And he’d never guessed that it would all pale in comparison to this woman and the life he might have had with her.
He would have saved her from his father. Would have loved her better. Harder. With more passion. He would have protected her. And he would have waited for her.
He knew it was wrong. And scandalous. But he would have waited until the day his father died, and then taken her for his own. And shown her the kind of life she deserved.
The one they both deserved.
She sighed in the darkness, and he heard the sorrow in the sound. The deep, enduring regret.
Was she sorry she hadn’t left with her brother? That she hadn’t taken the chance to run without ruin?
Ruin. Somehow, that goal had been lost in the darkness.
He’d waited too long. Come to know her. To understand her. To see her.
And now, all he wanted to do was to take her home and make love to her until they’d both forgotten the past. Until all they could think of was the future. Until she trusted him to share her thoughts and her smiles and her world.
Until she was his.
It was time to begin again.
He came out of the darkness. Into her light. “You must be frozen.”
She gasped, her chin snapping up, her eyes finding his in the small clearing. She shot to her feet. “How long have you been there?”
“Long enough.”
To see you betray me.
And, somehow, to realize I love you.
She nodded, her arms wrapped tightly about her. She was cold. He shrugged out of his coat, holding it out to her. She shook her head. “No. Thank you.”
“Take it. I am tired of standing by as you shiver in the cold.”
She shook her head.
He tossed it to the bench. “Then neither of us will use it.”
For a long moment, he thought she might not take it. But she was cold, and not an idiot. She pulled it on, and he took the movement as an excuse to come closer, wrapping the enormous coat around her, loving the way she curled into the heat of it. The heat of him.
He wanted to wrap her in his heat forever.
They stood in silence for a long moment, the scent of lemons curling around him, all temptation.
“I wish you would get on with it,” she said, breaking the quiet with anger and frustration.
He tilted his head. “With what?”
“With my unmasking. It is why I am here, is it not?”
It had been, of course. But now— “It is not yet midnight.”
She gave a little laugh. “Surely you needn’t stand on ceremony. If you unmask me early, then I can leave, and you can resume your position of valued duke. You’ve been waiting long enough for it.”
“Twelve years,” he said, watching her carefully, seeing the desperation in her eyes. “Another hour is nothing.”
“And if I told you it was something to me?”
His eyes tracked her face. “I would ask why you are suddenly so eager to be revealed.”
“I am tired of waiting. Tired of standing on tenterhooks, until you decide my fate. I am tired of being controlled.”
He wanted to laugh at that. The idea of his having any control over her was utter madness. Indeed, it was she who consumed his thoughts. Who threatened his quiet, logical life. Who threw it into disarray. “Have I controlled you?”
“Of course you have. You’ve watched me. Purchased my clothes. Inserted yourself into my life. Into the life of my charges. And you’ve made me . . .” She trailed off.
“Made you . . .” he prompted.
For a moment, he thought she might say she loved him. And he found that he desperately wanted the words.
She stayed quiet. Of course. Because she didn’t love him. He was a means to her end. As she was to him. Or, rather, as she had been in the beginning.
Anger flared. Frustration. How had he let this happen? How had he come to care for her even as she fought him? How had he forgotten the truth of their time together? What she’d done?
How did he no longer care?
The fighter in him pushed to the surface. “I know he was here, Mara,” he said, seeing the shock on her face. After a moment, he said, “You are not going to deny it?”
“No.”
“Good. At least there is that.”
Tell me the truth , he willed. For once in our cursed time together, tell me something I can believe.
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.”