“After all that,” Lucy protested, glaring at Gunter’s attractive white façade and white-paneled bow windows, “you’ve still brought me to this silly tearoom?”
“As I mentioned earlier, Sharpe’s is not currently open.However, if you truly wish to see it, I would be happy to escort you there later this week.For now, let us put poor Selwyn out of his misery and have some tea and cakes.”
He’d meant it as a pleasantry to lighten the tension between them, but Lucy darted a guilty look at his driver’s impassive face under the curled white wig as he sprang from his perch to hand her down from the carriage.
Clearly unable to contain herself, she blurted out, “Oh dear, I am sorry, Mr.Selwyn.You must be shocked at our squabbling like a pair of ill-mannered children.”
Selwyn was far too well-trained to do more than incline his head the merest fraction to acknowledge Lucy.Thorne stepped in to rescue him by saying, “Nonsense.Selwyn has witnessed far more shocking things while in my employ than a bit of banter between two fully clothed adults.Shall we?”
She hesitated for an instant, looking at her maid settling in to wait for them, but did finally take his arm.Thorne felt a rich curl of satisfaction deep in his chest at the touch of her slender fingers.
“I daresay you think it’s awfully common of me to speak to your driver as though he’s a human being,” she said with another lift of that defiant little chin.
He briefly weighed his response.It certainly was not the done thing to address one’s servants for more than brief commands, nor even to notice their presence.
But Thorne remembered kind, twinkling eyes, gentle reproofs and soft praise.His uncle’s butler, Farthingdale, whom Thorne hadn’t seen in years but still missed.
“Speak to whomever you like,” he said, glossing over the odd pang the memory caused.“But Selwyn, at least, won’t thank you for the consideration.He would prefer to have no involvement whatsoever in my affairs—a position for which he can hardly be faulted.”
“You and I are not having an affair,” Lucy hissed as a waiter bypassed several waiting patrons to lead them to the best table, situated directly before one of the bow windows.
“Cream tea for two, please,” Thorne said to the waiter, who bobbed his head and hurried off to placate the annoyed customers who’d been left waiting to be seated.An unassuming gentleman with thinning brown hair caught Thorne’s eye for a brief moment, causing Thorne to raise a supercilious brow.The man turned away, and Thorne settled back in his chair in satisfaction.
Lucy was biting her delectable bottom lip, Thorne observed with interest.She clearly wished she could apologize to those whose table they’d taken.Thorne couldn’t help but be a little fascinated.She seemed to feel everything so deeply.
“You mustn’t mind it,” he told her.“They understand the waitress had no choice but to attend to the highest ranking individual in the room.Perhaps they do things differently on the Continent.”
“Highest ranking individual.”Lucy snorted.
Thorne leaned back in his chair and stretched out his legs, crossing them at the ankle to better display the gleam of his perfectly shined Hessians.“Since I was six years old, I’ve been the highest ranking individual in almost every room I enter.Tiresome, I know, but there’s nothing to be done about it.”
He expected her to make some observation about that perhaps being the reason for his interest in pursuing a friendship with her brother—there was a rarified group of dukes in London at any given time, and most of the others Thorne knew were in their dotage.Perhaps she would even be correct.
But what she said instead was, “Six years old?Is that when you lost your father?”
Lost him.As though Father had wandered off like a stray kitten.Thorne made a conscious effort to relax his jaw enough to speak.“Both my parents died when I was six.”
She visibly struggled with reluctant sympathy for a moment before her innate sweetness won out.“I’m sorry for your loss.”
To Thorne’s surprise, the words tightened something in his chest.Ignoring it, he arched a cynical brow.“Many people would say I gained far more than I lost.I’ve known men who had to wait so long to inherit, they were too old to enjoy it when it finally happened.I had a dukedom to play with when other boys had only wooden soldiers.”
The sympathy faded from Lucy’s eyes, replaced by frank dislike.“You are truly terrible.”
Feeling himself back on solid ground, Thorne smirked at her.“Why?Because I don’t make a show of grieving for a family I barely even remember?”
She shook her head.“No one could be as heartless as you pretend to be.”
That sounded like a dare.Thorne never could resist a dare.He smiled at her.“I assure you, dear girl, it is no pretense.”
He could have played on her sympathies, he knew; could have sighed and slumped his shoulders and gazed off into the distance while holding back a manly tear.
He could’ve told her about his uncle’s cold, difficult lessons in what was expected of the Duke of Thornecliff.
Or he could’ve told her what happened to him in his first year at Cambridge—though the very idea was laughable, because he never spoke of it, nor of the dreams that still plagued him.
But it would have made it so easy.No matter how much she hated him, Lucy wouldn’t have been able to resist the urge to comfort him.
No.Thorne would not stoop to dramatics.That would be boring, and Thorne despised being boring above all else.
