There was something utterly galling about his particular brand of handsomeness, Lucy had always found.Never more so than in this moment, as he arched a brow at her, his midnight-black eyes glittering with detached amusement.
Lucy had been to Paris and Rome; she had studied statues carved by the masters and cherished through the centuries as depictions of the perfect ideal of masculine beauty.
So she felt herself in a very solid position to judge that Thornecliff put them all to shame.
From the tousled waves of his dark gold hair to the cut of his cheekbones and the exquisite edge of his jaw, he was perfection.He looked like if Michaelangelo had undertaken to immortalize the fallen angel Lucifer in marble, rather than heroic David.
Undeniably gorgeous, yes, but Lucy knew—thoughsomeseemed to have forgotten—that outer beauty hid a rotten core.
“Do join us,” he said softly, jolting Lucy from her reverie and making her uncomfortably aware that she’d been staring at him for far too long.“Unless you would prefer to take supper in the nursery?”
Was he trying to drive her away?
“I’m four and twenty,” she shot back, and took her place at the table purely to annoy him.Though in truth, she wouldn’t have minded a quiet tray in the nursery if it came with the chance to see the niece she’d barely spent any time with.“You’ll have to devise something new to mock me for.My height, perhaps, or my lack of a husband.”
“Awfully generous of you to provide me with ideas for future insults,” Thornecliff drawled, his eyes never leaving her.
The quality of his regard made Lucy sharply aware of how disheveled and travel-worn she must look.“I know as one ages, one begins to fall back more and more upon things that are familiar and simple,” Lucy said kindly.“I wouldn’t wish for you to strain yourself.”
“How was your journey?”Bess cut in, her gaze darting between Lucy and Thornecliff as though they were a pair of fencers facing off with foils.“I can’t wait to hear all about Tuscany.”
The Duchess of Ashbourn had been born a farmer’s daughter with dreams of travel, but to date she’d only made it as far as London.Her dreams appeared to have changed, somewhat, since her marriage.
Lucy noted the way Bess’s hand strayed to the barely perceptible bump of her stomach, where Lucy knew her next niece or nephew was baking like one of the cakes Bess used to mix up and serve to the appreciative customers at Five Mile House.This pregnancy was harder on her than the first had been, according to Nathaniel, and Lucy had come home from Italy to do whatever she could to help.
“You’d love it,” Lucy told her.“The sun shines every day, even when it rains.The air is soft and warm and smells of lemons.Nathaniel, you should take her.”
“I’ll take Bess anywhere she wishes to go,” Nathaniel said, making Bess’s eyes go shiny even as she smiled at him.
“Perhaps in a few years,” Bess replied.“When Kitty and the new baby are old enough to travel.”
Attempting the notoriously choppy Channel crossing with any traveling companion under the age of twenty sounded most unpleasant to Lucy, but she held her tongue.
“And how is the writing going?”Bess asked.
Lucy controlled a wince.Her writing wasn’t exactly a secret; it was openly talked about by all the family.But her work was published under a pseudonym for a reason, and she had absolutely no desire to discuss anything about it in Thornecliff’s presence.
But showing that on her face would be akin to offering her vulnerable underbelly for Thornecliff to carve up with his fish knife, so Lucy waved a breezy hand that unfortunately coincided with the footman stepping forward to offer to serve her from the platter of filet of sole.She nearly upended the silver dish but managed to steady it at the last moment.
The ensuing round of apologies and reassurances that no harm had been done was so comprehensively British that Lucy felt immediately and fully welcomed home.
Though if she’d hoped that a skirmish with a footman would be enough to move the conversation on to another topic, she was doomed to be disappointed.
“What is it you write, Lady Lucy?”Thornecliff inquired when they had all been served their portions of slightly messy fish.
She shot him a look.His words were entirely polite and correct, but the way he said them made her palm itch to slap the mocking half smile off his face.
“Oh, nothing much,” she said quickly, to forestall any of Bess or even Nathaniel’s proud interjections about her serialized novel.“Only a little journal about my travels.Descriptions of places I saw, my impressions of the Italian temperament, that sort of thing.Nothing that would interest you.”
“You have no idea what interests me,” Thornecliff said.Then, as if feeling the arrested pause in the conversation as the other three diners stared at his unexpected intensity, he broke the moment with a rakish grin.“My last mistress was Spanish; perhaps I ought to be in the market for an Italian signorina next.”
“You’re disgusting,” Lucy told him, cheeks blazing.
“That’s enough, Thornecliff,” Nathaniel said firmly.“I will remind you that there are ladies present.”
“A duchess and a worldly woman just back from her Grand Tour,” Thornecliff protested lazily.“Hardly delicate flowers of femininity who must be shielded from life’s best bits.Miss Lucy here is all of four and twenty, after all.Immune to shock, surely.”
How did he make everything he said sound simultaneously insinuating and mocking?
