No Good Duke Goes Unpunished

Chapter 5

A dressmaker. He’d brought her to a dressmaker.

In the dead of night, as though it was a crime to buy new gowns.

Of course, in the dead of night, creeping through the back door to one of Bond Street’s most legendary modistes, it did feel a bit criminal. As criminal as the shiver of pleasure that threaded through her as she brushed past him into the sewing room of the shop, unable to avoid contact with him—big as an ox.

Not that she noticed.

Nor did she notice that he was far too agile for his size, leaping up and down from carriages, opening doors—holding them for her entry with quiet smoothness—as though he were a ballet dancer and not a boxer.

As though grace had been imparted to him in the womb.

But she refused to notice all that, even when her heart pounded as the door closed behind him, his bulk crowding her further into the room, its half-dozen lanterns doing little more than cast shadows around the space.

“Why are we here?”

“You needn’t whisper. Hebert knows we are coming.”

She cut him a look. “Does she know why?”

He did not meet her eyes, instead heading through the shop, weaving in and out of the empty seamstress stations. “I would imagine she thinks I want to dress a woman and I’d like to keep the situation secret.”

She followed. “Do you do this often?”

He stopped, and she nearly ran into the back of him before he looked over his shoulder at her. “I’ve little reason to keep women secret.”

A vision flashed, young, handsome Temple full of bold smiles and even bolder touches, tempting her with broad shoulders and black eyes. He needn’t keep them secret. No doubt, women fell over themselves to assume the role. She cast the thought aside. “I don’t imagine you do.”

“Thanks in large part to you,” he said, and pushed through a heavy curtain into the dressing room, leaving her to follow.

She should have expected the reminder that his life had been something else before it was this. He’d been the son and heir to one of the wealthiest, most revered dukedoms in Britain. And now he might still have the wealth, but he spent it in shadows. He had lost the reverence.

Because of her.

She swallowed back the twinge of guilt she felt at the thought, and instead hovered at the exit. “When do I receive my funds?”

“When our agreement is fulfilled.”

“How am I to know that you will keep your word?”

He considered her for a long moment, and she had the keen sense that she should not have questioned his honor. “You shall have to trust me.”

She scowled. “I’ve never met an aristocratic male worthy of trust.” She’d met them desperate and angry and abusive and lascivious and filled with disgust. But never honorable.

“Then you should be grateful that I am rarely considered aristocratic,” he replied, and turned away from her, the conversation complete.

She followed him into the dressing room of Madame Hebert’s, where the proprietress was already waiting, as though she had nothing better to do in all the world than stand here and wait for the Duke of Lamont to arrive.

His words, still echoing in her ears, proved true inside the salon. She wasn’t here for the Duke of Lamont. She was here for one of the powerful owners of London’s most legendary gaming hell.

“Temple,” Madame Hebert welcomed him, coming forward to rise up on her toes and deposit kisses on both of his cheeks. “You great, handsome beast. Were it anyone else, I would have denied the request.” She smiled, the pleasure in the expression matching the tenor of her rich French accent. “But I cannot resist you.”

Mara resisted the urge to wrinkle her nose as a chuckle rumbled from Temple’s chest. “You cannot resist Chase.”

Hebert laughed, the sound like fine crystal. “Well, a businesswoman must know where—as you English say—her bread is buttered.” Mara bit her tongue rather than ask if Temple hadn’t sent a fair number of customers in the dressmaker’s direction himself. She did not care to know.

And then Mara couldn’t speak, because the modiste’s dark gaze flickered to her, eyes going wide. “This one is beautiful.”

No one had ever described her as such. Well, perhaps someone once . . . a lifetime ago . . . but no one since that night she’d run.

Another thing that had changed.

The dressmaker was wrong. Mara was twenty-eight, with work-hewn hands and more lines around her eyes than she’d like to admit. She wasn’t painted or primped or pretty like the women she’d seen at The Fallen Angel that night, nor was she petite the way ladies in style were, or soft-spoken the way they should be.

And she certainly wasn’t gorgeous.

She opened her mouth, ready to refute the label, but Temple was already speaking, chasing the compliment away with his lack of acknowledgment. “She needs dressing.”

