“Undoubtedly something similar to what you are thinking now,” Lucy said, sticking her chin in the air.“That you had never been so irritated in all your life, and you couldn’t wait to be rid of me.”
“Or perhaps that your sister was likely to gut me with a butter knife if I said anything untoward.For a woman whom I once personally observed demonstrating how to drink a glass of champagne without using her hands, your sister can be quite prudish when it comes to you.”
Ah, Gem.Lucy felt the same burst of warm fondness mingled with indignant exasperation she always felt at the thought of her overprotective, larger-than-life older sister.She really would need to make the trip home to Little Kissington for a visit once Bess was feeling better.
“What do you remember of that night?”she asked Thornecliff, suddenly curious.And perhaps a bit masochistic—there was almost no way his memories of sullen, sharp-tongued baby Lucy, with her ill-fitting gowns and gangly limbs, would be flattering to hear.
Thornecliff took a long moment to answer.“I remember the way you looked down your nose when you advised Gemma to go elsewhere in her hunt for a gentleman to wed.You seemed convinced at the time that I would make a spectacularly bad husband.”
His gaze was intent upon her face, giving Lucy the impression he was reading every minute tensing of muscle to catch her every expression.She wondered if he could tell how fast her heart was beating.
“I also remember you announcing your intention never to wed,” he went on, licking over the words like a spoonful of melting ice cream.“Even after I’d presented myself as a potential match.I wonder.If asked today, would your thoughts on the matter be the same?”
“Why?”Lucy raised her brows, pulse thundering in her ears.“Are you offering?”
* * *
“I wouldn’t dare.”Thorne smiled, savoring the spark and bite of the interplay between them.“I have it on good authority that you will never wed.You told me so yourself that night.”
“Quite right,” she agreed, looking away.
He enjoyed the pink of her cheeks and the slight tremble of her fingers where she clasped them about the handle of her reticule.Her breath came quickly, drawing his attention to the slight curves of her small breasts beneath the buttons of her olive green spencer.
She might have looked bony or too angular in comparison to some of the buxom beauties Thorne had bedded in the past, but he was not one to compare women.Every woman’s body had a beauty of its own, he’d found.
Lucy Lively’s lean, spare figure struck him as elegant.The long lines of her torso pleased him.He imagined the coltish perfection of her legs beneath the white sprigged muslin skirts of her walking dress, and that also pleased him.
She pleased him.
“And if I were to ever be tempted into matrimony,” she burst out, evidently fed up with his silent stare, “it certainly wouldn’t be to a deceitful, dishonorable rake!”
The words were a lit match tossed onto a bonfire.Thorne found his temper, never reliable, rising like a billowing burst of flame.
“I have never pretended to be a man of honor,” he said softly in the silken tones that would have warned most of his friends and acquaintances to beat a swift retreat.
Lucy, of course, did the opposite, leaning in and spitting, “Another incomprehensible boast.You do find the oddest things to be proud of, Your Grace.”
God, but he wanted her.And shehatedhim.She only wanted The Gentle Rogue.Who was also him—damnation, it was enough to drive a man out of his mind.
It had to be a symptom of madness for a man to be achingly, seethingly jealous of himself.
Not that he wanted Lady Lucy Lively to fall in love with him.That would be a nightmare.But for her to look at him, his true self, with that ever-present glint of hatred in her lovely blue eyes—and be unable to stop herself from wanting him?
Ah, that would be his triumph.
No woman held his interest for long.Thorne had only said that thing about his last mistress being Spanish to needle Lucy.The truth was that he rarely bothered with keeping a mistress, because he rarely cared to bed the same woman more than once.
That would be the cure for this damnable fixation on Lucy, he was certain.The surest way to exorcise this strange desire would be to have her.
Once would do, twice at the most.Then he’d be bored, and on to the next.
Yes, that was the way forward.Savoring the thought of the challenge ahead, Thorne ignored the fact that never before had he sunk so low as to trifle with the sister of a friend, especially when said sister was unmarried and likely still a virgin.
No matter.He would seduce Lady Lucy Lively, despite her principles and her better judgment and her well-earned dislike of him.
Thorne lifted his walking stick and tapped it lightly against the back of the driver’s box.
Selwyn, no doubt thrilled to stop circling Berkeley Square like a dizzily waltzing debutante, pulled to a smooth stop in front of Gunter’s Confectionary.They’d passed it no fewer than three times while Thorne amused himself by winding up Lady Lucy, but Selwyn had been driving Thorne for the better part of a decade and knew his master’s whims well.
