No Good Duke Goes Unpunished

Chapter 9

“You shouldn’t fight him.”

Temple did not look up from lacing his boots. “It’s a bit late for that, don’t you think? Half the club is already ringside.”

The Marquess of Bourne, Temple’s oldest friend and co-owner of The Fallen Angel, leaned against the wall to one side of the door to the boxing ring, watching as Temple prepared for the fight. “That’s not what I mean and you know it. Tonight, you are welcome to fight all you like—though if I were a betting man, I’d have twenty quid on Drake falling in the first minute.” He pointed to the low table at the center of the room. “You shouldn’t accept the challenge from Lowe.”

Temple looked to the list of names there. Christopher Lowe at the top, as it had been for weeks. Calling him. Tempting him. Daring him to accept. Evidently, Mara had not told her brother that she’d arranged a deal with the Killer Duke, and that she was earning back their money. Either that, or Lowe wanted to free his sister from ruin—but Temple couldn’t imagine his sister’s reputation had anything to do with the young man’s plans.

Damned if he didn’t want that fight more than anything. Lowe deserved a sound trouncing.

“It would be the fight of the year,” Temple said. “The Angel would make sinful amounts of money.”

“I don’t care if the King and his royal guard sat ringside, with the crown jewels on the match. You shouldn’t fight him.”

Temple stretched against the leather strap hanging from the ceiling of his office, letting his weight loosen his shoulders, preparing him for what was to come. In a half an hour, he would enter the ring and fight, and every man in the audience would fight with him. Some would fight on his side, seeing themselves in the fallen duke who, despite shame and ruin and loathing, could be king here. But most would fight as his opponent, David to Temple’s Goliath. They, too, knew what it was to lose to the Angel. And even as they paid their dues and basked in the glow of the tables above, a small part of them ached for the club’s ruin.

“It is the game,” he said, pretending not to care about the words. “It is what they come for. It is what we agree to give them.”

“Bollocks,” Bourne said. “We agree to take the bastards’ money and give them a fight to watch. We don’t agree to put ourselves on show. And that’s what you would be doing.” He came off the wall toward Temple, lifting Lowe’s file from the table. “It would not be a fight. It would be a hanging. They would think that Lowe is finally getting a chance at retribution for his sister’s death. If you’re even considering fighting him, at least wait until the bitch is revealed. Then the world will be for you.”

Temple’s jaw set at the description, unwelcome. “I don’t care who they are for.”

“What a lie that is.” Bourne huffed a humorless laugh and ran a hand through his hair. “I know better than anyone how you want them to think of you.”

When Temple did not reply, Bourne continued. “I looked at Lowe’s file today. He’s lost everything that wasn’t attached to him by birth, and a fair amount of money that he’d earned, somehow. I’m surprised Chase hasn’t sent Bruno for the clothes from his back. Houses, horses, carriages, businesses. A fucking silver tea set. What the hell do we need with that?”

Temple smirked, working another long strip around his free hand. “Some people like tea.”

Bourne raised a brow and threw the file to the table. “Christopher Lowe is the unluckiest man in Britain, and he either doesn’t see it or doesn’t care. Either way, his dead father is rolling in his grave, willing to make a deal with the devil or worse to rise up and kill the stupid boy himself.”

“You take issue with a man losing everything at the tables? There’s an irony.”

Bourne’s eyes glittered with irritation. “I might have lost it all, but I earned it back. Tenfold. More.”

“Vengeance worked well for you.”

Bourne scowled. “I spent a decade dreaming of retribution, convincing myself that there was nothing in the world that would satisfy me more than destroying the man who robbed me of my inheritance.”

Temple raised a brow. “And you did just that.”

The other man’s voice grew soft and serious. “And I nearly lost the only thing that mattered.”

Temple groaned, and reached for the leather strap that hung from the ceiling of the room, using it to lean into a stretch. “If the men in the room beyond knew how you and Cross go soft every time you speak of your wives, the Angel would lose all power.”

“As we speak, my wife is warm and waiting. The men in the room beyond can hang.” He paused, then added, “Vengeance was my goal, Temple. Never yours.”

Temple met his friend’s gaze. “Goals change.”

“No doubt. But be prepared. Retribution is angry and cold. It makes a man a bastard. I should know.”

“I’m already a bastard,” Temple said.

One side of Bourne’s mouth twisted in a wry smile. “You’re a pussy cat.”

“You think so? Tell me that in the ring.”

Bourne ignored the threat. “It won’t end as you think it will.”

