Undressed with the Marquess

by Caldwell, Christi

  “I know that.” She paused and lifted her gaze. “But perhaps it is time that it does,” she said in the gentlest of tones.

  “And what of you?” he returned.

  “Me?” she asked, with a quizzical furrow of her brow.

  “We’re not so very different.”

  “You and I?” She laughed.

  Wryness curved his lips up. “It is a certainty that there’s no compliment there.”

  Temperance stopped beside a narrow white oak and faced him. “We have always been different. That was always the problem.”

  Dare rested his palm along the trunk, just above her head. “Ah, but I’d argue that it was always that we are the same, and that was the source of the impasse we found ourselves at.”

  She laughed again. “You are mad.” Temperance made to step around him, but he dropped his other palm, framing her and blocking her retreat.

  “Am I? You were always responsible for Chance.”

  “That is not the same,” she protested.

  “Whose well-being and interests you always placed before your own. Did you not intervene on his behalf at every moment?” Her features tightened. Dare pressed his point. “All your rations went to him, all your funds went to seeing he had an apprenticeship.”

  “He is my brother.”

  “Very well.” Dare winged a brow up. “Then what of Miss Armitage?”

  Those endearing little creases in the middle of her high brow grew as she looked over to where Gwynn stood at the shore, tossing rocks. “What of her?”

  “Her hopes for marrying Chance?”

  “I don’t know what you are saying,” she muttered.

  “I know. That is my point.”

  At his knowing stare, Temperance frowned and ducked under his arm. She hurried after Kinsley, Gwynn, and Rose.

  “You’ve sacrificed for their dream.” He quickened his pace, falling into step beside her. “I’ve not heard you mention anything about what you want or need for yourself.”

  “I’m sure I did.”

  “Other than seeing your brother cared for.”

  She wrinkled her nose, that hint from long ago of her annoyance. “What else is there to say?”

  Dare slid into her path once more.

  Temperance stopped on a huff. Planting her hands on her hips, she gave him an exasperated look. “What now?”

  “What are your dreams?”

  “To see my brother happy,” she said without missing a beat. As if the matter were at an end, she fished a cleverly cut piece of fabric from the little satchel swinging on her arm. She proceeded to drag the needles through the material, her skill so flawless she didn’t even need to look as she walked and sewed.

  He suppressed a smile. “That hardly counts.”

  “Of course it does,” Temperance insisted, another one of those enchanting blushes on her cheeks. Her fingers flew, drawing the thread back and forth through the very edge of the material.

  Dare caught her lightly by the forearm, forcing her to stop.

  She stared up at him.

  “How was your coming to London to be with me, despite your vow not to, any different from my looking after people in society?”

  “Because . . . because . . .” She continued to flounder.

  “It isn’t my intention to question your sacrifice—”

  “Good,” she said between clenched teeth. “Then do not.”

  If she were another, he might be deterred. But this was Temperance, whose happiness had always meant more to him than even his own. As such, he went on. “However, I would have you realize that, even as you call me out for devoting my life to helping people in the Rookeries, you have done the same in your life, dedicating yourself to Chance and Gwynn.”

  “It’s not at all the same, Dare.”

  “Isn’t it, Temperance?” He leveled a stare on her. “Isn’t it?”

  Her mouth moved several times.

  “Temperance!” From the edge of the shore, Kinsley waved her over.

  “You know I’m right, Temperance,” he called after her as she hurried off to join the trio on the blanket.

  And as he made his way over to that gathering, he was forced to confront the possibility that she, too, had been right about him. What she raised . . . was entirely foreign. An idea he’d never allowed himself—the idea of having a family.

  And watching as Temperance lowered herself onto the blanket and Rose pitched herself onto Temperance’s lap, for the first time he wondered what it would be to have a future . . . for himself.

  Stretched out on the blanket with Kinsley reading several paces away, Temperance let her needle fly over the small child’s blanket she’d begun for Rose. All the while, she periodically stole furtive peeks over at Dare as he played with Rose. The little girl alternated between pitching pebbles at the water and tossing one at Dare.

