No Good Duke Goes Unpunished

Chapter 4

“And who is able to tell me what happened to Napoleon after Waterloo?”

A sea of hands shot up inside the small, well-appointed schoolroom of the MacIntyre Home for Boys. Daniel did not wait to be called upon. “He died!”

Mara chose to ignore the positive glee oozing from the young man as he pronounced the emperor dead. “He did, indeed, die. But I’m looking for the bit before that.”

Daniel thought for a moment and then offered, “He ran weeping and wailing from Wellington . . . and died!”

Mara shook her head. “Not quite. Matthew?”

“He rode his horse into a French ditch . . . and died!”

Her lips twitched. “Unfortunately, not.” She chose one of the hands straining for the ceiling. “Charles?”

Charles considered the options, then chose, “He shot himself in the foot, it turned green and fell off, and then he died?”

Mara did smile then. “You know, gentlemen, I am not certain that I am a very effective teacher.”

The hands lowered and a collective grumble went through the room, knowing that they would be required to learn an extra hour of history that day. The boys were saved, however, when a knock sounded, and Alice was silhouetted in the door to the boys’ schoolroom. “Pardon me, Mrs. MacIntyre.”

Mara lowered the book she held. “Yes?”

“There is . . .” Alice opened her mouth, closed it, then opened it again. “That is . . . someone is here to see you.”

Temple.

He was back.

She glanced at the clock in the corner of the room. He’d said tonight. As it was still today, she could only assume that he was a blackguard and a cheat. And she intended to tell him such.

Just as soon as her heart ceased its racing.

The air seemed to leave the room as she looked over the sea of little faces around her and realized that she was not ready to tell the world the truth. She was not ready to be Mara Lowe again.

She wanted to remain Mrs. MacIntyre, born nowhere, come from nothing, now governess and caretaker to a motley group of boys. Mrs. MacIntyre had purpose. Mrs. MacIntyre had meaning. Mrs. MacIntyre had life.

Mara had nothing.

Nothing but truth.

She forced her legs to move, to carry her through the collection of boys to meet Alice. To face the man who had returned to the house, no doubt with a plan in place to change both their lives. Once at the door, she turned back to her students.

“If I . . .”

No. She cleared her throat. Tried again.

“When I return, I expect to hear what happened to Napoleon.”

Their collective groan sounded as she pulled the door shut with a snap.

Alice seemed to know better than to say anything on the walk through the dark, narrow hallways. Mara appreciated the young maid’s intuition—she was not certain that she would be able to carry on a conversation with her heart pounding and thoughts racing.

He was there. Below. Judge and jury and executioner, all in one.

She descended the stairs slowly, knowing that she would never escape her past, and that she could not avoid her future.

The door to the little study where they’d spoken earlier that morning was ajar, and it occurred to Mara that the two-inch gap between door and jamb was a curious thing—eliciting excitement or dread depending upon the situation.

She ignored the fact that somehow, in this moment, it elicited both.

He was not even a little bit exciting; he was entirely dreadful.

She took a deep breath, willing her heart to cease pounding, and released Alice from duty with a halfhearted smile—the most she could manage under the circumstances—before pushing the door open to face the man inside the room.

“You saw him.”

She stepped inside and closed the door firmly. “What are you doing here?”

Her brother came toward her. “What are you doing approaching that man?”

“I asked first,” she said, meeting him at the center of the room in two short strides. “We agreed you’d never come here. You should have sent a note.” It was the way they’d met for the past twelve years. Never in this building, and never anywhere that she might be recognized.

“We also agreed we’d never tell that man that you were alive and living right under his nose.”

“He has a name, Kit.”

“Not one he uses.”

“He has one he uses, as well.” Temple. It wasn’t hard to think of him that way. Big as one, and as unmoving.

Had he always been unmoving? She hadn’t known him when they were young, but his reputation had preceded him—and no one had ever called him cold. A rake, a rogue, a scoundrel, certainly. But never cold. Never angry.

She’d done that to him.

Kit ran a hand through already disheveled brown locks, and Mara recognized the weariness in him. Two years younger, her brother had been filled with life as a child, eager for excitement, and ready with a plan.

And then she’d run, ruining Temple and leaving Kit to pick up the pieces of their unbearably foolish evening. And he’d changed. They’d traded secret letters for years, until she’d resurfaced, hidden in plain sight, Mrs. MacIntyre, widowed proprietress of the MacIntyre Home for Boys.

