No Good Duke Goes Unpunished

Chapter 10

The unmitigated gall.

The unmitigated ass.

He’d called her a whore.

With the insidious arrogance that came of being a wealthy, unencumbered man. A duke. He’d suggested that the idea that she provide him the information he required for a price made her a trollop.

If she’d been a man, the word wouldn’t have occurred to him. If she’d been a man, he never would have said it.

If you treat me like a whore, you pay me like one.

So, she’d used the word first. This was different. He’d turned her inside out with his touch. He’d tempted her. He’d made her like him.

And then he’d called her a whore.

He deserved an immense setting down. The great, unbeatable Temple deserved to be beaten. By her.

Seething, a masked Mara followed the guard to whom she’d been assigned through a winding, curving passageway that kept her from view of the club’s members. She was too angry to care where they were going or what came next—too lost in her mental evisceration of Temple.

Until her guide waved her into a new space and closed the door behind her, leaving her alone in a sea of people. Of women. Surprise coursed through her. Women did not belong in a men’s club. In a casino.

Her gaze threaded through the room, across the collection of chattering women. Recognizing several. A marchioness. Two countesses. An Italian duchess known for her scandals.

Surprise warred with curiosity as Mara considered the rest of the women—all of whom were dressed in stunning silks and satins, some masked, most chattering as though they were at a ladies’ tea.

These weren’t simply women. They were aristocrats.

And it was only once she’d recovered from that discovery that she noticed what she should have noticed the moment she’d been shepherded into the room, like a lamb to slaughter.

One entire length of the long, narrow, extraordinarily dark room was a window—a great shaded window that looked out on a roomful of men, all dressed for evening, clustered in a horseshoe of a crowd, at once not moving and in constant motion—shouting and laughing and enjoying themselves, vibrating with energy like leaves on a thriving oak in the heat of summer. The throngs of men surrounded a great empty space, blocked by rope and covered in sawdust, of which the women were afforded a perfect, unobstructed view.

The ring.

Mara moved closer to the glass, unable to stop herself from reaching out to touch it, amazed by the way the room glowed.

Thankfully, it occurred to her just in time that the men would see her if she came too close to the window. She stopped, pulling her hand back, even as she could not understand why not one of the men beyond seemed at all interested in the window or the ladies inside the small, dark room.

Were they so used to women watching the fights that they weren’t scandalized by the women’s presence? That they didn’t yearn to control them? To keep them at bay? What kind of place was this?

What kind of perfect, wondrous place?

“They won’t see you,” said a lady nearby, drawing Mara’s attention to her serious blue gaze, large and unsettling behind thick spectacles. “It’s not a window. It’s a mirror.”

“A mirror.” There was nothing mirrorlike about this window.

Mara’s confusion must have shown, as the woman continued, “We can see them . . . but they only see themselves.”

As if on cue, a gentleman crossed in front of the ring, close enough to the window to touch, before pausing for a moment and turning to face Mara. She leaned forward as he did the same on the other side, lifting his chin to fluff his cravat.

She waved a hand in front of his long, pale face.

He bared his teeth.

She dropped her hand.

He lifted one gloved finger, scrubbing it back and forth over the crooked, tea-and-tobacco-stained grimace before turning and walking away.

A collection of women nearby laughed uproariously. “Well. No doubt Lord Houndswell would be terribly embarrassed to know we have all witnessed the remains of his dinner.” The woman smiled at Mara. “Do you believe it now?”

Mara grinned. “This must provide you hours of entertainment.”

“When there isn’t a fight to do the job,” another woman replied. “Look! Drake’s entered the ring.”

The chatter inside the room dimmed as the women turned their attention to the young man climbing through the ropes into the sawdust-covered space where two others waited—the Marquess of Bourne and another pure aristocrat, pale and unnerved.

The crowd at the far end of the ring parted to reveal a large steel door, and the air in the room seemed to change, to grow thick with anticipation.

“Any minute now,” a feminine sigh came from several yards away, and the entire room—on both sides of the window—seemed to still, waiting.

They were waiting for Temple.

And Mara found that she, too, was waiting.

Even though she hated him.

And then he was there, filling the doorway as though it were cut to his size, broad and tall and big as a house, bare from the waist up, wearing only those scandalous tattoos and buckskin breeches fitted to his massive thighs, and the long linen strips she’d wrapped along the hills and valleys of his knuckles and around the muscles of his thumb and wrist, as she tried not to notice his hands. Tried not to remember how they felt on her skin. Tried to remember that he was a weapon.