  The girl’s aim was terrible, her throw weak, but every time she hurled her tiny missile, Dare would falter and stagger about, as if she’d landed the mightiest blow.

  He was, in short, everything she’d known he would be with a child.

  And perhaps that is why you shut the door on him that day.

  Because ultimately, she’d known she could never be a true wife to him. She’d reconciled not telling him by reminding herself that he’d not wanted a real marriage. Yes, he’d loved her, but he’d devoted himself fully to the Rookeries in every way he couldn’t to her.

  I would have you realize that, even as you call me out for devoting my life to helping people in the Rookeries, you have done the same in your life, dedicating yourself to Chance and Gwynn.

  They weren’t the same. And yet those silent protestations felt weak, even to her own mind. For she had given entirely of herself to care for Chance. It was a sacrifice that she would make any and every day, again and again, if she had to.

  Wasn’t it?

  Why must he do that? Why must he take the one thing she’d thought had made sense and throw a thousand questions behind it about what she wanted? About what her dreams truly were. About what she truly yearned for in life.

  “I’m worried about you.”

  She froze in her efforts. It had been inevitable.

  The talk with Gwynn was overdue. Temperance had managed to put off the discussion, but with Dare and Kinsley now occupied, there was no escaping.

  “You needn’t worry,” she assured her, continuing to study her sewing. Liar. Returning to London and living with Dare had proven even harder than she’d ever anticipated. She’d simply deluded herself into thinking she might somehow be unaffected by him all these years later.

  At the protracted silence, she made herself look up. Gwynn stared knowingly at her. “Don’t I? You kissed him the other night when I came upon you in the nursery.”

  “I didn’t kiss him.” She nearly had . . . and had made love to him after. Heat flared in Temperance’s cheeks.

  Gwynn stared at her with all the knowing in the world, one that called Temperance out as the liar she was.

  Her patience snapped. “Need I remind you . . . You were the one who suggested I consider it,” she whispered furiously. “You were the one who encouraged me to consider it.”

  “Consider offering him the help he needed. Not . . . spend the time that you do together.”

  Temperance jabbed her needle through the fabric. “Did you really think that was how this was going to work? That I would be thrust into the role of companion to his sister, accompanying him to events . . . and that I wouldn’t be with him?”

  It was her friend’s turn to color. “I didn’t expect—”

  Temperance didn’t allow her that response. “What? That it would be hard for me? That I wouldn’t be able to fully separate the feelings I had for him?” The minute she said it, Temperance wanted to call the words back.

  Her friend stared back with a heart-struck expression. “It is because of me.”

  “Nothing is because of you,” Temperance said quickly.

  Gwy
nn, however, wasn’t hearing it. “Oh, God.” The other woman touched a hand to her lips. “You did it so that Chance and I might have a way to be together.”

  How was your coming to London to be with me, despite your vow not to, any different from my looking after people in society?

  And mayhap in that, Dare had been so spot-on accurate. They . . . weren’t different. Oh, in how they went about looking after those individuals they cared about, they were . . . but not in that inherent need to support the ones who were reliant upon them.

  Temperance weighed her response . . . and in the end opted to protect Gwynn still with only a partial truth. “I did it for all of us.”

  “And for that gift, I’ll see you left with a broken heart,” Gwynn said with a bitter tinge to her voice.

  Temperance shivered.

  No. She wouldn’t have her heart broken again. She couldn’t . . . That organ had already been completely destroyed by him, long before this. It couldn’t hurt any more than what she’d lost . . .

  Their babe.

  Gwynn shoved a little elbow into her side, and as one they glanced over to where Kinsley openly watched them. The young lady sailed to her feet and then started for them.

  Her friend stood. “I’ll leave you to her.” Gwynn walked off, but not before she shot Temperance a look that was both warning and knowing.