It would end precisely as Temple thought it would. Mara might have been the mastermind of his ruin, but her brother had played his part—weeping and wailing and feigning accusation and making all the world, Temple included, believe that he’d been dreadfully wronged.

Memory flared, Temple on the street five years earlier, in broad daylight, all of London giving him a wide berth. No one wished to cross the Killer Duke. No one wished to incite his anger. Christopher Lowe had exited a pub with his debauched friends, pouring out onto the road into Temple, so rarely touched in anything but violence or fear that he started at the contact.

Lowe had looked up at him, drunk and slurring his words, and blustered for the crowd’s approval, “My sister’s killer in the daylight. What a surprise.”

The crowd of idiot drunks had laughed, and Temple had gone cold, believing Lowe’s anger. Believing himself worthy of it.

Believing himself a killer.

He looked to Bourne. “She might have stolen twelve years, but he kept them from me.”

“And both of them should suffer. God knows he deserves a thrashing, and yes, you’ll feel as though you’ve exacted your revenge, and you’ll trot the lady out through London as the second half of your master plan, and she’ll be shamed, and you’ll be welcomed with open arms and chased by marriage-making mamas. But you’ll still be angry.”

Revenge does not always proceed as expected.

The lesson he’d taught her boys.

The one he knew was true. He knew that this moment could not be undone. That it would forever mark him. That it would forever change him.

Bourne sat in a low, leather chair. “I’m simply saying you’ve everything you want. Money, power, a title that is growing dusty from lack of use, but yours nonetheless. And let’s not forget Whitefawn. You may not be there, but the place has made you a fortune in its own right—you’ve been a better master to it than your father ever was. You could take it all. Return to Society. Find yourself a wallflower. Wallflowers love scoundrels.”

Bourne was right. Temple could take it all back. Funds and a sullied title were more than most men had. Someone would have him.

But anger was a cunning mistress.

“I don’t want a wallflower.”

“What then?”

He wanted someone with passion. With pride.

Temple met his friend’s eyes. “I want my name.”

“Lowe can’t give it to you. Losing to you in the ring only makes him a martyr.” Temple was quiet for a long moment before he nodded once. He wanted the conversation done. Bourne added, “And the girl?”

A vision of Mara came, auburn hair wild, those strange, compelling eyes flashing. Never wearing gloves. Why did he notice that?

Why did he care?

He didn’t.

“We’ve a score to settle.”

“No doubt.”

“She drugged me.”

Bourne raised a brow. “A long time ago.”

Temple shook his head. “The night she revealed herself to me.”

A moment passed while Bourne registered the words. Temple gritted his teeth, knowing what was to come. Wishing he hadn’t said anything.

Bourne burst out laughing. “No!”

Temple rocked up on his toes, bouncing once, twice, swinging at the air. Pretending not to be infuriated by the truth. “Yes.”

The laugh turned booming. “Oh, wait until the others hear this. The great, immovable Temple—drugged by a governess. Where?”

“The town house.” Where she’d kissed him. Where he’d nearly taken more.

Bourne crowed, “In his own home!”

Goddammit.

Temple scowled. “Get out.”

Bourne crossed his arms over his chest. “Oh, no. I’m not through enjoying this.”

A sharp rap sounded on the door, and the two men looked to the clock. It was too early for the fight to begin. Temple called out, “Come.”

The door opened, revealing Asriel, Temple’s man and the second in command of security at the Angel. He did not acknowledge Bourne, instead looking straight to Temple. “The lady you invited.”

Mara.

The thrill that coursed through him at the thought of her name grated.

“Bring her in.” He waited for Asriel to leave, then returned his attention to Bourne. “I thought you were leaving.”

Bourne sat in a nearby chair, extending his legs and crossing them at the ankles. “I believe I’ll stay to watch this,” he said, all humor. “After all, I wouldn’t like the woman to try to kill you again. You might require protection.”

“If you aren’t careful, you shall be the one requiring protection.”

The door opened before Bourne could retort, and Mara stepped over the threshold into his sanctum. She was wearing an enormous black cloak, the hood pulled up and low over her brow, but he recognized her nonetheless.

She was tall and beautifully made—all soft curves and pretty flesh—a woman to whom he would be naturally drawn if she weren’t the devil incarnate. And that mouth . . . wide and wicked and made for sin. He shouldn’t have tasted it. All it had done was make him starved for more.

She pushed the hood of her cloak back, revealing herself, her wide eyes immediately meeting his. He registered the nervousness in them—the uncertainty—and hated it as they moved to where Bourne sat, several feet away.

And suddenly, whether because of the excitement of the fight to come or something much more dangerous, Temple wanted to hit Bourne. Hard.

