No Good Duke Goes Unpunished (32 page)
Blindfold him. Good Lord. Did people do such things?
She wanted to. Desperately.
She couldn’t help the smile that spread at the words, and she loved the way he laughed when it appeared. “You minx. You enjoy it.”
“You want me.”
“Want does not begin to describe the way I feel about you,” his low voice promised. “Want is nothing compared with the level of desire I have. With the desperation I feel. With the way I long for you.”
She leaned over, unable to resist pressing her lips to his, taking his mouth in a deep, thorough kiss that she’d learned from him—in long, lush strokes that left them both breathless.
When she lifted her head, it was to find her courage. She slid the cravat over his eyes, and when he lifted his head from the pillows, she reached behind him and tied it tightly, loving the way his body tensed beneath her, loving the sound of his exhale, low and harsh and perfect.
She leaned forward, pressing her breasts to his chest, being careful of his wound as she whispered in his ear, “You are mine.”
He growled at the words. “Always.”
Not always, though.
She couldn’t have him always. It wasn’t the life he deserved—married to a scandal, to a woman no one would ever accept, to a woman London would never forget. As long as she was with him, he would be the Killer Duke.
And he deserved to be so much more.
But tonight, she could pretend.
She pressed long kisses to his warm skin, across one shoulder and up his good arm, where his tattooed muscles strained against his grip. She couldn’t resist running her tongue along the edge of that inked spot, worrying the dips and curves until he growled his pleasure and she moved on, lower, along the outside of his chest and then across it, paying special attention to the scars dotting his chest and stomach. Kissing them. Tracing their raised surfaces with her tongue.
He hissed at the sensation, and she lifted her head. “Do they hurt?”
“No. It’s just—” She waited for him to finish. “No one has ever wanted to touch them before. Not like this.”
She wanted to touch them. She wanted to touch every inch of him, and the realization made her bold. She lifted herself up and slid down his body, working at the fall of his trousers, sliding buttons from their moorings—instinct and desire overtaking experience. He lifted his hips from the bed, allowing her to slide the trousers down, revealing him, long and hard and perfect.
And hers.
She sat back on her heels, taking him in, spread out upon his bed, his good hand locked at the headboard, knuckles white, straining to stay there. Eager to give himself up to her.
Turning himself over to her.
Giving up his control. For her.
She reached for him then, hand trembling, uncertain. She stilled, an inch from him. Closer.
He sensed it. “Mara,” he said, teeth clenched, anguish and desire making the words thick and lovely.
She wanted to give him everything he wanted. But—“I don’t know what to do,” she confessed, the words somehow easier because he was blindfolded. “I’ve never—I want to do it correctly.”
His breath came in a short, panting laugh. “You can’t do it wrong, darling. I promise. I want you too much.”
She leaned forward, taking her confession with him. “I’ve only ever dreamed it,” she told him. “In the dark of night. I’ve wondered what this would be like.”
He shook his head. “Don’t tell me. I don’t want to think of you dreaming of another.”
Shock coursed through her. “It’s never been another,” she said. “It’s always been you.”
And it was her turn to touch, her hand settling on the length of him, feeling him leap and harden even more—if it were possible. He groaned his pleasure, long and loud, and she reveled in the pure, masculine sound. “You’re so hard.”
“I am. For you.”
“And soft, too,” she said. “Like velvet over steel.”
One hand released from the headboard, coming toward her for a split second before he seemed to recall his promise. Before he forced it back to its position. “Not as soft as you.”
“You seem to be having trouble,” she said, her hands running up and down the hot length of him, loving the way his hips moved with her.
He tilted his head. “Are you teasing me?”
She grinned. “Perhaps.”
He scowled. “Remember, Miss Lowe, turnabout is fair play.”
A thrill shot through her. “What a pretty promise.”
The growl again. He couldn’t help himself, the glorious man. “Harder,” he said.
“I thought I was in control,” she said.
“Love, if you don’t think you are in control, you are mad.”
She smiled again, increasing the pressure of her touch. “How could I know I am in charge?”
“Because if I were in charge, we would not be playing silly games.”
She laughed at that, and he said, “I love the sound of your laughter.” She stopped. “It’s so rare. And I want to hear it every day.”
