The words stung him. She could see it, the blow there and then gone, as though they were in the ring where he reigned. When he did not retaliate, she threw her next punch. “I shall do whatever you ask. However you ask it. I shall play your silly game until you decide to reveal me to the world. Until you decide to send me packing. And when you do, I shall go.”

“For your brother’s debt.”

“For whatever I wish.”

One side of his mouth kicked up in a fleeting half smile, and for a moment Mara thought that in another place, in another time, as another woman, she might have enjoyed making him smile.

But right now, she hated it.

“He’s not worth you.”

“He’s not your concern.”

“Why? Some kind of sisterly love?” His eyes blackened, and she let him believe it. Anything to keep him from the orphanage. “His is a face badly in need of a fist.”

Retribution.

“And yet you will not fight him,” she said, feeling angrier than she would have imagined. “Are you afraid to give him a chance?”

He raised a brow, but did not rise to the bait. “I’ve never been bested.”

She smiled. “Did I not best you last night?”

He stilled at the words, then looked up. She saw shock in his black eyes, in the way they widened just barely for just a moment. She resisted the urge to grin her triumph. “You gloat over drugging me?”

She shook her head. “I gloat over felling you. That is the goal, is it not? You owe me the money.”

“In the ring, Miss Lowe. That is where it counts.”

She did smile then, knowing it would annoy him. Hoping it would annoy him. “Semantics. You’re embarrassed to admit I beat you handily.”

“With the help of enough narcotics to take down an ox.”

“Nonsense. A horse, maybe. But not an ox. And you are embarrassed. I work with boys, Your Grace. Need I remind you that I know one who is embarrassed when I see one?”

His gaze grew dark and serious again, and he leaned in, closer to her. Close enough for him to tower over her, more than six feet of muscle and bone, power and might, scars and sinew. He smelled of clove and thyme.

Not that she noticed.

And then he whispered, so close to her ear that she felt the words more than heard them as they sent a chill down her spine. “I am no boy.”

That much was true.

She opened her mouth to reply, but no words came.

It was his turn to smile. “If you wish to fell me, Miss Lowe, I encourage you to meet me in the ring.”

“You will have to pay me for it.”

“And if I don’t agree? What then? You haven’t any choice.”

Truth.

“I also haven’t anything to lose.”

Lie.

“Nonsense,” he said. “There’s always something else to lose. I assure you. I would find it.”

He had her in his trap. She couldn’t run. Not without making sure the boys were safe. Not without securing the money that Kit had lost.

She met Temple’s black gaze, even as he seemed to read her thoughts. “You could run,” he whispered, “but I would find you. And you wouldn’t like what happened then.”

Damn him.

He wasn’t going to agree.

She wanted to scream. Nearly did, until he said, “You won’t be the first woman I have paid to do my bidding . . .”

A vision flashed—arms and legs tangled in crisp white sheets, dark hair and black eyes, and more muscle than one man should have.

“ . . . but I assure you, Miss Lowe, you will be the last.”

The words fell between them, and it took her a moment to refocus her thoughts on them. To realize that he’d agreed. That the orphanage would be saved.

Its price, her ruin. Her life. Her future.

But it would be saved.

Relief was fleeting, interrupted by his low promise. “We begin tonight.”

Chapter 4

“And who is able to tell me what happened to Napoleon after Waterloo?”

A sea of hands shot up inside the small, well-appointed schoolroom of the MacIntyre Home for Boys. Daniel did not wait to be called upon. “He died!”

Mara chose to ignore the positive glee oozing from the young man as he pronounced the emperor dead. “He did, indeed, die. But I’m looking for the bit before that.”

Daniel thought for a moment and then offered, “He ran weeping and wailing from Wellington . . . and died!”

Mara shook her head. “Not quite. Matthew?”

“He rode his horse into a French ditch . . . and died!”

Her lips twitched. “Unfortunately, not.” She chose one of the hands straining for the ceiling. “Charles?”

Charles considered the options, then chose, “He shot himself in the foot, it turned green and fell off, and then he died?”

