No Good Duke Goes Unpunished

Chapter 14

She’d prepared for battle that morning. She’d been ready to fight her imprisonment, ready to negotiate her release.

She’d spent three days locked in The Fallen Angel, given the freedom to move about the myriad of hallways and secret rooms, though always with a companion. Sometimes Asriel, the solemn, quiet guard, sometimes with the Countess of Harlow, when she arrived to check on Temple’s wound, and sometimes with beautiful Anna, who was at once filled with words and empty of them.

It was Anna who had been sent for her that afternoon, barely knocking before opening the door to Mara’s room and stepping inside, shaking out her skirts. “Temple has asked for you,” she said, simply.

Mara was shocked at the words. She hadn’t seen him since the morning he woke, sputtering tea and mistrust all over them both. She’d thought he had forgotten her.

She’d wished she could have forgotten him—the way he’d lain still and pale in the hours before that moment when he’d regained consciousness and temper. The way she’d feared for him. The way she’d willed him well.

The way she’d realized that this moment . . . this whole situation . . . had spiraled utterly out of her control.

The way she missed him.

She’d sent word to the other men—Bourne, Cross, and the mysterious Chase—that she wished to leave. That she had a position to return to at MacIntyre’s. That she had boys to care for.

A life to live.

No word had returned, until now. Until Anna arrived and stole her breath and set her heart racing with the simple words. Temple has asked for you.

She would see him again.

She would see him now.

Excitement warred with trepidation, and she nodded, standing and smoothing her skirts. Nervous. She steeled her spine. “Like Boleyn to the chopping block.”

Anna smirked. “Queen of England, are we?”

Mara shrugged. “Something to aspire to.”

They started down the long, curved hallway, walking in silence for several long moments before Anna said, “You know, he’s not a bad man.”

Mara did not hesitate. “I have never thought he was.”

Truth.

“No one trusts him,” Anna said. “No one who isn’t very close to him. No one who doesn’t know him well enough to know that he could not have . . .”

She trailed off, but Mara finished the sentence for her. “Killed me.”

Anna cut her a look. “Just so.”

“But you knew him well enough?”

The beautiful blonde looked down at her hands. “I do.”

Mara heard the present tense. Hated it. This woman was Temple’s mistress, Mara had no doubt. And why not? She was his perfect match. Blond where he was dark, flawless where he was scarred, and so beautiful. They would make beautiful, unbearable children.

But Temple had bigger plans than to marry his mistress.

It ends with the life I was bred for. He’d told her once. With a wife. A child. A legacy.

Proper ones. Perfect ones. The kind due a duke. No doubt a wife beautiful and young and able to make perfect children. Jealousy flared. She did not like the idea of such a woman bearing his children.

She did not like the idea of any woman bearing his children.

Except—

She ended the thought before it could finish. Kept the madness at bay. Protected herself.

“He is lucky to have such good friends,” she said.

Anna looked to her. “And you?”

“Me?”

“Who are your friends?”

Mara laughed, the sound lacking humor. “I have been in hiding for twelve years. Friends are a luxury I cannot afford.”

“What of your brother?”

Mara shook her head. Kit was family. Not friend. Now, he never would be. She released a long breath. “He nearly killed Temple. What kind of a friend is he?”

Anna turned away, setting her hand to a nearby door handle. Turning it. The door opened wide before she said, “You should make sure Temple understands.”

Mara did not have time to ask for clarification. Instead, she stepped into Temple’s rooms, the door closing on Anna’s cryptic statement, her gaze settling on the open door she now understood led to the ring.

She headed in that direction.

He stood at the center of the empty room, at the center of the ring itself. Strong and silent and ever so handsome, even in shirtsleeves and a white linen sling that held his arm firm against his chest. Perhaps because of those things. His black trousers were perfectly pressed, and Mara’s gaze followed their line to the sawdust-covered floor, where his bare feet peeped out from beneath the wool hem.

