Mara Lowe.

It had been more than a decade since she’d said the name aloud. She’d been Margaret MacIntyre since the moment she’d left that night. But now, she was Mara again, the only way to save the one thing that mattered to her. The thing that gave her purpose.

She had no choice but to be Mara.

The thought propelled her upstairs, into a room that was part-library, part-study, and all male. As he lit the candles throughout, a golden glow spread over furniture large and leathered in heavy dark colors.

He was already crouching to light a fire in the hearth when she entered. It was so incongruous—the great duke setting a fire—that she couldn’t help herself. “You don’t have servants?”

He stood, brushing his hands on his massive thighs. “A woman comes in the mornings to clean.”

“But no others?”

“No.”

“Why not?”

“No one wants to sleep in the same house as the Killer Duke.” There was no anger in the words. No sadness. Just truth.

He moved to pour himself a scotch, but did not offer her one. Nor did he offer her a seat when he folded himself into a large leather chair. He took a long pull of amber liquid and crossed ankle over knee, letting the glass dangle from his grip as he watched her, black eyes taking her in, watching, seeing everything.

She folded her hands to control their trembling, and met his gaze. Two could play at this. Twelve years away from money and power and the aristocracy made for a strong will.

A will they shared.

The thought whispered through her on a thread of guilt. She’d chosen this life. Chosen to change everything. He hadn’t. He’d been a casualty of a child’s stupid, silly plan.

I am sorry.

It was true, after all. She’d never meant for that charming young man—all muscle and grace and wide, smiling mouth—to become an unwitting victim in her escape.

Not that she’d tried to save him.

She ignored the thought. It was too late for apologies. She’d made her bed; now she would lie in it.

He drank again, lids shuttering his gaze, as though she could miss the way he stared at her. As though she didn’t feel it right to her toes.

It was a battle. He would not speak first, which left it to her to begin the conversation.

A losing move.

She would not lose to him.

So she waited, trying not to fidget. Trying not jump from her skin with every crack of the logs in the fireplace. Trying not to go mad under the weight of the silence.

Apparently, he was not interested in losing, either.

She narrowed her gaze on his.

She waited until she could wait no longer, and then told him the truth. “I don’t like being here any more than you like having me.”

The words turned him to stone for a moment, and she bit her tongue, afraid to speak. Afraid to make things worse.

He laughed again—the laugh she’d heard earlier, outside—devoid of humor, a graveled expulsion that sounded more like pain than pleasure. “Amazing. Until this moment, I actually had allowed for the possibility that you have been a victim of fate as well.”

“Aren’t we all victims of fate?”

And she had been. She did not pretend that she had not been a willing participant in everything that had happened all those years ago . . . but had she known how it would change her  . . . what it would do to her . . .

She stopped the lie from completing.

She would have done it anyway. She didn’t have a choice then. Just as she had no choice tonight.

There were moments that changed one’s life. And paths that came without a fork in the road.

“You are alive and well, Miss Lowe.”

The man was a duke, powerful and wealthy, with all of London at his feet if he wanted it. She lifted her chin at the accusation in his tone. “As are you, Your Grace.”

His eyes went dark. “That is debatable.” He leaned back in his chair. “So it appears that fate was not my attacker, after all. You were.”

When he’d caught her outside, before he’d known why she was there and who she was, there had been warmth in his voice—a hint of heaviness that she’d been drawn to, even as she’d known better.

That warmth was gone now, replaced with cold calm—a calm by which she was not fooled. A calm she would wager shielded a terrible storm.

“I didn’t attack you.”

Fact, even if it was not entirely truth.

He did not release her gaze. “A liar through and through, I see.”

She lifted her chin. “I never lied.”

“No? You made the world believe you were dead.”

“The world believed what it wished.”

His black gaze narrowed. “You disappeared, and left it to draw its own conclusions.”