But he’d been different. Colder. Harsher.

Never speaking of the life she’d left him to. Of the man she’d left him with.

And then he’d gone and lost all her money.

She noted the hunch of his shoulders and the hollows in his cheeks and the scuff on his normally pristine black boots, and she recognized that he at least understood their predicament. Her predicament. She let out a little sigh. “Kit . . .”

“I wish you wouldn’t call me that,” he snapped. “I’m not a boy anymore.”

“I know.” It was all she could think to say.

“You shouldn’t have gone to see him. Do you know what they call him?”

She raised her brows. “They call him that because of me.”

“It doesn’t mean he hasn’t come to deserve it. I don’t want you near him again.”

Too late.

“You don’t want?” she said, suddenly irrevocably irritated. “You haven’t a choice. The man holds all our money and all the cards. And I’ve done what I can to save the home.”

Kit scowled. “It’s always the home. Always the boys.”

Of course it was. They were the important part. They were what she’d done right. They were her good.

But it wasn’t worth fighting Kit. “How did you even know he was here?”

He narrowed his gaze on her. “Do you think I am an idiot? I pay the whore in the street good money to look out for you.”

“To look out for me? Or to keep track of me?”

“She saw the Killer Duke. Sent word to me.”

Anger flared at the idea that her brother would spy on her. “I don’t need protection.”

“Of course you do. You always have.”

She bit back the retort—that she’d faced more demons than he had, for years. Alone. And returned to the matter at hand. “Kit—” She stopped. Reframed. “Christopher, I went to him because we needed it. You . . .” She hesitated, not knowing quite how to say the words. Spreading her hands wide, she tried again. “You lost everything.”

Christopher pushed his fingers through his hair once more, the move violent and unsettling. “You think I don’t know that? Christ, Mara!” His tone was raised, and she was instantly, keenly aware of where they were—of the name he’d used. She looked to the door, confirming it was closed.

He did not care. “Of course I know it! I lost everything he left me.”

Everything of hers as well. Scraped together and stupidly entrusted to his keeping. But all that was nothing compared to the funds that had been set aside to run the orphanage. Every cent the men had left with their sons.

He’d told her his bank would protect the funds. Grow them, perhaps. But she was a woman and without proof of her marriage or her husband’s death, and so her brother had made the deposits.

Her brother, who couldn’t stop gaming.

Anger flared, even as she wished it wouldn’t. Even as she wished she were sixteen again, able to comfort her younger, gentler, sweeter brother, without hating the man he’d become. Without judging his transgressions.

“You don’t know what it was like to live in his shadow,” he said.

Their father. The man who had unwittingly set them all on this path. Rich as Croesus and never satisfied. He’d always wanted more. Always better. He’d wanted a son smarter and bolder and braver and cleverer.

He’d wanted a duchess for a daughter.

And he’d received neither.

Kit laughed, bitterly. “He’s no doubt watching from his perch in Hell, devastatingly disappointed.”

She shook her head. “He doesn’t own us any longer.”

Her brother’s gaze met hers. “Of course he does. Without him, none of this would have happened. You wouldn’t have run. I wouldn’t have gamed. I wouldn’t have lost.” He raised a long arm, pointed in the direction of the street. “You wouldn’t live among waifs and whores—” He stopped. Took a breath. “Why did you go to him?”

“He holds our debt.”

Kit’s gaze narrowed. “What did he say?”

She hesitated. He wouldn’t like it.

“What did you agree to?” he pressed. She heard the irritation in his tone. The frustration.

“What do you think I agreed to?”

“You sold yourself.”

If only it had been so simple. “I told him I would show myself. Return him to society.”

He considered the words, and for a moment, she thought he might protest. But she had forgotten that desperate men turned mercenary. “And I get my money back?”

She heard the pronouns. Hated them. “It’s not only your money.”

He scoffed. “What was yours was minimal.”

“What was the orphanage’s was enough to run the place for a year. Maybe longer.”

“I’ve a great deal to worry about, Mara. I’m not about to worry over your whelps, too.”

“They’re children! They rely upon me for everything!”

He sighed, clearly through with her. “Did you get my money back or not?”

It did not matter to him that she would lose everything. This life she’d built. This place that had kept her safe. Given her purpose. He didn’t care, as long as his money was returned.

And so she did what she was so good at.

She lied.

“Not.”

