Before she ruined a man who had never deserved it.
She shivered in the night, running her silk gloves over her arms, unable to keep the cold at bay, perhaps because it was coming from within. And there, wracked with sorrow, she reached into her reticule and extracted the only money she had. The last of her stash, designed to get her to Yorkshire. To start again.
She gave her brother the coins. “Here. Enough to get you out of Britain.” He sneered at the paltry amount, and she hated him all the more. “You are welcome not to take it.”
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.