No Good Duke Goes Unpunished (7 page)

He shrugged, and she hated him in that moment. “I don’t trust you anywhere near my sleeping form . . . but they needn’t know that.”

The words stung. “Mistress in name only?”

He came closer, close enough to feel the heat of him. “Twelve years of lying to my detriment has no doubt made you a convincing actress. It’s time to use all that practice to lie for my benefit. As I please.”

She straightened her shoulders and tilted her face up to meet his gaze. He was so close—close enough that at another time, in another place, as another woman, she might come up on her toes and press her lips to his.

Where had that thought come from?

She wanted nothing to do with kissing this man.

He was not for kissing. Not anymore.

She pursed her lips. “So you wish to ruin me.”

“You ruined my life,” he said, all casualness. “I think it only fair, don’t you?”

She had been ruined for twelve years—from the moment she’d bloodied the sheets and ran from that room.

She had been ruined before then.

But she’d hidden it well, and she had a houseful of boys to care for. Perhaps her ruin was his due. Perhaps it was hers as well. But she’d be damned if he’d ruin MacIntyre’s and the safe haven she’d built for these boys.

“So I will have to leave. Start over.”

“You’ve done it before,” he said.

As had he.

Vengeance was a pretty thing, wasn’t it?

She straightened her shoulders. “I accept.” For a half second, his eyes went wide, and she took pleasure in his shock. Evidently, he’d underestimated her strength and her purpose. “But I’ve a condition of my own.”

Tell him.

The thought came from nowhere.

Tell him Christopher’s debt included all the orphanage’s funds.

She met his gaze. Cold. Unyielding. Uncaring. Like the eyes of the boys’ fathers.

Tell him that what he does threatens the boys.

“I see no reason why I should allow for any of your conditions,” he said.

“Because you haven’t a choice. I disappeared once. I can do it again.”

He watched her for a long moment, the threat hanging between them, his gaze going dark with irritation. With something worse. Something closer to hate. And perhaps he should hate her. She’d crafted him with the skill of a master sculptor, not from marble, but from flesh and blood and fury. “If you ran, I would find you. And I would take no prisoners.”

The promise was thick with anger and truth.

He would stop at nothing to exact his vengeance. She was at risk, and everything she loved.

But she would not put the boys at risk.

She threw herself into the fray, already considering her next steps . . . how she would protect the boys, the house, and its legacy if he made good on his promise. She straightened her shoulders, and entered the fray. “If you treat me like a whore, you pay me like one.”

The words stung him. She could see it, the blow there and then gone, as though they were in the ring where he reigned. When he did not retaliate, she threw her next punch. “I shall do whatever you ask. However you ask it. I shall play your silly game until you decide to reveal me to the world. Until you decide to send me packing. And when you do, I shall go.”

“For your brother’s debt.”

“For whatever I wish.”

One side of his mouth kicked up in a fleeting half smile, and for a moment Mara thought that in another place, in another time, as another woman, she might have enjoyed making him smile.

But right now, she hated it.

“He’s not worth you.”

“He’s not your concern.”

“Why? Some kind of sisterly love?” His eyes blackened, and she let him believe it. Anything to keep him from the orphanage. “His is a face badly in need of a fist.”

Retribution.

“And yet you will not fight him,” she said, feeling angrier than she would have imagined. “Are you afraid to give him a chance?”

He raised a brow, but did not rise to the bait. “I’ve never been bested.”

She smiled. “Did I not best you last night?”

He stilled at the words, then looked up. She saw shock in his black eyes, in the way they widened just barely for just a moment. She resisted the urge to grin her triumph. “You gloat over drugging me?”

She shook her head. “I gloat over
felling
you. That is the goal, is it not? You owe me the money.”

“In the
ring
, Miss Lowe. That is where it counts.”

She did smile then, knowing it would annoy him.
Hoping
it would annoy him. “Semantics. You’re embarrassed to admit I beat you handily.”

“With the help of enough narcotics to take down an ox.”

“Nonsense. A horse, maybe. But not an ox. And you are embarrassed. I work with boys, Your Grace. Need I remind you that I know one who is embarrassed when I see one?”

His gaze grew dark and serious again, and he leaned in, closer to her. Close enough for him to tower over her, more than six feet of muscle and bone, power and might, scars and sinew. He smelled of clove and thyme.

Not that she noticed.

And then he whispered, so close to her ear that she felt the words more than heard them as they sent a chill down her spine. “I am no boy.”

