Undressed with the Marquess
Page 27
The air didn’t move; it just hung motionless and suspended.
“I didn’t know those things,” she whispered.
Because he hadn’t shared them. But then mayhap that had always been the problem between them, the reason they’d never been able to make their relationship work: their inability to communicate about . . . everything.
The fight went out of him, and he sank onto the arm of the chair atop gowns that had once belonged to his mother. “When the adventure ended and I was given over to Diggory, I realized what I’d done. I tried to go back.” He made himself acknowledge that again—in a different way, the meaning still the same. “He wasn’t wrong,” he said tiredly, wiping a hand down his face. “When I went off, I chose the life I did. I was selfish and wicked, and I would have only hurt my mother and brother had I been allowed to stay.”
She moved in a whir of skirts, sitting beside him on the crowded arm of the chair. “Oh, Dare,” she whispered, her voice catching. “You didn’t choose this. You were a child . . . one who was deceived into believing the dream of the adventure, all the while being pulled deeper into a nightmare you could have never imagined.”
And it had been . . .
Because the food he’d had and the fun he’d had distributing baskets of baked goods to people his father had insisted nobles didn’t acknowledge . . . had ended. Instead, he’d been reduced to the same hungry, fearful state lived by every other impoverished child. “I went willingly,” he said, his voice empty to his own ears. “I have no one to blame but myself.”
Temperance made a sound of protest. She covered his hand with hers and drew it close to her chest.
“You’re wrong. This was chosen for you by the man who lured you away and tricked you. And your father . . . He was to blame for you not living in the world you were born to. A world where you could have done the good that your father was determined that you not do. He let you believe you didn’t belong here.” She lifted her arms, motioning to the room. “And you came to believe it. Because convincing yourself of that was easier than confronting that life went on without you.”
Unable to face her and all the truths she leveled, Dare resumed his inventorying of the contents that had been brought down earlier that afternoon. “It changes nothing. The items need to be sold. Gurney needs to be saved, as do so many others.”
Temperance spoke in hushed tones. “You don’t want to do this . . . collecting cherished possessions and just selling them off without a thought to how other people might feel about it. You’re choosing to let him back into your life, which will only end up hurting you.”
Him.
He should have known better than to believe she’d let the matter of Avery Bryant’s presence go without remark.
“I’m choosing to let him back into my life because of his connection with Wylie.” He stared down at the notepad containing the inventory Avery insisted would cover the fees to Wylie for the transfer of the prisoner. “There are people relying on me. Families I can feed.” He flipped to the next page in his book. “And his name is Avery. I still have dealings with Avery,” he said, not allowing her to erase his loyal partner’s name. “He’s helped me.”
“You always trusted him more than you should,” she fired back, not missing a beat. “He’s helped you nearly get yourself killed.” Temperance came over and plucked the notebook from his fingers, and this time when she spoke, she did so in gentler, almost pitying tones. “He was always about helping himself.”
Dare frowned. “That is unfair. I owe him my very existence.”
“Precisely, Dare.”
He winced.
Temperance wasn’t done. “He convinced you that a life of thieving is better than one of honor.”
His patience broke. “Honor?” he spat. “Was there honor in your darning damned socks until your fingers bled?” Her cheeks paled, but God help him, he couldn’t stop the flow of words. “Was there honor in begging for funds to feed your family? Or in pleading with your miserable landlord for an extension when your father failed to pay the rent on your family’s one-room apartment?”
Wordlessly, Temperance handed back his book. She didn’t say anything for a long while. At last she spoke. “You aren’t wrong, Dare. I did humble myself over the years. I begged. I asked for help.” He stared beyond the top of her head. “I took assistance from whomever was willing to give it, not just you. I darned socks for mere farthings. There was hardly money in what I did, Dare,” she said solemnly. “But there was always honor.” She thumped a hand against her breast. “I did what I had to do in order to care for my mother and brother, and I can also say that I never compromised myself and my values.”
Unlike Dare, who took from the undeserving and gave to the neediest. The evidence of her disdain had always cut like a knife. “Money lets people begin again in new places. It provides them with a roof and a warm fire in the dead of winter. But you had your honor,” he asked, unable to keep the disdain from that word. “Did honor keep you safe?”
As soon as the charge left him, he wanted to call it back.
Her entire body jerked the way it had the one time he’d witnessed her drunkard father strike her. It had been the first and last time he’d witnessed her being hit, and the memory of it haunted him still. “Temperance,” he said hoarsely. “Forgive me. That didn’t come out as I’d intended. I respected your decisions, Temperance,” he said, needing her to understand that. He’d never understood that pride; he’d fallen in love with her for her honor.
Temperance drew in a deep breath. “You’re right, honor didn’t keep me safe from him, but neither did that money you so love, either.”
“It isn’t about me,” he cried. “Joseph Gurney was imprisoned.”
