Chapter 20
Say something.
Say anything.
And yet he did not.
There was just a thick silence punctuated by the harsh rasp of his breath, that ragged intake and exhale of air the only indication that she’d thrown him into the same tumult that ravaged her now.
He took several steps toward her, and she in equal parts hungered for his nearness and yet could not bear for him to be close.
“Why . . . didn’t you tell me?” he whispered.
Temperance hugged her arms tight to her middle once more. “I should have.” She’d told herself it wouldn’t have brought their daughter back or eased the memories or erased her suffering. She’d wallowed in her resentment of his not having been there when she needed him. Now, Temperance could admit what had compelled her—fear. For the moment she revealed what she had, she would have to own all the ways in which her body was now a failure in a task expected of it. “It . . . was easier not telling you than thinking that you’d reject me.”
“You thought I would reject you?” he whispered. “I should have been there when you needed me most . . . and I was not.”
That was what Dare would focus on . . . his sense of guilt and obligation for not having taken care of her.
Moisture dampened her cheeks, and she touched the backs of her palms to them. Tears. At some point, she’d begun crying. When he’d come to her all those years ago, she’d turned him away. She’d told herself it had been because he’d lost the right to share in her grief. He’d not deserved to know. She blotted them several times. “Chance remained behind. He saw to the burial. He kept my father at bay, allowing me the time to make my escape.”
It had been the first time, and not the last, when the brother she’d looked after had shifted roles and come to care for her.
“Where?” he asked hoarsely.
“I don’t know what you are—”
He glanced over his shoulder at her. “Where is . . . she?”
“St. Abbey. I . . . I’ve never been. It is an unmarked grave. He could . . . We could not afford more.”
Dare caught the back of the chair as if to keep himself upright.
Their daughter rested in an unmarked grave in the Rookeries. His breath rasped noisily. “We were . . . very nearly a family.”
She caught the inside of her cheek, hard enough to draw blood, the metallic tinge of it filling her senses. “Yes,” she whispered. “Very nearly.”
And now, a fate that could never be.
He lifted his gaze to hers, those dark-brown eyes ravaged. “I am . . . so sorry,” he whispered.
Temperance, however, didn’t want his apologies. She wanted him to understand what his decisions had cost him . . . and what they would continue to cost him if he was unable to change.
“I didn’t tell you this to make you feel guilty.” It had never been about that. “You don’t let yourself form true connections to people. You make every effort to destroy everything that is good in your life. It’s why you insist on keeping Avery Bryant in your life.” She gave him a sad and, worse, pitying look. “It is why you left after marrying me.” Her heart bled from pain. “It is why you are selling items that mean so much to your sister.”
With that she started past him.
Stop me.
Say something more . . .
Because surely there had to be some words more than . . . this?
But as she left, there was only silence.
Dare had lived just ten years with his family. In that time he’d alternated staying at the townhouse or the country properties in Sussex, Kent, and Cornwall. Those memories had begun to lose clarity, time’s passage having dimmed them so that the years may have existed as only a dream he’d carried within.
For almost two decades he’d dwelled in East London.
Even after he’d agreed to return and squire his sister about town, Dare had always planned on returning to the Rookeries.
Once his obligations had been met and his pockets lined, he was to have returned to the place that he’d known to be home.
And now, he was back.
Dare strode through the streets of London, a man possessed. He’d walked from Mayfair to East London, familiar streets. And as he stalked through them, he was a man with one intent, one purpose, channeling all his regrets and misery and grief.
I was home. Chance came. He urged me to leave. I thought you were coming. I was so s-sure of it . . .
A babe.
There’d been a babe. A tiny one, too small to survive, but who would have become as strong as her mother.
Not him. Dare wasn’t strong. He’d never been. Oh, he’d thought himself so. But she, she had confronted life at every turn and, as she’d said, lived a life that was hard but honorable. All the while, he’d justified his dishonor by the actions of the men whom he robbed.
Dare paused at the end of the pavement, and squinting, he peered ahead.
Drunks filled the streets of East London. They were everywhere . . . But every one of them, they had their own corner. Their own place.
Abaddon had been king of his.
The man slumped with his eyes half-closed, however, bore no hint of a king, but a rat in the streets. Older, greyer, more wrinkled, and more bloated from the alcohol that he subsisted on, he remained largely the same street thug who’d worked for Diggory, feared by nearly all. By the life he’d lived and the spirits he’d consumed, the man should have been dead twenty times before this one.
Of course Temperance would have been correct even in this. The mean bastard was too stubborn to die. His soul was too black for Satan. This was the man. The one who’d hurt Temperance. Countless times. The man responsible for the black-and-blue bruises she’d sported.
At his approach, Abaddon Swift tried to straighten. A silly, spirit-induced smile tipped those fleshy lips up. “As Oiiii liiiiive an’ breathe. The marquesssss ’as returned. Tole everyone it was foolish to think ya’d ever quit the streee—”
Dare didn’t break stride. He greeted Abaddon Swift with a fist to the face.