It was the most beautiful thing anyone had ever said to her.
She rewarded him with a long stroke, down and then up his shaft, until his breath was coming hard and fast. “Tell me . . .”
“Anything,” he promised.
“Tell me how you like it.”
He moaned at the words, long and low. “I like it however you wish to give it.”
She leaned forward, kissing him on the lips, surprising him briefly before he reciprocated, the kiss wild and wanton and wonderful. She pulled away and whispered, “Would you like it if I used my mouth?”
He swore, harsh and dangerous, and she took the foul word as a yes, sliding back down the length of his body and considering the length of him . . . wondering what might feel best.
She hesitated too long, evidently, because he called out her name, the word an agonized plea. She pressed a kiss to the tip of him, loving the way he leapt in her hands, against her lips. “Tell me,” she whispered to the most private part of him.
He did as he was told. “Suck it.”
The instructions were scandalous, utterly improper.
And all she wanted.
She did as she was told, following his harsh, aching direction, experimenting and learning with tongue and lips and pressure until he prayed and swore and moaned her name, his head rocking back and forth, his hands desperately clinging to the bedposts as she gave him everything for which he asked.
As she worshipped him.
As she loved him.
Until she realized that it wasn’t enough. That she wanted everything. And she stopped.
“No . . .” The words panted from him as she pressed a final kiss to the throbbing, crimson tip of him. “Why?”
She lifted herself over him then, spreading her legs wide over his hips. Holding him straight until the tip of him touched the curls that protected the most intimate part of her.
The part she would give him.
The part she would never give another.
He shook beneath her. Literally quaked. “Is that— Oh, God. Mara.” She smiled, spreading herself wide, letting the tip of him slide through her secret folds. “Love, you’re so wet.” He swore, the words blasphemous and beautiful. “So hot. So beautiful.”
She smiled, working herself over the head of him. “You can’t see me, how would you know that?”
“I always see you,” he said. “You’re burned into me. I could be blind for the rest of my life, and I would still see you.”
The words took her as much as his body did, as she slid down the hard length of him, and he fit inside her so perfectly that they both sighed, half prayer, half blasphemy. He stilled at the sound of her pleasure. “It doesn’t hurt?”
She shook her head. “No.” It was glorious. “Does it hurt you?”
He grinned. “Hell, no.”
“I shall move, then, if that’s all right with you.”
He laughed. “You are in control, love.”
She was in control, lifting and lowering herself on him, testing the pressure and speed, pausing every now and then to revel in a particular angle. A specific pleasure.
He let her guide the moment, whispering his encouragement, lifting his hips to meet her when she found a particular cadence or rhythm that he enjoyed. She memorized those, coming back to them over and over, loving the way they seemed to destroy him with desire and sensation.
It was glorious.
But there was something missing.
Him.
His touch. His gaze. The piece of him that she desperately wanted. She didn’t want to control him. She did not wish to take this moment for her own.
She wanted to share it.
So she did, leaning up to remove his blindfold, pulling it over his head and flinging it across the room, not caring where it fell. His gaze was hot and heavy on her, and she nearly swooned when he instantly captured the tip of one of her breasts in his mouth, worrying it. Loving it.
And still, he kept his hands locked on the headboard. Until she released him with simple, honest words. “I am yours.”
Free, his hands fell to her hips, his strong, gentle grip guiding her hips in perfect rhythm, changing the angle, giving her the chance to find the movement that brought her immense pleasure, and she was suddenly rocking hard and fast against him, crying out as his fingers found the heat of her, pressing and rolling in that secret place until she could not bear it any longer.
His gaze was on hers, his lids heavy with desire, and she placed her hands on the bed by his head and whispered, “Don’t stop.”
Don’t stop looking at me.
Don’t stop moving in me.
Don’t stop loving me.
He heard it all. “Never,” he promised.
She gave herself up to ecstasy. And to him.
And only once she had taken her pleasure did he take hers, rocking once, twice, three times against her, and crying out her name, releasing high inside her, holding her to him—still joined together—until their heartbeats calmed as one.
After long moments, she stirred, the chill from the room making her shiver in his arms, and he pulled one edge of the massive coverlet over her, refusing to let her out of his arms.
