No Good Duke Goes Unpunished

Chapter 16

The gloves had been a mistake.

He realized that the second he started buttoning her into the damn things. Not that he hadn’t imagined buttoning her into them the second they arrived at his home.

Not that he hadn’t imagined unbuttoning everything else and leaving her in nothing but those long, silk gloves.

Except imagination paled in comparison to reality, at least when it came to Mara Lowe, and he hadn’t been able to stop himself from touching her. From kissing her. From tasting her skin. From making himself impossibly distracted and unbearably hard in the process.

In his life, he’d never been so thrilled and so furious to arrive somewhere. Except, as he climbed down from the carriage, reaching back to help her descend, the silken glove sliding through his grasp, he realized that he’d made an enormous mistake. After all, he’d have to touch her all evening, and every stroke of silk against his skin would be a lick of flame.

A reminder of what he’d touched.

Of what he would never touch again.

He guided her up the extravagantly decorated steps to Leighton House and inside, where he watched as a footman removed the fur-lined cloak from around her shoulders, revealing an extraordinary expanse of smooth, pale skin.

A too-bare expanse.

Shit.

He never should have pushed Hebert to keep the line of the dress so low. What had he been thinking? Every man in attendance would be watching her.

Which had been his plan all along.

Except now, as she adjusted that stunning golden mask that only highlighted her strange, beautiful eyes, and faced him with a quiet smile, he did not like the plan at all.

But it was too late. He had handed over his invitation, and they were inside the ballroom in moments, part of the teeming mass of revelers, all of whom had made special return to the city to attend this event. Which was why he’d chosen this event for her unveiling.

For his own return.

His hand fell to the curve of her lower back, and he shepherded her through the throngs of people clustered around the door, resisting the urge to throttle the men nearby whose roving eyes lingered on the high swell of Mara’s breasts.

He cast a sidelong gaze at the bosom in question, considering the perfect pink skin there, the three small freckles that stood sentry just above the edge of the jade green silk. His mouth went dry.

Then watered.

He cleared his throat, and she looked up at him, eyes wide and questioning behind the mask. “Well, Your Grace? You have me here now—what do you intend to do with me?”

What he wanted to do to her was to take her home and spread her bare in his bed and rectify the missing events of that evening, twelve years prior. But that was not the answer she was expecting. And so instead, he captured her gloved hand in his and led her into the crowd. “I intend to dance with you.”

She wasn’t in his arms for half a second when he realized that the idea was nearly as bad as gifting the woman gloves. Now she was warm and smelling of softness and citrus, and she fit perfectly in his good arm as he fell into the steps he shouldn’t remember. And there, in thinking of the steps, he hesitated over them.

He captured himself, but she noticed the misstep as she had his prior smoothness. She met his gaze, her eyes light inside gold filigree. “When was the last time you were somewhere like this?”

“You mean inside a legitimate aristocratic ballroom at a legitimate aristocratic event?” She inclined her head as he executed an elaborate turn to avoid another couple. “More than a decade.”

She nodded. “Twelve years.”

He did not like the exactness of the answer, but he could not say why. When Temple rubbed elbows with the elite of the ton it was most often on the floor of the casino after a fight, when he’d proven his worth with muscle and force. He was the strongest of them. The most powerful.

No longer.

His bad hand flexed in the sling, unfeeling and unsettling. And he hated it, in part because of the woman in his arms. Because he might never feel her skin with it. Her hair. And if she discovered his new failing, he might be less than a man for her.

But he should not care; after all, he would never see her again after tonight.

It was what he wanted.

Lie.

“Tell me about it,” she said, and he wished she hadn’t. He wished she was not interested in him. Wished she did not so easily draw his attention. His regard.

Wished she did not make him feel so goddamn out of control.

“Now is hardly the time for a conversation.”

Her beautiful gaze turned wry and she looked around the room at the couples dancing around them. “You have somewhere to be?”

