“Lowe challenges you again.”
He should have expected the words—Christopher Lowe had challenged him twelve times in as many days—and yet they came like a blow. “No.” The same answer he’d given eleven times. “And you should stop bringing him to me.”
“Why? Shouldn’t the boy have his chance like all the others?”
Temple met Chase’s gaze. “You’re a bloodthirsty bastard.”
Chase laughed. “Much to my family’s dismay, not a bastard.”
“Bloodthirsty, though.”
“I simply enjoy an impassioned fight.” Chase shrugged. “He’s lost thousands.”
“I don’t care if he’s lost the crown jewels. I won’t fight him.”
“Temple—”
“When we made this deal . . . when I agreed to come in on the Angel, we agreed that the fights were mine. Didn’t we?”
Chase hesitated, seeing where the conversation was headed.
Temple repeated himself. “Didn’t we?”
“Yes.”
“I won’t fight Lowe.” Temple paused, then added, “He’s not even a member.”
“He’s a member of Knight’s. Now afforded the same rights as any of the Angel’s members.”
Knight’s, the newest holding of The Fallen Angel, a lower club that carried the pleasure and debt of four hundred less-than-savory characters. Anger flared. “Goddammit . . . if not for Cross and his idiot decisions—”
“He had his reasons,” Chase said.
“Lord deliver us from men in love.”
“Hear hear,” Chase agreed. “But we’ve a second hell to run, nonetheless, and that hell carries Lowe’s debt. And he’s due a fight if he asks for it.”
“How has the boy lost thousands?” Temple asked, hating the frustration that edged into his tone. “Everything his father touched turned to gold.”
It was why Lowe’s sister had been such a welcome bride.
He hated the thought. The memories that came with it.
Chase lifted one shoulder in a shrug. “Luck turns quickly.”
The truth they all lived by.
Temple swore. “I’m not fighting him. Cut him loose.”
Chase met his eyes. “There’s no proof you killed her.”
Temple’s gaze did not waver. “There’s no proof I didn’t.”
“I’d wager everything I have that you didn’t.”
“But not because you know it’s true.”
Temple didn’t even know it.
“I know you.”
No one knew him. Not really. “Well, Lowe doesn’t. I won’t fight him. And I won’t have this conversation again. If you want to give the boy a fight, you fight him.”
He waited for Chase’s next words. A new attack.
It didn’t come.
“Well, London would like that.” The founder of the Angel stood, lifting the list of potential fights along with the stack of papers that had been on the table since before the fight. “Shall I return these to the books?”
Temple shook his head, extending one hand for them. “I shall do it.”
It was part of the ritual.
“Why pull the files in the first place?” Chase asked.
Temple looked to the papers, where Montlake’s debt to the Angel was accounted in clear, concise script: one hundred pounds here, one thousand there, a dozen acres. A hundred. A house, a horse, a carriage.
A life.
He lifted one shoulder, enjoying the sting of the muscle there. “He might have won.”
One of Chase’s blond brows rose. “He might have done.”
But he hadn’t.
Temple returned the record to the scarred oak table.
“They lay everything on the fight. It seems the least I can do to acknowledge the magnitude of their loss.”
“And yet you still win.”
It was true. But he understood what it was to lose everything. To have one’s entire life changed in an instant because of a choice that should not have been made. An action that should not have been taken.
There was a difference, of course.
The men who came to scratch in the ring beyond remembered making the choice. Taking the action.
Temple didn’t.
Not that it mattered.
A bell on the wall above the door rang, announcing that his bath was drawn, pulling him back to the present.
“I did not say they do not deserve to lose.”
Chase laughed, the sound loud in the quiet room. “So very sure of yourself. Someday, you may not win so handily.”
Temple reached for a towel, draping the fine Turkish cotton around his neck.
“Wicked promises,” he said as he headed for the adjourning bathing chamber, dismissing Chase, the fight, and the wounds he’d inflicted. “Wicked, wonderful promises.”
The streets east of Temple Bar came alive at night, filled with the worst of London—thieves and prostitutes and cutthroats set free from their daytime hiding places, released into the wild darkness. Thriving in it.
