To bare it to the firelight.
Dear God. He would remember her.
He met her gaze, glassy with desire. “We’ve done this before.”
She hesitated, and the pause sent a thread of frustration through him. He wouldn’t let her avoid him. He wouldn’t let her lie. Not about this.
Suddenly, somehow, this seemed far more important than all the rest. He lowered the layers of fabric, watching as dark dress and pale chemise gave way to even paler skin. To perfect skin, tipped with straining flesh turned the color of honey gold in the firelight.
His mouth watered, and he lowered his lips to that place where she strained for him.
Where, somehow, he strained for her.
It took all his strength to pause there, a breath from her skin, and whisper, “We’ve done this before.”
“William.” She gasped his name in the firelight.
His real name.
He froze. As did she.
“What did you call me?”
She hesitated. “I—”
No one had called him that for a decade. For longer. Few had called him that before—but he’d always liked his women to do so. He’d liked the way the familiarity of the name brought them closer. Made them more accommodating. It had been an easy way to make them love his naïve, idiot self.
“Say it.” The command was not to be refused.
“William,” she said, beautiful eyes filled with fire, the curve of the syllables on her warm lips making him at once furious and filled with longing.
Christ.
This had happened.
He would remember her.
Except he couldn’t. Because she’d made certain he wouldn’t. She’d stolen that night from him. This moment from him.
He released her as though she’d burned him, and perhaps she had. Perhaps the not remembering that night was the most serious of her infractions, now that he knew just what it was he could not remember.
He stood, the blood rushing through him at the movement, making his head light and his frustration acute. This woman was too much for him. He turned from her, moving away, wanting to leave her and still feeling her pull. He paced one end of the room once, twice before turning back to her.
“What else happened that night?”
She remained quiet.
Goddammit. What had happened? Had he lain her bare? Had he kissed her in a half-dozen forbidden places? Had she reciprocated? Had they enjoyed each other on that last, final night before he had woken as the Killer Duke—never to touch another woman without seeing trepidation in her gaze?
Or had Mara simply used him?
Anger flooded him like a fever. “We kissed. I saw you in your underclothes. Did we—?”
She stiffened at the question, waiting for him to finish it with the cold, crass word he’d offered in the dressmaker’s salon. The wait was as much of a blow as the word, however. She did not respond. And he hated that he couldn’t leave the silence almost as much as he hated the sound of his wrecked voice when he added, “Did we?”
I’ve never met an aristocrat worthy of trusting.
Christ. Had he hurt her?
He couldn’t remember it—if she’d been a virgin, he would have hurt her. He wouldn’t have been careful enough not to. He ran a hand through his hair. He’d never been with a virgin.
Had he?
And what if—he froze. The orphanage. The boys.
What if one of them was his?
His heart began to race.
No. It was impossible. She wouldn’t have left like that. She wouldn’t have taken his child. Would she?
She restored her bodice and stood, calm and collected, as though they were discussing the weather. Or Parliament. Refusing to be insulted.
He came at her, stopping inches from her, resisting the urge to shake her. “You owe me the truth.”
For a moment, something was there in her gaze. For a moment, she considered it. He saw her consider it. And then, she stopped. And he saw her mind racing. Conniving. Planning.
When she spoke, she did not cow. She was not afraid. “We negotiated the terms of our agreement, Your Grace. You get your vengeance, and I get my money. If you would like the truth, I am happy to discuss its cost.”
He’d never met anyone like her. And damned if he didn’t admire the hell out of her even as he wanted to tie her up and scream his questions until she answered. “It seems you are no stranger to scoundrels after all.”
“You would be surprised by what twelve years alone can do to a person,” she said, those stunning, unusual eyes filled with fire.
They stood toe to toe, and Temple felt more equal to this woman than to anyone he’d ever known. Perhaps because they’d both sinned so greatly. Perhaps because trust was not a thing in which either of them had faith.
“I would not be surprised at all,” he replied.
She took a step back. “Then you are willing to discuss additional terms?”
For a moment, he almost agreed. He almost turned over the entire debt, houses, horses, all of it. She almost won.
Because he wanted the memories of that night more than he had ever wanted anything in his life. More than his name. More than his title. More than all his wins and money and everything else.
But she could not give him his memory any more than she could give him his lost years.
All she could give him was the truth.
And he would get it.
There was a man outside the orphanage.
She should have expected it, of course, from the moment she left him at his town house the night before, sent home in a cold carriage that yawned huge and empty with his absence. Should have predicted that he would have her followed the moment she tossed caution into the wind and offered him the truth about the night she’d left him—for a price. Of course he would watch her. She was more valuable to him now than ever before.
The past was the most valuable commodity of them all.
The carriage had waited as she’d entered the house and stood sentry as she’d climbed the stairs and pulled back the bedcovers. She’d fallen asleep with the lanterns of the conveyance swaying in the wind, casting shadows across the ceiling of her little room, upsetting her sanctuary.
