He laughed, his shoulders relaxing.“That sounds like something I could imagine doing.I strongly disliked the Marchioness of Huntingdon.She was the mother of one of my dearest friends, and she treated him abominably.Is that the worst of it?Youthful hijinks and silly pranks are not, perhaps, the most admirable things to have in one’s past, but surely I have moved beyond that by this point in my life.”
“Oh, you moved beyond harmless pranks, all right.”Lucy bit her lip.Now that it came to it, she was finding it remarkably unpleasant to tarnish the image Gabriel seemed to have of himself.He seemed so far removed from the unrepentant rogue she had come to know.
But a resigned look had come over his perfect features.“Come on, out with it.What else did I do to land myself in the scandal sheets?”
Whathadn’the done?Lucy shook her head, wishing she could revel in this moment but entirely unable to.“It…it doesn’t really matter now, does it?It’s in the past.”
“Not for me,” he pointed out.“Just because I can’t remember it doesn’t mean it didn’t happen.I need to know who I am now, and those experiences must have shaped who I became.”
She swallowed hard.“You have ruled the fast set for years.The dandies and rakes of the Ton, younger sons and scapegraces and ne’er-do-wells flock to you, emulate your fashions and mannerisms and turns of phrase.You have many friends.”
Did he, though?Or did he have hangers-on?
Did any of them truly know him?Lucy was no longer sure that anyone did.
Perhaps Fitz, who she realized suddenly was the childhood friend Gabriel had been avenging with his infamous prank on the Marchioness of Huntingdon.She resolved to send Fitz a note to come round and visit.Surely it would do Gabriel good to see someone he recognized.
Gabriel was giving her a skeptical frown.“Damn.The rest must be truly beyond the pale if it’s this hard for you to say it.Am I suspected of murder?Am I a bigamist?”
Giving in, Lucy said, “As far as I know, you’ve never been married once, much less twice.And murder is about the only other sin I’ve never heard laid at your feet.”
“But all the rest of them?Adultery, seduction, cheating, lying, and so on?”
She nodded.“Thorne specialties, especially the seduction.No lady is safe from you.You were once reputed to be involved in a love triangle with a widow and a nun.”
He absorbed this in silence.Lucy began to worry that she’d broken his brain even further.
“I’m no longer surprised that your brother wanted to throw me out on my ear,” he said, his quiet voice holding a touch of irony.“I’m only shocked that somehow I overcame this tarnished reputation enough to secure your affections.I sound like the worst sort of scoundrel.”
Lucy found she didn’t like the grim note of self-disgust in his tone.“Your reputation is not all that you are,” she surprised herself by saying.
“You tell me that despite your interest in my scandalous doings, we began as enemies.”His black eyes were fixed on her face, tension in every line of his long body beneath the coverlet.“Did I compromise you, Lucy?Is that why we’re engaged, because you’re being forced to wed the man who seduced you?”
“No!”She regretted this entire conversation.“Of course not.”
“What else am I meant to think?”He raked a hand through his hair.“You tell me I’m this amoral monster, faithless and conscienceless.What would stop a man like that from taking exactly what he wanted—what I wanted—and Lucy, I cannot even imagine wanting anything or anyone the way I wanted you, within five minutes of seeing your face.”
Lucy’s stomach tightened, her heart thundering against her ribs.Leaping up from the chair, she said, “This was a mistake.I shouldn’t have told you any of this.You’re not supposed to become agitated!I should go.”
“Don’t,” he growled, throwing back the covers as though he meant to rise and catch her before she could reach the open door.
Lucy didn’t know what she would do if he touched her, but she was one hundred percent certain that whatever it was could not be good for his recovery.
“Please, stay in bed and rest,” she begged, moving swiftly toward the door.“I’ll come back and visit you later.”
Gabriel subsided against the pillow with a groan, his brows drawn and lines of pain bracketing his mouth.
His headache was back, Lucy surmised guiltily.She thought that was likely the only reason he didn’t follow her as she whisked herself out into the hallway.
Leaning against the wall beside his open door, she worked to catch her breath and slow her heartbeat.
You’re meant to hate him,you ninny, she thought in despair.Not to fret over his tender feelings about his own past misdeeds.What is wrong with you?
What she’d told him about her research into memory loss cases ran through her mind.She’d now read many accounts of people who drifted through their former lives with no memories, pared down to their very essence by the absence of remembered pains, joys, sorrows, mistakes.
As a writer, Lucy loved to discover what made people who they were, all the little fits and starts that governed their actions and reactions.She had never wanted to know the deepest essence of anyone the way she’d craved to know The Gentle Rogue.And later, though she was loath to admit it, Thornecliff.
Now here she was, with the opportunity to learn the long-buried heart of him…and Lucy was afraid.