They reveled in the way corners rose from shadows, carving welcome blackness from the city, not half a mile from its most stately homes and wealthiest inhabitants, marking territory where proper nobs would not tread, too afraid to face the truth of the city—that it was more than they knew.
Or perhaps it was exactly what they knew.
It was everything that Temple knew.
Everything he was, everything he had become, everything he would ever be, this place, riddled with drunks and whores—the perfect place for a man to fade away. Unseen.
Of course, they did see him. They had for years, since the moment, twelve years earlier, when he’d arrived young and stinking of fear and fury, with nothing but his fists to recommend him to this brave new world.
The whispers had followed him through filth and sin, marking time. At first, he pretended not to hear the word, but as the years passed, he had embraced it—and the epithet turned honorific.
Killer.
It kept them far from him, even as they watched. The Killer Duke. He felt the curiosity in their gazes—why would an aristocratic nob, born on the right side of the blanket with a diamond-crusted spoon in his mouth, have any reason to kill?
What devastating, dark secret did the rich and privileged hide so well behind their silks and jewels and coin?
Temple gave the darkest souls in London hope.
The chance to believe that their lives, dank and layered in soot and grime, might not be so very different from those that seemed so far above. So unattainable.
If the Killer Duke could fall, he heard in their furtive gazes, so, too, might we rise.
And in that flickering hope was the danger. He turned a corner, leaving the lights and sound of Long Acre, cloaking himself in the darkened streets where he had spent most of his adult life.
His steps quieted with years of instinct, knowing that it was this walk—the last hundred yards to his town house—where those who lurked found their courage.
Because of this, it was no surprise he was being followed.
It had happened before—men desperate enough to take him on, to wield knives and clubs in the hope that a single, well-placed blow would level him long enough to relieve him of his purse.
And if it laid him flat forever, well then, so be it. It was the way of the streets, after all.
He’d faced them before. He’d fought them before, spilling blood and teeth here on the cobblestones of Newgate with a ferocity that was missing in the ring of The Fallen Angel.
He’d fought them, and won. Dozens. Scores.
And still, there was always some new, desperate sinner who followed, mistaking the fine wool of Temple’s coat for weakness.
He slowed, fixed on the steps behind him, different
than usual. Missing the weight of drink and poor judgment. Fast and focused and nearly on top of him before he noticed what it was that set these footsteps apart.
He should have noticed earlier. Should have understood immediately why there was something so uncommon about this particular pursuer. So unsettling. He should have sensed it, if for no other reason than because of what this follower was not.
Because, in all the years that he had been shadowed down these darkened alleyways—in all the years he’d lifted his fists to a stranger—his attacker had never been female.
He waited for her to close the distance.
There was a hesitation in her step as she came closer, and he marked time with his stride, long and languorous, knowing that he could turn and eliminate this particular threat at any moment.
But it wasn’t every day that he was surprised.
And the chit behind him was nothing if not surprising.
She was close enough to hear her breath, fast and shallow—the telltale sign of energy and fear. As though she were new at this. As though she were the victim.
And perhaps she was.
She was a yard from him. A foot. Six inches before he turned, reaching for and catching her by the wrists, pulling her close—the realization that she was unarmed coming on a wave of warmth and lemon scent.
She wasn’t wearing gloves.
He barely had time to register the fact before she gasped, going utterly still for a split second before first tugging at her wrists and, once discovering them caught in his strong grip, struggling in earnest.
She was taller than most, and stronger than he expected. She didn’t cry or call out, instead using all her breath, all her strength, to fuel her attempt to extricate herself, which made her smarter than most of the men he’d met in the ring.
She was no match for him, however, and so he held her. Tight and firm, until she gave up.
He rather regretted that she gave up.
But she did, realizing the futility of her actions after a long moment . . . hesitating briefly before she turned her face up to his and said, “Release me.”
There was something in the words, a quiet, unexpected honesty that almost made him do it. Almost made him let her go, to run off into the night.
Almost.
But it had been a long time since he’d been so intrigued by an opponent.