Already propped against the wall as he was, Abaddon’s head knocked against the brick with a sickening thunk; the ferocity of that blow would have sent most men on to meet their maker, or in this bastard’s case, the Devil.
Abaddon howled as his already bent nose gave with a satisfying crack. Wiping the back of his ripped, dirt-stained sleeve across his face, Temperance’s father smeared blood across his sunken cheeks.
With rage pumping through him, Dare gripped Abaddon by the arms and propelled him back once more, forcing another squeal from the drunk’s lips. “Bastard,” Dare hissed. “I should have ended you years ago.” And yet for all his crimes, he’d not been able to make himself a murderer. Temperance, however, had deserved that of him. She’d deserved for Dare to kill the monster for the violence he had visited upon her again and again. Growling, Dare brought his knee up hard between the other man’s legs.
Cradling his crotch, Abaddon went down, collapsing in a heap. Temperance’s father writhed and squirmed upon the dank cobblestones.
Dare planted the tip of his boot in the older man’s stomach, and all the air left Abaddon on a hiss.
It wasn’t enough. With this fierce hungering to end the other man, Dare proved himself very much of this world. This was why he’d been unable to go back all those years ago . . . This was who he was. He towered over Abaddon, reveling in the bastard’s pathetic whimpering.
A haze of bloodlust clouded Dare’s vision as he drew his arm back again to deliver another blow, the crushing one he wanted to . . .
The other man peered up at him, cowering like the animal he was. Cowering . . . as Temperance likely had as a girl. And in that moment, Dare saw her in his mind’s eye . . . defiant and bold and proud, even as she’d taken a ruthless, vicious beating at the hands of the one who’d sired her.
Dare’s fist remained suspended.
“I should kill you,” Dare seethed. He should have
done so years ago. He’d let him live too many times before. If he’d done so, if he’d not balked at having that degree of violence on his hands, his child would be alive even now, and Dare, that little girl he’d never known, and Temperance could have been a true family.
That seemed to penetrate Abaddon’s drunken stupor. Fear wreathed his features. “Ya going to finally do it, theeennn?”
That was what Dare should do. It was what he wanted to.
He warred with himself.
And yet . . . he’d not have this man’s blood on his hands. Not in that way. He slackened his grip. “You can hide, but your days? They are at an end. You’ll be dealt with.” He’d the influence now to see that justice was done.
“Why didddn’t ya off me?” the other man wheezed. He spat out a mouthful of blood, and with it went one of his last few remaining teeth. His eyes clenched as he rolled from one side to the next. “Ya ’ad plenty o’ opportunities.”
Because Dare had convinced himself that their business was different. He’d severed all ties with Diggory’s people, had believed the streets were big enough for all of them.
He’d been wrong.
About so much.
Abaddon finally stopped his fidgeting. He lay there so motionless, so still, that Dare peered closer to see if the bastard was either dead or passed out.
Fate wouldn’t be that kind.
Temperance’s father opened his eyes. “Ya found ouutt.” Abaddon grunted. “Surprised she didn’t tell ya before.”
There’d been nothing Dare and Temperance hadn’t shared . . . until they’d shared nothing. Dare clenched and unclenched his jaw. However, he’d offer nothing about what was between him and Temperance, not to this man. Whether or not he’d sired her, he was nothing to her.
Turning on his heel, Dare left Abaddon Swift lying on the ground. There’d been no peace or satisfaction this night. Beating the other man didn’t change anything. It wouldn’t bring back the daughter he’d never known. It wouldn’t erase the time and distance that had sprung between Dare and Temperance.
“Youuuu’re angry with meeee,” the other man called after him. “Bee angry with yarrrself. Ya were the one who leffft. Ya were the one who trusssted all the wrong people.”
Mayhap that was what tore Dare up most . . . the fact that the divide between him and Temperance was a product of his own doing. He stopped midstride and wheeled around. “What did you say?”
Abaddon blinked his watery, bloodshot eyes several times. “Whhhaaat diiiid Oi say?”
Storming over, Dare gathered Abaddon once more by the shirtfront and dragged him to his feet. He backed him against the building. “What did you say?”
Abaddon blinked and scratched at the thatch of greasy hair atop his head. “Nottt sure.” His head bobbed sideways, and his mouth fell open.
Soon, a bleating snore spilled from the bastard’s lips.
Dare released him, and left him there, sleeping like the dog he was.
Suddenly, the fight went out of him. Dare resumed his restless trek through the Rookeries. Beating the other man senseless hadn’t brought any true solace. There could be none anymore.
The memory of everything Temperance had shared, every charge she’d leveled, every heartbreak she’d revealed went with him.
He destroyed . . . everything. It wasn’t chance that he put himself in precarious positions and had found himself confined to Newgate at various points through his life. Temperance had seen as much and called him out for it.
And just as she’d charged, it was why, shortly after marrying her, he’d left with Avery Bryant to carry out a series of thefts in the countryside. From a place not even so very deep down, he’d known she’d not have approved, but he’d gone anyway . . . because he’d always made the decisions that had proven the wrong and worst ones.
