“Ugly?”he suggested.
Her lips twisted.“Not exactly.Not on the outside, at least.But inside, he is an out-and-out villain, I’m afraid.”
Thorne couldn’t very well disagree.But he suddenly saw a glimmer of a chance, a way to shuffle the cards and stack the deck to get the hand he wanted to play.
“Many would call me a villain,” he pointed out.
She shook her head at once.“They don’t understand you.They don’t know you.”
And she thought she did.For some reason, her foolishness made his chest ache.“How well do you know this villainous duke?”he asked.
“Not terribly well,” she admitted grudgingly.“He seems to have changed, or to be trying to change.Or something.No, I cannot say I know him well.But I know him as well as I care to!”
Something sharp and exciting flared in Thorne’s gut—the sensation of a victory so close as to be almost within his grasp.
He turned his head to stare into the distance, aware that the angle of his profile would be illuminated by the silvery moonlight.His looks were a weapon he’d learned to wield with ruthless precision, a source of power when he’d felt particularly powerless and alone.
Beautiful people could shape the world around them as they wished.Thorne would never be that helpless, hapless boy again.He’d made damned sure of it, honing multiple skills his uncle deplored as weaknesses and turning them into strengths.
For instance, Thorne had been raised to be honest and straightforward.But he’d found lying and dissembling to be much more effective in getting what he wanted.
Accordingly, Thorne adopted a low, solemn tone of selfless martyrdom.“I cannot help but think even the worst duke in England is more fit company for you than I am.”
He didn’t need to look at her face to know how it landed.
“You’re wrong,” she said.“There is no one I would rather be with.”
Carefully controlling his breathing, Thorne looked down at his black-gloved hands holding Dante’s reins.Don’t overplay it.“Perhaps there is a way we might be together…if…”
“What?”she asked eagerly, breathlessly, so ripe and ready for the plucking, Thorne had only to reach up and catch her as she fell.
“Indulge me,” he begged, raising his gaze to hers at last.“I could continue meeting with you like this, from time to time—if you promise me that by day, you will spend time with someone of your own station.Someone who can give you what I can’t.Someone like this not-exactly-ugly duke who is trying to change his villainous ways.”
“The Duke of Thornecliff?”Her tone was all shock and disbelief—but she wasn’t saying no.
Time to seal the deal.Drawing Dante close enough to the carriage that the well-trained horse’s flanks brushed the side of the driver’s box, Thorne stood up in the stirrups to reach Lucy’s rapt face.
One hand on the reins, the other busy at buckles and straps, Thorne brought their faces together and brushed his mouth across hers once.Twice.
On the third brush, her pink lips parted on a gasp and he forgot everything he was meant to be doing except kissing her.
The taste of her, fresh and clean like water from a mountain spring, exploded over his tongue.One of her palms came up to cradle his jaw, and he felt his whole body shudder at the gentle touch.
What the fuck was happening to him?
Pulling back, breathing harsh and uncontrolled, Thorne stared into Lucy’s wide blue eyes.“Will you do what I ask?”
“For more kisses like that?”She was just as breathless as he.“I would dance with the devil himself.”
He had her.Triumph swelled his chest and throbbed through him with every beat of his pulse.“No devil, Lively.Only a duke.Shouldn’t pose any problems for a woman of the world.”
She wrinkled her nose at him and he laughed and kissed her again.Not because she was adorable.But because he’d already won, and she didn’t even realize it.
“How will I know when to meet you?”she asked quickly.
“Two weeks from tonight,” he told her, stealing one more kiss and finishing his work.“I’ll find you this time.”
When he pulled away, she let him go only reluctantly.The knowledge that it would be a hundred times more satisfying to seduce her as Thornecliff than it would be to take the easy tumble she offered The Gentle Rogue was all that enabled him to sit back in his saddle.