Fury crossed his handsome face. “You made a deal with the devil and you get nothing in return? What good are you? What good was this?” His lips twisted in irritation as he paced the room. “You’ve ruined everything!”

Her gaze narrowed on her brother. “I did what had to be done. He isn’t going to fight you, Kit. Now, at least, he will leave you alone.”

Kit turned and tossed a chair out of the way, the furniture crashing against the wall and splintering into a dozen pieces. Mara stilled.

The anger was familiar.

In all senses of the word.

She stepped behind her desk, pressing her knuckles to the desktop, hiding the shaking of her hands.

She was losing control of the situation.

Perhaps she deserved it. Perhaps this was what happened to women who tried to take fate into their own hands. She’d done just that, changed her future. Changed her life. Lived it for twelve years.

But now it was time to let Kit live his. “This is the deal we struck. Your only chance at honor is my agreeing to admit what I did. I brought the man to my room. I drugged him. I bloodied the damn sheets.” She shook her head. “I ran. It is I who require forgiveness. I who can give him retribution. And he knows it.”

“And what of me?”

“He is not interested in you.”

Christopher went to the window and looked out on the cold November afternoon. He was quiet for a long moment before whispering, “He should be. He doesn’t know what I could do.”

The sun sinking into the western sky turned his brown locks gold, and Mara recalled a long-ago afternoon at their childhood home in Bristol, Kit laughing and running along the edge of a little pond near their house, pulling a new toy boat behind him.

He’d tripped on a tree root and fallen, releasing the string attached to the boat to catch himself, and the high wind had carried the boat out to the middle of the pond, where it promptly capsized and sank.

They’d been beaten for their transgressions, then sent to bed without supper—Kit, because he hadn’t seen fit to rescue the boat, which had cost their father money, and Mara, because she’d had the gall to remind their father that neither of his children was able to swim.

It was not the first time Kit had been unlucky, nor was it the first time she had tried to protect him from their father’s scorn.

It was also not the last.

But today, she was not protecting him. Today, she was protecting something much more important. And she did not trust him to be a part of her plan. “You remain free of this.”

“And if I don’t?”

She opened the door to the room with a quick snap, indicating that she was done with the conversation. “You haven’t a choice.”

He turned to face her, and for a moment the light played tricks with her. For a moment, he looked like their father. “You in the hands of the Killer Duke? He and his club have taken everything I own. I’m supposed to simply allow it? What of my money?”

Not what of you. Not what of my sister.

The omission should not have surprised her, and yet it did. But she held back her surprise and lifted her chin. “Money isn’t everything.”

“Oh, Mara,” he said, sounding older and wiser than she’d ever heard him. “Of course it is.”

The lesson of their father, burned into them.

He met her gaze. “I am not free of this. And now, neither are you.”

Truth at last.

Hours later, Lavender on a cushion at her feet, Mara was attempting to focus on her work when Lydia Baker stepped into her small office and said, “I’m tired of pretending as though I have not noticed.”

Mara attempted surprise, turning wide eyes on her closest friend. “I beg your pardon?”

“Do not pretend to misunderstand me,” Lydia said, seating herself in a small wooden chair on the opposite side of Mara’s escritoire, and patted her lap to get Lavender’s attention. The piglet raised her head, considered the human, and decided to remain on her pillow. “That pig doesn’t like me.”

Mara grasped at the change in topic. “That pig spent half the morning running from a dozen maniacal boys.”

“Better than a farmer with an axe.” Lydia narrowed her gaze on the beast.

Lavender sighed.

Mara laughed.

Lydia returned her attention to Mara. “For seven years, we’ve worked side by side, and I’ve never once asked you about your past.”

Mara sat back in her chair. “A fact for which I am ever grateful.”

Lydia raised a blond brow and waved one deceivingly delicate hand in the air. “If it had only been the man who visited this afternoon, I might have ignored it. But combined with this morning’s visitor, I’m through with not asking. Dukes change everything.”

No doubt that was the understatement of the century.

Lydia leaned forward, tapping the edge of the letter in her hand on the desk with perfect rhythm. “I may work at an orphanage, Margaret, but I am not completely unaware of the world beyond the door. The enormous man who arrived at the crack of dawn was the Duke of Lamont.” She paused, then qualified, “The Killer Duke of Lamont.”

Lord, she was coming to hate that moniker.

“He’s not a killer.” The words were out before Mara could stop them—before she could realize that they were a tacit admission that she knew the man in question.

