At his core, he knew it was true, but he did not wish to believe it. So instead of continuing their useless conversation, he went to her office and opened the door, hoping to find her there, behind her desk, auburn hair pulled back in a tight knot.
But she was not.
The desk was pristine, as though it had been placed perfectly for the London stage, and not for any useful purpose.
He turned. Met Lydia’s eyes, sad and full of truth. “Her chamber. Take me to it.”
She considered refusing. He saw it in her. But something changed her mind, and instead, she turned to climb the stairs, up two flights and down a long hallway until she stopped in front of an oak door, firmly shut. He did not wait for her permission, opening it. Entering.
It smelled like lemons.
Lemons, and Mara.
The little room was neat and clean, just as he would have expected. There was a small wardrobe, too small to hold anything more than the bare necessities, and a little table on which sat a half-burned candle and a stack of books. He moved to look at them. Novels. Well-worn and well-loved.
And there was a tiny bed, one she no doubt hung off of when she slept, the only part of the room that was imperfect, because it was currently covered in emerald silk. The dress she’d worn the night before, when she’d revealed herself to the world, and next to it, the matching ermine cloak, and in a little, neat stack, the gloves he’d given her.
She was out in the world, and she did not have any gloves.
He lifted them from the bed, bringing them to his nose, hating the slide of silk, wishing it were her skin. Her heat.
He turned to face Lydia. “Where is she?”
There was sadness in her eyes. “Gone.”
No.
He was losing his patience. “Where?”
She shook her head. “I don’t know. She did not say.”
“When will she be back?”
She looked to the floor and he heard the answer before she spoke it. “Never.”
He wanted to scream. He wanted to rail against idiot women and cruel fate. But instead he said, “Why?”
Lydia returned her gaze to him. “For us.”
What utter nonsense. The words were nearly spoken aloud when Lydia continued.
“Thinks we are all better off without her.”
“The boys need her. You need her. This place needs her.”
Lydia smiled, small and sad. “You misunderstand. She thinks you are better off without her as well.”
“She’s wrong.” He was better with her. Infinitely so.
“I agree. But she believes no aristocrat will leave his children with someone with a past as dark as Mara’s. No donors will give charitably to an orphanage run by a liar. And no duke will ever return to Society with a scandal like her hanging over him.”
“Fuck Society.”
The crass words should have shocked Lydia, but instead, she grinned. “Hear, hear.”
“How did you meet her?” Temple asked, not knowing where the question came from, but desperate to know more about this woman whom he loved so much.
Christ. He should have told her he loved her. Maybe then she would have stayed.
Lydia smiled. “That’s a bit of a story.”
“Tell me.”
“There is a house in the North Country. A place that is safe for women who are looking to change their fate. Daughters and sisters. Wives. Prostitutes. At this house, women get a second chance.”
Temple nodded. It was not unheard of for such a place to exist. Women were not always as valued as they should be. He thought of Mara’s mother, stabbed by her husband. Of her, beaten and forced into a marriage with a man three times her age.
He would have protected her.
Except, he wouldn’t have been able to. Not once she was married. Not once he was returned to school.
And he’d have always hated his father for marrying the woman of his dreams.
Lydia was still speaking. “Mara was there for several years before she was offered the chance to return to London to open MacIntyre’s. I had been there for a year. Maybe less. But she spoke of this place as something more than a simple home for boys. I think it meant more to her. I think it meant everything.” She met Temple’s gaze. “I think she was trying to make up for the punishment she’d given one aristocratic son by helping two dozen others.”
Of course she had. The truth of the words threatened to destroy him.
And those boys were the most important thing in her life.
When he retrieved her, he’d buy them an estate in the country, with horses and toys and enormous grounds on which to run and grow. He’d give every one of them the chance at life she dreamed.
But first, he would give that chance to her. “I asked her to marry me.”
Lydia’s eyes went wide. “Well.”
Indeed.
“I offered to make her my duchess, to give her everything she ever wanted. And she ran.” He ran his fingers over the gloves. “She didn’t even take the damn gloves.”
“She didn’t take anything.”
He turned to face her. “What do you mean?”
“She said she couldn’t take anything more from you. She left everything. She wouldn’t take the clothes, or the cloak.”
He stilled, remembering the way she tore up the note he’d offered her. The funds she’d earned during their idiot arrangement. “She has no money.”
She shook her head. “A few shillings, but nothing substantial.”
“I offered her enough to keep her for years. A fortune!”
Lydia shook her head. “She wouldn’t have taken your money. She wouldn’t have taken anything from you. Not now.”
“Why not?”
“You don’t understand women in love, do you?”
In love. “If she were in love, she wouldn’t have left me in the first place.”
“Don’t you see, Your Grace,” Lydia explained. “It’s because she loves you that she left. Something about a legacy.”