And when he’d kissed her, she’d remembered the truth of all of it. He was a weapon, spreading desire through her body, like bullets. Wounding her with want.

“He’s the biggest, most beautiful brute of a man,” another woman sighed, and Mara went still, forcing herself not to look. Not to care that there was admiration and something more in the tone—something like experience.

“Too bad he’s never shown interest in you, Harriet,” another said, calling forth a symphony of laughter from the rest.

Forcing herself not to care that the experience in the lady’s words was a lie.

And then he was moving toward them, and it might have been her mind playing tricks, but it seemed like he was looking right at her, as though the magic window were a mirror for everyone in the room but him.

As though he knew himself well enough to never have to see his reflection ever again.

He was through the ropes then, and Bourne—now dwarfed by Temple—moved to Mr. Drake, saying words that Mara couldn’t hear. Drake lifted his arms wide and the marquess smoothed his palms down his sides, patting the fabric of his breeches in a clinical, if rather shocking movement.

Mara could not keep quiet. “What are they doing?”

A lady came to her side. “Checking for weapons. The fighters are allowed a second to make sure that the bout is a fair one.”

“Temple would never cheat,” Mara said, the words drawing the attention of the women around her before she could hold them back. Heat flooded her cheeks as she looked from one to the next, finally settling on the woman who had spoken, uncommonly tall and blond, brown eyes glittering near gold in the reflection of the brightly lit ring.

“No,” the lady said. “He wouldn’t.”

There. There was the experience that Mara had misheard earlier. This woman knew him.

She was beautiful enough for it.

They were no doubt beautiful together, matched only in height—with everything else perfectly contrasted to each other. She imagined this woman’s long arms wrapped around his neck, her long fingers threaded through his dark hair. His massive hands at her waist. Possessing her. Loving her.

And she hated him all over again, but now for another, more confusing reason.

A long whistle sounded from the other end of the room, “What I wouldn’t give to be Drake’s second right now!”

Mara’s attention returned to the ring, where the well-dressed aristocrat approached Temple, awkwardly indicating that he, too, should raise his arms. He did, the muscles of his chest and abdomen rippling with the movement, and Mara’s mouth went dry at the image he made, waiting for the man to check his person for weapons, smirk on his lips, as though he had the devil himself on his side, and therefore had no need of trickery.

She imagined his arms high above his head, caught in the scandalous strap that hung from his ceiling, where she’d held herself still, the cool leather biting into her palms, a contrast with his heat. With his touch. With his kiss.

But she hated him.

“Go on, man! Touch him!”

“Take him in hand!”

“Make sure to check all the nooks and crannies!”

The ladies were competing for bawdiest encouragement now, laughing and crying out as the aristocrat in the ring checked the Duke of Lamont with a speed born of fear or embarrassment or both.

“Not so quickly!”

“Or so soft!”

“I’d bet my fortune that Temple likes a firm hand!”

“Don’t you mean your husband’s fortune?” came the retort, and the redhead at the window turned to the room, a wide grin on her pretty face.

“What the earl doesn’t know shan’t hurt him. Look at the size of him!”

“Ten quid says he’s that big all over.”

“No one will take that bet, Flora,” someone replied, laughter seeping into the tone. “Not one of us wants you to be wrong.”

“I’d risk a night with the Killer Duke to find out!”

The laughter fairly shook the room, nearly all of the women taking immense pleasure from the words—from their own additions to the lewd suggestions. Mara looked down the room, at the long row of silks and satins and perfect coifs and maquillage, and the way the women fairly salivated at Temple, remembering his moniker but not the truth of it—that he was a duke. That he deserved their respect.

And that, even if he weren’t a duke . . . he wasn’t an animal.

As they were treating him.

As her actions had made them treat him.

The realization came on a wave of regret, and the keen knowledge that if she could go back in time . . . if she could change everything, she would have found another way to escape that life. A way that would have freed her from the chains of a cruel father and a cold husband, and still saved this man from such wicked, unpleasant shame.

But she couldn’t.

This was their life. Their dance. Their battle.

Blessedly, the seconds completed their inspections, leaving Temple to run a line in the sawdust at the center of the ring with his boot. Even that movement, which should have been harsh and unmeasured, was graceful.

“The scratch line,” her new companion explained. “The men face off on either side of the line. As many rounds as necessary until one falls and does not rise.”