Instead, he buried his nose in her neck and said, “I can’t get enough of you. Of that scent. You make me want to buy every lemon in London so no one can get a whiff of you. But it’s not just lemons. It’s something else. It’s you.”
The words warmed her. “You’ve noticed my scent?”
He smiled at the words he’d used with her a lifetime ago. Repeated her reply. “It’s impossible to miss.”
They lay there in silence, his good hand stroking over her skin, up and down her spine like a benediction. She wondered what he was thinking, and was about to ask when he broke the silence with “What if I cannot fight again?”
His arm. She turned to kiss the warm expanse of his chest. “You will.”
He ignored her platitudes. “What if I never regain the feeling? Who am I then? Who will I be? What am I if not unbeatable? If not a fighter? If not the Killer Duke? What is my value then?”
Her heart ached at the questions. He would be everything she’d ever wanted. He would be all she’d ever dreamed.
She lifted her head. “You don’t see it, do you?”
“What?”
“You are so much more.”
He kissed the words from her lips, and she was desperate for him to believe her, so she put all her love, all her faith, into the caress. And when he ended it, she whispered. “Temple, you are everything.”
“William,” he corrected her. “Call me William.”
“William,” she whispered the name against his chest. “William.”
William Harrow, the Duke of Lamont.
The man she’d destroyed. The one she could restore. She could give him back the life she had taken. She could return him to his former glory—to the world he’d loved, the women and the balls and the aristocracy. The world he could not have if he did a stupid, noble thing and married her.
No. This was the greatest gift she could give him, even if it would take the greatest sacrifice she had ever made.
The one where she gave up everything she wanted.
The only thing she wanted.
Him
.
She wasn’t his dream. She wasn’t his goal. She couldn’t be the wife, the mother, the legacy. “We cannot marry,” she said, softly.
He kissed the top of her head. “Sleep with me tonight, and let me convince you tomorrow why it is the best of all my ideas.”
She shouldn’t. She should leave him now, while she had the strength. “I can’t—”
He interrupted her with a long, lush kiss, one filled with something more than passion. With something she did not wish to identify, for if she identified it, she might never do what needed to be done.
“Stay.”
Her heart broke at the word, dark and graveled on his lips. At the desire in it. At the promise in it. At the knowledge that if she did, he would do everything in his power to keep her. To protect her.
At the knowledge that if she did, he would never have the life he deserved. One free of scandal and ruin. One free of the memories of his past and his destruction.
He was too perfect. Too right. And she was all wrong.
She would only ruin him again. Only destroy everything he ever wanted. She had to leave him. She had to leave before she was too tempted to stay.
And so she told one final lie. The most important one she’d ever tell.
“I will.”
He slept then, and once his breathing was deep and even, she told the truth.
“I love you.”
H
e woke at peace, for the first time in twelve years, already reaching for Mara, eager to pull her into his arms and make love to her properly. Eager to show her all the ways it was right for them to marry. Eager to show her all the ways he would make her happy. All the ways he would love her.
And he would love her, as strange and ethereal as the word seemed, as much as he’d never thought it would have place in his life. He would love her.
He would start today.
Except she was not in the bed. He came up with a handful of empty sheets, too cool to have been left recently.
Dammit. She’d run.
He out of bed within seconds, already pulling on the trousers she’d stripped from him the night before, doing his best to block the memory from his mind. Not wanting his reason or judgment clouded by the things she made him feel. Passion. Pleasure. Sheer, unadulterated frustration.
He was dressed and down the stairs within seconds, out to the mews to saddle his horse and in front of No. 9 Cursitor Street within thirty minutes. He took the stairs to the orphanage three at a time and was inside before most people could knock. It was a good thing the door was unlocked, or he might have torn it down himself.
Lydia was crossing the foyer when he entered, stopping her mid-stride. He did not hesitate. There was no time for pleasantries. “Where is she?”
The woman had learned from a master. “I beg your pardon, Your Grace, where is who?”
He had gone more than thirty years without throttling a female, and he was not about to start now. But he was not above using his size to intimidate. “Miss Baker, I am in no mood for games.”
Lydia took a deep breath. “She is not here.”
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.
“S
he 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.”