  Abandoning her efforts on Rose’s blanket, Temperance rested her sewing on her lap and watched Dare and the babe at play.

  “What is it?” Kinsley asked at her side.

  For a moment, she thought the always-direct young woman spoke of the exchange between Gwynn and Temperance, and she found herself briefly tongue-tied.

  She followed the young lady’s stare to the forgotten stitchery. “It will be a blanket for Rose. For when . . .” Her throat closed up.

  For too brief a time, she’d had the illusion of a family and the joy of knowing a child.

  “For when she leaves,” Kinsley murmured.

  Temperance managed a jerky nod.

  “I shall miss her,” the other woman said, staring out as Dare and Rose chucked rocks into the river. “I feel badly about how I . . . reacted to that boy . . . Lionel.”

  “You found a stranger in your house. Your reaction wasn’t unfounded.”

  “You’re being entirely too forgiving. I’ve never seen anyone treat children . . . any children, with the kindness you and . . . he do.” He . . . as in Dare. The girl still couldn’t bring herself to fully speak his name. “I assumed it had something to do with my grandfather’s requirements for him.” The young woman nudged her chin in Dare’s direction. “I assumed his coming here today was because my grandfather wished for us to be seen out.”

  Ah, so the young woman knew about the duke’s intentions and efforts. Just how much did she know? And for the bond she’d forged with the young woman these past days, there was a sliver of guilt at not having been up front in what was expected of all of them. Temperance carefully selected her words. “You are aware—”

  Kinsley cut her off. “I know enough.” Plucking at the corner of the blanket, she stared on at Rose, toddling along the edge of the shore. “But he . . . isn’t quite doing anything to earn society’s approval or my attention.”

  And because of that, he’d thrown the young woman’s thoughts of Dare as mercenary sibling into question.

  “Dare was never one to do what was expected of him.” Which was likely why this task he’d been given was so very hard for him.

  “It is interesting. He is my brother, and yet you speak of him as one who knows him, and I know . . . nothing about him.”

  Kinsley fell silent for a long moment, and they sat in a companionable silence while Dare moved on to stone-hopping lessons. “There is a portrait,” Kinsley spoke haltingly. “Of my father and . . . him.”

  Him.

  As in Dare.

  The brother whose name Kinsley could still not bring herself to say.

  “He never did that with me,” she said, bitterness coating every syllable of that statement. “He rarely did anything with me or Perrin. All he cared about was seeing to his estates. He failed to see the children he had.” Kinsley was silent for several moments, and Temperance glanced over. The young woman watched on wistfully while Dare handed stones to Rose to hurl at the water. “Now, my brother, Perrin? He spent time with me like that. When I was invisible, he saw me. He played with me.” Kinsley’s face crumpled. “That is . . . was my real brother.”

  And Temperance ached all over, from the inside out, with the suffering this family had known. How much damage had been done. How much damage could not be undone. Dare and Kinsley, the siblings who remained, were both hurting.

  Temperance considered her words, and when she found them and at last spoke them, she did so with a gentle insistence. “Dare is your real brother, too—”

  She’d not even finished when the other woman cut in. “No, he’s not.” Kinsley drew her knees up and wrapped her arms about them. “Perrin was my brother. He was my friend. He was my confidant. He was my champion. That man?” The young lady’s eyes went to where Dare now scoured the ground for pebbles and rocks for Rose. “Your husband? He is a stranger who sees me and sees the money he stands to earn by being my brother.” Her lips twisted in a macabre rendering of a smile.

  Yes, there was truth to those intentions Dare had. And yet that was not all he was. Temperance didn’t believe Dare was blameless in the resentment his sister carried, but there were reasons to explain the barriers he kept up. “I met your brother when he was just fourteen and I was ten.” She was aware of Kinsley’s heightened focus on her face. “My”—her lips twisted with disdain—“father had me begging outside a scandalous club in the Dials. I didn’t realize at the time that he was really intending for some reprobate to . . . pay for me.”