That much was true.

She opened her mouth to reply, but no words came.

It was his turn to smile. “If you wish to fell me, Miss Lowe, I encourage you to meet me in the ring.”

“You will have to pay me for it.”

“And if I don’t agree? What then? You haven’t any choice.”

Truth.

“I also haven’t anything to lose.”

Lie.

“Nonsense,” he said. “There’s always something else to lose. I assure you. I would find it.”

He had her in his trap. She couldn’t run. Not without making sure the boys were safe. Not without securing the money that Kit had lost.

She met Temple’s black gaze, even as he seemed to read her thoughts. “You could run,” he whispered, “but I would find you. And you wouldn’t like what happened then.”

Damn him.

He wasn’t going to agree.

She wanted to scream. Nearly did, until he said, “You won’t be the first woman I have paid to do my bidding . . .”

A vision flashed—arms and legs tangled in crisp white sheets, dark hair and black eyes, and more muscle than one man should have.

“ . . . but I assure you, Miss Lowe, you will be the last.”

The words fell between them, and it took her a moment to refocus her thoughts on them. To realize that he’d agreed. That the orphanage would be saved.

Its price, her ruin. Her life. Her future.

But it would be saved.

Relief was fleeting, interrupted by his low promise. “We begin tonight.”

Chapter 4

“A
nd who is able to tell me what happened to Napoleon after Waterloo?”

A sea of hands shot up inside the small, well-appointed schoolroom of the MacIntyre Home for Boys. Daniel did not wait to be called upon. “He died!”

Mara chose to ignore the positive glee oozing from the young man as he pronounced the emperor dead. “He did, indeed, die. But I’m looking for the bit before that.”

Daniel thought for a moment and then offered, “He ran weeping and wailing from Wellington . . . and died!”

Mara shook her head. “Not quite. Matthew?”

“He rode his horse into a French ditch . . . and died!”

Her lips twitched. “Unfortunately, not.” She chose one of the hands straining for the ceiling. “Charles?”

Charles considered the options, then chose, “He shot himself in the foot, it turned green and fell off, and
then
he died?”

Mara did smile then. “You know, gentlemen, I am not certain that I am a very effective teacher.”

The hands lowered and a collective grumble went through the room, knowing that they would be required to learn an extra hour of history that day. The boys were saved, however, when a knock sounded, and Alice was silhouetted in the door to the boys’ schoolroom. “Pardon me, Mrs. MacIntyre.”

Mara lowered the book she held. “Yes?”

“There is . . .” Alice opened her mouth, closed it, then opened it again. “That is . . . someone is here to see you.”

Temple
.

He was back.

She glanced at the clock in the corner of the room. He’d said
tonight
. As it was still
today
, she could only assume that he was a blackguard and a cheat. And she intended to tell him such.

Just as soon as her heart ceased its racing.

The air seemed to leave the room as she looked over the sea of little faces around her and realized that she was not ready to tell the world the truth. She was not ready to be Mara Lowe again.

She wanted to remain Mrs. MacIntyre, born nowhere, come from nothing, now governess and caretaker to a motley group of boys. Mrs. MacIntyre had purpose. Mrs. MacIntyre had meaning. Mrs. MacIntyre had life.

Mara had nothing.

Nothing but truth.

She forced her legs to move, to carry her through the collection of boys to meet Alice. To face the man who had returned to the house, no doubt with a plan in place to change both their lives. Once at the door, she turned back to her students.

“If I . . .”

No.
She cleared her throat. Tried again.

“
When
I return, I expect to hear what happened to Napoleon.”

Their collective groan sounded as she pulled the door shut with a snap.

Alice seemed to know better than to say anything on the walk through the dark, narrow hallways. Mara appreciated the young maid’s intuition—she was not certain that she would be able to carry on a conversation with her heart pounding and thoughts racing.

He was there. Below. Judge and jury and executioner, all in one.

She descended the stairs slowly, knowing that she would never escape her past, and that she could not avoid her future.

The door to the little study where they’d spoken earlier that morning was ajar, and it occurred to Mara that the two-inch gap between door and jamb was a curious thing—eliciting excitement or dread depending upon the situation.

She ignored the fact that somehow, in this moment, it elicited both.

He was not even a little bit exciting; he was entirely dreadful.

