No Good Duke Goes Unpunished

Chapter 2

As the door closed, clicking locks punctuating the quiet darkness of his home, it occurred to Mara that this could well be the biggest mistake she’d made in her life.

Which was saying something, considering the fact that two weeks after her sixteenth birthday, she’d absconded from her planned wedding to a duke, leaving his son to face false accusations of her murder.

His son, who was no doubt considering turning those false accusations into truth.

His son, who had every right to unleash his fury.

His son, with whom she stood now in an unsettlingly narrow hallway. Alone. In the dead of night. Mara’s heart raced in the confined space, every inch of her screaming to flee.

But she couldn’t. Her brother had made it impossible. Fate had turned. Desperation had brought her here, and it was time she faced her past.

It was time she faced him.

Steeling herself, she turned to do just that, trying to ignore the way his enormous form—taller and broader than any man she’d ever known—loomed in the darkness, blocking her exit.

He was already moving past her, leading the way up a flight of stairs.

She hesitated, casting a look back at the door. She could disappear again. Exile Mara Lowe once more. She had lost herself once before; she could do it again.

She could run.

And lose everything she had. Everything she was. Everything for which she had worked so hard.

“You wouldn’t go ten yards without my catching you,” he said.

There was that, as well.

She looked up at him, watching her from above, his face cast in light for the first time that evening. Twelve years had changed him, and not in the ordinary way—from a boy of eighteen to a man of thirty. Soft, perfect skin had given way to weathered angles and dark stubble.

More than that, his eyes held no hint of the laughter they’d held that night, a lifetime ago. They remained black as midnight, but now they held its secrets.

Of course he would catch her if she ran. That was why she was here, wasn’t it? To be caught. To reveal herself.

Mara Lowe.

It had been more than a decade since she’d said the name aloud. She’d been Margaret MacIntyre since the moment she’d left that night. But now, she was Mara again, the only way to save the one thing that mattered to her. The thing that gave her purpose.

She had no choice but to be Mara.

The thought propelled her upstairs, into a room that was part-library, part-study, and all male. As he lit the candles throughout, a golden glow spread over furniture large and leathered in heavy dark colors.

He was already crouching to light a fire in the hearth when she entered. It was so incongruous—the great duke setting a fire—that she couldn’t help herself. “You don’t have servants?”

He stood, brushing his hands on his massive thighs. “A woman comes in the mornings to clean.”

“But no others?”

“No.”

“Why not?”

“No one wants to sleep in the same house as the Killer Duke.” There was no anger in the words. No sadness. Just truth.

He moved to pour himself a scotch, but did not offer her one. Nor did he offer her a seat when he folded himself into a large leather chair. He took a long pull of amber liquid and crossed ankle over knee, letting the glass dangle from his grip as he watched her, black eyes taking her in, watching, seeing everything.

She folded her hands to control their trembling, and met his gaze. Two could play at this. Twelve years away from money and power and the aristocracy made for a strong will.

A will they shared.

The thought whispered through her on a thread of guilt. She’d chosen this life. Chosen to change everything. He hadn’t. He’d been a casualty of a child’s stupid, silly plan.

I am sorry.

It was true, after all. She’d never meant for that charming young man—all muscle and grace and wide, smiling mouth—to become an unwitting victim in her escape.

Not that she’d tried to save him.

She ignored the thought. It was too late for apologies. She’d made her bed; now she would lie in it.

He drank again, lids shuttering his gaze, as though she could miss the way he stared at her. As though she didn’t feel it right to her toes.

It was a battle. He would not speak first, which left it to her to begin the conversation.

A losing move.

She would not lose to him.

So she waited, trying not to fidget. Trying not jump from her skin with every crack of the logs in the fireplace. Trying not to go mad under the weight of the silence.

Apparently, he was not interested in losing, either.

She narrowed her gaze on his.

She waited until she could wait no longer, and then told him the truth. “I don’t like being here any more than you like having me.”