She was entirely at his whim. He could tell her to remove her mask that moment. He held all the cards, and she none of them. And still, she found room to tease him. Even now, minutes from her destruction, she stood her ground.

The woman was remarkable.

“I was forced to attend the coming-out party of a neighbor.”

Pink lips curved beneath the mask, underscoring the provocativeness of her costume. “You must have enjoyed that. Being forced into little mincing quadrille steps to even the ratio of males to females at the ball in question.”

“My father had made it clear that I had no choice,” he said. “It was as future dukes did.”

“And so you went.”

“I did.”

“And did you hate it? All the young ladies throwing their handkerchiefs at your feet so you’d have to stop and retrieve them?”

He laughed. “Is that why they did it?”

“A very old trick, Your Grace.”

“I thought they were simply clumsy.”

Her white teeth flashed. “You hated it.”

“I didn’t, actually,” he said, watching her grin fade to a curious smile. “It was tolerable.”

It was a lie. He’d adored it.

He’d loved every second of being an aristocrat. He’d been thrilled at all the mincing and my lording and the sense of pleasure and honor that he’d had as all of London’s youngest, prettiest women had chased after him for attention.

He’d been rich and intelligent and titled—all privilege and power.

What wasn’t to love?

“And I am certain the ladies of the land were grateful that you did your duty.”

Duty.

The word echoed through him, as faded as the memory, gone with his title when he’d woken in that blood-soaked bed. He met her eyes. “Why the blood?”

Confusion passed through her gaze, chased by understanding. She hesitated.

It was not the place for the conversation, in the home of one of London’s most powerful men, surrounded by hundreds of revelers. But the conversation had come nonetheless. And he could not resist pressing her. “Why not simply run? Why fake your death?”

He wasn’t sure she would answer. And then she did. “I never planned for you to be saddled with my death.”

He’d expected a number of possible answers, but he hadn’t expected her to lie. “Even now, you won’t tell me the truth.”

“I understand why you do not believe me, but it is the truth,” she said quietly. “They weren’t supposed to think me dead. They were supposed to think me ruined.”

He couldn’t help the bark of shocked laughter that escaped at that. “What kind of perverse acts were you expecting them to think I’d performed?”

“I’d heard there was blood involved,” she said, clearly not amused.

His brows rose behind his domino. “Not that much blood.”

“Yes, I rather gathered that once you were accused of murder,” she grumbled.

“It must have been—” He thought back on the morning.

“A pint.”

He laughed in earnest then. “A pint of pig’s blood.”

She smiled then, small and unexpected. “I have made up for it by treating Lavender very well.”

“So I was to have ruined you.” He paused. “But I didn’t.”

She ignored the words. “I also never expected you to sleep so long. I drugged you to keep you in the room long enough for the maids to notice. I’d been careful to make sure we were seen by two of them.” She met his eyes. “But I swear, I thought you would be up and escaped before anyone found you.”

“You’d thought of everything.”

“I overdid it.” He heard the regret in the words as she paused as the orchestra stopped playing, instantly releasing his hands. Wondered if it was regret for her actions, for their repercussions, or for now—for the revenge he had promised her.

Wondered if it was for herself, or for him.

He did not have a chance to ask, as she stepped backward, colliding with another masked man, who took the moment to have a good look at her. “If it isn’t the fighter from The Fallen Angel,” he leered.

“Find someone else to admire,” Temple said, darkly.

“Come now, Temple,” the man lifted his mask, revealing himself to be Oliver Densmore, king of idiot fops, the man who had offered for Mara as she’d stood in the ring of the Angel. “Surely we can make an arrangement. You can’t keep her forever.” He turned to Mara. “I’ll pay you double. Triple.”

Temple’s good hand fisted, but she spoke before he could strike. “You cannot afford me, sir.”

Densmore cackled and returned his mask to his face. “You would be worth the trouble, I think.” He tugged on one of Mara’s auburn curls, and was gone into the crowd, leaving Temple seething with anger. She’d protected herself.

Because she could not trust him to protect her.