She pressed her lips together in a thin line as Lydia’s eyes went wide with interest. “Isn’t he?”

Mara considered her next words carefully. She settled on “No.”

Lydia waited for Mara to continue for a long moment, her blond curls wild and unruly, barely contained by the two dozen pins shoved into the nest. When Mara said nothing more, her first employee and the closest thing she could call a friend sat back in her own chair, crossed her legs, rested her hands in her lap, and said, “He wasn’t here to deliver a child.”

It was not unheard of for men of the aristocracy to arrive toting their illegitimate sons. “No.”

Lydia nodded. “He was not here to retrieve one.”

Mara set her pen into its holder. “No.”

“And he was not here to make a generous, exorbitantly summed donation to the orphanage.”

One side of Mara’s mouth kicked up. “No.”

Lydia cocked her head. “Do you think you might convince him to do so?”

Mara laughed. “He is not in a generous spirit when I am near, sadly.”

“Ah. So he was not here for anything relating to the orphanage.”

“No.”

“Which means he was here because of your second visitor of the day.”

Alarm shot through Mara as she met her friend’s eyes. “I don’t understand.”

“Liar,” Lydia replied. “Your second caller was Mr. Christopher Lowe. Very wealthy, as I understand it, having inherited a glorious fortune from his dead father.”

Mara pressed her lips into a thin line. “Not wealthy anymore.”

Lydia cocked her head. “No. I hear he’s lost everything to the man who killed his sister.”

“He didn’t kill—” Mara stopped. Lydia knew.

“Mmm.” Lydia brushed a speck of lint from her skirt. “You seem very sure of that.”

“I am.”

Lydia nodded. “How long have you known the Duke of Lamont?”

There it was—the question that would change everything. The question that would bring her out of hiding and reveal her to the world.

She was going to have to start telling the truth at some point. She should consider it a gift of sorts that she could begin with Lydia. Except telling her closest friend, who had trusted her for seven long years, that she had been lying all that time was about the most difficult thing she’d ever done.

Mara took a breath. Let it out. “Twelve years.”

Lydia nodded slowly. “Since he killed Lowe’s sister?”

Since he supposedly killed me.

It should have been easy to say it. Lydia knew more about Mara than anyone in the world. She knew about Mara’s life, her work, her thoughts, her plans. She had come to work for Mara as a young, untried governess to a motley group of boys, sent from a large estate in Yorkshire—the one where Mara had herself hidden all those years ago.

Lydia lowered her voice, her tone gentle. Accepting. Filled with friendship. “We all have secrets, Margaret.”

“That’s not my name,” Mara whispered.

“Of course it isn’t,” Lydia said, and the simple words proved to be Mara’s undoing. Tears sprang to her eyes and Lydia smiled, leaning forward. “You no more grew up on a farm in Shropshire than Lavender will.”

Mara huffed a little laugh in the direction of the pig, who snorted in her sleep. “A farm in Shropshire would quite suit her.”

Lydia grinned. “Nonsense. She is a spoiled little porker who sleeps on a stuffed pillow and is fed from the table. She would care for neither the weather, nor the slop.” Her eyes grew large and filled with sympathy. “If not Shropshire, then where?”

Mara looked to the desk where she’d worked for seven years, every day hoping that these questions would never come. She spoke to the papers there. “Bristol.”

Lydia nodded. “You don’t sound like you were raised on the Bristol docks.”

A vision of the enormous house where she’d spent her youth flashed. Her father used to say that he could buy Britain if he’d wanted to, and he’d built a house to prove that fact to the rest of the world. The house had been gilded and painted, filled with oils and marbles that made the Elgins look minuscule. He’d been particularly fond of portraits, filling every inch of wall with the faces of strangers. Someday, I’ll replace them with my own family, he used to say every time he hung a new one.

The house had been exorbitant at best, outrageous at worst.

And it had been the only thing he’d loved.

“I wasn’t.”

“And the duke?” Lydia knew. No doubt.

“I . . .” Mara paused, chose her next words carefully. “I met him. Once.”

Not false, and yet somehow not true. Met wasn’t precisely the word she would use to describe her interactions with him. The hour had been late, the night dark, the situation desperate. And she’d taken advantage of him. Briefly.

Long enough.

“On the eve of your wedding.”

She had dreaded this moment for twelve years—had feared that it would destroy her. And yet, as she stood on the precipice of admitting the truth for the first time in twelve years—of being honest with her friend and, somehow, with the universe, she did not hesitate. “Yes.”