The words turned him to stone for a moment, and she bit her tongue, afraid to speak. Afraid to make things worse.

He laughed again—the laugh she’d heard earlier, outside—devoid of humor, a graveled expulsion that sounded more like pain than pleasure. “Amazing. Until this moment, I actually had allowed for the possibility that you have been a victim of fate as well.”

“Aren’t we all victims of fate?”

And she had been. She did not pretend that she had not been a willing participant in everything that had happened all those years ago . . . but had she known how it would change her . . . what it would do to her . . .

She stopped the lie from completing.

She would have done it anyway. She didn’t have a choice then. Just as she had no choice tonight.

There were moments that changed one’s life. And paths that came without a fork in the road.

“You are alive and well, Miss Lowe.”

The man was a duke, powerful and wealthy, with all of London at his feet if he wanted it. She lifted her chin at the accusation in his tone. “As are you, Your Grace.”

His eyes went dark. “That is debatable.” He leaned back in his chair. “So it appears that fate was not my attacker, after all. You were.”

When he’d caught her outside, before he’d known why she was there and who she was, there had been warmth in his voice—a hint of heaviness that she’d been drawn to, even as she’d known better.

That warmth was gone now, replaced with cold calm—a calm by which she was not fooled. A calm she would wager shielded a terrible storm.

“I didn’t attack you.”

Fact, even if it was not entirely truth.

He did not release her gaze. “A liar through and through, I see.”

She lifted her chin. “I never lied.”

“No? You made the world believe you were dead.”

“The world believed what it wished.”

His black gaze narrowed. “You disappeared, and left it to draw its own conclusions.”

His free hand—the one that did not grip his scotch in an approximation of casualness—betrayed his ire, fingers twitching with barely contained energy. She noticed the movement, recognizing it from the boys she’d met on the streets. There was always something that betrayed their frustration. Their anger. Their plans.

But this was no boy.

She was not a fool—twelve years had taught her a hundred lessons in safety and self-preservation, and for a moment, regret gave way to nerves and she considered fleeing again—running from this man and this place and this choice she’d made.

The choice that would both save the life she had built and tear it down.

The choice that would force her to face her past, and place her future in this man’s hands.

She watched those fingers move.

I never meant for you to be hurt. She wanted to say it, but he wouldn’t believe her. She knew that. This was not about his forgiveness or his understanding. This was about her future. And the fact that he held its key.

“I disappeared, yes. And I cannot erase that. But I am here now.”

“And we get to it, finally. Why?”

So many reasons.

She resisted the thought. There was only one reason. Only one that mattered.

“Money.” It was true. And also false.

His brows rose in surprise. “I confess I would not have expected such honesty.”

She lifted one shoulder in a little shrug. “I find that lies overcomplicate.”

He exhaled on a long breath. “You are here to plead your brother’s case.”

She ignored the flood of anger that came with the words. “I am.”

“He is in debt to his eyeballs.”

With her money.

“I’m told you can change that.”

“Can is not will.”

She took a breath, threw herself into the fray. “I know he can’t beat you. I know the fight with the great Temple is a phantom. That you always win. Which, I assume, is why you haven’t accepted one of his dozen challenges. Frankly, I’m rather happy you haven’t. You’ve given me room to negotiate.”

It was hard to believe his dark eyes could grow darker. “You are in contact with him.”

She stilled, considering the miscalculated reveal of information.

He gave her no time. “How long have you been in contact with him?”

She hesitated a second too long. Less. Enough for him to shoot from his chair and stalk her across the room, pressing her back, far and fast enough to send her tripping over her skirts.

One massive arm shot out. Caught her, the corded strength like steel across her back. Pulled her to him; she was caged against him. “For how long?” He paused, but before she could answer, he added, “You don’t have to tell me. I can smell the guilt on you.”

She put her hands to his chest, feeling the wall of iron muscle there. Pushed. The effort was futile. He would not move until he was ready.