Mara shook her head. “I don’t need dressing.”

The Frenchwoman was already moving to light a series of candles surrounding a small platform at the center of the dressing room, as though Mara hadn’t spoken. “Remove your cloak, please.” The dressmaker cast a quick look in Temple’s direction. “An entire trousseau?”

“A half-dozen gowns. Another six day dresses.”

“I don’t—” Mara began before Madame Hebert cut her off.

“That won’t see her through two weeks.”

“She won’t need more than two weeks’ worth.”

Mara’s gaze narrowed. “She is still present, is she not? In this room?”

The dressmaker’s brows rose in surprise. “Oui, Miss—”

Temple spoke. “You don’t need to know her name yet.”

Yet. That single, small word that held so much meaning. Someday, the dressmaker would know her name and her history. But not tonight, and not tomorrow, as she draped and crafted the gowns that would be Mara’s ruin.

Hebert had finished lighting the candles, each new flame adding to the lovely golden pool into which Mara could only guess she was supposed to enter. Reaching into a deep pocket, the dressmaker extracted a measure and turned to Mara. “Miss. The coat. It must go.”

Mara did not move.

“Take it off,” Temple said, the words menacing in the darkness as he removed his own greatcoat and relaxed onto a nearby settee, placing one ankle on the opposite knee and draping the massive grey cloak across his lap. His face was cast in the room’s shadows.

Mara laughed, a short, humorless sound. “I suppose you think it is that simple? You command and women simply jump to do your bidding?”

“When it comes to the removal of ladies’ clothing, it often works that way, yes.” The words oozed from him, and Mara wanted to stomp her foot.

Instead, she took a deep breath and attempted to regain control. She extracted a little black book and a pencil from the deep pocket of her skirts and said, “How much does disrobing typically cost you?”

He looked as though he’d swallowed a great big insect. She would have laughed, if she weren’t so infuriated. Once he collected himself he said, “Fewer than ten pounds.”

She smiled. “Oh, was I unclear? That was the starting price of the evening.”

She opened the book, pretending to consider the blank page there. “I should think that dress fittings are another . . . five, shall we say?”

He barked his laughter. “You’re getting a selection of the most coveted gowns in London and I’m to pay you for it?”

“One cannot eat dresses, Your Grace,” she pointed out, using her very best governess voice.

It worked. “One pound.”

She smiled. “Four.”

“Two.”

“Three and ten.”

“Two and ten.”

“Two and sixteen.”

“You are a professional fleecer.”

She smiled and turned to her book, light with excitement. She’d expected no more than two. “Two and sixteen it is.” The coal bill was paid.

“Go on then,” he said. “Off with the coat.”

She returned the book to her pocket. “You are a prince among men, truly.” She removed her coat, marching it over to where he sat and draping it over the arm of the settee. “Shall I dispense with my dress as well?”

“Yes.” The answer came from the dressmaker, feet behind them, and Mara could have sworn she saw surprise flash through Temple’s gaze before it turned to humor.

She stuck one of her fingers out to hover around the tip of his nose. “Don’t you dare laugh.”

One black brow rose. “And if I did?”

“If I’m to measure you, miss, I need you wearing as little as possible. Perhaps if it were summer and the dress were cotton, but now . . .” She did not have to finish. It was late November and bitterly cold already. And Mara was wearing both a wool chemise and a wool dress.

She placed her hands on her hips, facing Temple. “Turn around.”

He shook his head. “No.”

“I did not give you permission to humiliate me.”

“Nevertheless, I purchased it,” he said, easing back onto the settee. “Relax. Hebert has impeccable taste. Let her drape you in silks and satins, and let me pay for it.”

“You think three pounds makes me malleable?”

“I do not pretend to think you shall ever be malleable. But I expect you to honor our arrangement. Your word.” He paused. “And think—when all is said and done, you’ll have a dozen new frocks.”

“A gentleman would allow me my modesty.”

“I have been labeled a scoundrel more often than not.”

It was her turn to raise a brow. “I do believe that over the course of our acquaintance, I shall call you much, much worse.”