It had to be the coming fight, because it couldn’t possibly be Mara. He didn’t care who she looked at. Who looked at her. Indeed, his whole plan rested on all of London looking at her.

Bourne did not stand—a deliberate show of disrespect that set Temple on edge. “I am—”

“I know who you are,” she interrupted, not using Bourne’s title or the honorific he was due. A matching show of disrespect. “All of London knows who you are.” She turned to Temple. “What is this? You ask me to come here and watch while you brutalize some poor man?”

The words did not sit well. She was back, strong as steel, but he stood his ground, knowing she used bravado to cover her discomfort. He knew the tactic well. Had used it many times. “And here I was, hoping you would give me a token to wear into battle.”

Her gaze narrowed. “I ought to have your sabre tampered with.”

Temple raised a brow. “Sabre tampering, is that how they refer to it at the MacIntyre Home for Boys?”

Bourne snickered, and Mara cut him a look. “You are a marquess, are you not?”

“I am.”

“Tell me, do you ever act like it? I only ask because it does not seem that your friend cares much for behaving like a duke. I thought the immaturity was perhaps catching. Like influenza.”

Admiration flashed in Bourne’s gaze. He turned to Temple. “Charming.”

“And she’s armed with laudanum.”

Bourne nodded. “I shan’t drink anything she gives me, then.”

“And a knife,” she added, dryly.

He raised a brow. “And keep a vigilant watch.”

“It’s an intelligent plan,” Temple offered.

Mara gave a little huff of displeasure, one Temple imagined she often repeated with her young charges. “You are about to pummel a man to bits, and you stand here and make jokes?”

“It’s interesting that she takes the moral high ground, don’t you think?” Bourne said from his chair.

Mara turned on the marquess. “I wish you would leave, my lord.”

One of Bourne’s brows rose. “I would be careful with that tone, darling.”

Mara’s eyes flashed with anger. “I imagine you’d like me to apologize?”

Bourne stood, straightening the lines of his perfect coat. And nodded in Temple’s direction. “Apologize to him. He’s not as forgiving as I am.” He extracted his pocket watch and checked the time before turning to Temple. “Ten minutes. Is there anything you need before the fight?”

Temple did not speak. Nor did he move his gaze from Mara.

“Until after, then.”

Temple nodded. “Until after.”

The marquess left, closing the door behind him. Mara looked to Temple. “He did not wish you good luck.”

“We do not say good luck.” He moved to the table at the center of the room, and opened the mahogany box there and extracted a coil of wax.

“Why not?”

He pulled off two large clumps and set them on the table, pretending that he wasn’t utterly aware of her standing in the too-dark corner of the room. He wanted to see her.

He shouldn’t.

“Good luck is bad luck.”

“That’s ridiculous.”

“That’s fighting at the Angel.”

She did not say anything to that, instead crossing her arms across her chest. “Why am I here?”

He lifted a long, clean strip of linen from the wooden table at the center of the room, then laid one end across his palm and began to wrap the strip around his hand, being careful to keep it from twisting or folding. The nightly ritual was not designed merely to protect muscle and bone, though there was no doubt that in the heat of a battle, broken fingers were not unheard of.

Instead, the easy movement reminded him of the rhythm of the sport, of the way men had stood for centuries in this moment, minutes from battle, calming their mind and heart and nerves.

But there was nothing calm about his nerves with Mara Lowe in the room. He looked to her, enjoying the way her gaze locked on the movement. “Come.”

She met his eyes. “Why?”

He nodded to his hand. “How much to wrap it for me?”

She watched the movement. “Twenty pounds.”

He shook his head. “Try again.”

“Five.”

He wanted her close, despite the fact that he shouldn’t want any such thing. And he could afford it. “Done.”

She approached, removing her cloak to reveal the mauve dress Madame Hebert had promised him. She was beautiful in it, with skin like porcelain. His heart pounded as she came closer, pausing an arm’s length from him and extracting that little black book that she carried everywhere. “Five,” she repeated, marking the amount in her register. “And ten for the evening. As always.”

Reminding him that she had her own reasons for being here.

She returned the book to its place and reached for his hand. No gloves. Again. Skin against skin, this time. Heat against heat.

He was paying for it.

Perhaps if he remembered that, it would help him forget her. The feel of her. The smell of her, lemons in winter. The taste of her.

She resumed his ritual, careful to wrap the linen about his wrist and around his thumb, keeping the long strips flat and firm against his skin. “You’re very good at that,” he said, his voice unfamiliar even to him. She did that to him. She made him feel unfamiliar.

