Undressed with the Marquess

by Caldwell, Christi

  Where in blazes were they?

  And yet . . .

  Temperance again looked to the clock. It had been just twelve minutes.

  Twelve minutes since she’d arrived in the dead of night without any form of notice, and demanded to see Dare’s grandparents.

  What if they won’t see me?

  Her mind balked at that.

  Of course they would. They would, if for no other reason than because she was Dare’s wife.

  At last, footfalls echoed in the corridors.

  The duke and duchess appeared, as properly attired as if they’d just arrived from a ball and not come down from their bedchambers.

  His Grace allowed his wife to enter first before following behind.

  The appearance of being nonplussed must be something for which they trained those destined to be dukes and duchesses. Or mayhap it was essential training for all those of the nobility: give no outward reaction to anything, regardless of who might arrive unannounced on one’s doorstep.

  “I trust this isn’t a social call,” the duchess said in her customary clipped, cool, and droll tones.

  Temperance dropped a quick, belated curtsy. “No. Forgive me . . . There is a matter of . . . I . . .”

  She’d had the entire ride to prepare what she might say to enlist their support.

  He is their grandson. They were determined for him to live. That sobering reminder grounded her.

  “Your grandson is in trouble.”

  Neither the duke nor duchess moved.

  At last, they exchanged a look, a long one that may as well have contained a whole conversation that only they two heard. And then the couple found a place upon the pale-blue satin sofa, motioning for her to join them.

  Temperance opened her mouth, but the duchess held a finger up, silencing her. “Tea.”

  What in blazes? Temperance wrinkled her brow. What Punch-and-Judy stage had she stepped upon? “Have you not heard me?” she demanded of the pair.

  “My dear, hysterics will solve nothing; tea, however, will solve hysterics, and then we might speak.”

  And because it was a maddening, illogical philosophy as bizarre as this whole meeting, she claimed the seat across from Dare’s grandparents . . . and sat in absolute silence until the moment a servant appeared with a silver tray and the duchess had made a glass for herself and one for her husband.

  She turned to Temperance.

  The duchess was asking whether she wanted tea? “No.”

  The duchess aimed an incisive look at Temperance.

  That had, of course, been the wrong answer. Tightening her mouth, she accepted the cup handed over and rested it on her lap. “I’ve come because—”

  Another one of those long, flawlessly manicured fingers shot up.

  Clink-clink-clink.

  The duchess continued to stir her tea in four and a half more meticulous, perfectly even circles before setting the spoon aside. Raising her glass to her lips, she sipped, and from over the rim, she stared at Temperance.

  “Your grandson is in trouble,” Temperance repeated bluntly. Perhaps that would break through this maddening indifference.

  It did not.

  At most, there was just the faintest of pauses, so slight it might have even been imagined, as Temperance expected to find . . . some response from the woman.

  “Now, what manner of trouble?” she asked, only after she’d lowered her cup back to its neat, floral-painted porcelain tray.

  “Dare was attempting to help someone—”

  “Your brother’s friend,” the duchess said, lifting her cup for another sip. A thin white eyebrow winged up. “Was it not?”

  Temperance curled her hands tightly. “He is. Joseph Gurney,” she said needlessly, that offering useless. A woman like the duchess wouldn’t care about those like Joseph Gurney or Lionel. Temperance had always admired Dare. Appreciated what he did for so many . . . But now, seeing how different he was from all these lofty lords who treated the Gurneys and Swifts as invisible—her throat tightened—she loved him all the more.

  “I seeee.” There was a wealth of meaning to Her Grace’s words. Ones that made it beyond clear who was responsible for Dare’s current troubles. “And so, Dare was attempting to help your brother’s friend, and . . . ?”

  What manner of person would choose to make Temperance’s visit . . . about this? A wave of futility hit her, a sense of desperation. Her gaze fell to her lap. Her whole life, she’d had control over next to nothing. Why, beaten by her father since she was a babe, Temperance hadn’t even had control of her own body. Even as she’d loved Dare, their marriage had been born of her inability to exact change of her own over her existence.

