Kit was quiet for a long moment before he said, “So that’s it then?”

She swallowed back her tears, tired of this life she lived, of the way she’d had to run and hide for so long. Of the way she’d lived in the shadow of her past.

There was a part of her that thought the money might buy her freedom. It might send Kit away and give her a chance at something else. Something more.

Temple.

“That’s it.”

He disappeared into the darkness, the way he’d come.

Guilt flared, but not for Kit. Not for his future. She’d given him money and a chance at a new life. And, in doing so, she’d stolen Temple’s retribution.

Somehow, that was worse than all the rest.

She had betrayed him.

And it did feel like a betrayal, even as she stood outside the place where he planned to take his revenge. Even as she knew that she should loathe him and wish him ill for making his revenge somehow paramount, even as he treated her with kindness she’d never received from another.

If this was love, she wanted none of it.

Long after her brother left, Mara sat on a low wooden bench, feeling more alone than she ever had in her life. Tonight she would lose her brother, the orphanage, and this life she’d built for herself. Margaret MacIntyre would join Mara Lowe, exiled from Society. From the world she knew.

But none of that seemed to matter. Instead, all she could think was that tonight, she would lose Temple.

She would give him the life for which he’d been born—the highborn wife, the aristocratic children, the perfect legacy. She would give him the life that he had always wanted. Of which he’d dreamed.

But she would lose him.

And it would have to be enough.


She was beautiful.

Temple stood in the darkness, watching her as she sat straight and true on a low wooden bench carved from a single tree trunk, looking as though she’d lost her dearest friend.

And perhaps she had.

After all, in the moment she’d given Christopher Lowe the scraps from her reticule and sent him from England, she’d lost the brother she’d loved, and the only person who knew her story.

A story for which Temple would raze London.

He should loathe her. He should be furious that she’d helped Lowe escape. That she’d sent him running into the night instead of turning him over. The man had tried to kill him.

And yet, as he watched her, cold and alone in the Leighton gardens, he couldn’t loathe her. Because somehow, in all of this madness, he understood her.

He could see it in the way she held herself, stiff and unmoving, lost in her thoughts and the past. In the way she owned every one of her actions. In the way that she had never once cowed from him since that dark night that had changed both their lives.

She thought she deserved the sadness. The loneliness. She thought she’d brought it upon herself.

Just as he had.

Christ. He didn’t simply understand her.

He loved her. The words came like a blow, surprising and strong, and true. He loved her.

All of her, somehow—the girl who had ruined him and somehow, at the same time, set him free, and the woman who stood before him now, strong as steel and everything he’d ever wanted.

All those years, he’d imagined the life he might have had. The wife. The children. The legacy. All those years, he’d imagined being a part of the aristocracy, powerful and entitled and unquestioned.

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.”