“You and your idiot brother concocted an idiot plan, and you disappeared.” He was so close. Too close. “Maybe not idiot. Maybe genius. After all, everyone thought you were dead. I thought you were dead.” There was fury in the words, fury and something else. Something she could not help but wish to assuage.

“That was never the plan.”

He ignored the words. “But here you are, twelve years later, flesh and blood. Hale and healthy.” The words were soft, a whisper of sound at her ear. “I should make good on our past. On my reputation.”

She heard the anger in his words. Felt it in his touch. Later, she would marvel at her own courage when she looked up at him and said, “Perhaps you should. But you won’t.”

He released her, so quickly that she stumbled back as he turned away, pacing the length of the room, reminding her of a tiger she’d seen once in a traveling show, caged and frustrated. It occurred to her that she would gladly trade the wild beast for the Duke of Lamont in that moment.

Untamed, himself.

When he finally turned back, he said, “I wouldn’t be so certain. Twelve years marked as a killer change a man.”

She shook her head, holding his black gaze. “You are not a killer.”

“You’re the only one who knew that.”

The words were quiet and rife with emotion. Mara recognized fury and shock and surprise, but it was the accusation that unsettled her. It wasn’t possible that he’d thought himself her killer.

It wasn’t possible that he’d believed the gossip. The speculation.

Was it?

She should say something. But what? What did one say to the man falsely accused of one’s murder?

“Would it help if I apologized?”

He narrowed his gaze on her. “Do you feel remorse?”

She would not change it. Not for the world. “I am sorry that you were caught in the fray.”

“Do you regret your actions?”

She met his eyes. “Do you wish the truth? Or a platitude?”

“You could not imagine the things I wish.”

She could, no doubt. “I understand that you are angry.”

The words seemed to call to him, and he came toward her, glass still in hand, stalking her backward, across the too-small room. “You understand, do you?”

It had been the wrong thing to say. She skirted around an ottoman, holding her hands up, as though she could stop him, searching for the right thing.

He did not wait for her to find it. “You understand what it is to have lost everything?”

Yes.

“You understand what it is to have lost my name?”

She did, rather. But she knew better than to say it.

He pressed on. “To have lost my title, my land, my life?”

“But you didn’t lose all that . . . you’re still a duke. The Duke of Lamont,” she said, the words—things she’d told herself for years—coming quick and defensive. “The land is still yours. The money. You’ve tripled the holdings of the dukedom.”

His eyes went wide. “How do you know that?”

“I pay attention.”

“Why?”

“Why have you never returned to the estate?”

“What good would it have done if I returned?”

“You might have been reminded that you haven’t lost so very much.” The words were out before she could stop them. Before she realized how inciting they were. She scurried backward, putting a high-backed chair between them and peeking around it. “I did not mean—”

“Of course you did.” He started around the chair toward her.

She moved counter to him, keeping the furniture between them. Attempted to calm the beast. “You are angry.”

He shook his head. “Angry does not even begin to describe the depths of my emotion.”

She nodded, skipping backward across the room once more. “Fair enough. Furious.”

He advanced. “That’s closer.”

“Irate.”

“That, too.”

She looked behind her, saw the sideboard looming. This wasn’t a very large room, after all. “Livid.”

“And that.”

She felt the hard oak at her back. Trapped again. “I can repair it,” she said, desperate to regain the upper hand. “What’s broken.” He stopped, and for a moment, she had his full attention. “If I am not dead, you are not”—a killer—“what they say you are.” He did not reply, and she rushed to fill the silence. “That’s why I’m here. I shall come forward. Show myself to Society. I shall prove you’re not what they say you are.”

He set his glass on the sideboard. “You shall.”

She released a breath she had not known she was holding. He was not as unforgiving as she had imagined he might be. She nodded. “Yes, I will. I will tell everyone—”

“You shall tell them the truth.”