She took a deep breath, willing her heart to cease pounding, and released Alice from duty with a halfhearted smile—the most she could manage under the circumstances—before pushing the door open to face the man inside the room.

“You saw him.”

She stepped inside and closed the door firmly. “What are you doing here?”

Her brother came toward her. “What are you doing approaching that man?”

“I asked first,” she said, meeting him at the center of the room in two short strides. “We agreed you’d never come here. You should have sent a note.” It was the way they’d met for the past twelve years. Never in this building, and never anywhere that she might be recognized.

“We also agreed we’d never tell that man that you were alive and living right under his nose.”

“He has a name, Kit.”

“Not one he uses.”

“He has one he uses, as well.”
Temple.
It wasn’t hard to think of him that way. Big as one, and as unmoving.

Had he always been unmoving? She hadn’t known him when they were young, but his reputation had preceded him—and no one had ever called him cold. A rake, a rogue, a scoundrel, certainly. But never cold. Never angry.

She’d
done that to him.

Kit ran a hand through already disheveled brown locks, and Mara recognized the weariness in him. Two years younger, her brother had been filled with life as a child, eager for excitement, and ready with a plan.

And then she’d run, ruining Temple and leaving Kit to pick up the pieces of their unbearably foolish evening. And he’d changed. They’d traded secret letters for years, until she’d resurfaced, hidden in plain sight, Mrs. MacIntyre, widowed proprietress of the MacIntyre Home for Boys.

But he’d been different. Colder. Harsher.

Never speaking of the life she’d left him to. Of the man she’d left him with.

And then he’d gone and lost all her money.

She noted the hunch of his shoulders and the hollows in his cheeks and the scuff on his normally pristine black boots, and she recognized that he at least understood their predicament.
Her
predicament. She let out a little sigh. “Kit . . .”

“I wish you wouldn’t call me that,” he snapped. “I’m not a boy anymore.”

“I know.” It was all she could think to say.

“You shouldn’t have gone to see him. Do you know what they call him?”

She raised her brows. “They call him that because of me.”

“It doesn’t mean he hasn’t come to deserve it. I don’t want you near him again.”

Too late
.

“You don’t want?” she said, suddenly irrevocably irritated. “You haven’t a choice. The man holds all our money and all the cards. And I’ve done what I can to save the home.”

Kit scowled. “It’s always the home. Always the boys.”

Of course it was. They were the important part. They were what she’d done right. They were her good.

But it wasn’t worth fighting Kit. “How did you even know he was here?”

He narrowed his gaze on her. “Do you think I am an idiot? I pay the whore in the street good money to look out for you.”

“To look out for me? Or to keep track of me?”

“She saw the Killer Duke. Sent word to me.”

Anger flared at the idea that her brother would spy on her. “I don’t need protection.”

“Of course you do. You always have.”

She bit back the retort—that she’d faced more demons than he had, for years. Alone. And returned to the matter at hand. “Kit—” She stopped. Reframed. “Christopher, I went to him because we needed it. You . . .” She hesitated, not knowing quite how to say the words. Spreading her hands wide, she tried again. “You lost
everything
.”

Christopher pushed his fingers through his hair once more, the move violent and unsettling. “You think I don’t
know that
? Christ, Mara!” His tone was raised, and she was instantly, keenly aware of where they were—of the name he’d used. She looked to the door, confirming it was closed.

He did not care. “Of course I know it! I lost everything he left me.”

Everything of hers as well. Scraped together and stupidly entrusted to his keeping. But all that was nothing compared to the funds that had been set aside to run the orphanage. Every cent the men had left with their sons.

He’d told her his bank would protect the funds. Grow them, perhaps. But she was a woman and without proof of her marriage or her husband’s death, and so her brother had made the deposits.

Her brother, who couldn’t stop gaming.

Anger flared, even as she wished it wouldn’t. Even as she wished she were sixteen again, able to comfort her younger, gentler, sweeter brother, without hating the man he’d become. Without judging his transgressions.

“You don’t know what it was like to live in his shadow,” he said.

Their father. The man who had unwittingly set them all on this path. Rich as Croesus and never satisfied. He’d always wanted more. Always better. He’d wanted a son smarter and bolder and braver and cleverer.

He’d wanted a duchess for a daughter.

And he’d received neither.

Kit laughed, bitterly. “He’s no doubt watching from his perch in Hell, devastatingly disappointed.”

She shook her head. “He doesn’t own us any longer.”

