Lydia grinned. “A duchess, then.” Mara cut her a look, but she kept speaking, scooping Lavender up from where the piglet danced at their feet. “Cor. Imagine that. You, married to his father.”
“I’d rather not,” Mara said.
“The man’s stepmother.”
She closed her eyes. “Don’t say it.”
“Imagine that life—filled with impure thoughts about one’s stepson.”
“Lydia!” Mara protested, grateful for the distraction.
“Oh, tosh,” Lydia said. “The man’s older than you are.”
“It doesn’t mean—”
Lydia waved one hand. “Of course it does. Look at him. He’s enormous. And handsome as sin. Are you honestly telling me you haven’t had a single impure thought?”
“Yes.”
“Liar.”
Of course she was a liar. She’d had more than impure thoughts about him. She’d had impure deeds with him. And worse.
She loved him, somehow.
What an unfortunate turn of events that was.
And then the object of her thoughts appeared, saving her from having to think too much on the last.
Her heart was in her throat as she took him in, in his black trousers and waistcoat and coat, perfectly tailored despite his sling—also black. Dear Heaven, his shoulders were broad. The black was broken only by the stark white of his shirt and cravat, starched and tied as though by one of London’s best valets.
She could not imagine him with a valet. He did not seem the kind of man who ever needed another’s assist, let alone for something as frivolous as a perfectly tied cravat.
But perfectly tied it was, nonetheless.
“Your Grace,” Lydia said with an enormous smile. “We were just speaking of you.”
He tilted his head. “Were you? What were you saying?” He bowed low over Lydia’s hand, missing the gleam in her eye as Mara glared at her over the wide expanse of his back, willing her not to say any more.
“We were discussing the fine puppetry of fate.”
He stroked Lavender’s little furry snout, and the piglet turned traitor, leaning into the touch with a snuffle before Temple gave his attention to Mara. “Fine puppetry indeed.” His gaze swept over her, leaving her alternately hot and cold in its caress. Nervous, she clutched the ermine trim together at her neck, feeling as though he could see straight through the fabric. His attention fell to her hand, and he hesitated for a long moment before saying, “You are ready?”
“As I might ever be,” she said quietly, but he was already moving to the door, no doubt eager to get her destruction under way. No doubt tired of her. No doubt tired of living his life without all the privilege into which he’d been born.
She followed him, knowing with each step tonight, her life would change. Tonight, she would no longer be able to escape her past. She would have to claim it. And with it, she would likely lose everything for which she’d worked.
Because of him.
At the door, Lydia stopped her, throwing her arms around her, and whispering in her ear, “Courage.”
Mara nodded around the knot in her throat, and lifted Lavender into her arms for a long cuddle and a kiss on the head before relinquishing the pig to the new proprietress of the MacIntyre Home for Boys.
The coach was silent as a tomb, and Mara tried not to notice him.
She tried not to notice the way his chest rose and fell beneath the crisp linen of his shirt and the soft wool of his jacket. The way his breath came in long, slow inhales and exhales. The way his strong thighs engaged as the carriage rocked along the cobblestone streets. The scent of him—clove and thyme and Temple.
She tried not to notice him until he leaned forward in the darkness, across the unspoken line of demarcation between his side of the carriage and hers, and said, gruffly, “I brought you a gift.”
It would be rude not to notice one with a gift, after all.
And sure enough, he punctuated his words by extending a long, slim box toward her. She recognized it immediately, the white with gold embossing, the mark of Madame Hebert, and she shook her head in confusion as she accepted the parcel. “I’m wearing everything you ordered. More.”
The words were out before she could keep them back—before she could stop herself from reminding them both that she was wearing his clothes. Clothes he’d chosen as she stood half naked in front of him in a dark room.
He could have taken the moment to push her on the topic. To force her to admit each scrap of clothing was his before it was hers. But he didn’t. Instead, he leaned back on the seat and said, “Not everything.”
She opened the box, pulling back gossamer-thin paper to reveal a pair of beautiful satin gloves, perfectly matched to her dress with stunning embroidery and dozens of little buttons all along the inside of them. She lifted them gently from the box, as though they might fall apart in her hands.
“You never wear gloves,” Temple said. “I thought you might require some.”
These were not workaday gloves, however, these were gloves for one night, for one ensemble. For one man.
She pulled one glove on before realizing that she would not be able to fasten them one-handed. But before she could say anything, he was leaning forward again, extracting a button hook from his coat pocket, as though it were the most ordinary thing in the world for a man to carry. He crowded her in the small, dark space, reaching for her hand. He’d freed his arm and folded back the sleeve of her cloak, using his bad arm to hold her steady as he set to work on the task of buttoning the endless line of little green buttons.
She wanted to hate him for controlling even this, even her gloves.
But instead, she loved him all the more for it, her heart heavy in her chest, knowing this was their last evening. Perhaps the last time they would be alone together.
“Thank you,” she said softly, uncertain of what else to do as she sat, her free hand worrying the paper from the box.
He was quiet, focused on his task, and she settled into watching the top of his dark head, unable to take a deep breath for his nearness, wishing he weren’t so very close to her imperfect, scarred hands. Grateful for the fact that she had covered the years of history written on her palm before relinquishing the extremity to him.
Utterly unsettled by his gentle, deft touch.
She could feel the softness of his breath on the skin of her wrist as he hid it from view, the soft touch of his fingers along the inside of her arm the last thing chased away by silk.
No. Not chased away. Imprisoned by it.
Because it felt that way, as though the glove itself was protecting his touch from ever escaping.
He finished the first glove after an eternity and she released the long breath that she had not known she had been holding, realizing that he had clasped her other hand in his without any warning. She tugged on it, but his grip was steel. “Thank you, I can—”
“Let me,” he said, lifting the second glove from her lap.
No , she wanted to say, don’t look at it.
Heat washed across her cheeks, and she was thankful for the darkness of the carriage.
He saw it anyway. “You are embarrassed of them,” he said, the pad of his thumb rubbing softly—maddeningly—across her palm.
She tugged on the hand again. Futilely.
“You needn’t be, you know,” he said, that slow, circling stroke an endless torture. “These hands helped you survive for twelve years. They worked for you. They won your funds and shelter and safety for more than a decade.”