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.”