His free hand—the one that did not grip his scotch in an approximation of casualness—betrayed his ire, fingers twitching with barely contained energy. She noticed the movement, recognizing it from the boys she’d met on the streets. There was always something that betrayed their frustration. Their anger. Their plans.

But this was no boy.

She was not a fool—twelve years had taught her a hundred lessons in safety and self-preservation, and for a moment, regret gave way to nerves and she considered fleeing again—running from this man and this place and this choice she’d made.

The choice that would both save the life she had built and tear it down.

The choice that would force her to face her past, and place her future in this man’s hands.

She watched those fingers move.

I never meant for you to be hurt. She wanted to say it, but he wouldn’t believe her. She knew that. This was not about his forgiveness or his understanding. This was about her future. And the fact that he held its key.

“I disappeared, yes. And I cannot erase that. But I am here now.”

“And we get to it, finally. Why?”

So many reasons.

She resisted the thought. There was only one reason. Only one that mattered.

“Money.” It was true. And also false.

His brows rose in surprise. “I confess I would not have expected such honesty.”

She lifted one shoulder in a little shrug. “I find that lies overcomplicate.”

He exhaled on a long breath. “You are here to plead your brother’s case.”

She ignored the flood of anger that came with the words. “I am.”

“He is in debt to his eyeballs.”

With her money.

“I’m told you can change that.”

“Can is not will.”

She took a breath, threw herself into the fray. “I know he can’t beat you. I know the fight with the great Temple is a phantom. That you always win. Which, I assume, is why you haven’t accepted one of his dozen challenges. Frankly, I’m rather happy you haven’t. You’ve given me room to negotiate.”

It was hard to believe his dark eyes could grow darker. “You are in contact with him.”

She stilled, considering the miscalculated reveal of information.

He gave her no time. “How long have you been in contact with him?”

She hesitated a second too long. Less. Enough for him to shoot from his chair and stalk her across the room, pressing her back, far and fast enough to send her tripping over her skirts.

One massive arm shot out. Caught her, the corded strength like steel across her back. Pulled her to him; she was caged against him. “For how long?” He paused, but before she could answer, he added, “You don’t have to tell me. I can smell the guilt on you.”

She put her hands to his chest, feeling the wall of iron muscle there. Pushed. The effort was futile. He would not move until he was ready.

“You and your idiot brother concocted an idiot plan, and you disappeared.” He was so close. Too close. “Maybe not idiot. Maybe genius. After all, everyone thought you were dead. I thought you were dead.” There was fury in the words, fury and something else. Something she could not help but wish to assuage.

“That was never the plan.”

He ignored the words. “But here you are, twelve years later, flesh and blood. Hale and healthy.” The words were soft, a whisper of sound at her ear. “I should make good on our past. On my reputation.”

She heard the anger in his words. Felt it in his touch. Later, she would marvel at her own courage when she looked up at him and said, “Perhaps you should. But you won’t.”

He released her, so quickly that she stumbled back as he turned away, pacing the length of the room, reminding her of a tiger she’d seen once in a traveling show, caged and frustrated. It occurred to her that she would gladly trade the wild beast for the Duke of Lamont in that moment.

Untamed, himself.

When he finally turned back, he said, “I wouldn’t be so certain. Twelve years marked as a killer change a man.”

She shook her head, holding his black gaze. “You are not a killer.”

“You’re the only one who knew that.”

The words were quiet and rife with emotion. Mara recognized fury and shock and surprise, but it was the accusation that unsettled her. It wasn’t possible that he’d thought himself her killer.

It wasn’t possible that he’d believed the gossip. The speculation.

Was it?

She should say something. But what? What did one say to the man falsely accused of one’s murder?

“Would it help if I apologized?”

He narrowed his gaze on her. “Do you feel remorse?”

She would not change it. Not for the world. “I am sorry that you were caught in the fray.”

“Do you regret your actions?”

She met his eyes. “Do you wish the truth? Or a platitude?”