Lydia nodded. “He didn’t kill you.”

“No.”

Lydia waited.

Mara shook her head, rubbing her forearm absently. “I never meant for it to look so . . . dire.” She’d meant to bloody her sheets. To make it look like she’d been ruined. Like she’d run off with a man. He was to have escaped before anyone saw what had happened. But there’d been too much laudanum. And too much blood.

There was a long moment while Lydia considered the words. She turned the envelope in her hand over and over, and Mara could not help but watch the small ecru rectangle flip again and again. “I can’t remember your name.”

“Mara.”

“Mara.” Lydia repeated, testing the name. “Mara.”

Mara nodded, pleasure coursing through her at the sound of her name on someone’s lips. Pleasure and not a little bit of fear.

No going back now.

Finally, Lydia smiled, bright and honest. “It’s very nice to meet you.”

Mara caught her breath at the words, at the way they flooded her with relief. “When he gets his way, I shall be found out.”

Lydia met her gaze evenly, knowing what the words meant. Knowing that Mara would be run out of London. That the orphanage would lose everything if she were linked to it. Knowing that she would have to leave. “And will he get his way?”

Retribution.

The man would not stop until he did so. But she had plans as well. This life she’d built might be over, but she would not leave without ensuring the boys’ security. “Not without my getting a way of my own as well.”

Lydia’s lips kicked up in a wry smile. “Just as I expected.”

“I understand if you want away from here. If you want to leave.”

Lydia shook her head. “I don’t wish to leave.”

Mara smiled. “Good. As this place will need you when I am gone.”

Lydia nodded. “I will be here.”

The clock in the hallway beyond chimed, as if marking the moment’s importance. The sound shook them from the moment. “Now that that’s done,” Lydia said, extending the envelopes she held to Mara, “perhaps you’d like to tell me why you are receiving missives from a gaming hell?”

Mara’s eyes went wide as she took the offered envelope, and turned it over in her hands. On the front, in deep black, close-to-illegible scrawl, was her name and direction. On the back, a stunning silver seal, marked with a delicate female angel, lithe and lovely with wings that spanned the wax.

The seal was unfamiliar.

Mara brought it closer, for inspection.

Lydia spoke. “The seal is from The Fallen Angel.”

Mara looked up, heart suddenly pounding. “The duke’s club.”

Blue eyes lit with excitement. “The most exclusive gaming hell in London, where half of the aristocracy wagers an obscene fortune each night.” Lydia lowered her voice. “I hear that the members need only ask for what they want—however extravagant or lascivious or impossible to acquire—and the club provides.”

Mara rolled her eyes. “If it’s impossible to acquire, how does the club acquire it?”

Lydia shrugged. “I imagine they are quite powerful men.”

A memory flashed of Temple’s broad shoulders and broken nose, of the way he commanded her into his home. Of the way he negotiated the terms of their agreement.

“I imagine so,” she said, sliding a finger under the silver wax and opening the letter.

Two words were scrawled across the paper—two words, surrounded by an enormous amount of wasted space. It would never occur to her to use paper so extravagantly. Apparently, economy was not at the forefront of Temple’s mind—except, perhaps, for economy of language.

Nine o’clock.

That was it. No signature, not that she required one. It had been a dozen years since someone had exhibited such imperious control over her.

“I do not think I like this duke of yours very much.” Lydia was leaning across the desk, neck craned to see the note.

“As he is not my duke, I have little problem with that.”

“You intend to go?”

She had made an arrangement. This was her punishment. Her penance.

Her only chance.

Ignoring the question, she set the paper aside, her gaze falling to the second envelope. “That’s much less interesting,” Lydia said.

It was a bill, Mara knew without opening it. “How much?”

“Two pounds, sixteen. For coal.”

More than they had in the coffers. And if November was any indication of what was to come, the winter would only get colder. Anger and frustration and panic threatened, but Mara swallowed back the emotion.

She would regain control.

She reached for the duke’s terse note, turning the paper over and going for her pen, dipping the nib carefully in ink before she replied.

£10.

She returned the note to its envelope, heart in her throat, full of power. He might dictate the terms, but she dictated the price. And ten pounds would keep the boys of MacIntyre House warm for a year.

She crossed out her name on the envelope and wrote in his before handing it back to Lydia.

“We’ll discuss the bill tomorrow.”