  Now she sat before his noble grandparents, desperate. Once more reduced to one without any control.

  And as Dare’s grandparents stared on, Temperance wanted to leave. She wanted to storm out and say to hell with the duke and duchess and their damned tea and refusal to show emotion. But . . . she couldn’t. She couldn’t because she loved Dare more.

  Firming her resolve, she looked squarely at the lofty pair. “Dare bribed a warden at Newgate,” she said quietly. Something he’d done so many times, blind to the fact that people had been plotting his demise. From the last time he’d walked across St. Peter’s Square to his arrest this night, someone—possibly Avery Bryant—had been attempting to rid the Rookeries of Dare.

  His teacup forgotten, the duke rubbed at his chin. “Hmm.”

  Hmm. That was what he’d say? A single-syllable utterance that he’d managed to slice in half?

  “That is . . . it?” she asked incredulously, casting a disbelieving glance back and forth between Dare’s grandparents. “Just . . . hmm and . . .” She slammed her teacup down, splashing liquid all over the edge of the dish and onto the gleaming mahogany table between them.

  “What would you have us do, my dear?” the duchess asked. “Give in to hysterics?”

  “Yes,” she cried. Good God, what manner of people were they? “That is precisely what I’d have you do. I’d have you show some emotion. Or give”—she slashed a hand in the handsome pair’s general direction—“some indication that you care about Dare.”

  Only the ticking of the clock served as her response. Sixteen and a half precise ticks before Dare’s grandmother again spoke.

  “And how would that help my grandson?” the duchess asked in her perfectly even tones.

  That gave Temperance pause. It wouldn’t . . .

  “Do you truly think we won’t help our grandson, my dear?” the duke said in a surprisingly gentle voice that thoroughly confused.

  “I . . .”

  His Grace set aside his teacup. “We will do anything for our grandson.”

  “And yet you’d not give him the funds he was entitled to without strings attached.” She couldn’t keep the trace of bitterness out of that question.

  The duke made to speak, but his wife held a hand up. “Tell me, Temperance,” the duchess said. “What do you think he would do if we simply gave him the funds?”

  Leave. There was no doubt of it. Dare would have left long ago and happily distributed it all over East London from the Rookeries on to the Dials . . . and would be searching for the next household to rob, to replenish those coffers.

  “Strings attached, as you refer to it . . . are sometimes required, if a person cannot be trusted to act in their best self-interest.”

  And turning to her husband in an indication that the topic was at an end, the duchess spoke. “You’ll go handle this.”

  “I’ll go handle this.”

  Collecting the duchess’s hand, the old duke pressed a kiss atop it in an unexpected display of warmth, one that proved the two were not the heartless ones Temperance . . . or Dare had taken them for.

  “Thank you,” she said hoarsely after the duke had limped off.

  And it was the first time since the constable had arrived, demanding to see Dare, that Temperance knew it was going to be all right.

>   All earlier warmth that had been there at the duke and duchess’s exchange vanished.

  Dare’s grandmother sailed to her feet. “Do not thank me for looking after our grandson. We have always put him first. When his father failed to do so.” Hate burnt bright within the older woman’s eyes. She knew. She’d known that her son-in-law had sent Dare away.

  The duchess headed for the door.

  “Oh, and Temperance?” The duchess paused and turned back to face Temperance. “Putting Darius first . . . is something anyone who loved him would do.”

  And with that not-at-all-veiled meaning there, the duchess left.

  Newgate

  London, England

  Dare had come full circle.

  Though it was unclear. Would full circle mark the moment he climbed the gibbet and made that walk to the hangman’s noose? Or was it here, on the stone-cold Newgate prison floor?

  Sitting on the floor with his back to the wall and his face toward the narrow bars, he stared out.