He did laugh then. A warm, rich promise in the dim light. A sound she should not have liked so much. “No doubt.” His voice lowered. “Surely you’re strong enough to suffer my presence while you’re in your underclothes. You’ve a chaperone, even.”

The man was infuriating. Utterly, completely infuriating. And she wanted to hit him. No. That was too easy. She wanted to addle him. To best him in this battle of wits . . . in this game of words that he no doubt won any time he played. Because it wasn’t enough that Temple was strong in the ring. He had to be strong out of the ring as well—not agile simply with bones and sinew, but with thought and word.

She’d spent a lifetime under men’s control. When she was a child, her father had made it impossible for her to live as she liked, dictating her every deed with his army of spying servants and cloying nannies and treasonous governesses. He’d been ready to sell her off to a man three times her age who would have no doubt been just as domineering, and so she’d run.

But even when she’d run, even as she’d found a life in the wilds of Yorkshire and then in the sullied streets of London, she’d never escaped the specter of those men. She’d never been able to shake off their control—and they did control her, even as they didn’t know it. They overpowered her with fear—fear of being discovered and forced back into that life she’d so desperately wanted to escape. Fear of losing herself. Fear of losing everything for which she had worked.

Everything for which she had fought.

Everything she had risked.

And now, even as she promised herself she would get what it was she wanted, she could not escape the feeling that this man was another in a long line of men who wielded power like a weapon. Yes, he wished retribution, and perhaps it was his due. And yes, she might have agreed to his demands and turned herself over to him, and yes, she would honor her word and their agreement, but she would have to face herself when all was said and done.

And she would be damned if she would fear him, too.

He was smug, and self-important, and she badly wished to give him a dressing-down.

Even if it meant she would be the one dressing down.

Perhaps she shouldn’t have said the words. Perhaps she should have held them back. Perhaps, if she hadn’t been so very irritated with him, she would have. Perhaps if she had known what would come once he heard the words . . . she would have held her tongue.

But it didn’t matter. Because instead of not saying them, she turned away, marched back to that golden pool of light, and took her place on the platform there before facing him once more, and allowing the modiste access to the buttons and fastenings on her dress.

She stared, unblinking, into the darkness, where she imagined a look of arrogant triumph spread across his face, and said them anyway.

“I suppose it shouldn’t matter. After all, it is not the first time you’ve seen my underclothes.”

Everything froze. She couldn’t have said what he thought she’d said. She couldn’t have meant what he thought she meant.

Except she clearly did, for the smug look on her face, the dancing sparkle in her knowing gaze, as though she had been waiting a lifetime to set him on his heels.

And perhaps she had.

He snapped forward in his seat, both feet firmly on the ground, the residual glow from the candles casting him in light. “What did you say?”

She raised a brow, and he knew she was mocking him. “Is there a problem with your hearing, Your Grace?”

She was the most disastrous, damaging, difficult woman he’d ever know. She made him want to upturn the dainty, velvet furniture in this utterly feminine place, and tear the clothes from his back in irritation.

He was about to stand and intimidate her into repeating herself—into explaining herself—when the fastenings of her dress came loose, and the frock fell to her feet in a remarkable, fluid swoosh, leaving her standing there in her pale wool chemise, unadorned corset, and little else.

And then he couldn’t move at all.

Goddammit.

The Frenchwoman circled Mara, considering her for a long moment while Temple attempted to find his speech.

Hebert found hers first. “She will require lingerie as well.”

Temple disagreed. Mara did not require undergarments at all. In fact, he’d prefer she never wore another stitch of unmentionables again.

Or anything else, for that matter.

Good Lord.

She was perfect.

She was also lying.

For if he had seen her in her underclothes—in anything close to the things she wore now—he would remember.

He would remember the slope of her breasts, the spray of freckles across them, the way they curved in pretty, plump rounds topped with . . . he couldn’t see, but he knew that her nipples were very likely as gloriously well-formed as the rest of her breasts.

He would remember those breasts.

Wouldn’t he?

It is not the first time you’ve seen me in my underclothes.

He closed his eyes against the frustration that flared—the recollection that would not come. There had been a woman, one he’d thought was more muse than memory. More piecemeal than not.