She was transfixed by those bare feet. By the strength of them. The curves and valleys of muscle and bone. The straight, perfect toes. The clean white nails.

The man even had handsome feet.

Her gaze snapped to his at the ridiculous thought, and she registered the curious smile there, wondering if he’d somehow read her mind.

She would not put it past him.

Empty of spectators, the room was cold, and Mara wrapped her arms about herself as she approached him, a foot above her and somehow so much farther. He watched her, making her keenly aware of each step, of the way she looked to him. She itched to smooth her hair. Her skirts. Resisted the temptation.

She reached the ring and faced him, looking down at her, expression guarded, as though he wasn’t sure what she would do. What came next.

She wasn’t sure, either.

But she knew he would wait an eternity for her to speak, so she spoke. “I am sorry.”

It was not the first time she had thought the words, but it was the first time she’d said them aloud. To him.

Dark brows lifted in surprise. “For?”

She reached out, taking one of the coarse ropes in her hand. “For all of it.” She looked up at him, his black eyes seeing everything but revealing nothing. “For my brother’s actions.” She paused. Took a breath. Confessed her sins. “For mine.”

He came to her then, reaching down and helping her through the ropes with one rough, callused hand, warm and strong against hers. Once she was inside the ring, he stepped back, and she mourned the loss of him.

“Do you regret it?” He’d asked her the same question a lifetime ago, on the night she’d approached him outside his town house.

“I regret that you were caught in the fray.” Her answer was the same, and somehow different. Somehow more true. She did not regret her escape. But she deeply regretted his part in her stupid, thoughtless play. “And I regret what my brother did more than you can ever know.” She paused. He waited. “Yes,” she told the truth. “I regret it. I regret your pain. I regret the way I took your life. Toyed with it. I would take it back if I could.”

He leaned back against the ropes on the far side of the ring. “Then you did not know his plan?”

Her eyes went wide with the shock of the question. “No!” How could he think she would—

How couldn’t he think it?

She shook her head. “I would not hurt you.”

His lips tilted in a half smile at that. “I called you a whore. You were quite angry.”

The words stung, even now. She did not look away. “I was, indeed. But I was handing the situation.”

He chuckled at that, the sound warm and welcoming. “So you were.”

He was quiet for a long moment, until she could not help but look at him again. He was watching her, those dark eyes somehow seeing everything. Perhaps it was because of those eyes that she said, “I am happy you are recovered, Your Grace.”

The truth.

Or perhaps a terrible lie. Because happy did not begin to describe the flood of emotions that coursed through her as she watched him, restored to his power and might. To his strength and health.

Relief. Gratitude.

Elation.

She released a long breath, and he came off the ropes, approaching her, sending a thrill of anticipation through her. He reached for her, and she did not hesitate, leaning into the touch, to the stroke of his thumb high on her cheek. She lifted her hand, holding him there, skin against skin against skin, and whispered, “You are alive.”

Something flashed in his gaze. “As are you.”

For the first time in a dozen years, she felt so. This man made her feel it, somehow. This man, who should have been her enemy. Who likely remained her enemy. Who no doubt wanted her destroyed for all the things she’d done. All the sins she’d committed.

And who, somehow, saw her for all she was.

“I thought you would die.”

He smiled. “You wouldn’t have it. I did not dare disappoint.”

She tried to match his smile. Failed. Instead, thinking of another patient. Another death.

He saw it on her face. Had to have. “Tell me.”

And suddenly, she wanted him to know.

“I couldn’t save her,” she whispered.

He didn’t move. “Who?”

“My mother.”

His brow furrowed. “Your mother died when you were a child.”

“I was twelve.”

“A child,” he repeated.

She looked down between him, at her silly silk slippers, peeping out from beneath her plain borrowed frock, toes nearly touching his bare ones.

So close.

“I was old enough to know that she was going to die.”

“She contracted a fever,” he said, and she heard the consolation in his words. You couldn’t have known. There was nothing to be done. A dozen people had said the words to her. A hundred.

