Page 6 of Scoundrel Take Me Away (Dukes in Disguise #3)

Chapter Three

The Gentle Rogue had been eluding capture for years. He was notoriously slippery. He worked alone, unlike many highwaymen, and no one on earth seemed to have the slightest notion of who he was or how to find him.

No one except Lucy.

She’d finished her new chapter of The Midnight Rider .

Lucy wasn’t entirely happy with it; some of the transitions felt rushed and she worried she’d overdone the dialogue, but there was no time to dither.

She had to get the chapter to her publisher, so that it would be printed and run in the newspaper, and The Gentle Rogue would have a chance to read it.

That was how she’d find him.

Early on in her obsession with The Gentle Rogue, years ago, she’d realized that he read his own press.

To help her sister, Gemma, in her attempt to turn their coaching inn into a thriving stop along the Bath Road, Lucy had hit upon the idea of embellishing The Gentle Rogue’s legend by writing a story that claimed he stole kisses as well as purses.

It wasn’t true, but Lucy thought it would be good publicity and would make people flock to the Bath Road in hopes of a run-in with the famous highwayman—and she’d been right!

She’d also found out that, after her article ran in The London Observator , The Gentle Rogue did begin to bestow kisses upon the prettier ladies he robbed.

The thrill of power she’d felt in that moment still took her breath away.

But it could’ve been a coincidence, so Lucy had tested it out.

She’d next submitted an article claiming The Gentle Rogue had a lovely singing voice…

and, lo and behold, reports began to come in from his actual victims, claiming they’d heard him humming and whistling while going about his business of relieving them of their valuables. That had clinched it.

The Gentle Rogue liked to read about himself in the papers. And…he was suggestible.

It wasn’t until after Lucy met him in person, that night she ran away from Ashbourn House and he found her and helped her get home to Little Kissington, that she realized she could use what she’d learned to make certain their paths crossed again.

She wrote a new piece for the paper, and she made sure to include in it a very specific tidbit: that The Gentle Rogue was known to haunt a particular stretch of the Bath Road right outside Thatcham.

The night after that article ran in the paper, Lucy had snuck out of Five Mile House and ridden the coaching inn’s big, placid draft horse to Thatcham. And there he was.

It had worked.

From then on, whenever Lucy wanted to see The Gentle Rogue, she dropped a location into a newspaper article and turned up there herself.

It didn’t work every single time, but often enough that she’d successfully lured him out to meet her five times before he’d finally told her it was over. Before he’d sent her away to grow up.

Well, she’d gone. And now she was back, and though she had no idea if her old method of planting a suggestion for The Gentle Rogue to find would succeed, she had to try.

Even if it seemed she wasn’t the only one hunting The Gentle Rogue.

She’d found out only after she turned in the new chapter of Midnight Rider with its insinuation that The Gentle Rogue had been seen on the Maidenhead Bridge.

Her editor’s face flashed across Lucy’s mind, as he’d appeared in those brief moments earlier this week at the end of her visit to the print shop.

With his ubiquitous pipe clamped between his teeth and his dark brows lowered over his sharp brown eyes, Mr. Jeremiah Singh was not a man given to dramatics.

So when he’d taken her aside at the end of her visit to issue a warning, Lucy had felt a distinct chill pass through her.

“Bloke came round,” he’d said briefly, gaze shrewd and watchful on her face.

“A Sir Colin Semple. Said he was an agent of the Crown. Looking for information on the author of our paper’s most popular feature, The Midnight Rider .

He seemed to think the author might be able to help him catch a real highwayman. ”

“Any…particular one?”

“The Gentle Rogue.”

Covering her spike of apprehension with a scoff, Lucy had replied, “What a ridiculous notion. I hope you told him The Midnight Rider is a work of fiction bearing no relation to any real highwaymen, living or dead!”

“Of course.” Mr. Singh had puffed agitatedly at his pipe for a moment until fragrant smoke wreathed his head. “And I didn’t give him your name, either. Said I didn’t know it, got the chapters in by post, sent payments the same way. Not sure he believed me.”

They had decided it was best Lucy not come to the print shop in person again, at least for a time, and Lucy had departed the shop feeling as though everyone she passed in the street was watching her every move.