“I have wrapped broken bones. I assume it’s a similar principle.”

Again, a little snippet of Mara, of where she’d been. Of who she’d been. Enough to make him want to ask a dozen questions she wouldn’t answer. So he settled on: “It is.”

Her fingers were soft and sure on his hands, making him ache for them in other places. Her head bowed over her handiwork, and he stared down at the top of her head, into auburn curls that he itched to touch. He wondered what her hair would look like spread in wide waves across his pillow. Across the floor of this room. Across his bare chest. Across hers.

His gaze moved to her shoulders, to the way they rose and fell with each breath, as though she labored far more intensely than she did.

He recognized that breath. Experienced it himself.

She wanted him.

She tucked the end of the linen gently into the rest of the wrap, and he tested the binds, impressed.

Another thing she did expertly.

He turned away from her, lifted the other length of linen. Passed it to her and held out his free hand. Watched her repeat her ministrations in silence, muscles aching as he tensed beneath her touch, desperate for more of it. Desperate to touch her in return.

Christ, he needed another stretch.

That wasn’t all he needed.

But it was all he was getting. He extracted a mask from a nearby drawer. “Put that on.”

She hesitated. “Why?”

“You will have your first moment before London tonight.”

She froze, and he did not like the way it made him feel. “Masked?”

“I don’t want you seen yet.”

I don’t want it to be over.

“Tonight,” she repeated.

“After the fight.”

“If you don’t lose, you mean.”

“Even if I lose, Mara.”

“If you aren’t brutalized and left for dead. That’s the goal, isn’t it?”

It wasn’t, but he didn’t correct her. “All right; if I don’t lose.” He inclined his head. “But I won’t lose.”

“What is your plan?” she asked.

“You’ll see The Fallen Angel. Many women would kill for the opportunity.”

She lifted her chin, proudly. “Not I.”

“You’ll enjoy it.”

“I doubt it.”

Her obstinacy made him smile, and to hide it, he pulled his shirt off, yanking it over his shoulders, baring his chest to her. She immediately looked away, playing the prim and proper miss perfectly.

He laughed. “I am not naked,” he replied, smoothing the waist of his trousers and pretending to inspect a long-healed scar on one of his arms while watching her. “You have seen it before, have you not?”

She looked to him, then snapped her attention back to the wall. “That was different. You were wounded!”

His eyes darkened. “Before that,” he said, knowing he had her when her cheeks went red. He would give his entire fortune to know what had happened that night. But he would not simply hand her what she wanted. On principle.

And therein lay the challenge with her.

Between them. Exhilarating even as it made him mad.

“Do you not manage a home for boys?”

She exhaled in a little frustrated puff and stared at the ceiling. “It is not the same.”

“It is precisely the same.”

“They are aged three through eleven!” she insisted.

He smirked. “So, they are smaller.”

She lifted her hands wide in the universal signal for frustration. She was quiet for a long moment, before she said, “I did not thank you for giving them time today.”

A thread of pleasure went through him at the words—something akin to pride. He ignored it. “You needn’t thank me.”

“Nevertheless.” She looked down at the floor, her shoulders straight. “They enjoyed their time with you immensely.”

The small acknowledgment was an enormous concession in the battle they waged. He could not resist moving toward her, walking her backward, across the floor of his rooms. He knew it would unsettle her, but he couldn’t seem to care. When he was a foot or so from her, he lowered his voice. “And what of you? Did you enjoy it?”

Her cheeks flamed. “No.”

He smiled at the instant lie. “Not even the bit where I kissed you?”

“Certainly not.”

He came closer, pushing her back, drawn to the heat of her. Finally catching her in his arms, loving the way she gasped at his touch, loving the way the silk of her dress, warm from her body, brushed against his bare chest. He slid his hand down her arm, finding her hand, lifting it to the strap that hung from the ceiling above her.

She knew precisely what to do, grasping the leather strip as he repeated the movement with the other hand until she stood long and lush, arms extended overhead, like a sacrifice. Like a gift.

She could release it at any time. Deny him the moment. But she didn’t, instead staring up at him, daring him with her beautiful gaze to come closer. To touch her more. To tempt her.

He took the dare, cupping her cheek in his hand, spreading his thumb across the high arc of it. Loving the softness of the skin there even as he told himself he did not notice it. “No?”

“No,” she exhaled, and the sound of her breath turned him hard as a rock.

He looked down at her, her dress cut scandalously low, her breasts straining at the fabric because of her position, and he at once praised and cursed Hebert for doing his bidding.

Mara Lowe was the most tempting thing he’d ever seen.