She hesitated at the words, hating them, the way they threatened. And still she nodded. “I shall tell them the truth.” It would be the most difficult thing she’d ever done, but she would do it.

She hadn’t a choice.

It would ruin her, but it might be enough to save what was important.

She had one chance to negotiate with Temple. She had to do it correctly. “On one condition.”

He laughed. A great, booming guffaw of laughter. Her brow furrowed at the noise. She did not like the sound, especially not when it ended with a wicked, humorless smile. “You think to barter with me?” He was close enough to touch. “You think tonight has put me in a negotiating frame of mind?”

“I disappeared once before. I can do it again.” The threat did not endear her to him.

“I will find you.” The words were so serious, so honest, that she did not doubt him.

Still, she soldiered on. “Perhaps, but I’ve hidden for twelve years, and I’ve become quite good at it. And even if you did find me, the aristocracy shan’t simply take your word for it that I am alive. You need me as a willing participant in this play.”

His gaze narrowed, and a muscle in his jaw twitched. When he spoke, the words came like ice. “I assure you, I will never need you.”

She ignored him. Forged ahead. “I shall tell the truth. Come forward with proof of my birth. And you shall forgive my brother’s debt.”

There was a moment of silence as the words fell between them, and for those fleeting seconds, Mara thought she might have succeeded in negotiating with him.

“No.”

Panic flared. He couldn’t refuse. She lifted her chin. “I think it’s a fair trade.”

“A fair trade for destroying my life?”

Irritation flared. He was one of the wealthiest men in London. In Britain, for heaven’s sake. With women tossing themselves into his arms and men desperate to gain his confidence. He retained his title, his entail, and now had an entire empire to his name. What did he know of ruined lives?

“And how many lives have you destroyed?” she asked, knowing she shouldn’t, but unable to keep herself from it. “You are no saint, my lord.”

“Whatever I’ve done—” he started, then stopped, changing tack with another huff of disbelief. “Enough. You are as much an idiot now as you were when you were sixteen if you think you hold a position to negotiate the terms of our agreement.”

She had thought that at the start, of course, but one look into this man’s cold, angry gaze made her see her miscalculation. This man did not want absolution.

He wanted vengeance.

And she was the path by which he would get it.

“Don’t you see, Mara,” He leaned in and whispered, “You’re mine, now.”

The words unsettled, but she refused to show him. He wasn’t a killer. She knew that better than anyone.

He might not have killed you . . . but you haven’t any idea what he’s done since.

Nonsense. He wasn’t a killer. He was simply angry. Which she’d expected, hadn’t she? Hadn’t she prepared for it? Hadn’t she considered her options before donning her cloak and heading out into the streets to find him?

She’d been alone for twelve years. She’d learned to take care of herself. She’d learned to be strong.

He moved away from her then, heading for one chair near the fireplace. “You might as well sit. You’re not going anywhere.”

Unease threaded through her at the words. “What does that mean?”

“It means that you turned up outside my door, Miss Lowe. And I have no intention of letting you escape again.”

Her heart pounded. “I’m to be your prisoner, then?”

He did not reply, but his earlier words echoed through her. You’re mine, now.

Dammit. She’d made a dreadful miscalculation.

And he left her little choice.

Ignoring the way he waved at the other seat by the hearth, she headed for the decanter on the far end of the sideboard, pouring first one, then a second glass, carefully measuring the liquid.

She turned to face him, noting one dark brow raised in accusation.

“I am allowed a drink, am I not? Or do you plan to take that along with your pound of flesh?”

He seemed to think about his response before saying, “You are welcome to it.”

She crossed the room and offered him the second glass, hoping he would not see the shaking in her hand. “Thank you.”

“You think politeness will win you points?”

She sat down on the edge of the chair across from him. “I think it cannot hurt.” He drank, and she exhaled, staring down at the liquid, marking time before she said, “I did not want to do this.”

“I don’t imagine you did,” he said, wryly. “I imagine you’ve quite enjoyed twelve years of freedom.”