Snow had come overnight, its light dusting marking the first day of December, and when she looked out her bedchamber window into the grey light of dawn, she was surprised to find the carriage was gone, its tracks covered by the white down, and it had been replaced by an enormous man, bundled in a heavy wool coat, hat low over his brow, scarf wrapped high on his cheeks, leaving only a swath of dark skin and watchful eyes.
He would catch his death out there.
She told herself she shouldn’t be surprised, as he had no doubt been sent to stand watch by Temple, out of a lack of trust that she would remain in London and take the punishment he planned to mete out.
She told herself she shouldn’t care, as she washed and dressed and mentally prepared her lessons for the day ahead, swearing to keep Temple from her mind. The memory of their constant sparring. The memory of his kiss.
The kiss was thoroughly out of her mind.
She spent the entire descent from the upper rooms of the home to the ground floor putting it out of her mind.
Lydia met her in the foyer, a stack of envelopes in her hands and a furrow between her brows. “We’ve a problem.”
“I shall send him away,” Mara said, already heading for the door.
Lydia blinked. “Whatever it is you think I am referring to, not that kind of problem.” She lifted the stack of papers, and Mara’s heart sank. It seemed Temple’s sentry was the smallest of their worries today.
She waved Lydia into her office and sat behind the desk. Lydia sat, too. “Not one problem. More like one large problem made up of many small ones.” Mara waited,
knowing what was to come. “We’ve lost our credit.”
It was to be expected. They hadn’t paid their debts in months. There wasn’t any money for it. “With whom?”
Lydia began to sift through the bills. “The tailor. The bookshop. The cobbler. The haberdasher. The dairy. The butcher—”
“Good Lord, did they all attend some kind of citywide meeting and decide to uniformly come collecting?”
“It would seem so. But that is not the worst of it.”
“The boys shan’t be able to eat and that’s not the worst of it?”
Mara shivered and moved to the fire, opening the coal bin to discover it empty. She closed it.
Lydia held up a single envelope. “That’s the worst of it.”
Mara looked to the bin. Coal.
Again.
London winters were long and cold and wet, and the orphanage would require coal to keep the boys healthy. Hell. To keep the boys alive. “Two pounds, sixteen.” Lydia nodded, and Mara said what anyone would say in such a situation. “Damn.”
Lydia did not flinch. “My thoughts, precisely.”
Damn bills.
Damn bill collectors.
Damn her father for sending her into hiding.
Damn her brother for losing everything.
And damn Temple and his gaming hell for taking it.
“We’ve a houseful of boys bred from the richest men in England.” Lydia said, “Is there no one who can help us?”
“No one who would not expect our lists in return.” The lists of bloodlines, two dozen names that would scandalize London and in the process ruin the boys. Not to mention the reputation of the orphanage, which was of the utmost importance.
“What of the fathers themselves?”
Men who came in the dead of night to pass off their unwanted offspring. Men who made unthinkable threats to keep their identities secret. Men who Mara never wanted to see again. Who would not want to see her ever again. “They’ve washed their hands of the boys.” She shook her head. “I won’t go to them.”
There was a long pause. “And the duke?”
Mara did not pretend to misunderstand. The Duke of Lamont. Rich as Croesus and doubly powerful. And rightfully furious with Mara. “What of him?”
Lydia hesitated, and Mara knew her friend was searching for the right words. As though she hadn’t thought them herself. “If you told him the truth—that your brother’s funds were not his to gamble . . .”
Nothing you could say would make me forgive.
The words echoed, their dark promise sending a chill through her. He’d been so angry with her last night. And she’d brought it upon herself—telling him half tales, tempting him with partial truths, and then asking him to pay for his memories.
She sat.
No. The duke would not help. She was alone in this. The boys were her charges. Her responsibility.
It was she who must care for them.
She stood and moved to a nearby bookcase, extracting a fat volume. She held the book in her hands, her breath coming hard and fast, every inch of her resisting what she was about to do. The book was her safety. Her future. Her promise to herself that she would never go poor or hungry again. That she would never have to rely on the aid of others.
It was her protection, cobbled together with twelve years of work and saving.
Everything that would keep her from the streets.
Everything she’d planned to use once Temple ruined her.
But the boys were more important.
She set the book on the desk and opened it, revealing a large hollow space, filled with a cloth sack that jingled when she lifted it.
Lydia gasped. “Where did that come from?”
From years of work. Of saving. Of a shilling here and sixpence there.
Twelve pounds, four shillings, ten pence.
All she had.
Mara ignored the question, extracting coins. “Pay the coal, the dairy, and the butcher. Take your salary. And Alice’s. And Cook’s. And do what you can to put off the others—until the eldest require new shoes and clothes.”
Lydia considered the money, shook her head. “Even with that—”
She did not have to finish the sentence. The money wouldn’t be enough to carry them through winter. It would barely get them into the New Year.
