Sarah MacLean: No Good Duke Goes Unpunished

Her gaze fell on him, taking in the ripple of his muscles, the set of his jaw. The way his gaze tracked his opponent. But there was something different in this Temple. Something that she had not seen all the other nights.

Anger.

Desperation.

Frustration.

Sadness.

He loved her.

Just as she loved him. Mara closed her eyes. She might not deserve him, but she wanted him nonetheless.

She pressed her hands to the window. “He thinks I am gone.”

“Yes,” Anna said.

“Take me to him.”

“Not yet.”

That’s when the second fighter entered the ring. Her brother. “What is he doing here?”

“Showing his idiocy,” Anna said. “He came to the club and challenged Temple.”

She’d given him money. A chance to leave. And still, he’d come here out of greed and insolence and childishness.

She shook her head.

“Your brother insulted you.”

Mara had no doubt that Kit had done so with colorful aplomb. “Nevertheless, you must stop it.”

Anna looked to her, eyes suddenly wary. “Why?”

“Why?” Was the woman mad? “Because he shall hurt himself!”

“Who? Your brother? Or Temple?”

Had everyone in the entire world gone mad?

Mara faced Anna. “You think I don’t love him.”

“I think he is a man who deserves more love than most. And I think you are the reason why. So yes, I worry that you don’t love him enough. I worry that in this instance, you want the fight stopped for a different reason.”

She wanted the fight stopped so she could be with him. So she could love him. So she could finally, finally put the past to rest.

But the fight began before she could say so, and this new, angry Temple led the bout, coming out hard and fast, striking first with several blows, a right hook. A right jab. A right cross.

Always the right.

Kit recovered, coming at him with one blow, a second of his own, sending Temple dancing back across the ring. Mara watched the bandage, saw the linen ties that kept it in place loosen. Turned to Anna. “Please. Take me to Chase. We must end this.”

The prostitute shook her head. “This is his fight. For you.”

“I don’t want it.”

“And yet, you receive it all the same.”

Another right hook. A right jab.

That’s when Kit saw the pattern.

Mara looked away. A child could see the pattern.

He was going to lose.

How many times had he told her he did not lose? How many times had she heard of him, the great Temple, the winningest bare-knuckle boxer in Britain. In all the world. Unbeatable. Undefeated. Unbreakable.

Kit might be drunk, but he was no fool. He knew that Temple was weak on the left side, so he went for it, landing blows inexpert enough to have marked his own demise ten days prior. But now, those blows were hard enough to inflict pain. Hard enough to set Temple back.

He was not unbeatable. Not tonight.

But Kit had insulted her, and he would take the loss for himself before he would take it for her.

“Christ, why doesn’t he use the left? Why doesn’t he block on it?” Someone asked, and Mara heard the frustration in the woman’s voice.

“He can’t,” Mara whispered, her hand on the shaded window as she watched her love take another blow and another. For her. Again and again.

His arm wasn’t working correctly.

He was going to lose.

Kit landed another blow, and Temple came to his knees, the crowd counting the seconds he spent on the floor of the ring, before he looked up at his opponent and spoke. Kit danced away, and Temple pushed himself up to stand once more, blood running down his cheek.

He would fight until he was destroyed.

He would not give up. Not when Mara’s name was on the line.

He loved her.

His words from the prior night returned. What am I if not unbeatable? If not a fighter? If not the Killer Duke? What is my value then?

He would not stop. Not until her brother killed him.

Anna saw it then, the inevitable end. And when she looked to Mara, she said, “It will be over before we can stop it.”

Mara wouldn’t hear no.

The man she loved was ten feet away. Fewer. And he needed her.

Dammit, if she was the only one who would save him, she would.

She moved without thinking, lifting the chair in her hands before anyone in the room could predict her actions. Anna reached for it too late, calling out, “No!”

But Mara had one goal only.

Temple.

He was going to lose.

His left side was screaming in pain, the muscles protesting the bout—too soon after the stabbing. And that was without the nerves, sizzling in fits and starts down his arm, causing as much pain from the inside as Lowe was from the outside.

He was going to lose. He could not avenge her.

Not that it mattered; she had left him.

She’d run from him. Again.

Lowe landed two powerful blows to his left side, sending Temple to his knees. There, in the sawdust, he wondered when the last time was that he had been on his knees in the ring.

With Mara .

The afternoon they were alone here. The afternoon he’d driven her away the first time. The afternoon when he should have collected her in his arms and taken her to his bed and never released her.

He looked up at Lowe and said, “You may win today, but I will ruin you if you ever speak ill of her again.”

Lowe danced back from him and taunted. “That’s if I leave you alive.”

Temple came to his feet for what he knew would be the final portion of the bout, assuming Lowe had the stomach for it. But before any further blows could land, the room exploded.

The mirror hiding the ladies’ viewing room shattered in massive, ear-splitting perfection, every inch of it collapsing to the floor of the main room, like spun sugar. The sound was like nothing he’d ever heard, and he and Lowe—and the rest of the room—turned to watch as the window slid away, and the women inside went screeching and running for cover of darkness, not wanting to be seen or identified.

The men crowded around the fight stilled, hands in the air, clutching bets and markers, mouths frozen open in their perverse cheers, but Temple cared for none of that.

He cared only for the woman who had caused the devastation.

The woman standing alone at the center of that broken mirror, proud and tall and strong like a queen, the chair she’d used to shatter the window still in her hands.

Mara.

His love.

She was here. Finally.

She set the chair on the ground and used it to climb over the ledge and into the ring, caring not a bit about the men around her. Looking only at him.

He was moving toward her even as the last of the glass tinkled to the ground, caring only for her. Wanting to reach her. To hold her. To believe that she was there. She reached up and removed her mask, letting all of London see her for the second time in as many days.

A murmur of recognition moved like a wave through the room.

“I grew tired of waiting for you to come find me, Your Grace,” she said, loud enough for those near to hear her. But the words were for him. Only him.

He smiled. “I would have found you.”

“I’m not so certain,” she replied. “You seemed somewhat occupied.”

He looked over his shoulder. “What, him?”

Her gaze tracked his bleeding face, and he saw the worry in her eyes. Saw the way her hand lifted to touch. To soothe. “I thought I might help.”

His brows rose as she climbed into the ring and faced her brother. “You, Christopher, are an ass, and still the child you were when I left you twelve years ago.”

Kit’s gaze grew dark and foreboding. “Well, this child would have destroyed your duke if you hadn’t distracted us.”