They’d all believed the same story.

Except she hadn’t had a fever.

Or, rather, she had . . . but not the way her father told the story. It hadn’t come with sickness. It had come with infection. With a wound that would not heal.

And she had been in terrible pain.

Temple’s hand moved, lifting her chin, raising her gaze to his. All warmth and strength, huge and rough. And honest.

She looked up at him, into those eyes, dark as midnight and with its focus. “He killed her,” she whispered.

“Who killed her?”

“My father.” Even now, years later, it was hard to label him as such. Hard to think of him that way.

Temple shook his head, and she knew what he was thinking. It was impossible. A husband did not kill a wife.

“He did not like it when Kit and I went against his wishes, and she did all she could to protect us. That day . . .” she hesitated, not wanting to say more but unable to stop herself. Lost in the memory. “He’d purchased a new bust. From Greece or Rome or Persia—I cannot remember.

“Kit and I were running through the house, and I tripped on my skirts.” She laughed without humor, lost in the memory. “I had just been allowed to wear long skirts. I was so proud of myself. So grown up. I tumbled into the statue, which was perched atop a table on the upper landing of the house,” she said, and Temple inhaled sharply, as though he could see what was coming. What she had been unable to see as a child.

She shrugged. “It toppled over the banister. Fell two stories to the floor of the entryway.”

She could see it now, the way it lay broken and unrecognizable what seemed like a mile below. “He was furious. Came charging up the stairs, met me on the landing.”

“You didn’t run?”

The words surprised her from the memory. “Running would have made it worse.”

“The beating.”

“I could have taken it. It was not the first time he punished us. Nor would it be the last.” She hesitated. “But my mother decided she’d had enough.”

“What did she do?”

“She went at him. With a knife.”

He sucked in a long breath. “Christ.”

Mara had played the scene over again and again, nearly every day since it happened. Her beautiful mother, an avenging queen, placing herself between her children and their father.

Refusing to let him at them.

“He laughed at her,” Mara said, hating the softness in the words. Hating the way they made her sound like the child she had been. She swallowed. Met his gaze again. “He was too strong for her.”

“He turned the knife on her.”

Another wound, blossoming with blood. This time, unlucky. “The doctors came, but there was nothing to be done. She was dead the moment he struck the blow. It was only a matter of time.”

“Christ,” he said again, this time reaching for her, pulling her tight against his broad, strong chest. Speaking into her hair. “And you had to live with him.”

Until he offered me to another man, and I had no choice but to run.

She kept those words to herself, in part because she did not wish to remind him that he disliked her. That she was the reason his life had taken such a turn. She liked the comfort and strength of him too well.

A lie of omission.

She pressed her face into the warm smoothness of him, inhaling the scent of him, thyme and clove, letting herself have this moment, however fleeting, before she was faced once more with the world. And she said the words she’d never uttered. “If I hadn’t broken that statue . . .”

His hand came to her chin then, long blunt fingers lifting her face to the light. To his gaze. “Mara,” he said, the name still foreign to her ears after a decade without it. “It is not your sin.”

She knew it, even if she did not believe it. “I paid for it, nonetheless.” One corner of his mouth twitched in the threat of a smile, and she read the irony there. “Paying debts that do not belong to you. You would know a great deal about that.”

“Not as much as you would think,” he said, his thumb sliding like hot silk across her cheek, back and forth, the stroke at once calming and unsettling.

He watched the movement, and she took the opportunity to study him, his broken nose, the scar beneath one eye, the other that had split his lower lip. For a long moment, she forgot their conversation, her thoughts lost in that steady promise of his touch.

When he spoke, she saw the words curving on his lips. “I thought it was my debt.”

He did not meet her gaze, not even when she whispered his name—that name that he’d taken when he’d become a new man, forged from exile and doubt.

“I thought I killed you,” he said, simply. As though he were discussing something thoroughly inconsequential. The morning paper. The weather. He cleared his throat, and his hand fell away from her cheek. “I did not, however.”