There was only one way.
More time with the Duke of Lamont.
She stood, and headed for the foyer, now filled with boys. They were all at the two front windows of the house, teetering on chair arms and clinging to windowpanes, eyes riveted on the man across the street.
Lavender sat several feet away, watching them, and Mara lifted her to safety before the piglet could be crushed by a falling boy.
“He’s been there for an hour, at least!” Henry said.
“He doesn’t seem cold at all!”
“Impossible! It’s snowing!” Henry replied, as though the rest of them hadn’t eyes.
“He’s nearly as big as the man who came for Mrs. MacIntyre,” Daniel said, amazement in his tone.
He nearly was, but Temple was bigger.
“Aye! That one was big as a house!”
Bigger, and no doubt stronger. And handsomer. She stilled at the thought. She had no interest in his handsomeness. None whatsoever. She hadn’t even noticed it. Just as she hadn’t noticed the way his kisses made her weak.
He was infuriating. And impossible. And controlling in the very worst way.
And more handsome than the man across the street.
Not that she noticed.
“Do you think he’s here for one of us?”
The trepidation in little George’s voice brought her back to the matter at hand. “Gentlemen.”
The boys started, releasing curtains and unbalancing each other until their strangely crafted structure toppled, leaving half a dozen boys in a heap on the floor. Mara resisted the urge to laugh at the boys’ antics as they scurried to their feet, straightening sleeves and pushing hair from their eyes.
Daniel spoke first. “Mrs. MacIntyre! You are back!”
She forced a smile. “Of course I am.”
“You were not at supper last evening. We thought you’d left,” Henry said.
“For good,” George added.
Mara’s heart constricted at the words. Though they played at being fearless, the boys at the MacIntyre Home were terrified of being left. It was a vestige of being marked as orphans, no doubt, and Mara spent much of her time convincing them that she would not leave them. Indeed—that they would be the ones to leave her, eventually.
Except it was a lie now.
She would leave them. She would write her letter to the newspapers, and show her face to London, and then she would have no choice but to leave them. It was how she would protect them. How she would keep their lives on track. How she would ensure that funds continued into the orphanage, and they were never marked by her scandal.
Deep sadness coursed through her, and she crouched low, Lavender struggling for freedom, and pressed a kiss to George’s blond head before smiling at Henry. “Never.”
The boys believed her lies.
“Where did you go, then?” Daniel asked, always one to get to the heart of the matter.
She hesitated, turning over the answer in her mind. She couldn’t, after all, tell the boys that she’d been traipsing about London in the dead of night being fitted for clothes worthy of a prostitute and chased by villains. And kissed by them. “I had a bit of . . . business . . . to tend to.”
Henry turned back to the window. “There are two men out there now! And with a great black carriage, too! Cor! We could all fit into it! With room to spare!”
The pronouncement drew the attention of the rest of the boys, and—despite her attempt to resist—of Mara. She kn
ew before she looked out the window, through a web of young, spindly limbs, who would be in the snowy street beyond.
Of course it was he.
Without thinking, she headed for the door of the orphanage, tearing it open and heading straight for the carriage. Temple’s back was to her as he and his man-at-arms were deep in conversation, but Mara had taken no more than a half-dozen steps before he turned to look over his shoulder at her. “Get back inside. You’ll catch your death.”
She would catch her death? She held her head high, not wavering. “What are you doing here?”
He looked back to his companion, saying something that made the other man smirk, then turned to face her. “This is a busy street, Mrs. MacIntyre,” he said. “I could have any number of reasons to be here.” He took a step toward her. “Now do as I tell you and get inside. Now.”
“I am quite warm,” she said, her gaze narrowing. “Unless you’re searching for a woman to warm your bed, Your Grace, you really couldn’t have any number of reasons to be here. And in your condition, I would think that effort would prove futile.”
He raised a brow. “Do you?”
“I stitched your arm closed not twelve hours ago.”
He shrugged one shoulder. “I am quite well today. Well enough to carry you inside and stuff you into a cloak.”
She hesitated at the image that wrought, the way he simply oozed strength beneath his greatcoat, which made him look even wider and more unsettlingly large than ordinary.
He did look well. Wickedly, powerfully well.
She resisted the urge to identify the emotion that coursed through her at the look of him. Instead, she said, “You should not be cavorting about London with a fresh wound. It shall tear open.”
He tilted his head. “Is that concern you exhibit?”
“No,” she said quickly, the word coming on instinct.
“I think it is.”
“Perhaps the wound has addled your brain.” She huffed her irritation. “I simply don’t want to have to repeat my work.”
“Why not? You could fleece me out of another two pounds. I checked that price, by the way. Robbery. A surgeon would do it for a shilling, three.”
“A pity you didn’t have a surgeon nearby, then. I charged what the market would bear. And it shall cost you double if you tear it open and require me to do it again.”