Dare continued striding onward until he reached the rusted gates of St. Abbey. He didn’t stop but passed through those high metal openings that hung forlorn and broken, as untended as the worn, crooked stones within.
Numb, Dare made himself walk onward. As he went, he scanned the tombstones, some with identifying markers. Young children. Old men and women. Other markers had faded with time under the weathering.
And then, there were the others. The ones with no etching upon them, their existence marked only by a blank stone.
Dare stopped beside a random tomb overgrown with moss; the grass had grown, covering most of the stone so that only the smallest bit was visible underneath.
His breath formed a little cloud of white in the cool spring night air. He sank onto his haunches and proceeded to clean the unmarked grave. Tugging weeds and pushing back the earth with his fingers until the stone rose up above the dirt.
All these years, he had believed his life had been one of meaning. He’d seen what he’d done as a noble mission to be that which he’d most needed as a young boy in the Rookeries—salvation.
You don’t let yourself form true connections to people. You make every effort to destroy everything that is good in your life. It’s why you insist on keeping Avery Bryant in your life . . . It is why you left after marrying me . . . It is why you are selling items that mean so much to your sister.
Ya were the one who trusssted all the wrong people.
Those words Temperance had spoken blended with the drunken ones her father had uttered . . . moments ago? A lifetime ago?
Dare scraped a hand through his hair.
What had it all been for?
He’d merely . . . existed. It had been an unwitting decision he’d made to never truly experience life in the hopes that other people might. Because he’d known his worth. Ultimately, he’d known the world was all right without him in it. After all, his own parents had gotten on just fine in his absence. The gift of a family wasn’t for people like him.
And yet it was a gift that he’d unknowingly been granted . . . and squandered, as he did everything.
Restless, Dare pushed to his feet and walked a small little circle, staring, searching . . . for her—the child Temperance had been forced to deliver on her own before fleeing so that she might survive.
Tears welled, and this time, in the presence of East London’s ghosts, he let them fall.
He wanted a future . . . He wanted a life with her in it. Where the money dangled by his grandfather had represented what he’d craved, it wasn’t enough. Not anymore. Mayhap it had never really been. There was . . . her. And whether there was a child or not born of them . . . born to them . . . it didn’t matter more than she did.
His grandfather’s money would save countless lives, and yet he’d not have it at the expense of all else: his sister, Kinsley, whom he’d been pushing away since he’d discovered her existence. He’d never have let the duke turn Temperance into a broodmare . . . which ultimately was what the alternate route to those funds had been.
He was done stealing and selling himself.
He wanted to begin again.
Nay . . . he wanted a new beginning, with Temperance and his sister.
And yes, his marquessate was bankrupt, but there were connections afforded him now . . . and wealth he could squeeze out of his estates until he could turn it into something more. The help he would provide would be far more limited than that which he’d offered throughout the past twenty years. But there were also people who were reliant upon him who would benefit as well. As Spencer had pointed out, the servants were also men, women, and children whose livelihoods, security, and ability to coexist with their families all depended upon Dare’s commitment to this new life.
Feeling a lightness go through him unlike any he’d ever known, Dare wound his way through the dank streets he’d called home . . .
But they hadn’t been a home.
Not truly.
Home would only ever be where Temperance was.
Temperance, who’d helped him see the life he’d lived had been one filled with excuses. Who at every turn had urged him to be more . . . not because she’d reviled
him as his father had . . . but because she’d truly believed there was good in him. She’d seen it in Dare, who’d been unable to see it in himself.
When he finally found his way back home, Dare bounded up the steps past a waiting servant and called out a greeting to the boy.
“My lord,” he called after Dare.
“Thank you, James,” he said, whistling.
“I was told to tell you—”
Pushing the door open, he let himself inside, hungry to see her.
Except . . .
She was already there . . . beside Spencer.
Temperance, in her nightdress and wrapper.
Her cheeks whitewashed.
And . . . she was not alone.
A tall, painfully slim gentleman stepped forward, his uniform distinct. His hat even more so.
And an odd buzz filled Dare’s ears . . . as he tried to muddle through.
That which he already knew. Because this wasn’t the first moment he’d been in this position. There’d been seven times prior to this where he’d found one of them at his door.
No . . . a voice silently screamed in his head. Not now.
“Dare Grey, the Marquess of Milford?” The man spoke in graveled tones, his voice coming as if down an endless corridor.
Dare managed a wooden nod. “I am.”
“You are under arrest for the crime of bribery of a prison official.”
Chapter 21
There had been any number of places Temperance had never anticipated that she’d be in life.
There’d been the time Dare had sneaked her into the rafters of a Covent Garden theatre, and she’d witnessed the splendor of a musical production.
Or the time he’d taken her off to visit the Serpentine in Hyde Park in the dead of night, under a full moon, and skipped rocks upon that serene surface.
And the time most recently, when he’d escorted her through Hyde Park.
All those moments had blurred together with time meaning little as she sat in the unlikeliest of places, the one place she’d never expected to find herself—inside the residence of a duke and duchess.
Hands clasped before her, she stole another glance at the doorway . . .
Undressed with the Marquess Page 28