No Good Duke Goes Unpunished (28 page)

She took a deep breath and hurried down the steps from the stone colonnade to the dark gardens of Leighton House, disappearing into the landscape, thanking Heaven for the shadows. Leaning back against a large oak, she stared up at the stars, wondering how she had come to be here, in this place, in this dress, with this man.

A man against whom fate had pitted her.

With whom she was intertwined.

Forever.

Tears threatened as she heaved great, cloudy breaths in the fading light from the ballroom, as she wondered what would come next. She wished he would go ahead and unmask her and be done with it, so she could hate him and blame him and get on with her life.

So she could get on without him.

How had he become so very vital to her in so short a time? How had he changed so much? How had he come to say such things to her, to be so kind and gentle when they’d started their recent acquaintance with his vowing to destroy her? How had she come to trust him?

How did he remain the only person she would betray?

As if summoned by the traitorous thought, her brother stepped from the blackness. “This is fortuitous.”

Mara took a step back, away from him. “How did you know I was here?”

“I followed you from the orphanage. I saw him fetch you,” Kit said, eyes wild, face unshaven. “You make a handsome couple.”

“We are no such thing.”

He was quiet for a moment, then said, “What if you’d been betrothed to him instead? Then maybe we wouldn’t be in this mess.”

The question stung. What if.

If she had a shilling for every time the words had floated through her head, she’d be the richest woman in London.

The words didn’t help. All they did was fill one’s head with empty dreams.

But still, the words echoed.
What if.

What if she’d married him, that handsome young marquess with the wicked smile, who kissed her as though she were the only woman in the world? What if they’d married, and built a life together, with children and pets and kisses trailed down her arm and silly private jests that proved they belonged to one another?

What if they’d loved?

Love.

She turned it around in her mind, considering its curves and angles.

Even now, she didn’t understand it as others did. As she had dreamed of it when she was a child. As she’d mourned it during that wicked month leading up to her wedding, when she’d cried into her pillow and bemoaned the lack of love between her and her ancient fiancé.

But now . . . now, she loved. And it was hard. And it was painful.

And she wished it would go away.

She wished it would stop tempting her with ideas of a different life. Imagining another life was all danger—the fastest way to pain and anguish and disappointment. She lived in reality. Never in dreams.

And still, the thought of that boy twelve years ago . . . of the man now . . .

Of the life they might have had . . . if everything had been different.

“Did you receive my letter?”

She nodded, hot guilt spreading through her. Kit was here. Temple, mere feet away. Even speaking to her brother felt like betrayal of the man who had come to mean so much.

“You understand why I need your help,” Kit said, coming closer, tone all kindness, devoid of the anger no doubt simmering. “I have to leave London. If those bastards find me . . .”

But they weren’t bastards. They were the most loyal men she’d ever met. And Temple—he had the right to be so angry. She’d stolen his life all those years ago, and Kit had nearly taken it from him again.

“Mara,” Kit said, an echo of her father. “I did it for you.”

She hated him then, the younger brother whom she had loved so much. Hated him for his impulsiveness and his recklessness and his stupidity. Hated him for his anger. His coldness. The choices he’d made that impacted them both. That had made her life this elaborate, unbearable mess.

“Don’t you see that he’s done this to you?” Kit said, the words smooth as silk. “The Killer Duke. He’s turned you into his whore, and he’s turned you against me.”

She might have accepted those words as fact at the beginning of all this, but now she knew better.

Somewhere, while he’d taught the boys of MacIntyre’s that vengeance was not always the answer, and protected Lavender from certain death, and saved Mara from attackers, he’d made her love him.

And in that, he’d set her free.

“You think I don’t see it? The way you think of him?” Kit came toward her, disgust in his words. “I see the way you look at him. The way he owns you, the way he manipulates you like a puppet on a string. You don’t care that he took everything from me.”

She didn’t. She cared only that Temple was avenged. That he finally, finally had the life for which he was destined—that perfect wife, those perfect children, the perfect world he’d deserved from birth, and that she’d stolen from him.

The only thing she had to give him.

Tears stung. “Go away, Christopher.” She chose the name purposefully, for he was no longer a child. And she would no longer be blamed by him. “If you are caught, they will punish you.”

“And you won’t stop them.”

Not even if she could. “I won’t.”

He hated her; she could see it in his eyes. “I need money.”

Always money. It was always paramount. She shook her head. “I don’t have anything for you.”

“That’s a lie,” he said, coming toward her. “You’re hiding it from me.”

She shook her head, telling him the truth. “I haven’t anything for you.” Everything she had was for the orphanage. And the rest . . . it was for Temple.

She had no room for this man.

“You owe me. For what I suffered. For what I still suffer.”

She shook her head. “I don’t. I’ve spent twelve years trying to convince myself that what I did was right. Thinking that I hurt you. That I made you.” She shook her head. “But I didn’t. Boys grow. Men make choices. And you should count yourself lucky that I do not scream until half of London comes running and finds you.”

He stilled. “You wouldn’t.”

She thought of Temple, still and wounded on the table in his rooms at the Angel. Thought of the way her chest had ached and her heart had pounded and she’d been terrified that he would not wake.

A centimeter left or right, and Kit would have killed the man she loved.

“I would not hesitate.”

His anger overflowed. “So you are his whore, after all.”

If only it were that easy. She stood firm in her place, refusing to cower.

When he saw her strength, his voice became a high-pitched whine. “You also made mistakes, you know.”

“And I pay for them every day.”

“I see that. With your pretty silk dress and your coat lined in fur and your mask made of gold,” he said. “What a hardship.”

He seemed to have forgotten what was to come for her. How she would assume the mantle of punishment for his crimes. “I have paid for it every day since I left. And more since I returned. You are lucky I have taken the brunt of the punishment for our sins. And for yours alone.”