The loss of his touch was immense.

I’m sorry, she wanted to say.

Instead, she lifted her own hand to his cheek, the shadow of his beard tickling her palm. Tempting it. He met her gaze then, and she saw the regret in his eyes, tinged with confusion and frustration and, yes . . . anger, so well concealed that she would have missed it if she weren’t looking so closely.

“I never meant to hurt you.” She paused, her gaze flickering over his shoulder to the mirror where the women had watched the fight. “It never occurred to me that you would suffer.”

He didn’t say anything. Didn’t have to. The idea that her actions would have no consequences for him was pure idiocy. She kept talking, as if her words could keep the past at bay. “But, when I heard them . . . when they watched you . . .”

“Who?” he asked.

She nodded in the direction of the mirror. “The women. I hated the way they spoke of you,” she said, her fingers sliding away from his chin, down his chest, tracing the hills and valleys of his muscles beneath the linen. “I hated the way they looked at you.”

“Are you jealous?”

She was, but that wasn’t what she meant. “I hate the way their eyes devour you—like you’re an animal. A treat. Something to be consumed. Something less than . . . what you are.”

He captured her hand and pulled it from him, and she hated the loss. “I don’t need your pity.”

Her eyes went wide. “Pity?” How could he possibly think that this emotion—this wicked, unsettling feeling that coursed through her and upended everything she thought she knew—was pity?

It was nothing so simple as that.

“I wish it were pity,” she said, extracting her hand from his grip. Returning it to his torso, where the muscles of his abdomen stirred and stiffened, drawing her touch. “If it were pity, perhaps I could avoid it.”

“What, then?” he said, so low and dark that it made her feel as though this enormous room were the smallest she’d ever been in. Quiet and secluded.

She shook her head, every inch of her aware of him. Every ounce of her desperate for his touch. For his forgiveness. For him. “I don’t know. You make me feel—”

She stopped, unable to put the emotion into words.

His hand came to her neck, fingers sliding along the pulse there, brushing just barely, as though she might flee if he weren’t careful. “What?”

Her fingers moved of their own volition, threading into his hair, glorying in the softness of it. He stopped the caress with his good hand, pushing her back to the ropes, fisting her fingers around one thick cord—first one hand, then the other. When he was finished, he tilted her face to his. “What do I make you feel, Mara?”

After their sparring in the ring, all of London thought her his mysterious mistress. Was it not the thinking that made it so? Did it matter that it was in name only? Did it matter that she wanted him in more than farce? That she wanted him in truth? Hands and lips and body and . . .

She hesitated over the completion of the sentence. Over its meaning.

Over the way it would ruin her more thoroughly than any punishment Temple himself could mete out.

But the match had started, and she knew it was futile to fight.

Especially as she wished him to win.

She clutched the ropes, her mooring in his tempest. “You make me feel . . .” She paused, and his lips found hers in the hesitation, his kiss more gentle than ever before, tongue stroking with delicate, devastating force.

He pulled away before she could have her fill. “Go on,” he whispered, not touching her and somehow destroying her. Holding her over a wide abyss, with only the ropes of his ring to keep her sane.

“You make me hot and somehow cold.”

He rewarded the words with a long, lovely, worshipping kiss at the base of her neck. “What do you feel now?”

“Hot,” she answered, even as a shiver threaded through her. “Cold. I don’t know.”

He smiled against her skin, and she adored his lips curving against her. “What else?”

“When you look at me, you make me feel like I am the only woman in the world.”

His gaze was on the edge of her borrowed dress, where the bodice seemed brutally tight. He slid a finger along the simple line of fabric, barely touching her skin, making her wish the whole thing was gone. And then he tugged on the little white ribbon that fastened at the front, slowly tugging at the crisscrossing tie down her bodice until he gave her what she wished, the fabric coming loose. Instinctively, she released the ropes, moved to catch it. To hold it to her.