“And then there’ll be someone else. And instead of you finding the right and honorable way to make a difference, you’ll go about committing crime after crime, thinking the end justifies the means. And it doesn’t, Dare,” she said frantically. “It never will.”
It was those words that were the answer as to why they had never worked as a couple: his inability to be who she wanted him to be. Who she needed him to be. Who his grandparents needed him to be. Always a failure. Always failing to do that which was right because he was incapable of it. Dare flew to his feet. “And you would worry about some damned timepiece or . . . or”—he slashed his arm toward the floor—“paintings.”
She sucked a breath in through her teeth. “That isn’t what this is about.”
“Then what is it?” he shouted. He needed her to tell him so that it made some sense.
“It’s about how you destroy things, Dare,” she cried, stalking over to him, her skirts swirling wildly about her ankles. “It is about you making decisions that are poisonous and making a man who is poisonous your partner. It is about you looking after everyone but yourself.” Some of the fight seemed to leave her. Temperance hugged her arms close to her middle. “We’re never going to see eye to eye on this. I’ll never convince you that what you did wasn’t right. But this isn’t about me or you.”
“Isn’t it? You’ll get your brother his happily-ever-after, and I’ll get my remaining fifteen thousand pounds.”
She winced. “No. Not really, and we’d be wise to remember that.” She let her arms drop to her sides. “The person this is about is Kinsley. Thus far, you and I have only seen her as a means to an end. And we’ve both been wrong in that. Your grandfather tasked you with the role he did, Dare, because he wants you to be a brother to her.” Temperance nudged her chin in the direction of the biggest mound of belongings in the parlor. “And I’d suggest you begin by not going about stealing the belongings out from under her.”
“They are mine to sell, Temperance.”
She swept over and gripped him by his upper arms. “You insist this life isn’t yours, while at the same time insisting the belongings in this household are? You don’t get it both ways, Dare.”
And with that, Temperance released her hold on him and headed for
the front of the room. Suddenly, she stopped and faced him once more. “What leaves me truly sad is that I’d begun forming a bond with your sister. We actually spoke to each other in a way that I understood, if not her, what she is feeling. And with what you did here? Inviting Avery Bryant back into your life . . .” Temperance gave her head a forlorn little shake. “You’ve gone and undone any connection I’d made.”
“We just have to see her married,” he said tiredly. “It doesn’t matter whether or not she likes you, Temperance.” Or him. Though for a very brief while in Hyde Park, it had almost seemed as though she didn’t quite hate him so much, after all . . .
“She isn’t going to marry.”
That brought him up short. “What?”
“Your sister, she does not wish to wed.”
Shock silenced him. He’d been forced here to London with the expectation and requirement that he see her married. Kinsley had represented the only real path forward to the duke’s funds. But that wasn’t the only way . . .
Briefly, a thought slipped in . . . of the alternative arrangement, one that would require him to have a real marriage with Temperance . . . a baby. A future together, and the hungering for that imagining was so great it weighted his eyes closed.
Temperance went on to explain, shattering that dreaming. “At Hyde Park, Kinsley shared with me that she doesn’t want to marry.”
He found his bearings. “She’ll marry. She is young.”
“She’s near an age to my own when you and I were married.”
His cheeks flushed hot. “That is different.”
“Why?” Temperance persisted. She lifted an eyebrow. “Because you and I need her to marry? Because you want her to?” She swept over. “She doesn’t want to, and that is all that should matter.”
Or mayhap you can have a real marriage with Temperance . . . one with a child. The memory of her with Rose in her arms slipped in, and a hungering for that vision filled him. Nor did it have anything to do with the terms of his grandfather’s arrangement, and everything to do with the idea of being a family . . . with her.
Shaken by the potency with which he craved that imagining, Dare headed for the gilded frames and began stacking them. “Her unwillingness to marry therefore seems to grant me even more reason to sell off the contents of the household, then.”
“You still don’t understand.” Temperance stalked over and lightly wrestled a heavy frame from his grip. She settled it atop the thick stack of dresses. “I think before this exchange, I would have railed at you for the ruthlessness in that thinking.” Her lips curled in a heartbreaking smile. “But now I know.”
He tensed, not wanting to ask, and yet unable to call back the question anyway. “Know what?”
“You make every effort to never have a bond with another person.” She spoke beseechingly. “It is why you married me and then left immediately. It is why you took such delight in baiting your sister. Or why you”—she gestured to the stack of gowns between them—“decided to sell everything the moment you had a meaningful exchange with your sister.” Each word, accurate in its leverage, hit like a perfectly aimed blow. “And any relationships you do have?” Her eyes bored into his, her stare penetrating and one he both needed and yet could not look away from. “You kill, Dare.”
Just as he’d killed theirs.
“Is that what I did?” His feet twitched, and he wanted to run. To flee from her accusations, the real and unspoken, ones he’d no wish to explore. “I killed our relationship.”
Her response was instantaneous. “That is precisely what you did.”
Heat flushed his cheeks. “You were the one who sent me away, Temperance.”