Her brother’s gaze met hers. “Of course he does. Without him, none of this would have happened. You wouldn’t have run. I wouldn’t have gamed. I wouldn’t have lost.” He raised a long arm, pointed in the direction of the street. “You wouldn’t live among waifs and whores—” He stopped. Took a breath. “Why did you go to him?”

“He holds our debt.”

Kit’s gaze narrowed. “What did he say?”

She hesitated. He wouldn’t like it.

“What did you agree to?” he pressed. She heard the irritation in his tone. The frustration.

“What do you think I agreed to?”

“You sold yourself.”

If only it had been so simple.
“I told him I would show myself. Return him to society.”

He considered the words, and for a moment, she thought he might protest. But she had forgotten that desperate men turned mercenary. “And I get my money back?”

She heard the pronouns. Hated them. “It’s not only your money.”

He scoffed. “What was yours was minimal.”

“What was the orphanage’s was enough to run the place for a year. Maybe longer.”

“I’ve a great deal to worry about, Mara. I’m not about to worry over your whelps, too.”

“They’re children! They rely upon me for everything!”

He sighed, clearly through with her. “Did you get my money back or not?”

It did not matter to him that she would lose everything. This life she’d built. This place that had kept her safe. Given her purpose. He didn’t care, as long as his money was returned.

And so she did what she was so good at.

She lied.

“Not.”

Fury crossed his handsome face. “You made a deal with the devil and you get nothing in return? What good are you? What good was this?” His lips twisted in irritation as he paced the room. “You’ve ruined everything!”

Her gaze narrowed on her brother. “I did what had to be done. He isn’t going to fight you, Kit. Now, at least, he will leave you alone.”

Kit turned and tossed a chair out of the way, the furniture crashing against the wall and splintering into a dozen pieces. Mara stilled.

The anger was familiar.

In all senses of the word.

She stepped behind her desk, pressing her knuckles to the desktop, hiding the shaking of her hands.

She was losing control of the situation.

Perhaps she deserved it. Perhaps this was what happened to women who tried to take fate into their own hands. She’d done just that, changed her future. Changed her life. Lived it for twelve years.

But now it was time to let Kit live his. “This is the deal we struck. Your only chance at honor is my agreeing to admit what I did. I brought the man to my room. I drugged him. I bloodied the damn sheets.” She shook her head. “
I
ran. It is
I
who require forgiveness.
I
who can give him retribution. And he knows it.”

“And what of me?”

“He is not interested in you.”

Christopher went to the window and looked out on the cold November afternoon. He was quiet for a long moment before whispering, “He should be. He doesn’t know what I could do.”

The sun sinking into the western sky turned his brown locks gold, and Mara recalled a long-ago afternoon at their childhood home in Bristol, Kit laughing and running along the edge of a little pond near their house, pulling a new toy boat behind him.

He’d tripped on a tree root and fallen, releasing the string attached to the boat to catch himself, and the high wind had carried the boat out to the middle of the pond, where it promptly capsized and sank.

They’d been beaten for their transgressions, then sent to bed without supper—Kit, because he hadn’t seen fit to rescue the boat, which had cost their father money, and Mara, because she’d had the gall to remind their father that neither of his children was able to swim.

It was not the first time Kit had been unlucky, nor was it the first time she had tried to protect him from their father’s scorn.

It was also not the last.

But today, she was not protecting him. Today, she was protecting something much more important. And she did not trust him to be a part of her plan. “You remain free of this.”

“And if I don’t?”

She opened the door to the room with a quick snap, indicating that she was done with the conversation. “You haven’t a choice.”

He turned to face her, and for a moment the light played tricks with her. For a moment, he looked like their father. “You in the hands of the Killer Duke? He and his club have taken everything I own. I’m supposed to simply allow it? What of my money?”

Not what of
you
. Not what of
my sister.

The omission should not have surprised her, and yet it did. But she held back her surprise and lifted her chin. “Money isn’t everything.”

“Oh, Mara,” he said, sounding older and wiser than she’d ever heard him. “Of course it is.”

The lesson of their father, burned into them.

He met her gaze. “I am not free of this. And now, neither are you.”

Truth at last.

H
ours later, Lavender on a cushion at her feet, Mara was attempting to focus on her work when Lydia Baker stepped into her small office and said, “I’m tired of pretending as though I have not noticed.”

Mara attempted surprise, turning wide eyes on her closest friend. “I beg your pardon?”