Except it wasn’t.
His carriage clattered down the street at breakneck speed, and he leapt from inside before it came to a stop, calling up instructions to the driver. “Get to the Angel. Tell them what’s happened. And find her.”
The carriage was off before he’d entered the house, and she held her breath in the darkness, promising herself that she wouldn’t speak. Drinking him in—the height and breadth of him. The way his hair fell in disheveled waves on his brow. The way his whole body hovered on the edge of movement as he extracted his key and opened the door.
But he did not enter; instead, he stilled.
And turned to face her, peering into the shadows.
He couldn’t see her. She knew it. And still, he seemed to know she was there. He stepped into the street. “Come out.”
She could not deny him. Refused to. She stepped into the light.
He exhaled, her name a white whisper in the cold. “Mara.”
She shook her head. “I didn’t mean to come. I shouldn’t have.”
He came toward her again. “Why did you do it?”
To give you your life. Everything you wanted.
She hated the words even though they were the truth. She hated that they represented something she was not. Perfection.
So she settled on: “It was time.”
He was in front of her then, tall and broad and beautiful. And she closed her eyes as he raised his good hand to her face and stroked his fingers across her cheek.
“Come inside,” he whispered.
The invitation was too tempting to deny.
Once the door was closed behind them and she was at the foot of the staircase, he spoke again. “The last time you were here, you drugged me.”
A lifetime ago. When she thought she could make a stupid arrangement with no repercussions. When she thought she could spend weeks with him without coming to know him. To care for him. “The last time I was here, you scared me.”
He started up the stairs to the library where she’d left him unconscious. “Are you scared now?”
Yes.
“As I am without my laudanum, I don’t think it’s relevant.”
He stopped. Turned back to look down at her. “It’s relevant.”
“Do you wish for me to be scared?”
“No.”
The word was so firm, so honest, that she couldn’t help herself. She followed him up the stairs, as if on a string. He did not stop at the library, instead climbing the next set of stairs, up into the darkness. She hesitated at their foot, struck by the keen sense that if she followed him, anything could happen.
And then struck by the keen realization that she didn’t care.
Or, rather, that she might want it to happen.
How had this man consumed her so quickly? How had she gone from thinking of him as the enemy to thinking of him as something infinitely more terrifying in mere weeks?
How had she come to love him?
She could not stop herself. She followed him up to darkness. Up to the unknown. At the top of the stairs, he lit a candle and moved to a large mahogany door.
She really should speak.
“I think it best if I speak to your newspaperman,” she started up again. “Tell him the entire story—as was our agreement—and then leave you in peace, your perceived sins absolved. In fact,” she babbled, “I should really leave you now. I don’t belong here.”
He grasped the handle and turned to face her, the golden light of the candle flickering over his handsome face. “You’re not going anywhere until we speak.” He opened the door and let her enter before him.
She came up short just inside the room. “This is a bedchamber.”
He set the candle down. “Indeed it is.”
And what a chamber it was, utterly masculine with its heavy oak and its dark wall coverings and books everywhere—piled on tabletops and in one of the chairs by the fireplace, and stacks around the posters of the bed—
The massive bed.
“This is your bedchamber.” She stated the obvious.
“Yes.”
Of course he had a massive bed. He needed to fit in it. But this one rivaled the Bed of Ware.
She couldn’t take her eyes from it, from its great wooden posts and the web of slats that made up the utterly masculine headboard in beautifully wrought oak, and the lush coverlet that promised Heaven even as it was no doubt woven in Hell.
“We are to speak here?” The words came out on a squeak.
“We are.”
She could do this. She’d been on her own for twelve years. She’d faced far more terrifying moments than this one. But she wasn’t certain that she’d ever faced any moment more tempting.
She turned to him. “Why here?”
He was approaching, having left the candle on a nearby table, and his face was deep in shadow. Her heart began to race in her chest, and perhaps she should have been afraid. But she wasn’t. There was no threat in the movement. Only promise.
“Because once we have spoken, I’m going to make love to you.”
The frank, honest words tore the ground from beneath her, and her racing heart began to thunder, so loud in her ears that she was certain he could hear it. “You are?” she asked.
He nodded once. All seriousness. “I am.”
Good Lord. How was a woman to think, knowing that?
He continued. “And then I am going to marry you.”
Her hearing was failing her.
“You can’t.”
It wasn’t possible. She was ruined. And he was a duke.
Dukes did not marry ruined scandals.
“I can.”
She shook her head. “Why?”
“Because I wish to,” he said, simply, moving to light the fire. “And because I think you wish to as well.”
He was mad.
She watched him crouch low in the glow of the flames, silhouetted in orange light. Prometheus, stolen to Olympus to thieve fire from the gods. He was magnificent.
