Page 11 of The Duke of Deceit

“I’m careful.” He never let any unmarried woman get close enough for that.

But as he lifted the glass for another drink, a terrible thought struck him. He froze just as the brandy touched his lips, and the taste turned to acid on his tongue.

A few months ago, hehadn’tbeen completely careful.

There had been a young woman at Lady Hawthorne’s ball who had snagged his attention. He certainly hadn’t been hoping for any kind of encounter that night. Hell, he’d only been at the ball in the first place because Lord Hawthorne knew how boring his wife’s party would be and so insisted Lucien attend to keep him entertained. If he didn’t attend, Hawthorne threatened to whisper into the Regent’s ear that Lucien had been tupping Prinny’s current mistress. So Lucien had dragged his carcass off to the ball. But the gel he’d encountered there was hardly boring. She was striking, flirtatious despite being dressed in pastel pinks, and seemingly a cure for his evening’s boredom when she suggested they take a stroll together in the garden.

Amanda St Claire… He wasn’t certain why he should so easily remember her name when it was the sister’s face he saw whenever he thought about that night. Her sister’s eyes had thrown lightning when she found them together in the bower. Lucien would have sworn he’d seen actual sparks of fury blaze from her, which oddly enough only made her more attractive. Even her voice had been alluringly husky when she ordered her sister back inside the house. Lucien had said nothing and let the two women go. After all, he and Miss St Claire were certainly done by then, with nothing more shared than a few heated kisses. No matter that the gel had taken the lead in their encounter and temptingly lifted her skirts for seduction, he would never have accepted that invitation. Not from an unmarried miss. Yet he still profited by the encounter, because getting caught by her sister at that moment only added to his rakehell’s reputation without ruining the gel’s.

When he’d received a letter from Miss St Claire a few weeks later, demanding he wed her to save her from scandal over the encounter, he’d laughed. To make such a demand over what had been nothing more than a few kisses, witnessed by no one but her sister, was simply ludicrous. She would have to try a lot harder than that to trap him into marriage. So he wrote back a single word—

No.

All concern over the incident had ended right there.

Or so he’d thought. Perhaps she was just desperate enough to keep pursuing him, just mad enough to attack his reputation. After all, if her friends ever found out that she’d gone off alone into a dark garden with a rake, she’d be ostracized from whatever bit of society she occupied…unless she could convince the world he was kind-hearted, decent, and genuinely good enough not to take advantage of a pretty woman in the moonlight.

In other words, everything thetonbelieved he wasn’t.

“If you’re not careful,” Devlin warned as he placed the two rapiers back onto their wall hooks, “the truth about you is going to come out. Then everyone will know what you’ve really been up to.” He shot Lucien a glance over his shoulder. “And I don’t mean what you did on the Continent.”

Lucien knew exactly what his old friend referred to, and he wouldneverlet that happen. The world could never know that his brother Phillip existed. Even if that meant terrifying a young miss to death when he hunted her down this afternoon and confronted her.

One way or another, he would make Amanda St Claire put an end to rumors of his goodness.

“Shay’s back in London.”

That unexpected comment pierced his reverie, and Lucien looked up in surprise. “Truly?”

Seamus Douglass was one of their brothers-in-arms who had trained alongside them under Anthony Titus at Eton, and then joined them on the Peninsula during those years of hell and madness when they had fought as mercenaries. But when Lucien and Devlin eventually came to their senses and returned to England and when Chase went home to his wife, Shay remained in the wars. He’d joined the British army and made his way as a proper soldier, until the accident that killed his brother and left him scarred in more ways than just appearance. Every aspect of his life irreparably changed after that.

Devlin nodded. “He sent word two nights ago that he’d arrived.”

“Why is he here?” Shay never traveled anymore. Instead, he’d become a hermit on his northern estate, seldom venturing as far as the local village and never coming all the way to London.Never.“Did something happen?”

“Not that he said in his message.” Devlin sat on the arm of the chair opposite Lucien’s and pondered the brandy in his own glass as he slowly swirled it. “All he offered was that he was here to put old problems to rest and might need our help.”

Lucien frowned. “What does he mean by that?”

“Don’t know.” Devlin shrugged and took a swallow of cognac before answering. “But Shay went through more hell than you and I ever did.”

Lucien knew that, but not because Shay had ever confided in him. Although they were still in close contact even now, fifteen years after their first meeting and their first fighting lessons together, the four friends never discussed their own demons unless they had to. Or their fathers.

“Same thing,” Lucien muttered to himself against the rim of his glass as he gratefully swallowed a healthy amount and welcomed the heat sliding down his throat.

“Pardon?”

Lucien shook his head. “Nothing.”

Devlin fell silent for a long while, then asked casually, although there was nothing at all casual about his question, “Do you ever regret that time we spent fighting on the Continent for the Prussians?”

“Always.” Lucien blew out a hard breath. “We were young and stupid, and we should have listened to Titus when he told us we weren’t made to be mercenaries.”

“But we were at our physical peaks, our skills perfectly trained for it.”

“Bollocks. We failed, and at the most important lesson of all, too.”That being a good fighter takes more than physical prowess.It took mental conditioning and a spiritual reckoning the four friends simply had not been prepared for. “We were nothing but a bunch of lads running away from home.”

“Well, we might be grown men now,” Devlin said quietly, “but I think some of us are still trying to run away from home.”