But he was there, guiding one arm from the woolen dress, then the other.

And she let him. When he was finished, he said only, “Take the ropes.”

She turned herself over to him, grasping the ropes once more.

The dress was caught on her breasts, threatening to fall. He watched the way it held there, tenuous, and she wondered if he might be able to remove it with her gaze.

He ran a finger beneath the wool, gently, perfectly, and it pooled at her feet. She gasped.

“Cold?” he asked.

“No.” Hot as the sun.

He bent his head, taking the tip of one breast in his mouth, chemise and all, worrying it through the fabric, leaving it wet and aching for more. For him. He lifted his head, meeting her gaze.

“What else, Mara?” he asked. “What else do I make you feel?”

“You make me wish it was all different,” she said.

He rewarded the confession by sending her chemise to the floor, leaving her in nothing but her woolen stockings and those silly silken slippers that had matched the gown she’d worn the night she’d arrived, but had no place here. Now. He watched her for a long moment, drinking her in, keeping her warm, even as he blew a stream of cool air across the tip of her breast.

She sighed her pleasure, and he lifted his head, finding her. Seeing her. Just as she saw him. The way he desired her. The way he craved her. And when he ran the back of his hand across his lips like a starving man, she went weak-kneed, grateful for the strength of the ropes behind her.

“You make me wish I were different,” she confessed. You make me wish I were more.

He shook his head. “It’s strange; I don’t wish that at all.”

The words brought a cacophony of thought, too tangled for understanding. All she wanted was to say the right thing—the thing that would bring him closer to her. That would give her what she wanted. What she ached for.

The thing that would make him hers.

“Everything,” she whispered, finally. “You make me feel everything.”

And there, in the ring that was his castle and kingdom, he sank to his knees before her, wrapped one strong arm about her waist, and pressed his lips to the soft swell of her stomach before responding, “Not everything. Not yet.”

He trailed kisses from her navel to the core of her, to the wicked edge of the soft curls there, and he stilled. Lingered. “But I will,” he promised her, his tongue sliding along the soft, unbearably sensitive skin there.

She sighed, one hand moving to his head, sliding into his curls.

He froze, snapped to attention at the touch, turning instantly to capture the flesh at the base of her thumb in his teeth. Nipping gently. “The ropes.”

She stilled. “Why?”

He met her gaze, and she saw the wicked promise there. “The ropes,” he repeated.

She did as she was told, grasping the rough cords behind her, and he rewarded her, his hand stroking from her ankle up the long line of her leg, around the curve of her knee, up the soft, untouched skin of her inner thigh, above her stocking. He lifted the leg from the pool of her skirts with one hand, hooking her knee over his good shoulder, as though it weighed nothing at all.

Her cheeks burned with embarrassment as the rest of her burned with desire. She was horrified and desperate all at once. A contradiction, as ever it was with him.

“Watch.”

As if she could do anything else. All she could do was watch him.

Watch him see her.

“In the mirror,” he said, and her gaze shot to the enormous mirror across from them, she’d been so caught up in him that she’d forgotten it—forgotten that it could give her a view she’d never imagined. Never dreamed.

She was nude, bared to him and the ring and the mirror, her hands tangled in the ropes, and she looked an utter scandal, spread wide like a sacrifice at this strange altar. But it was he who was on his knees, shoulders wide between her bare thighs, one leg tossed over his shoulder in wild, wanton abandon.

Anyone could see them.

The knowledge of what was beyond that mirror should have devastated her. Should have frightened her. Should have scandalized her. But instead, it made her want it more.

What had he done to her?

“Temple,” she said, softly, closing her eyes to the vision. To its power. Terrified of what he would do next.

Terrified of what he would not do next.

And then he did it, spreading her wide, looking at her, seeing her in a way no one ever had. A way no one ever should.

And she loved it.

That hand—that glorious, magical hand—moved again, one finger sliding along the most secret part of her, exploring folds and valleys and ridges, sending pleasure coursing through her. She closed her eyes at the sensation, leaning back, the ropes creaking beneath her, their rough threads scraping along her back, coarse where he was soft. Harsh where he was gentle.