Wide smile. Strange, intoxicating eyes.

“Is it red?”

The modiste’s words were like gunfire in the dark, quiet room. They startled Mara as well. “I beg your pardon?”

“Your hair,” Hebert replied. “Candlelight plays tricks on the eye. But it is red, no?”

Mara shook her head. “It’s brown.”

A silken waterfall of auburn curls.

“It’s auburn,” Temple said.

“You do not seem the kind of man to notice the difference,” she said, refusing to look at him, her eyes instead tracking the slender Frenchwoman now kneeling at her feet.

“I notice more than you could imagine.”

That hair had flickered in his memory for twelve years. There had been countless points when he’d decided it wasn’t real. In his darkest moments, he’d thought he’d fabricated it. Her. Something good to remember of that night.

But she’d been real.

He’d known Mara was the key to that night. That she remembered more than he did. That she was his only chance at piecing together his fall. But it had never occurred to him that she’d been with him for longer than it took to destroy him.

Perhaps she hadn’t. Perhaps it was a lie. Perhaps she’d drugged him and left him to distract the world while she ran from God knew what to God knew where, and those teasing words were her latest attempt at torture.

It wasn’t a lie.

He knew that as well as he knew anything.

But somehow, knowing the truth made everything worse. Because she hadn’t left him with no memory of the night.

She’d left him with no memory of her.

He had to pull himself together. To regain the upper hand. He forced himself to lean back against the settee, refusing to allow her to see that she’d riled him. “For example, I notice that you never wear gloves.”

As if on strings, her hands came together, clasping tight. “When one works for a living . . . one can’t.”

But she hadn’t been required to work. She could have been a duchess.

He wanted answers. Itched for them.

“All the governesses I’ve ever known have worn them.” He tracked the movement of her hands, knowing that they were well-hewn, the skin rough in places, the knuckles red with cold. They were hands that knew work.

He knew, because his hands looked the same.

As though she could hear his thoughts, she unclasped the hands in question, holding them straight and still at her sides. “I am not an ordinary governess.”

No doubt. “I never imagined you an ordinary anything.”

Madame Hebert stood then, excusing herself and leaving them alone in the room. For long moments, Mara stood silent before saying, “I feel a bit like a sacrificial offering up here.”

He could see why. The platform was cast in a warm golden glow, the rest of the room in utter darkness. In her awkward, pale underclothes, she could have easily played the part of the unsuspecting virgin, about to be tossed into a volcano.

Virgin.

The word gave him pause.

Had they—

The question dissolved into a vision of her spread across crisp linen sheets, long, lithe limbs spread wide, perfect and nude. His mouth went dry at the thought, at the image of her splayed open to him, then watered as he considered where he would start with her . . . the long column of her neck, the slope of her breasts, the swell of her belly, the secrets nestled between what he knew would be long, perfect thighs.

He would start there.

He stood, coming toward her, unable to keep himself from it, as though reeled in on a long, sturdy fishing line. She wrapped her arms about her midsection as he approached, and he noticed the gooseflesh on them.

He could warm her.

“Are you cold?” he asked.

“Yes,” she said, smartly, “I’m half naked.”

It was a lie. She wasn’t cold. She was nervous. “I don’t think so.”

She cut him a look. “Why don’t you take off your clothes and see how you feel?”

The words were out before she had a chance to think on them. Before she—or he, if he were honest—realized what they might evoke. Curiosity. Frustration. More. He stopped just short of the pool of light where she stood, unable to hide her face. “Have I done that before?” he asked, the words coming harsher than he intended. Filled with more meaning than he expected.

She looked down at her feet. He followed the gaze, taking in her stockinged toes. When she did not answer, he pressed further. “I woke naked that morning. Naked and covered in someone else’s blood. A damn lot of it,” he said, though the blood didn’t seem to matter so very much. He stepped into the light. “Not your blood.”

She shook her head, finally looking up at him. “Not mine.”

“Whose?”

“Pig’s blood.”

“Why?”

“I didn’t mean—”

Dammit. He didn’t want apologies. He wanted the truth. “Enough. Where were my clothes?”