Because he had vowed to do just the opposite.

As though the run-in had never happened, Mara returned to the conversation. “I know you don’t wish to hear this, but I think it’s worth telling you nonetheless. I really am sorry.”

“You are ignoring him.”

She paused. “The man? It’s best, don’t you think?”

“No.” He thought it was best for Densmore to lie facedown in a ditch somewhere. Right now he wanted to chase the man through the crowd and put him there.

She considered him, her beautiful eyes clear and honest through the mask. “He treated me like a lady of the evening.”

“Precisely.”

She tilted her head. “Is that not the point?”

Christ, he felt like an ass. He couldn’t do this to her.

“At any rate,” she continued, unaware of his riotous thoughts. “I am sorry.”

And now she was apologizing to him, as though he hadn’t given her a dozen reasons to hate him. A hundred of them.

“It’s nowhere near a decent excuse,” she pressed on, “but I was a child and I made mistakes, and had I known then . . .”

She trailed off. I wouldn’t have done it.

No, he might not want to hear the apology, but he most definitely wished to hear that she would take it all back if she could. That she’d give him back his life. He couldn’t help himself. “If you had known then . . . ?”

Her voice grew soft, and it was as though it were just the two of them in that ballroom, surrounded by half of London. “I would not have used you, but I still would have approached you that night. And I still would have run.”

He should have been angry. Should have felt vindicated. Her words should have chased away all his doubts about his plans for the evening. But they didn’t. “Why?”

She looked to the wall of doors, opening out onto the Leighton House gardens, several left slightly ajar to allow the stifling air in the ballroom out. “Why, which?”

He followed her, as if on a string. “Why approach me?”

She smiled, quiet and small. “You were handsome. And in the gardens, you were irreverent. And I liked you. And somehow, in all of this, I still rather do.”

Like was the most innocuous, tepid of words. It did nothing to describe how she should feel for him. And it did absolutely nothing to describe how he felt for her.

He couldn’t stop himself. “Why run?”

Tell me the truth, he willed. Trust me.

Not that she should.

“Because I was afraid your father was like mine.”

The words came like a blow, quick and in his blind spot, the kind that made a man see wild stars. Bright and painful, like truth.

She’d been sixteen, and set to marry a man three times her age. A man whose last three wives had met unfortunate fates. A man who counted her bastard of a father among his closest friends.

A man whose son was an inveterate womanizer, even at eighteen.

“I would never have let him hurt you,” he said. She turned at that, her eyes liquid.

He would have protected her from the moment he met her. He would have hated his father for having her.

“I didn’t know that,” she said softly, the words filled with regret.

She’d been terrified. But more than that, she’d been strong.

She’d chosen a life in the unknown over a life with a man who might well have been her father’s second.

Temple had been collateral damage.

She was frozen, all long limbs and grace, poised at the edge of the ballroom, staring at the doors, leading into blackness, and the metaphor was not lost on him. It was another time. Another threat. Another moment that had revealed too much of Mara Lowe. And she was no longer afraid of the darkness beyond.

She had lived twelve years in the darkness.

Just as he had.

Christ. It did not matter how they had come to be here. How different their paths had been.

They were the same.

He reached for her, her name soft on his lips, not knowing what came next. Not knowing what he would say or do. Knowing only that he wanted to touch her. His fingers slid over her silk-clad wrist even as she pulled away from him, already in smooth, graceful motion.

Already heading to the doors.

He let her go.

It was bitterly cold, and she wished she’d thought to fetch her cloak before escaping the stifling ballroom, but she couldn’t very well head back inside.

She wrapped her arms tight across her chest, telling herself she’d been colder and worse off. It was true. She was comfortable with cold. She understood it. Was able to combat it.

What she could not combat was his warmth.

I would never have let him hurt you.

She took a deep breath and hurried down the steps from the stone colonnade to the dark gardens of Leighton House, disappearing into the landscape, thanking Heaven for the shadows. Leaning back against a large oak, she stared up at the stars, wondering how she had come to be here, in this place, in this dress, with this man.