“Because you weren’t there,” she said imploringly.
“I came and found you.” And she’d turned him away, leaving him empty and broken in ways that even the separation from his mother and brother hadn’t. Done with a past they’d never see eye to eye on, he headed for the door . . . when her words reached him.
“Not when I needed you,” she repeated, her voice a faint whisper that he struggled to hear.
Dare sharpened his gaze on her face. Warning bells went off, ringing faintly. What was she saying?
“Chance insisted I leave, but I knew you would return.” And I did. I did. “My father found out.”
He stilled. “We always anticipated he would. That was the plan,” he said, faintly entreating. Did he plead with her or himself? He had married her. Her father was supposed to have feared Dare’s reputation and influence. “He was to have left you alone.”
As if she could not meet his eyes, she glanced down at the floor. “Yes, he was.”
He took a step toward her, unable to get the question out, the one that would ultimately explain why she’d turned him away. Deep down, in a place where horror and terror dwelled together, he knew. “It . . . didn’t see you safe.” His words emerged as a statement, hollow.
Temperance squeezed her eyes shut briefly and sucked in a shuddery breath. She gave the faintest shake of her head, the barest bob of her neck. When she again opened her eyes, a chill scraped along his spine. “No.”
Haunted.
In that moment she was a woman haunted, and he would forevermore be tormented by the sight of her as she was, here. Now.
And she must have felt the cold, too . . . for she rubbed her hands frantically over her arms.
He shook his head. He was the coward she’d called him out as. Wanting her to stop. But she continued anyway. Because it was what he deserved. Because it was what she was entitled to . . . his owning the memories of those days after they’d wed.
“He was enraged. He’d other plans for me. Ones that didn’t include marriage to you. He wanted me to marry Diggory’s number two. My father resented us for thwarting him.” Her shoulders came back. “He beat me.” There was a peculiar calmness to her admission, one that warred with the tumult ravaging him.
His entire body jerked. “Temperance—”
“Mm-mm,” she said, cutting him off, giving her head a more definitive shake. Tears filled her eyes, and the sight of that suffering gutted him. She, who’d never cried before him. Not once. “I need to say this, and . . .” Her voice broke on a sob. He took another frantic step closer, but she held a hand up, staying him in his tracks. “And if you stop me, I don’t think I’ll ever get the words out.”
He nodded jerkily and gave her that which she needed—his silence.
“I was home. Chance came. He urged me to leave. I thought you were coming. I was so s-sure of it.”
A groan better suited to a wounded beast climbed his throat and spilled from his lips. No. No. No.
“My father arrived.” Her voice, her eyes, were deadened. “He beat me.” Oh, God. His eyes slid shut, and he wanted to block out each word, each revelation. Each reminder that he hadn’t been there . . . when she had needed him.
He’d failed her. He should have been there. What had been more important than her? Nothing. He couldn’t even remember the items he and Avery had filched—
“I was with child.”
His body went hot . . . and then cold. As through the haze of his own misery and regret and heartbreak, her admission slipped in. “What?” That question . . . his own, came as if down a long, empty tunnel.
She stopped rubbing her arms and stared out, her gaze locked on his chest—sightless.
His body went absolutely motionless. No.
It was a single-word litany in his head.
“I was so heavy with child, I was slower.”
A piteous moan spilled from his lips. “I didn’t . . .” Know. And isn’t that the very point she made, a voice taunted through his misery.
“I lost the babe.” She said the words he knew were inevitable in her telling. “I held her.”
Her.
His eyes slid closed.
Temperance continued speaking, her words coming as if from far away. “She was so tiny. Her skin was so clear you could almost see through it.”
Temperance touched a hand to the top of her head. “She’d this tiny little tuft of dark hair on her head. This little circular patch.”
Dare’s throat worked spasmodically. They’d had a babe . . . and that child had been a girl. Something in knowing that made the loss . . . even more. There’d been a little girl, who would have grown to be like her mother, with her fiery spirit and clever wit and . . . Agony shredded the rest of those desperate yearnings. I am never going to survive this.
And yet . . . she had. And she’d done so alone. Without him at her side, battling that crushing loss and recovering from the brutal assault her father had carried out. Tears stung his eyes, and he pressed the backs of his palms against them, trying to drive away a pain that could not be dulled.
“There was so much blood. I should have died.” Temperance drew in a shuddering breath. “The doctor Chance brought expected I would.”
And where was I while she was there, suffering, clinging to her life, having lost our babe?
“He explained I’d never be able to have more children.”
The earth ceased spinning on its axis.
And when it resumed rotating, the ground shifted under Dare’s feet, and he grappled for something to keep him upright.
My God.
Temperance cleared her throat. “After . . . it all, Chance, he put me in a mail carriage, with money to get to Cotswold. I was . . . sick the whole way.”
It was why she could no longer ride in carriages. Now, that aversion made sense.
Now, everything made sense. And what was worse . . . knowing . . . it changed nothing.