A wife. Children. A legacy. He’d told her that’s what he wanted.
And she’d believed him.
“All I want is her.”
Lydia smiled. “Well. That is something.”
He couldn’t think of her loving him. It would make him mad. He had to retain his sanity if he was going to find her. And then he would lock her in a room and never let her go, hang sanity. “She left here in the dead of winter with no gloves and no money.”
“I’m not certain why the gloves matter so much—”
“They matter.”
“Of course.” Lydia knew better than to argue. “So you can see why it is that I was rather hoping you would turn up. I was rather hoping you would find her.”
“I will find her.”
Lydia let out a long, relieved breath. “Good.”
“And then I will marry her.”
She smiled. “Excellent.”
“Don’t get too excited. I just might throttle her after that.”
Lydia nodded, all seriousness. “Entirely reasonable.”
He bowed, short and perfunctory, turned on his heel, and left the room, leaded down the stairs to the exit. Halfway down the final set of steps, a small voice came from the shadows, staying his movement.
“She left.”
Temple turned to find a collection of small boys above him on the landing, each looking more worried than the last. Daniel was holding Lavender under one arm.
Temple nodded. “Yes.”
Daniel scowled at him. “She was crying when she left.”
Temple’s chest tightened at the words. “You saw her?”
The boy nodded. “Mrs. MacIntyre does not cry.”
Temple remembered the tears in her eyes that night that he’d left her naked
in the boxing ring, and shame coursed through him.
“You made her cry.”
The accusation was harsh and honest. Temple did not deny it. “I am going to fetch her. To make it right.”
Henry spoke up, frustration and anger on his little face, as though he were prepared to avenge his lady. “What did you do to her?”
There were a thousand things he’d done.
I didn’t believe her.
I didn’t trust her.
I didn’t show her how much I loved her.
I didn’t protect her.
He settled on: “I made a mistake.”
George nodded. “You should apologize.”
The other boys seemed to agree with this course of action. “Girls like apologies,” Henry added.
Temple nodded once. “I shall do that very thing. But first I must find her.”
“She’s very good at hiding,” Henry said.
Another boy nodded. “The best of all of us.”
Temple did not doubt that. “I, also, am good at hiding. And one good at hiding is excellent at seeking.”
George looked skeptical. “As good as she is?”
He nodded once. “Better.” He hoped it was true.
Daniel did not believe it. “She’s left us. I don’t think she is coming back.”
The fear in the boy’s eyes echoed that in Temple’s chest, and he was reminded why he’d thought Daniel was his son.
The boy looked down at the pig in his arms. “She left Lavender.”
She’d left them all. She’d left the boys, thinking it was best for them. She’d left Lydia, thinking it would be easier to run an orphanage without the weight of scandal over her head. And she’d left Lavender, because the post road to wherever it was she was going was no place for a pig.
Another one spoke up then, repeating the sentiment. “She forgot Lavender.”
He came up the stairs, crouching low to face the collection of boys, finally reaching out to take Lavender in his arms.
She forgot Lavender.
He knew how the little pink piglet felt. The boys, as well.
She’d also forgotten him.
“May I borrow her for the day?”
The boys considered the question, huddling together to come to a unanimous decision before Henry turned to face Temple. “Yes. But you have to bring her back.”
Daniel stepped forward, extending the pig. “You have to bring both of them back.”
Temple’s heart thudded in his chest, and he nodded solemnly to the boys. “I shall do just that.”
If he could.
“She is not here.”
Temple paced Duncan West’s office on Fleet Street, refusing to believe it. “She has to be here.”
He had come to understand her. She would not leave London before she had honored their arrangement and cleared his name. He believed that with every ounce of his being. He had to. Because if he didn’t, he had to allow for the possibility that she was already gone, and that it would take him time to find her.
He wasn’t interested in giving up time to find her. He wanted her immediately. In his arms. In his bed. In his life.
He wanted to begin the life that they should have had a dozen years ago. The one that had been torn from both of them. He wanted them to have happiness. And pleasure. And love.
Christ, she could right now be with child.
With his child.
And damned if he didn’t want that child—that beautiful little girl with strange eyes and auburn hair. Damned if he didn’t want to be with them both for every possible minute.
She had to be here.
He turned on West, who was seated tall and straight behind a desk covered in papers, in notes and articles and God knew what else. “She would have come here. To speak to you. To give you your story.”
West leaned back in his chair, hands spread wide. “Temple, I swear to you I would like nothing more than for that door to open and Mara Lowe to wander in off the street, full of a decade’s worth of column inches.” He paused, his golden gaze flickering to Temple’s good arm. “But all I have is a duke with a pig.”
Temple looked down at Lavender, asleep.
“Why do you have a pig?”
Temple scowled at the half smile on West’s face. “It’s not your concern.”