A man against whom fate had pitted her.

With whom she was intertwined.

Forever.

Tears threatened as she heaved great, cloudy breaths in the fading light from the ballroom, as she wondered what would come next. She wished he would go ahead and unmask her and be done with it, so she could hate him and blame him and get on with her life.

So she could get on without him.

How had he become so very vital to her in so short a time? How had he changed so much? How had he come to say such things to her, to be so kind and gentle when they’d started their recent acquaintance with his vowing to destroy her? How had she come to trust him?

How did he remain the only person she would betray?

As if summoned by the traitorous thought, her brother stepped from the blackness. “This is fortuitous.”

Mara took a step back, away from him. “How did you know I was here?”

“I followed you from the orphanage. I saw him fetch you,” Kit said, eyes wild, face unshaven. “You make a handsome couple.”

“We are no such thing.”

He was quiet for a moment, then said, “What if you’d been betrothed to him instead? Then maybe we wouldn’t be in this mess.”

The question stung. What if.

If she had a shilling for every time the words had floated through her head, she’d be the richest woman in London.

The words didn’t help. All they did was fill one’s head with empty dreams.

But still, the words echoed. What if.

What if she’d married him, that handsome young marquess with the wicked smile, who kissed her as though she were the only woman in the world? What if they’d married, and built a life together, with children and pets and kisses trailed down her arm and silly private jests that proved they belonged to one another?

What if they’d loved?

Love.

She turned it around in her mind, considering its curves and angles.

Even now, she didn’t understand it as others did. As she had dreamed of it when she was a child. As she’d mourned it during that wicked month leading up to her wedding, when she’d cried into her pillow and bemoaned the lack of love between her and her ancient fiancé.

But now . . . now, she loved. And it was hard. And it was painful.

And she wished it would go away.

She wished it would stop tempting her with ideas of a different life. Imagining another life was all danger—the fastest way to pain and anguish and disappointment. She lived in reality. Never in dreams.

And still, the thought of that boy twelve years ago . . . of the man now . . .

Of the life they might have had . . . if everything had been different.

“Did you receive my letter?”

She nodded, hot guilt spreading through her. Kit was here. Temple, mere feet away. Even speaking to her brother felt like betrayal of the man who had come to mean so much.

“You understand why I need your help,” Kit said, coming closer, tone all kindness, devoid of the anger no doubt simmering. “I have to leave London. If those bastards find me . . .”

But they weren’t bastards. They were the most loyal men she’d ever met. And Temple—he had the right to be so angry. She’d stolen his life all those years ago, and Kit had nearly taken it from him again.

“Mara,” Kit said, an echo of her father. “I did it for you.”

She hated him then, the younger brother whom she had loved so much. Hated him for his impulsiveness and his recklessness and his stupidity. Hated him for his anger. His coldness. The choices he’d made that impacted them both. That had made her life this elaborate, unbearable mess.

“Don’t you see that he’s done this to you?” Kit said, the words smooth as silk. “The Killer Duke. He’s turned you into his whore, and he’s turned you against me.”

She might have accepted those words as fact at the beginning of all this, but now she knew better.

Somewhere, while he’d taught the boys of MacIntyre’s that vengeance was not always the answer, and protected Lavender from certain death, and saved Mara from attackers, he’d made her love him.

And in that, he’d set her free.

“You think I don’t see it? The way you think of him?” Kit came toward her, disgust in his words. “I see the way you look at him. The way he owns you, the way he manipulates you like a puppet on a string. You don’t care that he took everything from me.”

She didn’t. She cared only that Temple was avenged. That he finally, finally had the life for which he was destined—that perfect wife, those perfect children, the perfect world he’d deserved from birth, and that she’d stolen from him.

The only thing she had to give him.

Tears stung. “Go away, Christopher.” She chose the name purposefully, for he was no longer a child. And she would no longer be blamed by him. “If you are caught, they will punish you.”

