Thorne asked, suddenly desperate to avoid being left alone with this kindly old man who had never once let him down…and had never once let him get away with anything.

“I have some things to arrange,” Dom said in that vague way of his, and then he was off down the hall, whistling a merry tune, and Thorne was left holding the door open for Albert Farthingdale to enter his flat.

He watched in silence as the man who’d raised him looked around the bachelor rooms with interest. Not that there was much to see; they were lavishly appointed and entirely devoid of personality.

Deliberately so. For the first time since he let the place, Thorne found himself wishing he’d put a little more effort into the décor.

“Is there tea?” Farthingdale prompted gently. “I could make some, if you?—”

“There’s coffee,” Thorne blurted. “Or I can ring for tea. If you like.”

“That’s not necessary, coffee would be lovely. You have a very nice home, if I may say so.”

“It’s not a home,” Thorne said, busying himself with the sterling silver coffee service. “It’s just a place to be.”

When he handed over the cup, Farthingdale’s well-groomed white brows were slightly raised. “Indeed. Perhaps you have outgrown this particular place.”

Throwing himself down into his favorite armchair, Thorne picked up his own discarded cup and drank it down to the bitter dregs.

Where was Lucy right now? Was she already gone? Was she out of his reach?

Ridiculous. She’d been out of his reach the whole time, even when she was wrapped in his arms.

“Why are you here?” he asked, blunt and impolite. Almost hoping to offend.

But Farthingdale, as ever, was impossible to offend. He took an unperturbed sip of his coffee before answering, “To see you. To see with my own eyes that you are well, after your ordeal.”

“As you can see, I’m fine.”

“Mmm. Quite. But could you be better?”

Thorne snorted without humor. “That was certainly always Uncle Roman’s question. How could I improve myself, be more, different, better than I was?”

“Your uncle asked a lot of you boys,” Farthingdale agreed. “Though no more than he asks of himself.”

“Just like Dom, you always defend him,” Thorne said. It came out in the accusatory tone of an aggrieved thirteen-year-old rather than a mature thirty-one-year-old man.

“I know him,” Farthingdale said simply, meeting Thorne’s stare. “Better than he knows himself, I’d wager. All three of you boys. My boys.”

His voice wavered, and Thorne remembered suddenly that Farthingdale had begun his career in service in his grandparents’ house as a very young man, when Thorne’s father and Uncle Roman were little boys.

This man had seen multiple generations of de Veres through triumph and tragedy, and he’d never faltered in his loyalty, or in his steady affection.

He’d tried to talk to Gabriel, after the abduction. But Gabriel had been too angry to listen to anyone or anything.

That hadn’t stopped Farthingdale from writing to him.

Small missives about everyday things: a new walking stick Farthingdale had bought from a local farmer who did woodcarving in his spare time, or a recipe for Eccles cake he’d asked Cook to try. Nothing that required a reply.

And Thorne had not replied, not once.

But he’d kept every single letter, carefully folded in a locked box at the back of his wardrobe.

To see Farthingdale again now, when everything inside him had been upended and shaken until he hardly knew himself anymore… It was a gift. If he had courage enough to seize it.