The newspaperman tilted his head. “It’s strange enough to make an interesting little side story.”
“I shall make you an interesting little side story if you don’t tell me the truth.”
West seemed uninterested in the threat. “Are you planning some kind of meal?”
Temple clutched Lavender to him, disliking the implication that she might become dinner. “No. I’m—holding her for someone.”
West tilted his head. “Holding her.”
Temple shook his head. “Forget about the damn pig. You haven’t seen Mara.”
“I haven’t.”
“If you do—”
West raised his brows. “I assure you, all of London will know when I’ve had a chance to speak with the woman.”
Temple scowled again. “You won’t make a mockery of her.”
“To be fair, she did destroy your life. She might deserve to have a mockery made of her. The illustrators are already working on the retelling of last night.”
Temple leaned across the desk, fury coursing through him. “You. Will. Not. Make. A. Mockery. Of. Her.”
West watched him for a long moment, then said, “I see.”
Temple did not care for the words. “What do you see?”
“You care for the girl.”
It was not every day Temple was laid bare. By a member of the media. “Of course I care for her. I’m going to marry her.”
West waved one hand in the air. “No one gives a fig about marriage. Throw a stone in London and hit someone unhappily matched. The point is that you care for the girl.”
Temple looked down at Lavender, sleeping in his arms. The only creature on earth who was not annoying him right now.
“Christ. Unfellable, unbeatable Temple. Felled. Beaten. By a woman.”
He met the newspaperman’s gaze, putting all of his darkness into the look. “If she comes here, you send for me. Immediately.”
“Am I to keep the woman locked up until you arrive?”
“If that’s what it takes.”
She was alone with no resources on the streets of London. And he wanted her safe. He wanted her with him. And he would not rest until he found her. He turned on his heel to leave the room.
“I’ll do it, on one condition.”
He should have expected it, of course. Should have known that West would have his own half of the bargain. He turned back. Waited for it.
“Tell me why she is so important. After all, she’s already restored your name. The world believes her alive. I found half a dozen women in that ballroom last night who recognized her. She’s older, but still just as beautiful. And everyone remembers those eyes.”
Irrational fury coursed through him at the mention of Mara’s eyes. He didn’t want people noticing them. He didn’t want them thinking about them. They were not for all to look at. They were for him. He was the only one who had looked into them and seen more than their strange, mismatched color. He had looked into them and seen her.
West pressed on. “Why do you care if she stays or goes?”
He met West’s gaze. “One day, the woman you love will slip through your fingers, and I shall ask you the same question.”
He exited the room, leaving West to consider the implications of the statement.
The newspaperman waited long minutes, listening for the exterior door to close, marking Temple’s departure, before he turned to the window and watched as the Killer Duke mounted his horse and tore off to his ne
xt destination—in search of his love.
Only once the clatter of hooves faded away, he spoke to the empty room. “You may come out now.”
A small closet door opened, and Mara stepped into the room, cheeks stained with tears. “He is gone?”
“He is searching for you.”
She nodded, staring down at her feet, sadness like nothing she’d ever felt before coursing through her. Desire like nothing she’d felt before. He loved her. He’d said it. He’d come looking for her, and he’d confessed his love for her.
“He will find you.”
She looked up at that. “Perhaps not.”
Even as the words left her mouth, she heard the echo of Temple’s promises. If you run, I will find you.
West shook his head. “He will find you, because he will not stop looking until he does.”
“He might,” she said, hoping it was true. Hoping he might decide she was not worth the trouble. Hoping he might find another life. Another woman. Someone worthy of him.
West smiled at that. “You think a man simply gives up searching for the woman he loves?”
The woman he loves. Tears came at the words, hot and stinging, and she couldn’t hold them back. He loved her.
“Here is the part that I do not understand,” West said, more to himself than to her, she thought. “You love him, as well.”
She nodded at that. “Quite desperately.”
“So what is the problem?”
She couldn’t help it. She laughed. “What is the problem? It’s all a problem. I ruined him. I destroyed everything that was supposed to be his. I stole his life. He deserves an aristocratic wife and perfect little children and a legacy that is not tarnished by me.”
West tented his fingers beneath his chin. “He seems not to care a bit about all that.”
Mara shook her head. “But I do! London does! He’ll never return to his rightful place as Duke of Lamont if he’s saddled with the woman who is responsible for all the black marks around the edges of his reputation.”
“Reputation,” West scoffed.
Her eyes went wide. “You make your living on it.”
He grinned. “All that means is that I understand precisely how arbitrary it all is.”
She shook her head. “You’re wrong.”
“I think you have been away from Society for too long,” he said. “You forget that dukes—with or without scandalous wives—are forgiven everything as quickly as possible. They are, after all, the only people who can beget dukes. The aristocracy needs them, lest civilization crumble around us.”