“And you won’t stop them.”

Not even if she could. “I won’t.”

He hated her; she could see it in his eyes. “I need money.”

Always money. It was always paramount. She shook her head. “I don’t have anything for you.”

“That’s a lie,” he said, coming toward her. “You’re hiding it from me.”

She shook her head, telling him the truth. “I haven’t anything for you.” Everything she had was for the orphanage. And the rest . . . it was for Temple.

She had no room for this man.

“You owe me. For what I suffered. For what I still suffer.”

She shook her head. “I don’t. I’ve spent twelve years trying to convince myself that what I did was right. Thinking that I hurt you. That I made you.” She shook her head. “But I didn’t. Boys grow. Men make choices. And you should count yourself lucky that I do not scream until half of London comes running and finds you.”

He stilled. “You wouldn’t.”

She thought of Temple, still and wounded on the table in his rooms at the Angel. Thought of the way her chest had ached and her heart had pounded and she’d been terrified that he would not wake.

A centimeter left or right, and Kit would have killed the man she loved.

“I would not hesitate.”

His anger overflowed. “So you are his whore, after all.”

If only it were that easy. She stood firm in her place, refusing to cower.

When he saw her strength, his voice became a high-pitched whine. “You also made mistakes, you know.”

“And I pay for them every day.”

“I see that. With your pretty silk dress and your coat lined in fur and your mask made of gold,” he said. “What a hardship.”

He seemed to have forgotten what was to come for her. How she would assume the mantle of punishment for his crimes. “I have paid for it every day since I left. And more since I returned. You are lucky I have taken the brunt of the punishment for our sins. And for yours alone.”

“I don’t require your protection.”

“No,” she snapped. “You require my money.” He stiffened at the words. She knew that she had no choice but to drive the point home. “I should turn you over to him. You nearly killed him.”

“I wish I had.”

She shook her head. “Why? He never hurt us. He was innocent in all of this.” He was the only one.

“Innocent?” Kit spat, “He ruined you.”

“We ruined him!” she cried.

“He deserved it!” Kit’s voice rose to a fevered pitch. “And the rest of them took every penny I owned!”

Twenty-six and still a child. “Every penny of mine, as well, brother.” He stilled. “They did not force you to wager.”

“They did not stop me, either. They deserve what they received.”

“No. They don’t. He didn’t.”

“He’s turned you against me—me, who kept your secrets all these years. And now you choose him over me.”

By God, she did. She chose Temple over all else.

But it didn’t mean she could have him.

She was sorry for Kit in that moment, sorry that he’d lived the life he had—that they hadn’t been able to protect each other. To support each other. And she mourned him, that laughing, loving boy he’d been, who’d found her a pint of pig’s blood and sent the maids across the grounds of Whitefawn Abbey to ensure that she and Temple would be seen before she faked her own ruin.

Before she ruined a man who had never deserved it.

She shivered in the night, running her silk gloves over her arms, unable to keep the cold at bay, perhaps because it was coming from within. And there, wracked with sorrow, she reached into her reticule and extracted the only money she had. The last of her stash, designed to get her to Yorkshire. To start again.

She gave her brother the coins. “Here. Enough to get you out of Britain.” He sneered at the paltry amount, and she hated him all the more. “You are welcome not to take it.”

Kit was quiet for a long moment before he said, “So that’s it then?”

She swallowed back her tears, tired of this life she lived, of the way she’d had to run and hide for so long. Of the way she’d lived in the shadow of her past.

There was a part of her that thought the money might buy her freedom. It might send Kit away and give her a chance at something else. Something more.

Temple.

“That’s it.”

He disappeared into the darkness, the way he’d come.

Guilt flared, but not for Kit. Not for his future. She’d given him money and a chance at a new life. And, in doing so, she’d stolen Temple’s retribution.

Somehow, that was worse than all the rest.

She had betrayed him.