She shook her head again. “I don’t know. I gave them to—”

“To your brother, no doubt. But why?”

“We—I—” She hesitated. “I thought that if you were naked, it would postpone your looking for me. It would give me more time to get away.”

“Is that it?” He was horrified to discover that the explanation disappointed him. What had he been expecting? That she’d confess a deep, abiding attraction to him?

Perhaps.

No. Goddammit. She was trouble.

He didn’t know what he wanted from this woman any longer. “I was naked, Mara. I remember your hair, down. Your body above me.” She blushed in the candlelight, and then he knew precisely what he wanted. He stepped up, crowding her on the little round platform, but somehow—by the grace of something far more divine than either of them deserved—not touching her. “Did we—”

“Excusez moi, Your Grace.”

He did not hesitate, did not move. Did not look back. “A moment, Hebert.”

The Frenchwoman knew better than to linger.

He snaked an arm around Mara’s waist, hating himself for the weakness in the movement. He pulled her close, her breasts pressed tight against his chest, as their torsos met. Their thighs.

She gasped, but there was no fear in the sound.

Dear God, she wasn’t afraid of him. When was the last time he’d held a woman who did not fear him?

The last time he’d held her.

“Did we, Mara?” He spoke in a low whisper at her ear, his lips close enough to brush the soft curve of it, the warm skin. He couldn’t resist taking that lobe in his mouth, worrying it with his teeth until she shivered with pleasure.

Not fear.

“Did we fuck?”

She stiffened at the word, hot and wicked at the sensitive skin of her neck, and a thread of guilt shot through him even as he refused to acknowledge it. Even as he refused to feel regret insulting her.

Not that he needed to.

The woman fought her own battles. She turned her own head then, and matched him measure for measure, pressing her soft lips to his ear, kissing once, twice, softly, before biting the lobe and sending a river of desire through him. Good Lord, he wanted this woman like he’d never wanted anything in his life. Even as he knew she was poison.

Even as she proved it, lifting her lips from him, making him desperate for their return, and saying, “If I tell you, will you forgive the debt?”

She was the most skilled opponent he’d ever faced.

Because in that moment, he actually considered doing it. Forgiving it all and letting her run. And perhaps he would have, if she could have restored his memory.

But she’d taken that, too.

“Oh, Mara,” he said, releasing her in a slow slide, fury and something startlingly close to disappointment threading through him. He harnessed one and ignored the other. “Nothing you could say will make me forgive.”

He spun off the little platform, calling for Hebert as he retreated into the darkness.

The modiste entered again, a pile of satin and lace in her hands, and approached Mara. “Mademoiselle, s’il vous plait,” she said, indicating that Mara should put the dress on. Mara hesitated, but Temple saw the way she eyed the frock as though she hadn’t eaten for days and there, in the Frenchwoman’s hands, was food.

Once she was headfirst inside it, her arms swimming through fabric to find egress, he caught his breath and his sanity and looked to the dressmaker. “I don’t want her in another’s clothes. I want everything made. By you.”

Madame Hebert gave Temple a quick look. “Of course. The dress is for style. You indicated a desire to approve the collection.”

Mara gave a yelp of disagreement at that, her head finally poking out into the light. “It is not enough that you humiliate me by remaining in attendance as I am fitted? You must choose the gown as well?”

Hebert was already adjusting the fall of the gown and fastening it up the back, affording Temple a view of Mara in the mauve concoction, slightly too tight in the bodice and slightly too loose in the waist, but a gown nonetheless.

He’d never put much credence into the idea that frocks could make a woman more beautiful. Women were women; if they were attractive, they were attractive no matter what they wore. And if they weren’t, well . . . fabric was not magic.

And yet this gown seemed to be magic with its beautiful lines and the way it shimmered in the candlelight and the way the color offset her pretty pale skin and played with the reds in her hair and the blues and greens in her eyes.

Hell. He sounded like a damn woman.

The point was, this was the Mara he’d never known—the one he’d not had a chance to formally meet. The one who had been raised wealthy as sin, with all of London at her feet. The one who had been set to be Duchess of Lamont.

And damned if she didn’t look remarkably like a duchess in that dress.