  He’d always had miserable timing.

  The worst.

  That would remain until he drew his last breath.

  There had been he and Temperance . . . as young loves . . . sweethearts who had been pulled down differing paths—he, the path of thievery, and she, one of respectability.

  And what did I do? I called her out for bloodying her fingers . . . when all the while, she was doing honest work.

  Dare knocked his head lightly against the wall.

  So many regrets, and he’d added any number more of them this night.

  A figure stepped out of the shadows.

  Dare’s entire body tensed.

  Wylie scraped his wide circle of keys over the metal bars, that clink and clang echoing around the eerily silent gaol. “You know, Grey, you always had terrible timing.”

  “I was rather thinking the same damned thing myself,” he muttered. This was certainly the end . . . He’d reached a point where he’d found himself agreeing with the ruthless warden. “You and Bryant, huh?”

  Wylie shrugged. “Struck a better deal.”

  Struck a better deal.

  And with Dare’s mentor.

  You always trusted him more than you should . . . He’s helped you nearly get yourself killed . . . He was always about helping himself.

  God, what a fool he’d been.

  “You would have been wiser, listening to that old sweetheart that used to get you out of here . . .” Wylie lounged a shoulder against the cell. “Whatever happened to that one? Probably married, she did.”

  “She did,” Dare muttered. “Me.”

  Wylie tossed his head back and laughed until tears filled his eyes. The warden wiped them back. “Well, you would have been wiser trusting her instincts.”

  “I’d prefer you’d quit talking so I don’t have to agree with you any more times this night,” Dare said in deadened tones.

  The warden glanced down to the opposite end of the hall. “You’ve company.”

  Company?

  The quiet click of a cane striking the stone floor penetrated through his confusion.

  The Duke of Pemberly stopped at the cell.

  “Grandfather . . . ?” he whispered, struggling to his feet.

  “That man is a lousy one to entrust with your reputation and life.” The duke’s pronouncement proved an accurate echo of Wylie’s earlier opinion.

  It is about you making decisions that are poisonous and making a man who is poisonous your partner. It is about you looking after everyone but yourself.

  “I . . . know that,” he said. “How . . . ?”

  “Did I find out?” His Grace finished for him. “Your wife.” He removed his gloves and stuffed them inside the front of his cloak.

  “My . . . wife?” She’d gone to the duke and appealed for Dare’s life.

  “Never tell me you’ve forgotten your wife . . . again,” the duke drawled.

  Never. He never had. He never would. A man didn’t forget the reason for his heart’s every beat.

  The duke stepped nearer Dare’s cell. “Come, Darius. It is time to leave this place.”

  Leave.

  It was what Dare had feared the moment Connor Steele had found him and presented him with the opportunity to reclaim his rightful place. Leaving the Rookeries. His role here.

  He’d failed to let himself see that he could still do the work he wished to—and make the difference that he wanted to—as the Marquess of Milford.

  “And I can just do that . . . leave?”

  His Grace thumped the bottom of his cane upon the floor. “I’ve told you once before that no grandson of mine will hang. And that holds true.” The duke released the monocle he still held in his other hand; that little glass cylinder swung loosely at his neck. “But you are certainly complicating matters by making this a regular occurrence.”

  “How?”

  “Your arrest was nothing more than a setup, orchestrated by some uncouth street thug”—Avery Bryant—“and I am a peer of the realm. As such, I’ve handled the warden . . . who has been accepting bribes over the years, and as such, he found himself in a similarly tenable situation if he didn’t agree to release you.”

  He . . . was being freed. He’d have the opportunity to start over. To begin again. And to do so . . . with Temperance.

  There wouldn’t be a fortune . . . because he wouldn’t force his sister to wed. And there couldn’t be a babe because . . . because . . .

  Every corner of his soul seized with the aching loss of grief . . . at what he’d only just realized he’d lost long ago with Temperance.