And it did feel like a betrayal, even as she stood outside the place where he planned to take his revenge. Even as she knew that she should loathe him and wish him ill for making his revenge somehow paramount, even as he treated her with kindness she’d never received from another.

If this was love, she wanted none of it.

Long after her brother left, Mara sat on a low wooden bench, feeling more alone than she ever had in her life. Tonight she would lose her brother, the orphanage, and this life she’d built for herself. Margaret MacIntyre would join Mara Lowe, exiled from Society. From the world she knew.

But none of that seemed to matter. Instead, all she could think was that tonight, she would lose Temple.

She would give him the life for which he’d been born—the highborn wife, the aristocratic children, the perfect legacy. She would give him the life that he had always wanted. Of which he’d dreamed.

But she would lose him.

And it would have to be enough.

She was beautiful.

Temple stood in the darkness, watching her as she sat straight and true on a low wooden bench carved from a single tree trunk, looking as though she’d lost her dearest friend.

And perhaps she had.

After all, in the moment she’d given Christopher Lowe the scraps from her reticule and sent him from England, she’d lost the brother she’d loved, and the only person who knew her story.

A story for which Temple would raze London.

He should loathe her. He should be furious that she’d helped Lowe escape. That she’d sent him running into the night instead of turning him over. The man had tried to kill him.

And yet, as he watched her, cold and alone in the Leighton gardens, he couldn’t loathe her. Because somehow, in all of this madness, he understood her.

He could see it in the way she held herself, stiff and unmoving, lost in her thoughts and the past. In the way she owned every one of her actions. In the way that she had never once cowed from him since that dark night that had changed both their lives.

She thought she deserved the sadness. The loneliness. She thought she’d brought it upon herself.

Just as he had.

Christ. He didn’t simply understand her.

He loved her. The words came like a blow, surprising and strong, and true. He loved her.

All of her, somehow—the girl who had ruined him and somehow, at the same time, set him free, and the woman who stood before him now, strong as steel and everything he’d ever wanted.

All those years, he’d imagined the life he might have had. The wife. The children. The legacy. All those years, he’d imagined being a part of the aristocracy, powerful and entitled and unquestioned.

And he’d never guessed that it would all pale in comparison to this woman and the life he might have had with her.

He would have saved her from his father. Would have loved her better. Harder. With more passion. He would have protected her. And he would have waited for her.

He knew it was wrong. And scandalous. But he would have waited until the day his father died, and then taken her for his own. And shown her the kind of life she deserved.

The one they both deserved.

She sighed in the darkness, and he heard the sorrow in the sound. The deep, enduring regret.

Was she sorry she hadn’t left with her brother? That she hadn’t taken the chance to run without ruin?

Ruin. Somehow, that goal had been lost in the darkness.

He’d waited too long. Come to know her. To understand her. To see her.

And now, all he wanted to do was to take her home and make love to her until they’d both forgotten the past. Until all they could think of was the future. Until she trusted him to share her thoughts and her smiles and her world.

Until she was his.

It was time to begin again.

He came out of the darkness. Into her light. “You must be frozen.”

She gasped, her chin snapping up, her eyes finding his in the small clearing. She shot to her feet. “How long have you been there?”

“Long enough.”

To see you betray me.

And, somehow, to realize I love you.

She nodded, her arms wrapped tightly about her. She was cold. He shrugged out of his coat, holding it out to her. She shook her head. “No. Thank you.”

“Take it. I am tired of standing by as you shiver in the cold.”

She shook her head.

He tossed it to the bench. “Then neither of us will use it.”

For a long moment, he thought she might not take it. But she was cold, and not an idiot. She pulled it on, and he took the movement as an excuse to come closer, wrapping the enormous coat around her, loving the way she curled into the heat of it. The heat of him.

He wanted to wrap her in his heat forever.

They stood in silence for a long moment, the scent of lemons curling around him, all temptation.

“I wish you would get on with it,” she said, breaking the quiet with anger and frustration.

He tilted his head. “With what?”

“With my unmasking. It is why I am here, is it not?”

