“Lady Lucy.”He nodded at her, black eyes half lidded and glittering.“Imagine my shock at receiving your charming communication.What a way to greet the day.”
“I didn’t send my note until well after eleven,” Lucy remarked, seating herself as far from him as she could manage without hanging over the side of the barouche.
“Oh, I tend not to leave my bed until well past noon.Nothing good happens before one o’clock, in my experience.”
Lucy snorted and pretended she wasn’t discomfited by the reference to his bed.It wasn’t strictly the sort of thing a gentleman should really say to a young lady—but hadn’t she been at pains to remind all and sundry that she was no longer a sweet, untried debutante?
Determined to take no notice of Thornecliff’s provocations and doubly determined not to picture him lounging amongst his bed linens, golden hair tousled upon his pillow, Lucy folded her gloved hands primly in her lap.“I’m not surprised to hear that you sleep the day away, Your Grace.What else should you be doing?There are no balls, no routs, no scandalous salons or masquerades or drunken revelries during the daylight hours.”
If she’d intended to annoy him with her implication that he did nothing of importance with his time, she failed.He only arched a brow and murmured, “Yes, my point exactly.What a bore.”
God, such a waste he was.A waste of what had undoubtedly been a good education, and what were—to her everlasting dismay—equally undoubtedly good looks.
All the privilege and wealth and opportunity and choice in the world, and what did Thornecliff choose to do?Sleep.Eat.Dance.Gossip.Fornicate.
He was everything Lucy deplored and abhorred about the English aristocracy.
How could her darling Rogue possibly think this man, this duke, was more fit company for her?
“I’m sorry to drag you from your boudoir at the ungodly hour of two o’clock,” she said tartly, staring straight ahead as the well-sprung wheels rolled over the cobblestones as smoothly as if the road were covered in silk.“You needn’t have bestirred yourself if you didn’t like to.”
“Oh, but how could I not?”He was all but purring in smug satisfaction, the wretch.“When you were so eloquent in your appeal for my escort?A true gentleman never allows a lady to beg.”
Now the blush burning her cheeks was mostly anger.“I didnotbeg.”
“Of course.”He laid his arm along the open side of the carriage.The move pulled his fitted coat open to expose the lean musculature of his chest and the taut lines of his torso in the ornately embroidered waistcoat.It was a deep blue today, she noted distractedly, a blue so dark it was nearly purple, with a delicate tracery of green leaves picked out along the placard and the hem.“I misspoke.It was more of a command.”
“It was nothing of the sort,” Lucy argued, “and I will thank you not to imply to my brother or Bess that I have been anything less than polite to you.For some reason, they seem to care about your feelings.God knows why.”
He made a small movement, a jerk of his head, that brought Lucy’s attention to him at once.For an instant, there was a look in his cruelly perfect face that she couldn’t place.
Something about the tilt of his dark golden brows over those black eyes that made him seem…lost.
Seeming to notice her regard, Thornecliff shook off whatever odd start he’d been experiencing.He gave her a shark’s smile, all teeth.“Quite right.I have no feelings.”
“What a thing to boast about.”Lucy shook her head.
She must have imagined that brief glimpse of vulnerability.One of the hazards of being a writer, she’d found, was that she was always trying to see to the core of a person, to find out what animated them and made them who they were.That tendency had led her to some of her dearest friendships—but it had also occasionally led her astray.
Not everyone, at their core, was someone worth knowing.
“Ah, of course,” he said with an amused curl to his handsome lips.“You would prefer everyone around you to be constantly proclaiming their emotions at top volume.”
“It would certainly eliminate a lot of confusion,” Lucy retorted.“I’ve noticed a good deal of trouble results from people deliberately obfuscating their feelings.But don’t worry, I won’t expect it ofyou.It takes courage to be open and unguarded.”
“Courage or foolhardiness, so often two sides of the same coin.But do not let me dissuade you.It’s charming to be in the company of one so full of romantic sensibilities.”
Lucy felt heat scorch her neck.He saw her a touch too clearly, and she didn’t care for it.“My sensibilities are perfectly normal and natural.What is unnatural is the level of cynicism affected by the so-called style leaders of the English Ton.It’s not like this in Italy!Even in France, passion is prized and celebrated.But not here.Oh, no.The upper classes in England are always so above it all, so unaffected—in the most affected way possible.I find it to be a very tedious attitude, with little wisdom or insight to recommend it.I refuse to pretend to be bored by everything and everyone.”
“Tell me more about what you learned in your travels.I am all aflutter to discover what the French and Italians taught you about passion.”
Lucy rolled her eyes and sat back in her seat.She didn’t flop.That would be inelegant.“You’re so predictable.I’m not talking about that kind of passion—or at least, not only that kind.”
Though she had certainly learned some interesting things about the pleasures of the body, and about herself, on the Continent.
“You wound me,” he murmured.“Predictable.A mortal blow.”
“The world is big and complex and fascinating,” Lucy pursued, unsure why it felt so vital that she get through to him.“Much bigger than London society.You should see a bit more of the world for yourself.Perhaps you will discover something to have a feeling about.”