But no one had approached her, and gradually she had relaxed. After all, she’d told herself, it wasn’t likely that any rational person would think her Midnight Rider could actually lead them to The Gentle Rogue.

After the first few articles she’d written, years ago in her little bedchamber at Five Mile House, Lucy had switched over from writing (admittedly sensationalized) accounts of The Gentle Rogue’s adventures to fiction.

She had dreamed up her highwayman character’s exploits, his personal history and tangled relationships, entirely out of her own imagination.

All right, so The Midnight Rider bore more than a passing resemblance to The Gentle Rogue.

They haunted the same stretch of highway and shared some of the same habits, like humming and singing on their way to rob the wealthy in their carriages, and stealing kisses from pretty, blushing ladies along with their baubles and jewels.

It was an homage! Not a biography.

She was grateful to Mr. Singh for maintaining her anonymity.

But the idea that anyone could reach The Gentle Rogue through Lucy was laughable, really.

She didn’t know who he was and never had!

It had been years since Lucy had used her writing to predict The Gentle Rogue’s whereabouts on a given evening.

She wasn’t at all certain her secret method would still work.

But she was about to find out.

It had been several days of settling back into life at Ashbourn House, helping Bess with her correspondence and attempting to distract her young niece while Bess napped.

She’d written to her mother and sister in Little Kissington.

She’d teased Nathaniel and enjoyed watching the way he softened all over with love for his little daughter and worry for his pregnant wife.

And she’d waited.

Finally, the wait was over. The newest chapter of Midnight Rider had appeared in today’s edition of Mr. Singh’s paper.

Tonight, she would discover if her old way of reaching out to The Gentle Rogue would draw him in.

Tonight, if all went well, she would see him for the first time in five years.

Too jittery to sleep and accustomed to keeping very late hours, Lucy sat at her writing desk and attempted to scratch out a few pages while the household quieted around her.

But as soon as the hallway clock chimed midnight, she tossed down her pen and hurried to pull on a hooded cloak of soft cobalt blue linen.

It felt odd having to be quiet on the stairs, Lucy reflected, pausing at the landing when she heard a thump from above.

In the past five years, she hadn’t really answered to anyone but herself.

She’d had her maid with her in the beginning, for propriety’s sake, but once it became clear that Molly was pining for England and the young man she’d left there, Lucy sent her home and went on without her.

It had been a long while since Lucy had given two thoughts to propriety, and truth be told, she’d never been as concerned with it as she probably should’ve been.

But beyond the shock and disapproval she could imagine on her brother’s face if he were to discover her midnight escapade, Lucy had not the smallest desire to answer questions about what she intended.

She hardly knew what she thought might come of this madness. She only knew her feet trod upon the same soil as The Gentle Rogue once more, and she had to see him.

Lucy hurried down the stairs and out the back door of Ashbourn House to the stables.

She tipped the sleepy stableboya small fortune to ready the little two-wheeled curricle she’d bought the last time she was in London, when Kitty was born.

Lucy had learned to drive in Italy and was unwilling to relinquish the independence of owning her own equipage simply because “English ladies don’t. ”

She intended to do quite a few things English ladies didn’t, she reflected as the stableboy handed her up to the box.

Gathering the reins expertly, Lucy relished the taut anticipation of having two superbly matched gray geldings ready and raring to go, controlled only by the touch of her hand upon the ribbons.

With a soft cluck and a flick of the reins, the light curricle leapt forward, and in moments she was driving over the tidy Mayfair cobblestones.

At that hour, it took only a short while to clear the city, even with all its congestion of traffic.

Before Lucy knew it, her curricle’s tall wheels were flying down the well-maintained Bath Road toward her quarry.

When she neared the little market town of Maidenhead, she slowed and made certain the cloak of her hood shaded her face. Her heart raced faster than the flashing hooves of her spirited horses. It had to work.

He must come. He must!

There was a Thames River crossing at Maidenhead, a lovely stone bridge with more than a dozen arches to let the wide river flow through.

Mist swirled up from the water, thick and substantial enough that Lucy felt her cheeks grow damp.

Her breath was quick and light, her very lungs aflutter with nerves. As her horses reached the center of the bridge, a dark figure atop a monstrous black stallion materialized from the mist like a phantom.

“Stand and deliver!”

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