  “Oh.” Kinsley’s breath caught on a gasp, and perhaps there should have been a greater sense of shame and embarrassment in Temperance speaking of her coarse, ruthless world. But there was not.

  Mayhap if the other woman did learn, she could know some of what drove . . . not just her brother in the Rookeries but all the people forced to live there. “Someone did come up to me that night.”

  “Darius,” the astute other woman murmured.

  It was the first time Temperance had ever heard Dare’s sister call him by name. She nodded, needing the young lady to know what manner of man he truly was. “I’d my palms out, and Dare came up to me and placed a sovereign in them. ‘You’re done here,’ he said in the finest speech I’d ever heard. I thought he was a prince.” Gazing at him, she grew wistful, that meeting so very clear in her mind. “And mayhap he was. He took me to a tavern and used his coin to feed me, and then he walked me onward to London, showing me the places I was best to avoid there. He provided me clues as to which men to avoid.” She cleared her throat, not able to elaborate any more for Dare’s innocent sister. “He became my friend that night. My champion. My protector.” Just as he was for so many others.

  Dare scooped up Rose, and holding her under the belly, he made as if to hurl the child into the water. Wild laughter spilled from the little girl’s lips, and the sight of it was too much. Temperance closed her eyes and imagined a different child in his arms.

  “I don’t want a protector,” Kinsley whispered. She wanted a brother.

  “No.” Neither did Temperance. Not anymore. She wanted so much more than that. Gifts that could never be hers.

  “I used to want a family,” the young lady confided. “I dreamed of one for myself.” There it was . . . that word: “dream.” “I wanted the husband who would be devoted and a father to our children, and I wanted children who would be happy and loving.”

  In short, she’d wanted everything she’d never known.

  The women went silent.

  Nor did it escape Temperance’s notice that the young woman spoke in the past tense. “There can still be that.” Those hopes that were dead to Temperance could still exist for Dare�
�s sister.

  Kinsley’s lips twisted up wryly. “Oh, no. I’ve tried my hand at love, and I want no part of it. Not again.”

  The gossips’ whisperings that day at the modiste’s resurfaced in Temperance’s mind.

  “Yes, they were correct,” Kinsley said tiredly to Temperance’s unspoken question. The other woman stretched her legs out and hooked an ankle across the other as she continued watching her brother and Rose at play. “I gave my heart where I oughtn’t. Nor do I have any intention of making myself an arm ornament for some fine lord, as my grandparents wish.”

  Temperance stilled. Dare’s hopes for that fortune were reliant upon his sister marrying. The same sister who’d no interest in entering into that state. Her mind slowed and then stopped altogether under the realization dawning at the back of her mind.

  She sucked in a breath.

  “You’re thinking of my grandparents’ requirements.”

  She opened her mouth, prepared to give the lie, and yet . . . could not. “I . . . You . . .”

  “Yes, I know about their offer to fill Dare’s pockets when I marry. Alas, it is fortunate for him that they allowed him an alternative to those funds.”

  “The alternative,” Temperance managed through a suddenly dry mouth.

  For God help her, she knew what that alternative was. The staggering weight of grief and loss and fury . . . There was that, too, all roiling in her breast, pounding there so that she wanted to toss her head back and keen from the grief.

  Rose raced over. “Kinnnnneeee,” the girl cried excitedly, grabbing for the young lady’s hand.

  Color spilled onto Kinsley’s cheeks, and she briefly resisted that show of affection. But even the most cynical couldn’t be immune to the babe’s charm. “Oh, very well,” Kinsley muttered, climbing to her feet. She let the child pull her onward, tugging her along . . .

  Temperance sat frozen and watched the brother and sister and the little girl, Rose.

  For a moment she thought he’d leave. His body stiffened, and knowing him as she did, she knew he wanted to. He wanted to flee any and all connection, even one that hadn’t yet occurred with the woman who was his sister.