“I’m no sailor; sea voyages are not for me,” he said airily, though an odd tension strung his frame taut.“I shall have to content myself with those parts of the world I can reach by land.Not that it matters.In my experience, people are dull everywhere one goes.”
“Then I feel sorry for you,” Lucy told him, and if she hadn’t been watching closely, she would have missed the moment his lazy derision hardened into something much sharper.
“You may keep your pity,” he said softly, looking away to stare at the passersby, many of whom were staring back, eyes wide and hiding their mouths behind their hands.The Duke of Thornecliff was famous—most would say, infamous—and turned heads wherever he went.
Lucy studied his averted face.His profile was like a Roman coin, at once decadent and pure.Something about it riveted her, tugging at her mind with a sensation like trying to remember a word that was on the top of one’s tongue.She couldn’t stop puzzling at it.
Because it was an illusion, Lucy decided.His masculine beauty was an illusion to trap the unwary.Luckily, she had met many handsome men in her travels.She would not be swayed by a strong jawline and a perfectly carved cheekbone.
“Where are you taking me, then?”she asked briskly into the somewhat fraught silence that enveloped the carriage.
“I thought we’d go to Gunter’s,” he said in a moody way that instantly annoyed Lucy.
“I’ve lived in Italy for the past two years,” she pointed out.“They have gelato.You think I’ve been missing English ices?”
“Gunter’s also serves confections and pastries.”
“Before Italy, I lived in France.But certainly, let us partake of these fine British sweets.I’m sure nothing in any Parisian patisserie could rival them.”
She thought she detected the jump of a muscle in his jaw, as though he was grinding his teeth.“Is there somewhere you’d prefer to go?”
For a moment, Lucy felt badly about being so difficult.Then she looked at Thornecliff, who had thought nothing of publicly humiliating her sister.She remembered the way he’d mocked and demeaned Lucy in front of his laughing friends.And suddenly she felt fine about being difficult.
Thornecliff might have saved her brother’s life in that awful fire, and he might have donated money to the children’s home, but he’d never once apologized for the way he’d made sport of Lucy, to the delight of his cronies.He’d even insulted her mother.
No, Lucy was not ready to fall at Thornecliff’s feet and declare him a changed man.
Though there was something about sitting here with him in this carriage that felt oddly…familiar?Intimate, in a way that should be impossible between two people who were practically strangers.
Frowning when her heart gave a frantic flutter like a forest animal caught in a trap, Lucy told herself firmly to calm down.
It was only that Thornecliff was so overwhelming, his powerful presence almost suffocating even when he was sitting silently at her side.And when he spoke, when he challenged her and taunted her and listened to her, it was ten times worse.
Well, she would simply have to avoid the apoplexy brought on by his enraging moods and attitudes as best she could.Perhaps it would help if she could infuriate him a tenth as much as he infuriated her.
To that end, Lucy decided to test him.
“The sort of place I’d like to go isn’t open in the afternoon,” she informed him airily, folding her hands in her lap and gazing nonchalantly out her side of the carriage.
She felt him stir beside her.“What sort of place would that be, exactly?”
“The sort of place my brother has never stepped foot in his life.”
The sort of place my brother seems to believe you no longer frequent.
For some reason, he snorted.“You might be surprised.”
Lucy bristled.“And just what is that supposed to signify?”
“Nothing.Only that older brothers have lives, you know.”
Not hers, Lucy wanted to argue.Instead, she said, “I think it’s quite telling that for you, ‘living a life’ can only mean whatever sordid place you’re imagining I’m speaking of.”
“I could never imagine you any place sordid, Lady Lucy.”He turned those demon eyes on her, black pools so deep and hypnotic, if she fell into them she would surely drown.“Indeed, if you stepped one dainty foot into a place like The Nemesis or Sharpe’s, you would instantly rid it of every low, debased, degenerate connotation, simply by the power of your presence.”
The way he looked at her made Lucy’s breath push hard and fast against the stays of her short corset.What did he mean by observing her so intently?
Fumbling for a cool response when she felt strangely overheated, Lucy said, “Why?Because I’m so pure, I would instantly purify any den of iniquity?”