That wasn’t what she’d meant, but she knew better than to correct him. “And if I told you I haven’t always enjoyed it? That it hasn’t always been easy?”

“I would counsel against telling me those things. I find that I’ve lost my sympathetic ear.”

She narrowed her gaze on him. “You are a difficult man.”

He drank again. “A symptom of twelve years of solitude.”

“I didn’t mean for it to happen the way it did,” she said, realizing even as she spoke the words that they were revealing more than she’d been willing to reveal. “We did not recognize you.”

He stilled. “We?”

She did not reply.

“We?” He leaned forward. “Your brother. I should have fought him when he asked. He deserves a trouncing. He was . . .” He hesitated. She held her breath. “He helped you run. He helped you . . .” He lifted a hand to his head. “ . . . drug me.”

His black eyes went wide with shock and realization, and she shot up from her chair, heart pounding.

He followed, coming to his full height—more than six feet, tall and broad and bigger than any man she’d ever known. When they were younger, she’d marveled at his size. She’d been intrigued by it.

Drawn to it.

He interrupted her thoughts. “You drugged me!”

She put the chair between them. “We were children,” she defended herself.

What’s your excuse now?

He hadn’t given her any choice.

Liar.

“Goddammit!” he said, his glass falling from his hand as he lunged toward her, missing his mark, catching himself on the edge of the chair. “You did it . . . again . . .”

And he collapsed to the floor.

It was one thing to drug a man once . . . but twice did seem overmuch. Even in one lifetime. She wasn’t a monster, after all.

Not that he would believe that when he woke.

Mara stood over the Duke of Lamont, now felled like a great oak in his own study, and considered her options.

He hadn’t given her any choice.

Perhaps if she kept telling herself that, she’d believe it. And she’d stop feeling guilty about the whole thing.

He’d threatened to keep her prisoner, like some monster.

Which of them was the monster?

Good Lord, he was enormous.

And intimidating, somehow, despite being unconscious.

And handsome, though not in a classical way.

He was all size and force, even motionless. Her gaze tracked the length of him, the long arms and legs in perfectly tailored clothes, the cords of his neck peeking out from above the uncravatted collar of his shirt, the stretch of bronze to his strong jaw and dimpled chin, and the scars.

Even with the scars, the angles of his face betrayed his aristocratic lineage, all sharp edges and long slopes—the kind that set women to swooning.

Mara couldn’t entirely blame them for swooning.

She’d nearly swooned herself, once.

Not nearly. Had.

When he was young, he’d been quick to smile, baring straight white teeth and an expression that promised more than pleasantry. That promised pleasure. His size, combined with that ease, had been so calm, so unpracticed that she’d thought him anything but the aristocracy. A stable boy. Or a footman. Or perhaps a member of the gentry, invited by her father to the enormous wedding that would make his daughter a duchess.

He’d looked like someone who did not have to worry about appearances.

It hadn’t occurred to her that the heir to one of the most powerful dukedoms in the country would be the most carefree gentleman for miles. Of course, it should have. She should have known the moment that they came together in that cold garden and he smiled at her as though she were the only woman in Britain and he the only man, that he was an aristocrat.

But she hadn’t.

And she certainly hadn’t imagined that he was the Marquess of Chapin. The heir to the dukedom to which she would soon become duchess. Her future stepson.

The man sprawled across mahogany and carpet didn’t look anything stepson-like.

But she would not think on that.

She crouched low to check his breathing, taking no small amount of relief in the way his wide chest rose and fell beneath his jacket in even strokes. Her heart pounded, no doubt in fear—after all, if he were to wake, he would not be happy.

She gave a little huff of laughter at the thought.

Happy was not the word.

He would not be human.

And then, with the giddiness of panic coursing through her, she did something she never would have imagined doing. Or, rather, she would have imagined doing, but never would have found the courage to do.

She touched him.