“Bets are closed, ladies,” the dark-skinned man who had escorted her to this room spoke for the first time, reminding Mara that they were in a gaming hell—that even this moment was worth money to The Fallen Angel.

Temple waited, unmoving, for Drake to approach.

The narration continued. “Temple always allows the opponent to take the first hold.”

“Why?” she asked, hating the breathlessness in the word. She’d been dragged here, against her will, to watch this expression of utter brutality.

So why did she suddenly care so much for the answer?

“He is undefeated,” the woman said, simply. “He likes to give his opponents a fair chance.”

Fairness. Something he’d never had. He was a good man. Even if no one saw it. Even if she didn’t wish to believe it.

She looked to his bare feet, the wide black bands on his massive arms, the myriad of scars on his chest and cheek and the new fresh one on his arm, still bearing the stitches from her hand.

She couldn’t find his dark gaze, couldn’t bring herself to see him as a whole and face the things that she’d done to him, to put him here, in this ring, watched by half of London. Wagered on. Marveled at, like a bottled creature in a cabinet of curiosities.

She looked away, turning to Drake, who was easier to watch. He took a deep breath and steeled himself for battle.

The fight began, brutal and unforgiving.

Drake came at Temple with undeniable force, and Temple deflected it, bending backward and using the momentum of the smaller man’s blow to bring him off balance and land a powerful punch to Drake’s side.

The hit was hard and precise, and Drake stumbled away, catching himself on the ropes of the ring before coming around to face Temple again.

The massive duke stood at the scratch line, barely breathing heavily. He waited.

“Aww, ’twon’t be a good fight tonight, girls,” one of the ladies said. “Drake’s going to drop like a stone.”

“They always do,” another said.

“If only there were an opponent who would keep him in the ring,” sighed a third, and Mara wished all these women would simply stop talking.

Drake came at him again, arms outstretched, like a small child angling for an embrace. He never had a chance. Temple moved like lightning, swatting away the long arms and delivering a wicked blow to Drake’s jaw and another to his torso immediately after.

Drake fell to his knees, and Temple immediately stepped back.

Mara’s gaze flew to his face, registering none of the triumph or pride that one might have expected. There was no emotion there—nothing that revealed his feelings about the bout.

He waited, patient as Job as Drake pressed his hands to the sawdust-covered floor, and the room around her went quiet.

“Is he going to get up again?”

She watched the fallen man breathe deeply, his chest heaving once, twice, before he raised his hand in the universal sign for enough.

“Awww,” one of the ladies sighed in disappointment. “A forfeit.”

“Come on, Drake! Fight like a man!”

The women around her whined and whinged, as though they’d lost a favorite toy. She turned to the woman who had become her tacit guide for the evening. “What now?”

Temple stepped forward as the woman spoke, reaching toward his opponent. “A forfeit is an immediate loss.”

Drake accepted Temple’s help, coming to his feet unsteadily. The aged oddsmaker at one side of the ring pointed a finger to a red flag at one corner of the space, and the crowd on both sides of the window erupted into shouts and jeers.

“And Temple wins,” the woman explained to Mara, “but not the way they like.”

“A win is a win, is it not?”

One brown brow rose in amusement. “Tell that to the men who just lost hours of entertainment in thirty seconds.” She returned her attention to the ring, as men throughout the room protested, waving scraps of paper in the air. “Those men have placed enormous bets on the fights—never against Temple, but on the number of rounds and the punches thrown . . . even the way Drake fell.” The lady paused. “They don’t care for short bouts.”

“Anna,” the man in the corner called out, and the lady turned to him.

He nodded once, and she returned her attention to Mara. “I am sorry. I’m afraid I have work to do.” Mara’s brow furrowed, and the lady tilted her head. “Unhappy patrons require . . . appeasing.”

And Mara understood. The woman was a prostitute. A highly paid one if Mara had to make a guess. “Of course.”

The woman tipped her head. “My lady.”

“Oh, I’m not . . .”

Anna smiled. “Those of us who are not must stick together.”

And then she was gone, leaving Mara with the aftermath of the fight and the keen knowledge that she deserved no kind of honorific considering the consequences of her long-ago actions.

Temple seemed not to care about the way the men screamed and fought around him, desperate for a way to regain their bets. Instead, he turned to face the mirror, black eyes scanning its breadth.

“Here it is!” a lady called from nearby.

He nodded once, sending titters and sighs through the room, leaving Mara breathless with the knowledge that with the bout now over, he was coming for her.

