Undressed with the Marquess

by Caldwell, Christi

  He lifted a quizzical brow. Her cheeks heated several degrees as she whipped her gaze firmly, squarely back on his face. And only his face.

  “You want to secure my assistance,” Temperance repeated. She had been so overwhelmed by his return that she’d not allowed herself to think what business he could possibly have with her.

  He inclined his head. “Alas, I’d not see you sacked or force your hand.”

  Surprise brought her eyebrows shooting up. Impossible. The seamstress had sacked girls for mixing up the laces. “Are you expecting me to believe Madame Amelie does not intend to release me for . . .”

  “For pulling a pair of scissors on a marquess, refusing her orders, and storming out?” He flashed a wry grin. “No, we spoke, and upon hearing me out, she proved agreeable to the promise of not holding any of those offenses against you.”

  She opened and closed her mouth several times, shock briefly taking her words. And that is nothing less than stunning . . .

  He rocked on his heels. “What was that?”

  “Nothing,” she said, unaware she’d spoken aloud. “It doesn’t matter.”

  And yet . . . it did. He could have forced her hand and instead had gone to the efforts of securing her position and leaving her the choice. He’d always been unlike any other person in her life. Emotion stuck sharply in her throat.

  Dare briefly palmed her cheek, that touch so fleeting and tender she might have conjured the caress of her own dreaming.

  “What do you want, Dare?” she asked quietly.

  He straightened from that favorite tree she so loved, which was now just one more place she would forever see him. “I’m a marquess, and I require a marchioness”—he pointed at her—“you, at my side.”

  It took a moment to register what he’d said. A sharp laugh escaped her. “Playing at marquess?” She rolled her eyes. “This is an entirely new approach to thievery for you. If I might give you some advice . . .” She didn’t wait for him to ask and granted her guidance anyway. “You just saved your neck. You won’t always be so lucky. Playing with the rank of nobleman will only see one result.” And she’d be damned if she was around for it. “Goodbye, Dare.”

  “This isn’t a lie, Temperance.”

  Temperance’s steps slowed, and then she stopped altogether. He’d been a thief of much, and capable of using the right words and tone to secure a person’s capitulation . . . but he’d never lied. And not to her.

  He’d always told her precisely as it was, and even in marrying him, she’d known precisely what he was offering.

  She turned back and faced him.

  There was a serious set to his always easy features. “This is real.”

  “What is . . . ‘this’?”

  “Damned if I even know,” he muttered, and she noted those details to have previously escaped her: the slightly panicky glint in his eyes. The restless way in which he balled and unballed his fists. He scraped a hand through those beautiful dark-brown locks.

  She stared at him questioningly.

  Dare let his arm drop abruptly, and like it was a fancy bench, he motioned to a gnarled limb jutting out of the tree.

  She should go.

  She shouldn’t hear out whatever story this was.

  And yet whether she wished it or not, she had bound herself in name and body to this man and, as such, needed to know what had brought him back into her life and why he was now insisting on a real marriage between them.

  Her body stiff, she joined him and took a spot on the makeshift bench.

  “I was recently caught in a heist.” Of course. She couldn’t stop the swell of jealousy for that, his one true love. “It was bold and risky, and yet the payout was significant.”

  “They always are,” she said softly. The higher the booty, the greater the risk, and also the greater the certainty that Dare would take the job. It was why she hated that she’d fallen for someone who’d only ever been on a path of danger.

  “I’d no other choice.” He uttered those far-too-familiar words with the same ease another person might issue a “good morning” or a “hello.” That matter-of-fact, straightforward justification he’d always given her. He began pacing. “The sum was sizable, and the person deserved stealing from.”

  There it was . . . the remainder of that reasoning.

  He’d not changed. He never would. A regular old Robin Hood is what he’d always been. Stealing from the rich to give to the poor. And she wanted to hate him for it . . . but she hated herself more for admiring how he cared about the downtrodden when, to the rest of the world, those people were invisible.