Mara did smile then. “You know, gentlemen, I am not certain that I am a very effective teacher.”

The hands lowered and a collective grumble went through the room, knowing that they would be required to learn an extra hour of history that day. The boys were saved, however, when a knock sounded, and Alice was silhouetted in the door to the boys’ schoolroom. “Pardon me, Mrs. MacIntyre.”

Mara lowered the book she held. “Yes?”

“There is . . .” Alice opened her mouth, closed it, then opened it again. “That is . . . someone is here to see you.”

Temple.

He was back.

She glanced at the clock in the corner of the room. He’d said tonight. As it was still today, she could only assume that he was a blackguard and a cheat. And she intended to tell him such.

Just as soon as her heart ceased its racing.

The air seemed to leave the room as she looked over the sea of little faces around her and realized that she was not ready to tell the world the truth. She was not ready to be Mara Lowe again.

She wanted to remain Mrs. MacIntyre, born nowhere, come from nothing, now governess and caretaker to a motley group of boys. Mrs. MacIntyre had purpose. Mrs. MacIntyre had meaning. Mrs. MacIntyre had life.

Mara had nothing.

Nothing but truth.

She forced her legs to move, to carry her through the collection of boys to meet Alice. To face the man who had returned to the house, no doubt with a plan in place to change both their lives. Once at the door, she turned back to her students.

“If I . . .”

No. She cleared her throat. Tried again.

“When I return, I expect to hear what happened to Napoleon.”

Their collective groan sounded as she pulled the door shut with a snap.

Alice seemed to know better than to say anything on the walk through the dark, narrow hallways. Mara appreciated the young maid’s intuition—she was not certain that she would be able to carry on a conversation with her heart pounding and thoughts racing.

He was there. Below. Judge and jury and executioner, all in one.

She descended the stairs slowly, knowing that she would never escape her past, and that she could not avoid her future.

The door to the little study where they’d spoken earlier that morning was ajar, and it occurred to Mara that the two-inch gap between door and jamb was a curious thing—eliciting excitement or dread depending upon the situation.

She ignored the fact that somehow, in this moment, it elicited both.

He was not even a little bit exciting; he was entirely dreadful.

She took a deep breath, willing her heart to cease pounding, and released Alice from duty with a halfhearted smile—the most she could manage under the circumstances—before pushing the door open to face the man inside the room.

“You saw him.”

She stepped inside and closed the door firmly. “What are you doing here?”

Her brother came toward her. “What are you doing approaching that man?”

“I asked first,” she said, meeting him at the center of the room in two short strides. “We agreed you’d never come here. You should have sent a note.” It was the way they’d met for the past twelve years. Never in this building, and never anywhere that she might be recognized.

“We also agreed we’d never tell that man that you were alive and living right under his nose.”

“He has a name, Kit.”

“Not one he uses.”

“He has one he uses, as well.” Temple. It wasn’t hard to think of him that way. Big as one, and as unmoving.

Had he always been unmoving? She hadn’t known him when they were young, but his reputation had preceded him—and no one had ever called him cold. A rake, a rogue, a scoundrel, certainly. But never cold. Never angry.

She’d done that to him.

Kit ran a hand through already disheveled brown locks, and Mara recognized the weariness in him. Two years younger, her brother had been filled with life as a child, eager for excitement, and ready with a plan.

And then she’d run, ruining Temple and leaving Kit to pick up the pieces of their unbearably foolish evening. And he’d changed. They’d traded secret letters for years, until she’d resurfaced, hidden in plain sight, Mrs. MacIntyre, widowed proprietress of the MacIntyre Home for Boys.

But he’d been different. Colder. Harsher.

Never speaking of the life she’d left him to. Of the man she’d left him with.

And then he’d gone and lost all her money.

She noted the hunch of his shoulders and the hollows in his cheeks and the scuff on his normally pristine black boots, and she recognized that he at least understood their predicament. Her predicament. She let out a little sigh. “Kit . . .”

“I wish you wouldn’t call me that,” he snapped. “I’m not a boy anymore.”