Sarah MacLean - No Good Duke Goes Unpunished

Temple disagreed. Mara did not require undergarments at all. In fact, he’d prefer she never wore another stitch of unmentionables again.

Or anything else, for that matter.

Good Lord.

She was perfect.

She was also lying.

For if he had seen her in her underclothes—in anything close to the things she wore now—he would remember.

He would remember the slope of her breasts, the spray of freckles across them, the way they curved in pretty, plump rounds topped with . . . he couldn’t see, but he knew that her nipples were very likely as gloriously well-formed as the rest of her breasts.

He would remember those breasts.

Wouldn’t he?

It is not the first time you’ve seen me in my underclothes.

He closed his eyes against the frustration that flared—the recollection that would not come. There had been a woman, one he’d thought was more muse than memory. More piecemeal than not.

Wide smile. Strange, intoxicating eyes.

“Is it red?”

The modiste’s words were like gunfire in the dark, quiet room. They startled Mara as well. “I beg your pardon?”

“Your hair,” Hebert replied. “Candlelight plays tricks on the eye. But it is red, no?”

Mara shook her head. “It’s brown.”

A silken waterfall of auburn curls.

“It’s auburn,” Temple said.

“You do not seem the kind of man to notice the difference,” she said, refusing to look at him, her eyes instead tracking the slender Frenchwoman now kneeling at her feet.

“I notice more than you could imagine.”

That hair had flickered in his memory for twelve years. There had been countless points when he’d decided it wasn’t real. In his darkest moments, he’d thought he’d fabricated it. Her. Something good to remember of that night.

But she’d been real.

He’d known Mara was the key to that night. That she remembered more than he did. That she was his only chance at piecing together his fall. But it had never occurred to him that she’d been with him for longer than it took to destroy him.

Perhaps she hadn’t. Perhaps it was a lie. Perhaps she’d drugged him and left him to distract the world while she ran from God knew what to God knew where, and those teasing words were her latest attempt at torture.

It wasn’t a lie.

He knew that as well as he knew anything.

But somehow, knowing the truth made everything worse. Because she hadn’t left him with no memory of the night.

She’d left him with no memory of her.

He had to pull himself together. To regain the upper hand. He forced himself to lean back against the settee, refusing to allow her to see that she’d riled him. “For example, I notice that you never wear gloves.”

As if on strings, her hands came together, clasping tight. “When one works for a living . . . one can’t.”

But she hadn’t been required to work. She could have been a duchess.

He wanted answers. Itched for them.

“All the governesses I’ve ever known have worn them.” He tracked the movement of her hands, knowing that they were well-hewn, the skin rough in places, the knuckles red with cold. They were hands that knew work.

He knew, because his hands looked the same.

As though she could hear his thoughts, she unclasped the hands in question, holding them straight and still at her sides. “I am not an ordinary governess.”

No doubt. “I never imagined you an ordinary anything.”

Madame Hebert stood then, excusing herself and leaving them alone in the room. For long moments, Mara stood silent before saying, “I feel a bit like a sacrificial offering up here.”

He could see why. The platform was cast in a warm golden glow, the rest of the room in utter darkness. In her awkward, pale underclothes, she could have easily played the part of the unsuspecting virgin, about to be tossed into a volcano.

Virgin.

The word gave him pause.

Had they—

The question dissolved into a vision of her spread across crisp linen sheets, long, lithe limbs spread wide, perfect and nude. His mouth went dry at the thought, at the image of her splayed open to him, then watered as he considered where he would start with her . . . the long column of her neck, the slope of her breasts, the swell of her belly, the secrets nestled between what he knew would be long, perfect thighs.

He would start there.

He stood, coming toward her, unable to keep himself from it, as though reeled in on a long, sturdy fishing line. She wrapped her arms about her midsection as he approached, and he noticed the gooseflesh on them.

He could warm her.

“Are you cold?” he asked.

“Yes,” she said, smartly, “I’m half naked.”

It was a lie. She wasn’t cold. She was nervous. “I don’t think so.”

She cut him a look. “Why don’t you take off your clothes and see how you feel?”

The words were out before she had a chance to think on them. Before she—or he, if he were honest—realized what they might evoke. Curiosity. Frustration. More. He stopped just short of the pool of light where she stood, unable to hide her face. “Have I done that before?” he asked, the words coming harsher than he intended. Filled with more meaning than he expected.

She looked down at her feet. He followed the gaze, taking in her stockinged toes. When she did not answer, he pressed further. “I woke naked that morning. Naked and covered in someone else’s blood. A damn lot of it,” he said, though the blood didn’t seem to matter so very much. He stepped into the light. “Not your blood.”

She shook her head, finally looking up at him. “Not mine.”

“Whose?”

“Pig’s blood.”

“Why?”

“I didn’t mean—”

Dammit. He didn’t want apologies. He wanted the truth. “Enough. Where were my clothes?”

She shook her head again. “I don’t know. I gave them to—”

“To your brother, no doubt. But why?”

“We—I—” She hesitated. “I thought that if you were naked, it would postpone your looking for me. It would give me more time to get away.”

“Is that it?” He was horrified to discover that the explanation disappointed him. What had he been expecting? That she’d confess a deep, abiding attraction to him?

Perhaps.

No. Goddammit. She was trouble.

He didn’t know what he wanted from this woman any longer. “I was naked, Mara. I remember your hair, down. Your body above me.” She blushed in the candlelight, and then he knew precisely what he wanted. He stepped up, crowding her on the little round platform, but somehow—by the grace of something far more divine than either of them deserved—not touching her. “Did we—”

“ Excusez moi , Your Grace.”

He did not hesitate, did not move. Did not look back. “A moment, Hebert.”

The Frenchwoman knew better than to linger.

He snaked an arm around Mara’s waist, hating himself for the weakness in the movement. He pulled her close, her breasts pressed tight against his chest, as their torsos met. Their thighs.

She gasped, but there was no fear in the sound.

Dear God, she wasn’t afraid of him. When was the last time he’d held a woman who did not fear him?

The last time he’d held her.

“Did we, Mara?” He spoke in a low whisper at her ear, his lips close enough to brush the soft curve of it, the warm skin. He couldn’t resist taking that lobe in his mouth, worrying it with his teeth until she shivered with pleasure.

Not fear.

“Did we fuck?”

She stiffened at the word, hot and wicked at the sensitive skin of her neck, and a thread of guilt shot through him even as he refused to acknowledge it. Even as he refused to feel regret insulting her.