It had been, of course. But now— “It is not yet midnight.”

She gave a little laugh. “Surely you needn’t stand on ceremony. If you unmask me early, then I can leave, and you can resume your position of valued duke. You’ve been waiting long enough for it.”

“Twelve years,” he said, watching her carefully, seeing the desperation in her eyes. “Another hour is nothing.”

“And if I told you it was something to me?”

His eyes tracked her face. “I would ask why you are suddenly so eager to be revealed.”

“I am tired of waiting. Tired of standing on tenterhooks, until you decide my fate. I am tired of being controlled.”

He wanted to laugh at that. The idea of his having any control over her was utter madness. Indeed, it was she who consumed his thoughts. Who threatened his quiet, logical life. Who threw it into disarray. “Have I controlled you?”

“Of course you have. You’ve watched me. Purchased my clothes. Inserted yourself into my life. Into the life of my charges. And you’ve made me . . .” She trailed off.

“Made you . . .” he prompted.

For a moment, he thought she might say she loved him. And he found that he desperately wanted the words.

She stayed quiet. Of course. Because she didn’t love him. He was a means to her end. As she was to him. Or, rather, as she had been in the beginning.

Anger flared. Frustration. How had he let this happen? How had he come to care for her even as she fought him? How had he forgotten the truth of their time together? What she’d done?

How did he no longer care?

The fighter in him pushed to the surface. “I know he was here, Mara,” he said, seeing the shock on her face. After a moment, he said, “You are not going to deny it?”

“No.”

“Good. At least there is that.”

Tell me the truth, he willed. For once in our cursed time together, tell me something I can believe.

As if she’d heard him, she did. “The night I found you,” she said, “I came to you because of Kit.”

He looked to the sky, frustrated. “I know that,” he said. “To restore his funds.”

She shook her head firmly. “Not in the way you think. When I opened the orphanage, pretending to be Margaret MacIntyre seemed like the easiest solution. A soldier’s widow was respectable. Would not tempt questions.” She paused. “But no bank would allow me to manage my own funds, not without a husband.”

“There are women who have access to banking facilities.”

She smiled, small and wry. “Not women with false identities. I could not risk questions.”

Understanding dawned. “Kit was your banker.”

“He held all the funds. The initial donations, and the money that came from each aristocratic father who left his by-blows with us. All of it.”

Temple exhaled his frustration. “And he gambled it away.”

She nodded. “Every penny.”

“And you were desperate to get it back.”

She lifted one shoulder. “The boys needed it.”

Why hadn’t she told him? “You think I would have let them starve?”

“I did not know.” She hesitated. “You were very angry.”

He paced the little copse of trees, finally placing his hand flat on one trunk, his back to her. She was right, of course, but still, the words stung. “I’m not a goddamn monster!”

“I didn’t know that!” she tried to explain, and he spun to face her.

“Even you thought I was the Killer Duke. Even then.” Disappointment raged through him. She was supposed to know him. To understand him. Better than any. She was supposed to know he was no killer. She was supposed to see that it was all lies.

But she’d doubted him, too.

He wanted to roar his frustration.

She saw it. Raised a hand to stop him. “No. Temple.”

More lies. But he couldn’t stop himself from asking, “Then why?”

She spread her hands wide. “You told me that nothing I could say—”

The memory flashed, intertwined on the platform in Hebert’s shop, at odds. He’d been furious with her. “Christ. I told you there was nothing you could say to make me forgive you.”

She nodded once. “I believed you.”

He released a long breath, a cloud in the cold air. “So did I.”

“And there is a part of me that believed I deserved to pay for his sins. I turned him into that as much as I turned you into this,” she said. “I left you both that night, and my father no doubt punished him brutally just as London punished you.” She grew quiet. “My mistakes seem never to end.”

He was quiet for a long time. “What utter nonsense.”

Shock coursed through her. “I beg your pardon?”

“You didn’t make him. You saved yourself. The boy made his own choices.”

