She followed him, knowing with each step tonight, her life would change. Tonight, she would no longer be able to escape her past. She would have to claim it. And with it, she would likely lose everything for which she’d worked.
Because of him.
At the door, Lydia stopped her, throwing her arms around her, and whispering in her ear, “Courage.”
Mara nodded around the knot in her throat, and lifted Lavender into her arms for a long cuddle and a kiss on the head before relinquishing the pig to the new proprietress of the MacIntyre Home for Boys.
The coach was silent as a tomb, and Mara tried not to notice him.
She tried not to notice the way his chest rose and fell beneath the crisp linen of his shirt and the soft wool of his jacket. The way his breath came in long, slow inhales and exhales. The way his strong thighs engaged as the carriage rocked along the cobblestone streets. The scent of him—clove and thyme and Temple.
She tried not to notice him until he leaned forward in the darkness, across the unspoken line of demarcation between his side of the carriage and hers, and said, gruffly, “I brought you a gift.”
It would be rude not to notice one with a gift, after all.
And sure enough, he punctuated his words by extending a long, slim box toward her. She recognized it immediately, the white with gold embossing, the mark of Madame Hebert, and she shook her head in confusion as she accepted the parcel. “I’m wearing everything you ordered. More.”
The words were out before she could keep them back—before she could stop herself from reminding them both that she was wearing his clothes. Clothes he’d chosen as she stood half naked in front of him in a dark room.
He could have taken the moment to push her on the topic. To force her to admit each scrap of clothing was his before it was hers. But he didn’t. Instead, he leaned back on the seat and said, “Not everything.”
She opened the box, pulling back gossamer-thin paper to reveal a pair of beautiful satin gloves, perfectly matched to her dress with stunning embroidery and dozens of little buttons all along the inside of them. She lifted them gently from the box, as though they might fall apart in her hands.
“You never wear gloves,” Temple said. “I thought you might require some.”
These were not workaday gloves, however, these were gloves for one night, for one ensemble. For one man.
She pulled one glove on before realizing that she would not be able to fasten them one-handed. But before she could say anything, he was leaning forward again, extracting a button hook from his coat pocket, as though it were the most ordinary thing in the world for a man to carry. He crowded her in the small, dark space, reaching for her hand. He’d freed his arm and folded back the sleeve of her cloak, using his bad arm to hold her steady as he set to work on the task of buttoning the endless line of little green buttons.
She wanted to hate him for controlling even this, even her gloves.
But instead, she loved him all the more for it, her heart heavy in her chest, knowing this was their last evening. Perhaps the last time they would be alone together.
“Thank you,” she said softly, uncertain of what else to do as she sat, her free hand worrying the paper from the box.
He was quiet, focused on his task, and she settled into watching the top of his dark head, unable to take a deep breath for his nearness, wishing he weren’t so very close to her imperfect, scarred hands. Grateful for the fact that she had covered the years of history written on her palm before relinquishing the extremity to him.
Utterly unsettled by his gentle, deft touch.
She could feel the softness of his breath on the skin of her wrist as he hid it from view, the soft touch of his fingers along the inside of her arm the last thing chased away by silk.
No. Not chased away. Imprisoned by it.
Because it felt that way, as though the glove itself was protecting his touch from ever escaping.
He finished the first glove after an eternity and she released the long breath that she had not known she had been holding, realizing that he had clasped her other hand in his without any warning. She tugged on it, but his grip was steel. “Thank you, I can—”
“Let me,” he said, lifting the second glove from her lap.
No, she wanted to say, don’t look at it.
Heat washed across her cheeks, and she was thankful for the darkness of the carriage.
He saw it anyway. “You are embarrassed of them,” he said, the pad of his thumb rubbing softly—maddeningly—across her palm.
She tugged on the hand again. Futilely.
“You needn’t be, you know,” he said, that slow, circling stroke an endless torture. “These hands helped you survive for twelve years. They worked for you. They won your funds and shelter and safety for more than a decade.”
Her eyes flew to his, coal black in the dim light. “Women’s hands aren’t supposed to show their work.”
He continued, his voice barely above a whisper. “But what I cannot understand, Mara, is why you required it of them?”
Fear. Fate.
Folly.
“I wish they were untried. Soft. The way ladies’ hands should be.”
The way you no doubt prefer them.
No. She did not care how he liked his hands. Her hands.
He slid the silk glove over her hand, working her fingers into the fabric channels, pressing his own fingers into the valleys between hers. Who could have imagined that the skin in those places was so sensitive?
“They are your hands,” he said, lifting her hand, lowering his head, whispering to the bared skin at her palm. “They are perfect.”
“Don’t say that,” she whispered.
Don’t be nice to me.
Don’t make me love you any more than I already do.
Don’t hurt me any more than you already plan.
He pressed a kiss to the soft pad of muscle at the base of her thumb before he fastened the buttons and made his way to her wrist, where he pressed another soft kiss, and fastened more.
And so it went, on and on, up the inside of her arm with light, delicate kisses, each sending a shock of heat through her, each locked in by silk. By him. Each one a ruination of its own, as it made her want to crawl into his lap and do his bidding without question.
When he reached the final stretch of buttons, the one that would encase her elbow, he lingered on the bare skin there, pressing his warm lips to that sensitive place that she’d never before known, lingering when she gasped at the pleasure of the caress. Parting his lips. Stroking his tongue in a long, languorous circle of glorious heat.
She couldn’t stop herself from sliding her free hand into his hair, holding him there, at that wicked, wonderful place.
Hating the damn glove that kept her from touching him.
Cursing it aloud.
She felt his lips curve against her skin, the smile chased away by a painless, unbearable scrape of his teeth before he finished his torture, and then his task.
In that moment, he could have had anything he asked.
She would have given it with deep, abiding pleasure. Which was what made this man more dangerous than anyone in London thought.
He could control her with a touch, and his control was more serious, more dangerous, than that of any of the men who had controlled her before.
And it was terrifying.
“Temple,” she whispered in the dark, “I . . .”
She trailed off, a million things wishing to be said.
I’m sorry.
I wish it could be different.
I wish I could be the perfect woman you want. The one who will erase the past.
I love you.
He didn’t give her a chance to say any of it. “It’s time for you to put on your mask.” He sat back against the carriage seat, looking utterly unmoved by the entire experience. “We’ve arrived.”