Sarah MacLean - No Good Duke Goes Unpunished

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.”