But strangely, it wasn’t her face or her body or the perfect breasts that rose and fell in an unsettled rhythm that convinced him of the fact. It was the way she faced him head-on. It was the way she refused to cow to him. The way she refused to fear him. The way she met him partway.

The way she saw him.

He was no killer, and she was the only person in the world who had always believed it. The only person who had ever known it to be true.

He lifted her chin, exposing the long column of her neck, and pressed a long, lingering kiss to the pulse beneath her chin, then to its mate at the place where neck met shoulder. “Are you sure you didn’t enjoy it?”

The words teased at her warm skin, and she shook her head in a broken movement, swaying against the strap, holding tight to combat the way the caress impacted her. “Quite,” she replied, the breath shuddering out of her, as he moved on, kissing the slope of her breast, once, twice, a third time—until he reached the edge of her dress, and slid a single finger between silk and skin, barely able to tell the two apart, until he reached the pebbled flesh that ached for him.

For which he ached.

He pulled the silk down, and spoke to her. “Even now?”

One hand fell from its mooring, coming to rest on his shoulders. Her bare skin against his. He could feel the want in them. “Even now.”

It was a taunt. A challenge.

One he did not refuse. He set his lips to her breast, loving the little cry that escaped her as he worried that sacred skin, sucking low and soft until the cry became a moan in the dark room. He could not stop himself from pulling her closer, lifting her from her feet, wrapping her legs about his waist, worshipping her there in that room that rarely knew pleasure and too often knew pain.

And then she’d released the strap altogether, her weight in his arms and her fingers in his hair, holding him tight against her, encouraging his caress, begging him for more, urging him to give her everything he could.

He was hard and aching, loving the way she directed him. The way she took her pleasure with abandon. He wanted to give her everything for which she asked.

He pressed her to the wall of the room, his hands everywhere, pulling them up, higher and higher, his fingertips sliding against stocking and then glorious smooth skin, tracking the curve of her thigh up . . . up until he could feel the heat of her. Wicked, promising warmth guarded by perfect, soft curls. A promise he could not wait to uncover. To explore.

He paused there, lifting his lips to find her eyes.

She gasped. “Yes.”

He’d never in his life heard such a glorious word. Never received such coveted permission.

“Say it again,” he said. To be certain.

“Yes.” The word coursed through him, her fingers tight in his hair.

He would give anything for a night with this woman.

But had he already done so?

The icy thought tore him from her, placing distance between them. Hating her all over again even as he felt nothing near hate. Nothing so cold. “Tell me,” he shoved his fingers through his hair, trying to erase the memory of hers. “Did we do this? Were we—”

Lovers.

For a moment, he thought she would answer him. He thought he saw it there. Sympathy. Worse. Pity.

Fuck.

He didn’t want her pity. She’d stolen that night from him, and she refused to give it back.

And then the emotion was gone from her gaze, and he knew what she was about to say.

He raised his voice before she could speak. “Tell me!”

“You know the cost of that information.”

Vaguely, it occurred to him in that in another place, at another time, he would find this woman perfect in every way. There was something strong and firm and fearless about her.

The same something that had drugged him on their first meeting. And their second. The same something that had sent her fleeing into the darkness the prior evening.

The same something that had set him up to be a murderer twelve years ago.

The same something that would no doubt attempt to thwart him again.

But it was this place. This time.

And he had never been so infuriated in his whole life. “I will give you this, Mrs. MacIntyre, if the orphanage fails, you’ve a tremendous career as a whore.”

She stilled like a doe on the hunt for a half second, before she moved, her hand flying fast and true and landing with remarkable precision on his cheek, stinging with her anger and his shame.

He didn’t dodge or duck or feint. He took the slap as his due, feeling a dozen times an ass. He shouldn’t have said it. He’d never said anything so insulting to a woman before. The apology was nearly on his lips when a bell rang above the door leading to the ring. She lowered her hand, the only sign of the blow the slight increase in her breath and the way her words shook in her throat. “What is that?”

What were they doing?

He turned away, refusing to touch the place where a furious red mark no doubt blossomed. “My opponent is ready. We shall continue this after the bout.”

She inhaled, and he hated the way the soft sound filled the room almost as much as he hated the way she said, “I hope he wins.”

He returned to the table, lifting the wax, molding it into two long strips. “I’m sure you do. But he won’t.” He inserted first one strip, then the second, into his mouth, and he did not hide the way he molded the wax along the edge of his teeth, daring her to look away.

She watched the coarse movements for a long moment before firing her own parting shot. “Good luck, Your Grace.”