She shook her head. “My father—”

“Your father is the greatest bastard in creation, and if he weren’t dead, I’d take great pleasure in killing him myself,” he said. “But the man was not a god. He did not mold your brother from clay and breathe life into him. Your brother’s sins are his and his alone.” He paused, the words echoing in the darkness, and added, softly, “As are mine.”

She shook her head, moved toward him. “Not so. If I hadn’t drugged you. Left you. Failed to return . . .”

“You are not a god, either. You are just a woman. As I am just a man.” He exhaled, harsh in the darkness. “You didn’t make me. And we have made this mess together.”

Her eyes were liquid in the darkness, and he wanted to hold her. To touch her. To take her home and make her his.

But he didn’t. Instead he said, “I only wish it were over.”

She nodded. “It can be,” she said. “It’s time.”

She meant the unmasking. And perhaps it was time. God knew he’d waited long enough to have this life back—the one he’d been promised. The one he’d loved and missed with a stunning, stinging ache.

But as he stared down at her, it was all gone, lost to this woman, who owned him in some remarkable, unbearable way. He lifted his hand to stroke her cheek in a long, slow caress. She leaned into the touch, and his thumb traced the curve of her lips, lingering.

Something had happened.

He whispered her name, and in the darkness it sounded like a prayer. “I can’t.”

Tears sprang to her eyes, betraying her confusion. Her frustration. “Why not?”

Because I love you.

He shook his head. “Because I find I no longer have a taste for vengeance. Not if it will hurt you.”

She went still beneath his touch, and he saw the myriad of emotions race through her before she reached for his hand. He pulled away before she could catch it and reached into his jacket pocket.

He extracted the bank draft—the one he’d planned to give her after her unmasking this evening. The one he had to give her now. The one that would release them both from this strange, painful world. Handed it to her.

Her brow furrowed as she took the paper in hand, reading it. “What is this?”

“Your brother’s debt. Free and clear.”

She shook her head. “It’s not what we negotiated.”

“It’s what I’m giving you, nonetheless.”

She looked up at him then, sadness and something else in her gaze. Something he hadn’t expected. Pride. She shook her head. “No.”

“Take it, Mara,” he urged. “It’s yours.”

She shook her head once more and repeated herself. “No.” She folded the draft carefully and tore it in half, then in half again, then in half again.

What in hell was she doing? That money could save the orphanage a dozen times. A hundred of them. He watched as she continued her tearing, until she was left with little bits of paper, which she sprinkled on the snowy ground.

His heart pounded in his chest as he watched the little white squares dust the toes of his boots. “Why would you do that?”

She smiled, sad and small in the darkness. “Don’t you see? I’m through taking from you.”

His heart pounded at the words and he reached for her, wanting her in his arms. Wanting to love her as she deserved. As they both deserved.

She let him catch her, pressing her lips to his in one long, lush kiss that stole his breath and flooded him with desire. He wanted to lift her and carry her away, and he cursed his wounded arm for making it difficult to make good on that desire.

Instead, he held her close and reveled in the feel of her lips on his, in the smell of lemons that consumed him, in the soft promise of her fingers in his hair. He ravished her mouth until she sighed her pleasure and melted against him. Only then did he release her, loving the way her fingertips found her lips, as though she’d never been kissed quite that way before.

As though she did not know that he was going to kiss her that way forever.

He reached for her once more, her name already on his lips, wanting to tell her just what she could expect from his kisses in the future, but she stepped backward, out of reach. “No,” she said.

He had waited for twelve years. He did not want to wait any longer.

“Come home with me,” he said, reaching for her. Wanting her. “It’s time we talk.”

It was time they did more than talk. He’d had enough of talk.

She danced back from his touch, shaking her head. “No.” He heard something firm in the word. Something unyielding.

Something he did not like.

“Mara,” he said.

But she was already turning away. “No.”

The word came on a whisper in the darkness as she disappeared for the second time that night.

Leaving him alone, and aching.