And with that knowledge came the memory of their last conversation. Of the words he’d used. Of the blow she’d dealt.

Of the bed she had made for them, where they were enemies. Where she did all she could to regain her funds, and he did all he could to exact his revenge.

Her anger returned.

“Poor Temple!” someone called. “He didn’t get his fight!”

“I should like to give him a fight,” another lady retorted, and the innuendo set the rest of the room tittering.

I don’t fight women.

How many times had he said it that first night?

But what if one were to challenge him anyway? In the open? What if a women were to offer to fight him for the money that was rightfully hers?

What if she were to back him into that corner where his red flag flew with cocksure arrogance?

Would he forfeit?

Could she win?

Her heart pounded in her chest. She could. This moment, this place was her answer. The Marquess of Bourne had climbed into the ring with him, and the two were in discussion.

Mara’s thoughts raced.

It could be that easy.

A reed-thin bespectacled man materialized at her side. “Temple requests that you meet him in his rooms. I am to take you there.”

Excellent. “I have every intention of meeting the duke.”

She intended to set him down. To prove him wrong. To prove herself stronger and smarter and more powerful than he thought her. To make him regret his words. To make him rescind them.

His kisses had distracted her too well. His strange, unexpected kindness had upended her keen awareness of this war they waged. But then he’d called her a whore. And she was reminded of his purpose. Of hers.

He wanted retribution; she wanted the orphanage safe.

And she would get what she wanted.

Tonight.

Her commitment redoubled, she and her guide emerged from the quiet passageway into a crush of bodies beyond, and Mara was grateful for her mask, the way it focused her view—men moving in and out of frame—the wheres and whyfors of their journey made irrelevant by her limited view.

The mask turned the entire evening into a performance of some kind—the men moving across a stage just for her, dressing for a larger, more important scene. For the main player.

Temple.

She let the man guide her back to Temple’s rooms, where he deposited her in the dimly lit space and closed the door behind her, throwing the lock without hesitation.

But Mara was already moving across the room, already heading for the steel door she’d watched from the other side of the ring. Knowing where it led.

She yanked it open, her plan clear in her mind—as clear as the plan twelve years earlier that had set her on this course. That had led her to here. To this moment. To this man.

She ignored the men on either side of the aisle that marked the clear path to the ring, grateful for her mask in those fifty short feet even as her gaze tracked no one but the enormous man still in the ring, his back to her as he reached for grasping, congratulatory hands.

The poor thing had no knowledge of what was to come.

She was so focused on Temple, she did not see the Marquess of Bourne before he stepped into her path, catching her by the arms. “I don’t think so.”

She met his eyes. “I won’t be stopped.”

“I don’t think you’d like to test me.”

She laughed at the words. “Tell me, Lord Bourne,” she said, considering her options. “Do you really think that you have any place in this? My entire life has led to this moment.”

“I will not let you ruin his retribution,” he said. “If you ask me, you deserve every ounce of it, for the devastation you’ve wrought.”

Perhaps it was the implication that he understood the long thread of past that stretched between Mara and Temple. Or perhaps it was the ridiculous entitlement in the words, as though the Marquess of Bourne could stop the globe from spinning on its axis if he wished. Or perhaps it was the smug look on his face.

She would never know.

But Mara did not hesitate, using all the strength and skill and lessons she’d learned from twelve years living on her own with no one to care for her, and from the man beyond, who’d refreshed them.

Bourne didn’t see the punch coming.

The smug aristocrat reeled back, a sound of shock and surprise coming on a flood of red from his nose, but Mara did not have time to marvel at her accomplishments.

She was ringside and through the ropes in seconds, and the moment she stood there, in the uneven sawdust, the room began to quiet. The men clamoring to claim their bets and call for a second bout turned to face her, like layers of onion peeling off for stew.

It took him a moment to hear the silence. To realize it was directed at him. At the ring.

A thread of uncertainty began at the back of her neck, starting its slow, curling journey down her spine. She willed it away.

This was her choice.

This was her next step.

She met his black eyes even as he started toward her, and she saw the surprise there. The irritation. The frustration. And something more. Something she could not identify before it was locked away in that unforgiving gaze.

She took a deep breath and spoke, letting her voice run loud and clear in the enormous room. “I, too, have a debt with The Fallen Angel, Duke.”

One black brow rose, but he did not speak.

“So tell me. Will you accept my challenge?”