Sarah MacLean: No Good Duke Goes Unpunished

He did not reply.

“Yes, I left you holding the guilt for my death.”

And still nothing.

“But I swear I did not mean it to go the way I did. The whole thing got away from me.”

Yet still she’d run.

“If you knew why I did it—”

His chest rose in a long, even breath.

“Why I returned—”

And fell.

If he knew, he’d still be furious. She sighed. “Well. Here we are. And I am tired of running.”

No answer.

“I shan’t run now.”

It seemed important to say it. Perhaps because there was a part of her—a very sane and intelligent part of her—that wished to run. That wished to leave him here on his cold, hard floor, and escape as she had so many years ago.

But there was another part of her—not so sane, and not so intelligent—that knew that it was time for her penance. And that if she played her cards right, she could get what she wanted in the bargain.

“Assuming you negotiate.”

She turned to the sideboard, where the day’s paper sat, unread. She wondered if he were the kind of man who read his news each day. If he were the kind of man who cared about the world.

Guilt flared, and she pushed it away.

She tore the sheet of newsprint in half, then searched the drawers in the room until she found what she was looking for—a pot of ink and a quill. She scrawled a note, haphazardly waving the wet ink in the air as she returned to him, still as a corpse.

Extracting a hairpin, she crouched beside him again. “No blood this time,” she whispered to him. “I hope you’ll notice that.”

Still, he slept.

She pinned the note to his chest, reached into his boot to extract her knife, and made to leave.

Except she couldn’t.

At the door, she turned back, noting the chill in the room. She couldn’t leave him like this. He’d catch a death of cold. On a chair in the corner, there was a green and black tartan. It was the least she could do.

She had drugged the man, after all.

She was across the room and had the blanket in her hands before she could change her mind. She spread it across him, tucking it around his body carefully, trying not to notice the size of him. The way he exuded warmth and the tempting scent of clove and thyme. The memory of him. The now of him.

Failing.

“I’m sorry,” she whispered.

And then she left.

He dreamed of the ballroom at Whitefawn Abbey, gleaming sun-bright in the shade of a thousand candles and the sheen of silks and satins in a myriad of color.

The room belied the darkness that lurked beyond the enormous windows overlooking the massive gardens of the Devonshire estate—the country seat of the Duke of Lamont.

His estate.

He descended the wide marble stairs to the ballroom floor, where a crush of bodies writhed in time to the orchestra situated behind a wall of greenery at the far end of the room. The heat of the revelers overwhelmed him as he made his way through the throngs, pressing against him, pulsing with laughter and sighs, hands reaching for him, touching, grasping. Wide smiles and unintelligible words beckoned him deeper into the mass of people—welcoming him into its center.

Home.

There was a glass in his hand; he lifted it to his lips, the cool stream of champagne quenching the thirst he hadn’t noticed before, but was now nearly unbearable. He lowered the glass, letting it fall into nothingness as a beautiful woman turned and stepped into his arms.

“Your Grace.” The title echoed through him, coming on a wave of pleasure.

They danced.

The steps came from distant memory, a slow, spinning eternity of long-forgotten skill. The woman in his arms was all warmth, tall enough to make him a proper match, and curved enough to fit his long arms.

The music swelled, and still they danced, turning again and again, the sea of faces in the ballroom fading into blackness—the walls of the room falling away as he was distracted by a sudden, heavy weight on his sleeve. He turned his attention to his forearm, wrapped in black wool, pristine but for a sixpence-sized white spot.

Wax, fallen from the chandeliers overhead.

As he watched, the spot liquefied, spreading across his coat sleeve in a thread of molten honey. The woman in his arms reached for the liquid—her long, delicate fingers stroking along the fabric, her touch spreading fire as it crept toward the spot, hot wax coating her fingertips before she turned them up to his gaze.

She had beautiful hands.

Beautiful skin.

She wore no gloves.

He followed the line of her long arm from wrist to shoulder, taking in her piecemeal perfection—the curves and valleys of her collarbone; the long rise of her neck; her angled jaw; her wide, welcoming mouth; long, equine nose; and eyes like none he’d ever seen. One blue, one green.

Her lips curved around the words he’d craved and feared for so long. “Your Grace.”

And, like that, she was in focus.

Mara Lowe.

He woke on the floor of his library, coming to his feet in a mad rush, a foul curse echoing in the blue fog of breaking dawn.

A green and black tartan fell to his feet as he rose, and the fact that the woman had covered him with a blanket after drugging him in the dead of night was no kind of comfort. He imagined her standing over him at his most vulnerable moment, and wanted to roar his anger.

She had drugged him and left.

Again.

On the heels of that thought came another.

Dear God. She was alive.

He hadn’t killed her.

Relief burst full and high in his lungs, warring with frustration and ire.

He wasn’t a killer.

He ran one hand down his face to ease the tightness of the emotion, and noticed that she had not simply left him.

She’d also left a note, scrawled across yesterday’s news, and pinned to his chest with a simple hairpin, as though he were a package to be delivered by post.

He tore the missive from its mooring, knowing that whatever she had to say would do little to assuage his anger.

I had hoped it would not come to this, but I will not be intimidated, and I will not be strong-armed.

He resisted the urge to crumple the note and throw it into the fire. She thought she was the one being strong-armed? When it was he who had been knocked out on the floor of his own study?

The offer is a trade, and nothing less.

When you are in a negotiating frame of mind, I welcome your visit for a discussion of equals.

That would be impossible. He was not nearly mad enough to be her equal.

You will find me at No. 9 Cursitor Street.

She’d left her address. Mistake. She should have run. Not that he wouldn’t have caught her; he would have spent the rest of his life chasing her if she’d run.

He deserved his retribution, after all. And she would give it to him.

Who was this stupid, brave woman?

Mara Lowe. Alive. Found.

Strong as steel.

The thought came, another fast on its heels, and he reached inside his boot, knowing what he would find.

The harpy had stolen her knife.

Within the hour, he was washed and on his way to No. 9 Cursitor Street, uncertain of what to expect. It was possible the woman had run, after all, and as he made his way deeper and deeper into the streets of Holborn, he wondered if she had done just that and left him with directions to her personal cutthroats to finish the job she’d begun the prior evening.

The neighborhood was less than pleasant, even at seven in the morning. Drunks were nestled in doorways of unsavory taverns, empty bottles fallen haphazardly to their sides as they lolled in their early-morning stupors. A haggard prostitute stumbled into the street from an alleyway beyond, eyes bloodshot and heavy as she plowed into him.