He stood and slipped his wounded arm from its sling before taking the large, empty chair by the fire, removing the black slash of fabric that kept his wounded arm in place before extending his good arm toward her. “Come here.” The words should have sounded like a command, but were a request.
She could have refused.
But she found she did not wish to.
She approached, heading for the chair piled high with books, prepared to move them and make space for herself, but he caught her hand in his. “Not there. Here.”
He meant for her to share his chair. To share his lap.
“I couldn’t—” she said.
White teeth flashing in the firelight. “I shan’t tell.”
She desperately wanted to join him, but she knew better. She knew that if she were in his lap, touching him, she’d never resist him. She hesitated, desperate for clear thought. “I thought you were angry with me.”
“I am. Quite. Very, even.”
“Why? I did as you wished. I returned your name.”
He watched her for a long moment, those black eyes seeing everything. “Mara,” he said softly, turning her palm to him, running his fingers over the silk there, sending heat shooting through her as though she were wearing nothing at all. As though they were skin to skin. “What if we did not wear the mantle of our past? What if we weren’t the Killer Duke and Mara Lowe?”
“Don’t call yourself that,” she snapped.
He tugged her closer. “I suppose I can’t anymore. You’ve ruined my reputation.”
She stilled. “I thought you wanted it ruined.”
He tugged again, spreading his thighs, pulling her between them. Staring up at her with that serious black gaze that seemed to promise everything she’d ever wanted if only she’d give
in to him. “I thought I did, too.”
Confusion flared. “But you didn’t?”
He captured her in his good arm, pulling her close, pressing his face into her skirts, his hands stroking down her legs, leaving heat and confusion in their wake. She could not stop herself from threading her fingers through his hair, hating that the gloves kept her from feeling its softness. From touching him.
He rocked his face against the soft swell of her, and whispered, “You gave up too much.”
She shook her head. “I righted a wrong. You were innocent.”
He laughed into the silk of her dress, the sound coming on a warm breath that sent a shiver of pleasure through her. “I am not innocent. The things I’ve done . . .”
“The things you’ve done are because of what I did to you,” she said, loving the feel of his hands on her, of his face against her. Of him.
“No,” he said. “Enough of that lie. I’ve told it enough for both of us. The things I’ve done are mine to bear. They are who I am. Who I was.” He looked up at her. “I was no prize to begin with.”
It wasn’t true, of course. “Nonsense. You were—”
“I was an entitled, arrogant ass. That night we met. The first time?”
She thought of him then, fresh-faced, with a quick smile. “Yes?”
“I followed you to your bedchamber. I assure you, it didn’t occur to me that we might forge a love for the ages.”
She smiled. “I assure you, Your Grace, I was not thinking such things, either.”
“Was I rude to you?”
She shook her head. “No.”
He did not meet her gaze, instead asking her torso, “Would you tell me if I were?”
Her hands slid down his cheeks, tilting his face up to hers. “It occurs to me that few men would concern themselves with such things,” she said, unable to keep the surprise from her tone. “Few men would care, considering that the night in question left you unconscious and thought responsible for a murder you did not commit. A murder that did not occur.”
He was quiet for a moment, thinking on what she’d said, and she resisted the urge to prompt him into speech. Finally, he said, “I am very happy that it did not occur.”
He tugged her toward him again, and she toppled into his lap. Into his arms, and she should have protested, but they both seemed to have lost their minds, and she found she did not care.
His arms came around her, and she could not help but say, “I don’t understand why you tossed out revenge.”
One of his hands slid into her hair, working at the pins that held it together. She felt the wild mass protesting its moorings as he slowly removed them. “I don’t understand why you gave it to me anyway.”
The single hand worked gloriously through her hair, massaging her scalp, sending waves of pleasure through her as her hair came down around her shoulders.
Perhaps it was the luxurious caress that made her tell the truth. “You freed me, but it wasn’t freedom.”
His touch stilled as he considered the words, then began anew when he said, “What does that mean?”
She closed her eyes. Leaned into his caress. Told a half truth. “You left me bound by my actions. By the things I’ve done to you.” She stopped, but his touch continued, drawing more words forth. “Not just twelve years ago. The night Kit met you in the ring. Tonight.” She released a long breath, hating the guilt that consumed her over what she’d done that night. She captured the hand of his wounded arm, held it tight in hers. “Tonight, I betrayed you, and you freed me.”
And I love you.
And I could give you the one thing you wanted.
She didn’t say it. Couldn’t.
Was afraid of what would come if she did.
Afraid he might laugh.
Afraid he wouldn’t.
Her eyes opened, finding his, hot and focused on her. “You think too much of me.”
“When was the last time someone thought of you, Mara?” he asked, his fingers sliding free of her scalp, tracing the rise of her cheekbones, the column of her neck, the ridge of her shoulders. “When was the last time someone cared for you? When have you ever allowed it to happen?”