  “Who did you steal from, Dare?” she asked.

  This time, he didn’t meet her eyes.

  Oh, no. This could not be good. “Who?” she pressed when he didn’t immediately reply.

  He stopped pacing. “It was an earl.”

  There was more there. She heard it in his voice, and knew it because she knew this man, more than she wished she did. “Which. Earl?”

  He yanked at his cravat. “The Earl of Liverpool.”

  “The prime minister?” Temperance cursed. He may as well have stolen from a damned king or prince. “Dare.”

  He went on over her quiet chastisement. “He’s an oppressor who delights in taking rights away from the masses. His household was empty.” His mouth tensed. “Or it was supposed to have been. My reports had him retired to the country—”

  She cut him off. “Prime ministers don’t retire in the heart of the London Season. There were clues painting the operation as a foolhardy one.”

  The color rose in his cheeks, but he didn’t debate her charges. Which any and every other man she’d ever known would have. Dare, however, hadn’t been too proud to acknowledge when he was in the wrong. It was yet another reason she’d been so besotted by him. “The clues should have been warning enough.”

  “I know that now, Temperance.”

  So why hadn’t he seen it?

  “The fact remains, I was set up.”

  She tensed as the significance of that finally penetrated. It had been inevitable. When one stole from the most powerful, one secured powerful enemies. Too many knew of Dare and what he did, and though he was a legend, loved amongst the masses, the truth remained that his head could be sold, and sold for fine coin. Her gut clenched. Temperance stood. “Who?”

  “I don’t know,” he said. “A young woman came to me with the information.”

  A sad smile formed on her lips. He’d always been hopeless where helpless young women were concerned. Someone had used that against him. And yet . . . “What does any of this have to do with your making yourself a marquess?”

  “I didn’t make myself a marquess.” As he spoke, he resumed pacing. “I am a marquess.”

  “You’re a marquess. And I take it that is why you managed to get yourself spared from the gallows,” she said dryly.

  He stopped and faced her. “I know it is far-fetched.” His eyes darkened, and she knew the very moment she was forgotten and he was lost in his memory. “I was kidnapped as a child. A tutor turned me over to Mac Diggory.”

  Hatred burnt through her veins. Mac Diggory. That reviled, most feared, most ruthless of leaders. Dead for some years now, the memory of his evil lived on still. “What?” she whispered.

  Dare’s gaze fixed on a point beyond her. “I was apparently kidnapped and sold for a sizable sum.”

  “You’re . . .” She couldn’t finish the thought.

  “A marquess’s son.”

  It defied logic and sense. It was a fantastical story better suited for fiction . . . A small boy taken from his noble family and plunked into the streets, where he’d then risen up to become the Rookeries’ greatest and most noble thief. It was also why he had the finest, crispest tones of the King’s English. The life drained from her limbs as she sank back onto the edge of her perch.

  All these years, he’d been stealing when he should have been shut away and protected in the finest West London townhouse
.

  “I . . . also, apparently, have a sister. She was born after I’d been taken, and is therefore not really family.”

  Not really family?

  As he spoke so very casually about it, her gut churned and twisted into a thousand knots. She tried to make something out of those words . . . or his face or anything, but he was an unreadable mask. God, how she’d hated that control he sometimes yielded, a power he’d had to keep even her out.

  “The grandparents”—not “my,” but “the” grandparents—“are determined I help form a relationship with her. Help her navigate Polite Society. And, of course, see her settled. I don’t know anything about any of that,” he said with a frantic little wave of his hand. “Selecting suitors who would make an appropriate husband for her. Who to avoid. Gowns. Dresses.” He blanched. “All of it.”

  What . . . exactly was he saying?

  As her mind sought to make sense of all those words, she fixed on just one statement: help her navigate Polite Society.

  And then it hit her with the same weight of one of her father’s unexpected fists to her belly.

