It was possible.Because tonight, Thorne realized, marked two weeks since The Gentle Rogue had issued his challenge to Lucy to spend more time with her not-unhandsome duke.Tonight was the night he had promised to see her again.
Thornecliff couldn’t risk going to Lucy now and undoing all his efforts to disentangle them from the knotty mess he’d made.
But The Gentle Rogue could.
He’d just have to follow Rook’s advice, and be careful about it.
There was a time, not so long ago, when he’d been determined not to use The Gentle Rogue to get to Lucy.But the time for such scruples was over.
Lucy deserved to know that she was wanted.Needed.Hungered for.And The Gentle Rogue could give her that.
He could give her everything Thorne couldn’t.
And apart from all of that…Thorne had reached the end of his self-control.He would have Lucy tonight, and it wouldn’t matter what she saw when she looked at him or what name she screamed when he made her come.
He had to have her.No matter what it cost him.
* * *
Lucy lay in her carved four-poster bed and stared, dry-eyed, at the ceiling.
She had meant nothing to him.He had seen her as an intriguing puzzle to solve, at best.And at worst?
A joke.
What more should she have expected from a man who’d made a laughingstock of one of his closest friends, without hesitation or apparent regret?
The sad fact was that Lucyhadcome to expect more from Thornecliff.The more fool her.
After she’d stumbled out of that alley and found Charlie frantically searching for her, Lucy had allowed him to scold her all the way back to Ashbourn House.She deserved it, and more, for the unpardonable stupidity of her actions.
She’d even given Charlie leave to tell her brother or Bess if he felt he must, at which point he’d shot her a truly alarmed glance and said, “You go right upstairs and get yourself into a hot bath.You’re clearly nigh on delirious from the chill.”
So that was all right, and she would be allowed to go her merry way, making her silly stands and foolish plans and playing at being an adult.
Because surely no competent, grown woman would ever behave as Lucy had.Not so much that she’d allowed Thornecliff to cozen her into believing him worthy of her time—she could forgive herself that.He was an accomplished, experienced liar and manipulator.
But the way she’d driven all over Town searching for him this evening, even after he’d shown his true colors by dropping her, then leapt at the chance to publicly confront him…in aid of what, exactly?
What had she been hoping to accomplish, other than making clear to him and any nearby witnesses that she had lost her head over the worst duke in all of England, Scotland and Wales?
It was too humiliating to contemplate.Lucy’s stomach churned and her palms were clammy and damp where she gripped the coverlet too tightly.
Thank God she hadn’t slept with him.
Anaspiring spinstershe might be—her cheeks burned with remembered outrage in the darkness of her bedchamber—but Lucy was no virgin.
She’d done what every young gentleman on his Grand Tour did.She had sampled the delights of Paris and Rome, especially the liberality and permissiveness of the Continental attitude toward sex.
Lucy had encountered charming men, passionate men, men who made her feel wanted and desirable and womanly instead of like a little girl who’d been sent to bed without supper.
It was a sensation she’d craved when she first left England’s shores, and she’d enjoyed herself with a debonair comte, a dashing chevalier, and a very enthusiastic baron.She’d slowed down by the time she reached Rome, already finding that physical satisfaction alone did not suit her.
She had indulged only one other time, in Rome, because she’d genuinely liked the young man—an artist who’d been hired to touch up the frescoes in the basilica of San Nicola in Carcere.Justin had been English, in fact, but he’d gone to Italy to study art and had never returned.They had bonded over the things they missed (proper tea, well-maintained roads) and the things they didn’t (hidebound, socially segregated, narrow-minded society).
Lucy had liked Justin, which had made the sex more enjoyable, but she hadn’t loved him.And in a stubborn, silly corner of her heart, Lucy still wanted love.
Her mother and father had been famously in love.Her sister, Gemma, had found a deep and abiding love with Hal.Even stern, imposing Nathaniel had unbent enough to tumble head over heels for Bess.
