Sarah MacLean - No Good Duke Goes Unpunished

As if she’d heard him, she did. “The night I found you,” she said, “I came to you because of Kit.”

He looked to the sky, frustrated. “I know that,” he said. “To restore his funds.”

She shook her head firmly. “Not in the way you think. When I opened the orphanage, pretending to be Margaret MacIntyre seemed like the easiest solution. A soldier’s widow was respectable. Would not tempt questions.” She paused. “But no bank would allow me to manage my own funds, not without a husband.”

“There are women who have access to banking facilities.”

She smiled, small and wry. “Not women with false identities. I could not risk questions.”

Understanding dawned. “Kit was your banker.”

“He held all the funds. The initial donations, and the money that came from each aristocratic father who left his by-blows with us. All of it.”

Temple exhaled his frustration. “And he gambled it away.”

She nodded. “Every penny.”

“And you were desperate to get it back.”

She lifted one shoulder. “The boys needed it.”

Why hadn’t she told him? “You think I would have let them starve?”

“I did not know.” She hesitated. “You were very angry.”

He paced the little copse of trees, finally placing his hand flat on one trunk, his back to her. She was right, of course, but still, the words stung. “I’m not a goddamn monster!”

“I didn’t know that!” she tried to explain, and he spun to face her.

“Even you thought I was the Killer Duke. Even then.” Disappointment raged through him. She was supposed to know him. To understand him. Better than any. She was supposed to know he was no killer. She was supposed to see that it was all lies.

But she’d doubted him, too.

He wanted to roar his frustration.

She saw it. Raised a hand to stop him. “No. Temple.”

More lies. But he couldn’t stop himself from asking, “Then why?”

She spread her hands wide. “You told me that nothing I could say—”

The memory flashed, intertwined on the platform in Hebert’s shop, at odds. He’d been furious with her. “Christ. I told you there was nothing you could say to make me forgive you.”

She nodded once. “I believed you.”

He released a long breath, a cloud in the cold air. “So did I.”

“And there is a part of me that believed I deserved to pay for his sins. I turned him into that as much as I turned you into this,” she said. “I left you both that night, and my father no doubt punished him brutally just as London punished you.” She grew quiet. “My mistakes seem never to end.”

He was quiet for a long time. “What utter nonsense.”

Shock coursed through her. “I beg your pardon?”

“You didn’t make him. You saved yourself. The boy made his own choices.”

She shook her head. “My father—”

“Your father is the greatest bastard in creation, and if he weren’t dead, I’d take great pleasure in killing him myself,” he said. “But the man was not a god. He did not mold your brother from clay and breathe life into him. Your brother’s sins are his and his alone.” He paused, the words echoing in the darkness, and added, softly, “As are mine.”

She shook her head, moved toward him. “Not so. If I hadn’t drugged you. Left you. Failed to return . . .”

“You are not a god, either. You are just a woman. As I am just a man.” He exhaled, harsh in the darkness. “You didn’t make me. And we have made this mess together.”

Her eyes were liquid in the darkness, and he wanted to hold her. To touch her. To take her home and make her his.

But he didn’t. Instead he said, “I only wish it were over.”

She nodded. “It can be,” she said. “It’s time.”

She meant the unmasking. And perhaps it was time. God knew he’d waited long enough to have this life back—the one he’d been promised. The one he’d loved and missed with a stunning, stinging ache.

But as he stared down at her, it was all gone, lost to this woman, who owned him in some remarkable, unbearable way. He lifted his hand to stroke her cheek in a long, slow caress. She leaned into the touch, and his thumb traced the curve of her lips, lingering.

Something had happened.

He whispered her name, and in the darkness it sounded like a prayer. “I can’t.”

Tears sprang to her eyes, betraying her confusion. Her frustration. “Why not?”

Because I love you.

He shook his head. “Because I find I no longer have a taste for vengeance. Not if it will hurt you.”

She went still beneath his touch, and he saw the myriad of emotions race through her before she reached for his hand. He pulled away before she could catch it and reached into his jacket pocket.

He extracted the bank draft—the one he’d planned to give her after her unmasking this evening. The one he had to give her now. The one that would release them both from this strange, painful world. Handed it to her.

Her brow furrowed as she took the paper in hand, reading it. “What is this?”

“Your brother’s debt. Free and clear.”

She shook her head. “It’s not what we negotiated.”

“It’s what I’m giving you, nonetheless.”

She looked up at him then, sadness and something else in her gaze. Something he hadn’t expected. Pride. She shook her head. “No.”

“Take it, Mara,” he urged. “It’s yours.”

She shook her head once more and repeated herself. “No.” She folded the draft carefully and tore it in half, then in half again, then in half again.

What in hell was she doing? That money could save the orphanage a dozen times. A hundred of them. He watched as she continued her tearing, until she was left with little bits of paper, which she sprinkled on the snowy ground.

His heart pounded in his chest as he watched the little white squares dust the toes of his boots. “Why would you do that?”

She smiled, sad and small in the darkness. “Don’t you see? I’m through taking from you.”

His heart pounded at the words and he reached for her, wanting her in his arms. Wanting to love her as she deserved. As they both deserved.

She let him catch her, pressing her lips to his in one long, lush kiss that stole his breath and flooded him with desire. He wanted to lift her and carry her away, and he cursed his wounded arm for making it difficult to make good on that desire.

Instead, he held her close and reveled in the feel of her lips on his, in the smell of lemons that consumed him, in the soft promise of her fingers in his hair. He ravished her mouth until she sighed her pleasure and melted against him. Only then did he release her, loving the way her fingertips found her lips, as though she’d never been kissed quite that way before.

As though she did not know that he was going to kiss her that way forever.

He reached for her once more, her name already on his lips, wanting to tell her just what she could expect from his kisses in the future, but she stepped backward, out of reach. “No,” she said.

He had waited for twelve years. He did not want to wait any longer.

“Come home with me,” he said, reaching for her. Wanting her. “It’s time we talk.”

It was time they did more than talk. He’d had enough of talk.

She danced back from his touch, shaking her head. “No.” He heard something firm in the word. Something unyielding.

Something he did not like.

“Mara,” he said.

But she was already turning away. “No.”

The word came on a whisper in the darkness as she disappeared for the second time that night.

Leaving him alone, and aching.

“You appear to have lost your coat.”