“My God,” he whispered, his words at once sacrilege and benediction as his finger swirled and stroked, stealing breath and thought from her. “I don’t know how I thought I could ever resist you.”

An echo of her own thoughts. This had been inevitable. From the moment she’d approached him on the street. From before.

And then his mouth was on her, and she could not think at all, his tongue stroking in long, slow licks, teasing and tempting and torturing even as it wrought pleasure she could not believe. “Temple,” she cried, lifting, offering herself to him. Giving herself up to him.

Trusting him.

Trusting someone for the first time in what seemed like forever.

He rewarded her with his glorious mouth, wrapping his arm around her waist and pulling her tight to him, closing his lips tightly around some unbearable, unthinkable place and sucking more deeply, licking more firmly, scraping with a barely-there pressure that had her crying out for him.

“William.” She sighed the name that she’d thought a hundred times in the dead of night. A thousand. Never once believing that he could unlock such glorious pleasure.

He stilled at the name on her lips, and she looked down at him, finding his black gaze across the expanse of her naked body, knowing that this was at once terribly wrong and ever so right.

He swirled his tongue against her in the most wonderful way, and her eyes slid closed, unable to bear the torture of the pleasure. He lifted his mouth then, just long enough to say, “Watch.”

She shook her head, color rising on her face. “I can’t.”

“You can,” he promised, turning his face to press a kiss to the high curve of her thigh. “Watch me give you all there is to give.”

He set his mouth to her again, and she did watch, her gaze sliding from their reflection to his beautiful face, knowing that it was immodest and scandalous, but unable to take her gaze from his. Unable to stop herself from letting go of the ropes and sliding her hand into that glorious dark hair of his, and holding him tight to her. Unable to stop herself from moving against him. Unable to ignore the flood of powerful pleasure that coursed through her when that movement made him groan against her.

Made him redouble his efforts, his tongue and lips and teeth moving in perfect concert, sending her high, higher still on a wave of unbearable pleasure, until she came apart against him, calling out his name, fisting her fingers in his hair, taking every last ounce of glorious feeling from him.

Never once looking away, not even as she rocked against him, the ropes behind her sighing with the movement.

He held her as she returned to him, as her feet found the floor once more and, unable to hold herself upright, she sank to her knees with him.

He pulled her into his lap, and they sat there, hearts pounding, breath coming hard and fast, for an eternity, neither speaking, but both knowing that everything had changed.

Forever.

She’d never felt anything like this. Not even that long-ago night, the one she lorded over him, when they’d lay in her bed and kissed and touched. When he’d whispered teasing words in her ear and played with her hair and made her promises he’d never intended to keep.

When she’d taken his world from him.

She could not hide from him any longer. She could not lie to him. She would find another way to save the orphanage. To keep the boys safe. There had to be a way.

A way that did not rely on using this man any longer.

She could give him that, at least.

Sadness coursed through her as she looked up at him, meeting his inscrutable gaze. Wishing she could hear his thoughts. Wishing she could tell him everything. Wishing she could lay herself bare for him.

Wishing their future had not been so well cast in such strong stone.

“I promised I would tell you—” she began.

He shook his head, cutting her off. “Not now. Not because of this. Don’t sully it. It’s the first time it’s felt real in . . .”

He trailed off, the words singing through her, bringing hope and promise with them—two things she could not accept. Two things she had learned long ago would destroy her if she gave them quarter.

She did not give them time to take root. “We never . . .” She moved from his lap, sliding to the floor. “It started, but did not get to here . . .” He closed his eyes at the words and took a deep breath, and as much as she wanted to stop, she soldiered on. “I should never have let you believe we did.”

His gaze found her. “So it was another lie.”

She nodded, wanting to tell him everything. Wanting to tell him that that night, long ago, when she’d done the thing she most regretted, was also the night she’d done the thing she least regretted.