Her hand was moving before she could stop it. Before she really even knew what she was about. But then her fingers were on his skin—smooth and warm and alive. And ever so tempting.

Her fingers traced the angles of his face, finding the smooth ridges of the inch-long white scar along the bone at the base of his left eye, then down the barely-there bumps and angles of his once-perfect nose, her chest tightening as she considered the battles that would have produced the breaks. The pain of them.

The life he’d lived to wear them.

The life she’d given him.

“What happened to you?” The question came out on a whisper.

He did not answer, and her touch slid to his final scar, at the curve of his lower lip.

She knew she shouldn’t . . . that it wouldn’t do . . . but then her fingers were on that thin white line, barely there against rich skin, edging into the soft swell of his lip. And then she was touching his mouth, tracing the dips and curves of it, marveling at its softness.

Remembering the way it had felt on hers.

Wishing for—

No.

Her hand came away from him as though she’d been burned, and she turned her attention to the rest of him, to the way one arm spread haphazardly across the carpet, the victim of laudanum. He looked uncomfortable, and so she reached across him, intending to straighten that arm, to lay it flat against his side. But once his hand was in hers, she couldn’t help but consider it, the spray of black hair that dusted the back of it, the way the veins tracked like rivers across its landscape, the way the knuckles rose and dipped, scarred and calloused from years of fighting. Bruised with experience.

“Why do you do this to yourself?” She ran her thumb across those knuckles, unable to resist, unable to remain aloof in the feel of him.

In the memory of him—young and charming and handsome, with the world at his feet—tempting her like nothing else.

Nothing else, but freedom.

She shivered in the cool room, her gaze moving to the fire, where the flames he’d stoked had died away to a quiet ember. She stood and moved to add another log to the hearth, stirring the coals to raise the fire. Once golden flames licked and danced again, she returned to him, staring down at him arms akimbo, and took a moment to speak to him, finding the act much easier with his accusing eyes closed. “If you hadn’t threatened me, we would not be in this position. If you’d simply agreed to my trade, you’d be conscious. And I’d not feel so guilty.”

He did not reply.

“Yes, I left you holding the guilt for my death.”

And still nothing.

“But I swear I did not mean it to go the way I did. The whole thing got away from me.”

Yet still she’d run.

“If you knew why I did it—”

His chest rose in a long, even breath.

“Why I returned—”

And fell.

If he knew, he’d still be furious. She sighed. “Well. Here we are. And I am tired of running.”

No answer.

“I shan’t run now.”

It seemed important to say it. Perhaps because there was a part of her—a very sane and intelligent part of her—that wished to run. That wished to leave him here on his cold, hard floor, and escape as she had so many years ago.

But there was another part of her—not so sane, and not so intelligent—that knew that it was time for her penance. And that if she played her cards right, she could get what she wanted in the bargain.

“Assuming you negotiate.”

She turned to the sideboard, where the day’s paper sat, unread. She wondered if he were the kind of man who read his news each day. If he were the kind of man who cared about the world.

Guilt flared, and she pushed it away.

She tore the sheet of newsprint in half, then searched the drawers in the room until she found what she was looking for—a pot of ink and a quill. She scrawled a note, haphazardly waving the wet ink in the air as she returned to him, still as a corpse.

Extracting a hairpin, she crouched beside him again. “No blood this time,” she whispered to him. “I hope you’ll notice that.”

Still, he slept.

She pinned the note to his chest, reached into his boot to extract her knife, and made to leave.

Except she couldn’t.

At the door, she turned back, noting the chill in the room. She couldn’t leave him like this. He’d catch a death of cold. On a chair in the corner, there was a green and black tartan. It was the least she could do.

She had drugged the man, after all.

She was across the room and had the blanket in her hands before she could change her mind. She spread it across him, tucking it around his body carefully, trying not to notice the size of him. The way he exuded warmth and the tempting scent of clove and thyme. The memory of him. The now of him.

Failing.

“I’m sorry,” she whispered.

And then she left.