Sarah MacLean: No Good Duke Goes Unpunished

She mirrored his expression. “A pity, as I was doing such a good job of it beforehand.”

A laugh threatened, and he quashed it. He would not be amused by her.

She was toxic. Toxic was not amusing.

She pressed on. “I do not deny that I deserve a modicum of your anger, but I will not be strong-armed.”

“That’s the second time you’ve used that word with me. Need I remind you that for the duration of our acquaintance only one of us has drugged the other? Twice?”

A red wash appeared on her cheeks. Guilt? Impossible. “Nevertheless, it seems an apt description of how you might behave with me, Your Grace.”

He wished she’d stop calling him that. He hated the honorific—the way it scraped up his spine, reminding him of all the years he’d longed for it. The years he couldn’t have it, even though it was his by right.

Even though he deserved it.

Of course, he hadn’t known that.

He hadn’t killed her.

The realization remained a shock.

He hadn’t known. All those years—he’d lived with the idea that he might have been a killer. All those years.

She’d stolen them from him.

A wave of anger washed through him, hot and uncomfortable. Vengeance had never been his nourishment, and now, even as he could not resist it, he tasted the bitterness of it on his tongue.

He snapped his attention to her. “What happened?”

Her eyes went wide. “I beg your pardon?”

“Twelve years ago, at Whitefawn. On the eve of your wedding. What happened?”

She hesitated. “You don’t remember?”

“I was quite drugged. So, no, in fact, I don’t remember.”

Not for lack of trying. He’d played the evening over and over in his head, hundreds of times, thousands. He remembered scotch. He remembered wanting a woman. Reaching for one. He couldn’t picture a face, but he remembered strange eyes and auburn curls and pretty curves and laughter that was half innocence, half sin.

And those eyes. No one could forget those eyes. “I remember you were with me.”

She nodded, and pink scored her cheeks again.

He’d known it. It was one of the things he’d never doubted. He’d been young and full of liquor and had never met a woman he couldn’t seduce. Of course he’d been with her.

And, suddenly, he wanted to know everything. He moved closer, noting the way she stiffened, pressing back against the door. “And before you set me up—before you faked your death and ran like a coward—we were alone?”

She swallowed, and he couldn’t help but watch the muscles of her throat, the way the muscles there betrayed her nerves. Her guilt. “Yes.”

She looked down at her skirts. Smoothed them. He noticed she wasn’t wearing gloves—same as the prior evening. As in his dream. But now, in the light of day, he saw the marks of work on them: blunt, clean nails; sun-worn skin; and a ghost of a scar on her left hand, just pale enough to have been long healed.

He did not like that scar.

And he did not like that he’d noticed it.

“For how long?”

“Not long.”

He exhaled a humorless laugh at that. “Long enough.”

Her gaze flew to his, wide and open and filled with . . . something . “Long enough for what?”

“Long enough for you to incapacitate me.”

She exhaled, and he knew she’d hidden something from him. He considered her for a long moment, wishing he were in the ring. There, he saw his opponents’ vulnerability, open and raw. There, he knew where to strike.

Here, in this strange building, in this strange battle with this strange woman, things were not so easy.

“Tell me one thing. Did you know who I was?” For some reason, it mattered.

Her eyes met his, and there was truth in them, for once. “No.”

Of course she hadn’t. So what had she done? What had happened in that pretty yellow bedchamber all those years ago?

Dammit.

He understood combat enough to know that she wouldn’t tell him. And he understood it enough to know that if he showed his interest, she held the power.

And he’d be damned if he gave her any more power.

Today was his. He changed tack.

“You shouldn’t have returned. But since you did, your mistake is my reward. And the world will know the truth about us both.”

Mara was never so grateful in her life as she was the moment he shifted the conversation away from that long-ago night, and back to the matter at hand. She could handle him here. Now. Angry.

But the moment the present clouded over with past, she lost her nerve, uncertain of how to proceed with this enormous brute of a man and the years that had passed since the last time she’d seen him.

She resisted the thought and returned her attention to the matter at hand. “Then you are ready to negotiate?” Pretending not to be overwhelmed by him, she returned to her desk. Sat. “I shall draft the letter to the News today, assuming you are ready to clear the debts in question.”

He laughed. “Surely, you did not think it would be so easy.”

“I would not say easy.” It would not be easy. She’d written the letter a hundred times in her head. A dozen on paper. For years. And it never got easier. “I would say quick, however. Surely that is of interest.”

He raised a brow. “I’ve waited twelve years for this. Neither ease nor quickness is paramount.”

She asked the question despite knowing the answer. “Then what is?”

“Retribution.”

She huffed a little laugh to cover the way the words unnerved her. “What do you plan to do? Parade me through the streets? Tarred and feathered?”

“The image is not entirely unpleasant.” He smiled then, and she imagined he’d smiled that particular smile a hundred times in his club. In his ring. “I do plan to parade you through London. But not tarred and feathered.”

Her brows rose. “What, then?”

“Painted. And primped.”

She shook her head. “They won’t have me.”

“Not like the wealthy heiress you once were, no.”

They’d barely accepted her then. She’d been a threat to everything they were. Everything they had. The pretty young daughter of a wealthy working man. She might have been rich enough, but she’d never been good enough for them.

“They won’t have me in their company.”

“They shall do what I say. You see, I am a duke. And, if I remember correctly, while killer dukes are not favored by the doyennes of the ton , those of us who have not committed murder tend to be well received.” He leaned closer. “Ladies like the idea of dukes.” The words were more breath than sound, and Mara resisted the urge to touch the exposed skin of her neck, to at once rub them away and to keep them there. “And you are mine to do with as I please.”

Her brows knit together at the words. At the way they spread through her, hot and threatening. “And what is that, precisely?”

“Precisely, whatever I desire.”

She stiffened. “I shan’t be your mistress.”

“First, you are in no position to make such demands. And second, I don’t recall offering to have you.”

She went hot with embarrassment. “Then what?”

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.