He’d made her laugh and smile. He’d made her feel beautiful.

For the first time in her life.

For the only time in her life.

She opened her mouth to tell him just that, to try to explain, but he was already speaking. “Daniel.”

The name confused her. “Daniel?”

“He is not mine.”

Shock threaded through her at the words. At their meaning. She shook her head. “I don’t understand . . .”

“You said he’d been with you forever.”

Daniel, with his dark hair and blue eyes and his age—exactly correct if they had done this. If they had done more.

For a moment, she let the vision of it crash over her. Temple, strong and sure and handsome and hers. And a son, dark and serious and sweet.

And theirs.

It was the life he wanted. A wife. A son. A legacy.

But it was not real. She shook her head, finding his gaze, seeing the emotion there. Regret. Anger. Sadness.

She’d hurt him again. Without even trying. She shook her head, tears in her eyes. “Forever—since I founded the orphanage. He is not . . .” She trailed off, wishing the truth were different.

He laughed then, the sound harsh and humorless. “Of course he isn’t. Of course we didn’t.”

The words cut through her.

He stood, in a single fluid movement, taking himself to the opposite side of the ring, all grace and economy even now, even with one arm in a sling. Even with a wound that would have killed a lesser man.

His back to her, he scraped his hand through his hair. “Just once, I wanted the truth from you.” He looked over his shoulder at her. “Just once, I wanted you to give me a reason to believe you are more than what you seem. More than a woman out for blood and money.” He laughed and turned away again. “And then you gave it to me.”

She should tell him.

The whole story.

The money, the debt, the reason she’d run. She should lay herself at his feet and give him the chance to forgive her. To believe her. To believe in her.

Perhaps then, they could start again. Perhaps then, there might be more to this strange, unsettling, remarkable thing between them.

Dear God, she wanted that more than she wanted her next breath.

“I was not out for blood,” she said, coming to her feet, her dress in her hand, shielding her nakedness from him. “And not for money, either.” She took a step toward him. “Please. Let me explain—”

“No.” He turned to her, hand slashing through the air.

She stopped.

“No,” he repeated. “I am tired of it. Of your lies. Of your games. I am tired of wanting to believe them. No more.”

She pulled her dress around her, knowing that she deserved this. Knowing that, for twelve years, her life had been heading for this. For the day when she faced this man and told him the truth, and suffered the repercussions.

But it had never occurred to her that the pain would come from losing him. From hurting him. That she might care for him.

Care for him.

What a silly, tepid phrase in comparison to the emotion that coursed through her now, as she watched this remarkable man battle his demons. Demons she had sent after him.

“I don’t care what your reasons are, or how well you’ve fabricated them. I am done. How much was this worth? This afternoon?”

The words were a blow. He couldn’t believe she would ask to be paid for— Of course he could. It was the arrangement they’d made.

She shook her head.

“And now you are too high for our agreement?”

She didn’t want it now. She didn’t want any of it. She only wanted him.

And, like that—like a sharp, wicked blow, she understood.

She loved him.

And if that was not bad enough, he would never believe it.

But still, she tried. “William. Please. If you’ll just—”

“Don’t.” The word cut through the air, frigid and frightening. And she realized that now, here, she faced Temple, the greatest fighter London had ever seen. “Don’t you ever call me that again. You don’t have the right.”

Of course she didn’t. She’d stolen the name from him when she’d stolen his life. Tears threatened, and she swallowed them back, not wanting him to think them fabricated. Not wanting him to think her fabricated. She nodded. “Of course.”

He was cold and unmoving, and she couldn’t look at him any longer. She wrapped her arms about herself as he took his final shot. As he ended it. “Tomorrow, this is over. You show your face, you restore my name. I’ll give you your money. And then you get the hell out of my world.”

He left her there, at the center of his ring, in the heart of his club.

It was only once the door to his rooms was closed and the lock thrown that she dressed, and allowed the tears to come.