  But there could be babes. The unwanted orphans, like what he’d become . . . And there could be a life with Temperance. Together, they would build up what had been stolen and lost in his absence. And together they could bring the change they wished for the world.

  “Thank you,” he said hoarsely.

  “You shouldn’t thank me, but rather your wife, who’s got a clever head to realize when to ask for help and”—his grandfather passed his monocle over Dare’s cell—“which people are reliable enough to turn to.”

  Avery Bryant.

  Dare winced.

  He deserved that. He’d realized as much . . . just too late.

  Just as she’d been right . . . about so much. Dare had been so determined to do things his way, to help by any means, that he’d been too blinded to see that the one who’d set him on the path of thieving had shifted, becoming the one determined to take him down.

  Dare scrubbed a hand over his face.

  I don’t want it to be that way . . . I want to live a different life. The kind Temperance had urged him to live for years now, and one he’d believed himself incapable of carrying out . . .

  Until now.

  Before this moment, he’d seen himself through his father’s eyes. He’d seen a person who was bad and broken and incapable of anything but a life of sin and strife.

  Temperance had opened his eyes to the fact that he . . . was not the person his father had believed him to be. That there was good and worth in him. And he was capable of exacting change . . . in ways that did not involve stealing or bribery, or working with the likes of Avery Bryant and Wylie to bring about that change.

  And I want that life . . . with Temperance in it . . .

  The duke cleared his throat. “Shall we leave this place, Darius?”

  Dare glanced over at the older gentleman, taking in the details that he’d not allowed himself to see these past weeks: the heavy lines around the duke’s eyes. The deep wrinkles in his cheeks. He was a man who’d been aged by years . . . and grief.

  Dare nodded slowly. “I would like that . . . Grandfather,” he said quietly.

  Tears filled the duke’s eyes, and then patting Dare awkwardly on the back, he led him out of Newgate and onward to the path he wished to make for himself next.

  Chapter 22

  The following evening, Temperance prepared for her first real entry into Polite Society. She and
Dare had not spoken since his return the night prior.

  More specifically, they’d not spoken since Temperance had revealed her loss to Dare . . . and he’d returned early the following morn . . . with the duke.

  Freed once more.

  But then after what she’d shared, what was there to say? After what she’d shared, everything had changed between them; her telling had claimed their ease in being with one another.

  What had she expected him to say? Or for them to be? No words from either of them could have changed . . . anything . . . She could not be the one to get him his twenty thousand pounds. Not with her broken body. Nor would she want a future with him that way—a child, if she could have given him that, born for wealth.

  He’d always been a man of single-minded purpose. That hadn’t changed because of what she’d revealed. Just like he’d always done, Dare was content to make decisions that only left him and the people around him hurting.

  We just have to see her married . . . It doesn’t matter whether or not she likes you, Temperance . . .

  He’d always been chasing money, and it would have been so very easy to resent him for it, had he been driven by his own selfish greed. But it had never been that way with him. Everything he’d ever done had been because of the people in the streets, searching for help in a hopeless world. All the while he’d been helping others, however, he’d deliberately set out to sabotage his own happiness and security.

  Not so very long ago, it would have been easy to resent him for all the wrong paths he continued to travel and choose. But that had been before. Before she’d come here and learned all he’d lost . . . and what had truly shaped him.

  Now, he made sense.

  He made sense in ways he never had before—his making decisions that ultimately saw him less safe and never truly happy because he didn’t believe himself worthy of it.

  And what was worse, knowing as much, knowing why he was the way he was . . . it changed nothing. It didn’t make life better for him. It didn’t bring him peace with the remaining kin he had alive. And it didn’t heal her brokenness.

  “Buck up. You look like you’re headed to the gallows,” Gwynn said as she drew Temperance’s gown overhead.

  The silk slid in a whispery glide over her hips and then settled in a whoosh at her ankles.