“I don’t require your protection.”

“No,” she snapped. “You require my money.” He stiffened at the words. She knew that she had no choice but to drive the point home. “I should turn you over to him. You nearly killed him.”

“I wish I had.”

She shook her head. “Why? He never hurt us. He was innocent in all of this.” He was the only one.

“Innocent?” Kit spat, “He ruined you.”

“We ruined him!” she cried.

“He deserved it!” Kit’s voice rose to a fevered pitch. “And the rest of them took every penny I owned!”

Twenty-six and still a child. “Every penny of mine, as well, brother.” He stilled. “They did not force you to wager.”

“They did not stop me, either. They deserve what they received.”

“No. They don’t.
He
didn’t.”

“He’s turned you against me—me, who kept your secrets all these years. And now you choose him over me.”

By God, she did. She chose Temple over all else.

But it didn’t mean she could have him.

She was sorry for Kit in that moment, sorry that he’d lived the life he had—that they hadn’t been able to protect each other. To support each other. And she mourned him, that laughing, loving boy he’d been, who’d found her a pint of pig’s blood and sent the maids across the grounds of Whitefawn Abbey to ensure that she and Temple would be seen before she faked her own ruin.

Before she ruined a man who had never deserved it.

She shivered in the night, running her silk gloves over her arms, unable to keep the cold at bay, perhaps because it was coming from within. And there, wracked with sorrow, she reached into her reticule and extracted the only money she had. The last of her stash, designed to get her to Yorkshire. To start again.

She gave her brother the coins. “Here. Enough to get you out of Britain.” He sneered at the paltry amount, and she hated him all the more. “You are welcome not to take it.”

Kit was quiet for a long moment before he said, “So that’s it then?”

She swallowed back her tears, tired of this life she lived, of the way she’d had to run and hide for so long. Of the way she’d lived in the shadow of her past.

There was a part of her that thought the money might buy her freedom. It might send Kit away and give her a chance at something else. Something more.

Temple.

“That’s it.”

He disappeared into the darkness, the way he’d come.

Guilt flared, but not for Kit. Not for his future. She’d given him money and a chance at a new life. And, in doing so, she’d stolen Temple’s retribution.

Somehow, that was worse than all the rest.

She had betrayed him.

And it did feel like a betrayal, even as she stood outside the place where he planned to take his revenge. Even as she knew that she should loathe him and wish him ill for making his revenge somehow paramount, even as he treated her with kindness she’d never received from another.

If this was love, she wanted none of it.

Long after her brother left, Mara sat on a low wooden bench, feeling more alone than she ever had in her life. Tonight she would lose her brother, the orphanage, and this life she’d built for herself. Margaret MacIntyre would join Mara Lowe, exiled from Society. From the world she knew.

But none of that seemed to matter. Instead, all she could think was that tonight, she would lose Temple.

She would give him the life for which he’d been born—the highborn wife, the aristocratic children, the perfect legacy. She would give him the life that he had always wanted. Of which he’d dreamed.

But she would lose him.

And it would have to be enough.

S
he was beautiful.

Temple stood in the darkness, watching her as she sat straight and true on a low wooden bench carved from a single tree trunk, looking as though she’d lost her dearest friend.

And perhaps she had.

After all, in the moment she’d given Christopher Lowe the scraps from her reticule and sent him from England, she’d lost the brother she’d loved, and the only person who knew her story.

A story for which Temple would raze London.

He should loathe her. He should be furious that she’d helped Lowe escape. That she’d sent him running into the night instead of turning him over. The man had tried to kill him.

And yet, as he watched her, cold and alone in the Leighton gardens, he couldn’t loathe her. Because somehow, in all of this madness, he understood her.

He could see it in the way she held herself, stiff and unmoving, lost in her thoughts and the past. In the way she owned every one of her actions. In the way that she had never once cowed from him since that dark night that had changed both their lives.

She thought she deserved the sadness. The loneliness. She thought she’d brought it upon herself.

Just as he had.

Christ. He didn’t simply understand her.

He loved her. The words came like a blow, surprising and strong, and true. He loved her.

All of her, somehow—the girl who had ruined him and somehow, at the same time, set him free, and the woman who stood before him now, strong as steel and everything he’d ever wanted.

All those years, he’d imagined the life he might have had. The wife. The children. The legacy. All those years, he’d imagined being a part of the aristocracy, powerful and entitled and unquestioned.

And he’d never guessed that it would all pale in comparison to this woman and the life he might have had with her.

He would have saved her from his father. Would have loved her better. Harder. With more passion. He would have protected her. And he would have waited for her.

He knew it was wrong. And scandalous. But he would have waited until the day his father died, and then taken her for his own. And shown her the kind of life she deserved.

The one they both deserved.

She sighed in the darkness, and he heard the sorrow in the sound. The deep, enduring regret.

Was she sorry she hadn’t left with her brother? That she hadn’t taken the chance to run without ruin?

Ruin. Somehow, that goal had been lost in the darkness.

He’d waited too long. Come to know her. To understand her. To see her.

And now, all he wanted to do was to take her home and make love to her until they’d both forgotten the past. Until all they could think of was the future. Until she trusted him to share her thoughts and her smiles and her world.

Until she was his.

It was time to begin again.

He came out of the darkness. Into her light. “You must be frozen.”

She gasped, her chin snapping up, her eyes finding his in the small clearing. She shot to her feet. “How long have you been there?”

“Long enough.”

To see you betray me.

And, somehow, to realize I love you.

She nodded, her arms wrapped tightly about her. She was cold. He shrugged out of his coat, holding it out to her. She shook her head. “No. Thank you.”

“Take it. I am tired of standing by as you shiver in the cold.”