Too much like a duchess.

Too much like a lady.

Too much like something Temple wanted to reach out and—

No.

“The bodice should be cut lower.”

“Mais non, Your Grace,” the dressmaker protested. “The bodice is perfect. Look at the way it reveals without revealing.”

She was right, of course. The bodice was the most perfect part of the dress, cut beautifully, just low enough to tantalize without being too obvious. He’d noticed it the moment Mara had put it on—the way it displayed those pretty, freckled breasts to their very best advantage. The way it made him want to catalog every one of those little blemishes.

It was perfect.

But he didn’t want perfect.

He wanted ruinous.

“Lower.”

The dressmaker looked at Mara, then, and Temple willed her to protest. To fight the demand. To insist the cut of the dress be left as is.

Then he would have felt better about his decision.

It was as though she knew that, of course. Knew that he wished her to fight. Because instead, she stood straight, her head bowed in obedience he knew held no honesty, and said nothing.

Leaving him feeling twenty times the ass.

“How long?” he barked the question at the modiste.

“Three days.”

He nodded. Three days would work well. “She requires a mask, as well.”

“Why? Isn’t the goal to unmask me?” Mara answered for the dressmaker, her tone betraying her pique at being left out of the conversation. “Why hide me?”

He met her eyes then. She was a poplar, and he was a storm. She would not break. Admiration flared, and he hid it. She’d ruined him. She’d stolen from him.

“You are hidden until I choose to reveal you.”

She stiffened. “Fair enough.” She paused for a moment as the dressmaker unfastened the dress, and he gritted his teeth as it came loose, grateful that she caught it to her chest before revealing herself to him once more. “Tell me, Your Grace, am I to undress forever in your presence now?”

The room was hot and cloying, and he itched for a fight. And he didn’t think he could bear seeing her in her underclothes again.

He inclined his head. “I shall give you privacy, with pleasure.” He headed for the front of the shop, stopping before he pushed through the curtains to add, “But when I return, you had best be prepared to tell me the truth about that night. I shan’t let you out of my sight until you do. It is not negotiable.”

He did not wait for her answer before entering the storefront, with its walls filled with bolts of fabric and frippery. He took a deep breath in the dimly lit space, running his hand along the edge of a long glass case, waiting for an acknowledgment that he could return.

That she was once more clothed.

That Pandora’s box was once more closed.

He reached into a basket at the top of the case, and he extracted a long, dark feather, worrying it with his fingers, wondering at its softness. He wondered what it would look like in her hair. Against her skin.

In her fingers against his.

He dropped the feather as though it had burned him, and spun back toward the dressing room to find Madame Hebert standing in the entryway. “Green,” she said.

He didn’t care what color she wore. He didn’t plan to give her enough attention to notice.

And still he said, “I want the mauve as well. The one she tried.”

Years of practice kept Madame Hebert from showing her thoughts. “The lady should be in green more than anything else.”

For a moment he wondered at that, imagining Mara in green. In satins and lace and lingerie—in finely spun chemises and boned corsets and clocked silk stockings that went all the way to the floor.

He would pay good money to see her legs.

Perhaps he had seen them.

With that, frustration flared once more. He was irritated by the idea of her keeping secrets from him. Secrets that were as much his as they were hers.

“Put her in whatever color you like. I care not.” He moved to push past the Frenchwoman. “But send the mauve, too.”

“Temple,” The name on Hebert’s lips stopped him, and when he turned back, one hand on the curtains, she said, “I’ve dressed dozens of your women.”

“The Angel’s women.” For some reason, the qualifier felt necessary.

She did not argue. “This one is not like the others.”

It was a colossal understatement. “She is not.”

“Clothes,” the Frenchwoman continued. “They have a power that is undeniable. They can change everything.”

It was rubbish, but he was not in the mood to argue with a modiste on her field of expertise, so he allowed her to finish.

“Be certain you wish for what you ask.”

Just what he needed. A cryptic French dressmaker.

He pushed through the curtains, his gaze flying to the platform where Mara had stood in that beautiful gown, proud and tall.

The now-empty platform.

The now-empty room.

Shit.

She had finally run.