  “Surely you aren’t suggesting . . . ?” She tried and failed to get the remainder of that ridiculous supposition out.

  “You are my wife,” he rightly pointed out. “Overseeing all this is part of their requirement for me—”

  “Their requirement?” she interrupted. “Why would they require . . . ?”

  “I inherited a bankrupt marquessate. There are properties, but even so, the earnings have been meager, and whatever there is must go to the villagers.” His lips twisted in a cynical half grin. “Even ascending to the rank of marquess, I find myself impoverished.”

  And if she were capable of laughing, this moment certainly would have been one that merited it. Ever the Robin Hood, he’d not just take from the unknown villagers in need, but would simply add them to the long and ever-growing list of those reliant upon him.

  Reliant upon him, just as she’d made herself—she, who’d sacrificed what she’d wanted in a marriage with Dare Grey, convincing herself he might change so that she could be safe from her father.

  When she still didn’t speak, he cleared his throat. “As loath as I am to take them up on the terms, I’ve told myself . . . it is just any other job.” Only it wasn’t. It was one that didn’t require him to risk his neck and steal someone else’s belongings. He wouldn’t see that, however. “I simply have to get in. Squire her about. Get her married. My grandfather will turn over twenty thousand pounds if you and I succeed in seeing the young lady married. After that, you and I can both go back to the lives we’ve chosen.”

  She’d long known who he was and how he viewed all his connections.

  And yet . . . “How . . . very mercenary you sound,” she murmured.

  His cheeks flushed. “It is in all our best interests.”

  It wasn’t in Temperance’s . . .

  He wanted something that could never be, because of something Temperance wasn’t—a lady.

  “I’m not part of that world, Dare,” she said, determined to disabuse him of whatever madness had sent him here. “I cannot be any kind of chaperone to the young lady . . . or anyone.” Temperance might dress them, but she didn’t dine with them. It just wasn’t done.

  “Your mother was the daughter of a vicar. You speak the King’s English.”

  “That won’t be enough for them,” she said impatiently. Surely he wasn’t so naive as to think her being able to speak the King’s English was enough to ensure her entry into Polite Society?

  “I’m not from those elite ranks, either, Temperance. We would learn to navigate together.”

  Together.

  It was all she’d ever wanted. So desperately. A dream she’d even allowed herself, only to have it quashed.

  My God, please don’t . . . do not . . .

  Those distant screams of long ago pealed around her mind, and she folded her hands together to keep from clamping them over her ears.

  And just like he’d proven her savior in the past, his voice reached through the darkness, and he plucked her from the abyss.

  “Despite your low opinion of me, I didn’t come here to upend your world, Temperance,” Dare said quietly. “I would have you join me . . . of your own volition.”

  Join him . . .

  Those two words, that one thought alone was enough to shatter the reverie.

  You always built Darius Grey to be more God than mere mortal. That legend of a man she’d built in her mind was what had gotten her a broken heart.

  And she’d believed herself wholly at peace with that . . . only in this moment, with him before her, to find she’d lied to herself. “I cannot be your wife, Dare,” she said, her voice somehow steady. And while she trusted that she still had the strength to not break down weeping before him, she stood to leave. “I wish you the best. I wish you every happiness”—because she did; she’d never wanted him to suffer in any way—“and yet, I cannot join you.” Nor did she want to.

  She couldn’t open herself back up to all those old hurts.

  He nodded slowly. “I . . . see.”

  Do you?

  Those two words screamed around her mind.

  What did he think he saw? Or believe or know?

  Temperance began the trek back toward her cottage.

  Because he could not know what had become of her in those days. Too much had come to pass. She’d managed to put the shattered pieces of her heart into some semblance of an organ that might beat. To be with him . . . and dream of the life she’d wanted . . . and dream of what could never be . . .

  “I did come, Temperance,” he said quietly, unexpectedly. “I need you to know that as soon as I returned from the country, you were the first person I searched for.”