He was mesmerizing. The barely-there touch on her skin, the soft skim of his breath as he spoke. She shook her head.
“When have you ever trusted someone?”
I would never have let him hurt you.
The words that had nearly destroyed her in the ballroom that evening whispered through her. The promise that even then, twelve years earlier, without knowing a thing about her, he would have protected her.
The thought devastated her with its temptation.
She shook her head. “I can’t remember.”
He sighed, pulling her close, setting his lips to her forehead and cheek, to the curve of her jaw and the line of her neck and the corner of her mouth. She turned to him, wanting to kiss him in earnest. Wanting to hide from the overwhelming thoughts he planted in her mind. Wanting to hide from him.
In him.
But he wouldn’t allow it.
“You once asked me how I came by the name Temple.”
She stilled, not certain she wanted the truth now. Not certain she could face it. “Yes.”
“It’s where I slept the night I arrived in London. After my exile.”
Her brow furrowed. “I don’t understand. You slept in a temple?”
He shook his head. “Under one. I slept under the Temple Bar.”
She knew the monument, mere blocks away on the eastern edge of the city, marking the place where the unfortunates of London toiled and lived, and she thought of that bright-faced young man—the one who’d shown her kindness and pleasure—there, alone. Miserable. Terrified.
“Were you—” She tried to find the words to finish the question without insulting him.
His lips twisted in a humorless smile. “Whatever you are thinking . . . the answer is likely yes.”
It was a miracle he could look at her.
It was a miracle he could be near her.
She did not deserve him.
“What happened after the first night?” She asked.
“There was a second, and a third,” he said, working at the buttons of her glove with one skilled hand, doffing the garment with the same efficiency with which he’d donned it. “And then I learned to make my way.”
He slid the silk from her fingers and she immediately placed the hand on his arm, feeling the muscles there bunch and ripple beneath the touch. “You learned to fight.”
He turned his attention to the other glove. “I was big. And strong. All I had to do was forget the rules of boxing that I’d learned at school.”
She nodded. She’d forgotten every rule she’d ever learned as a child in order to survive once she’d run. “They no longer applied.”
He met her gaze as the second glove slid off. “It worked well for me. I was angry, and gentlemen’s rules did little to assuage that. I fought on the streets for two years, taking any fight with money to pay.” He paused, then smiled. “And any number of fights without money to pay.”
“How did you come to the Angel?”
His brow furrowed. “Bourne and I had been friends at school. When he lost everything that was not entailed, he found himself down on his luck, and we decided to form an alliance. He ran dice games. I made sure the losers paid.” She was surprised by the turn of events, and he saw it. “You see? Not so honorable after all.”
“What then?” she prodded, desperate to know the story.
“One night, we went too far. Pushed too hard. And backed a group of men into an unpleasant corner.”
She could imagine. “How many of them?”
He shrugged his good shoulder, his hand sliding down the side of her thigh, distracting her. “A dozen. Maybe more.”
Her attention returned to him. “Against you?”
“And Bourne.”
“Impossible.”
He smiled. “So little faith in me.”
Her brows shot up. “Am I incorrect?”
“No.”
“Then what?”
“Then Chase.”
The mysterious Chase. “He was there?”
“In a sense. We’d been fighting for what seemed like an age, and they kept coming—I really did think we were done for.” He pointed to the scar at the corner of his eye. “I couldn’t see out of my eye for the blood.” She winced, and he instantly stopped. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have—”
“No,” she said, lifting her hand to the thin white line, tracing it with her fingers, wondering what he would do if she kissed it. “I just don’t like the idea of you hurt.”
He smiled, capturing her hand and bringing it to his lips, placing a kiss on the tips of her fingers. “But drugged?”
She met his smile with her own. “At my hands, it’s a different matter.”
“I see,” he said, and she loved the laughter in his voice. “Well . . . suffice to say, I thought we were done for. And then a carriage pulled up and a group of men piled out—and then I thought we were definitely done for,” he added. “But they fought on our side. And I didn’t care who they worked for, as long as Bourne and I lived.”
“They worked for Chase.”
Temple inclined his head. “So they did.”
“And then you worked for him.”
He shook his head. “With. Never for. From the beginning, the offer was clear. Chase had an idea for a casino that would change the face of aristocratic gaming forever. But that idea required a fighter. And a gamer. And Bourne and I were precisely that combination.”
She let out a long breath. “He saved you.”
“Undoubtedly.” He paused, lost in thought. “And never once believed me a killer.”
“Because you weren’t,” she said, this time having no choice but to lean in and press a kiss to his temple. She lingered on the caress, and he caught her close. When she pulled away from him, he moved to capture her lips.
They lingered there, tangled together for a long moment, before Mara pulled away. “I want the rest of the story. You became unbeatable.”
No Good Duke Goes Unpunished Page 30