  Temperance whipped about to face him. “You were late,” she whispered. Too late. “You always were.” She shouldn’t have needed his saving. She should have been capable enough to take care of herself. And yet that hadn’t been the way where her father was concerned. When she opened her eyes, she found Dare’s gaze intently on her. “And nothing will change that.”

  “Sleep on it,” he called when she started onward to her cottage. “I leave on the morrow. In the event you change your mind”—she wouldn’t—“you can find me at the Black Seal.”

  Sleep on it.

  That favorite, familiar phrase he’d always given her when he’d wished for something from her . . .

  A smile formed on her lips before her heart could remind her that she didn’t want to remember those happy thoughts of them together. “Nothing is going to change,” Temperance said, not allowing herself to look back.

  For where Darius Grey and a future with him, any future with him, were concerned, nothing would ever change.

  Chapter 6

  “You . . . said . . . what?”

  Early the following morn, Gwynn sat in the middle of Temperance’s bed, on her knees, and stared at Temperance.

  Given all Temperance had shared about her connection to Dare Grey, the Marquess of Milford, that should be the part her friend focused on.

  “I told him I could not join him,” she said, plaiting her hair.

  “You are the only woman, Temperance Swift, who’d dare turn out a marquess and reject the life of a noblewoman.”

  “And what of you? Would any of that matter to you?” She already knew the answer. None would argue her friend had fallen in love with Chance for his funds or rank.

  “Of course not.” The young woman’s gaze took on the far-off quality it always did at the mention of her love. “I don’t care if he’s a prince or a pauper—he’s always a king to me.”

  Temperance gave her a pointed look.

  Gwynn scrunched her nose up. “I see what you’re doing there,” she mumbled, and tossed a pillow at Temperance.

  Managing her first laugh since Dare’s resurrection, Temperance caught the feathered article to her chest and hugged it close. Her laughter immediately died. “Eit
her way, I’m not a noblewoman.” She was the daughter of a vicar’s daughter and the once charming man—turned drunk—with whom her mother had fallen in love.

  And . . . there were too many reasons it was perilous to let Dare back into her life again.

  “No. You aren’t a noblewoman.” Gwynn paused. “Though technically, you did marry a marquess, which by default makes you a marchioness by marriage.”

  “But he wasn’t a marquess at the time.” He’d just been . . . Dare. And she’d loved him so desperately when he was just an honorable man in the Rookeries.

  Gwynn’s eyes glimmered. “Ah, but he was always a marquess or destined to the title. You just didn’t know it.”

  Grabbing the same pillow that had been hurled her way, Temperance tossed it playfully back at her friend.

  With a laugh, Gwynn caught it to her chest and scrambled to the edge of the bed. “Here . . .” She jumped up and rushed to join Temperance. “Let me.” As Gwynn shoved Temperance’s fingers out of the way and saw to arranging her hair, Temperance stared in the beveled mirror at her friend.

  “I . . . had my heart broken by him.” It was the closest she’d ever come to telling anyone about those days that only her brother knew of. And she tried to get those words out, for this woman who was her only friend in the world, and yet . . . could not. Because she was too cowardly to speak them and live those moments aloud.

  Gwynn slowed her strokes and brought her hands to rest on Temperance’s shoulders. “Be it life or love, a woman’s fate is to have her heart broken,” her friend said sadly in the tones of one who knew all too well. “You can be with him but cannot because he broke your heart, and I . . .” Cannot be with Chance . . . Her friend forced a smile. “But this is not about me. This is about the new beginning the marquess presented you with.”

  The new beginning. That gave Temperance pause. So shocked, so offended by his reappearance, she’d not considered Dare’s offer in the way her friend now presented it. And yet . . .

  “I had a new beginning,” she said, taking the brush from Gwynn’s fingers. “This was it.”

  “This? As in working at Vêtements Français?” Gwynn asked incredulously. “A place so trite it literally means ‘French Apparel’ when there is about as much French in Madame Amelie as in me?”