Pulling her closer, he easily transferred both her wrists into one of his hands as he used the other to check her cloak for weapons.
His hand closed on the hilt of a knife, hidden deep in the lining of the cloak. He extracted it. “No, I don’t think I will.”
“That’s mine,” she said, reaching for the weapon, cursing as he held it out of her reach.
“I don’t care for late-night meetings with armed attackers.”
“I’m not armed.”
He raised a brow.
She exhaled harshly. “I mean, I am armed, of course. It’s the dead of night and anyone with the sense of a trout would be. But I have no intention of stabbing you.”
“And I’m simply to take your word for it?”
Her words came straight and true. “If I wanted to stab you, you’d have been stabbed.”
He cursed the darkness and its secrets, wanting to see her face. “What are you after?” He asked softly, sliding the knife into his boot, “My pockets? You should have picked a smaller mark.” Though he wasn’t exactly sorry that she’d chosen him. He liked it.
Even more when she answered.
“I’m after you.”
The response was quick enough to be true, and to shock the hell out of him.
Wariness flared. “You’re not a lightskirt.”
The words were not a question. It was clear the woman wasn’t a whore—in the way she stiffened in response to his statement, keeping space between them.
She wasn’t comfortable with a man’s touch.
With his touch.
She redoubled her efforts to free herself. “Is that all people want from you? Your purse or your—” She stopped, and Temple resisted the urge to laugh. She most certainly was not a prostitute.
“The two options are usually enough for women.” He stared into her dark face, wishing for a street lamp. For a shadow of light from a nearby window. “All right, darling, if not my purse or my . . .” He trailed off, enjoying the way her breath caught before he finished. She was curious. “ . . . prowess, what then?”
She took a deep breath, its weight falling between them, as though what she were about to say would change her world. Would change his. He waited, barely noticing that his breath held, as well.
“I’m here to challenge you.”
He let her go and turned away, irritation and frustration and not a small amount of disappointment flaring. She hadn’t come for him as a man. She’d come for him as a means to an end. Just as they always did.
Her boots clattered on the cobblestones as she ran after him. “Wait.”
He did not wait.
“Your Grace—” The title cut through the darkness. Stung. She wouldn’t get anywhere with such good manners. “Hold a moment. Please.”
It might have been the softness in the word. It might have been the word itself—one the Killer Duke did not often hear—that stopped him. Turned him back. “I don’t fight women. I don’t care who your lover is. Tell him to find his manhood and come after me himself.”
“He doesn’t know I’m here.”
“Perhaps you should have told him. Then he might have stopped you from making the rash and reckless decision to stand in the dead of night in the middle of a dark alley with a man widely believed to be one of the most dangerous in Britain.”
“I don’t believe that.”
Something flared deep in him at the words. At the truth in them. And for the briefest of moments, he considered reaching for her again. Taking her to his town house.
It had been a long time since a woman had intrigued him.
Sanity returned. “You should believe it.”
“It’s nonsense. It has been since the beginning.”
His gaze narrowed on her. “Go home and find yourself a man who cares enough to save you from yourself.”
“My brother lost a great deal of money,” she said, her words clear in the darkness, tinged at the same time with proper education and an East London edge. Not that he cared about her accent. Or about her.
“I don’t fight women.” There was comfort in the repetition. In the reminder that he had never hurt a woman. Another woman. “And your brother seems smarter than most. I also don’t lose to men.”
“I wish to reclaim the money, nonetheless.”
“I want a number of things that I shan’t have,” he tossed back at her.
“I know. That’s why I’m here. To give them to you.” Something echoed in the words. Strength. Truth. He did not reply, but curiosity had him waiting for her next words. Words that came like a blow. “I am here to propose a trade.”
“So you are a lightskirt, after all?”
He meant to insult her. Failed. She gave a little half laugh in the darkness, the breathy sound more intriguing than he’d like to admit. “Not that kind of trade. And besides, you don’t want me half as much as you want what I can give you.”
The words were a challenge, and he itched to accept it. For there was something in the stupid, brave woman’s words that called to him. That made him consider making whatever idiot trade she was offering.
He focused on her, taking a step toward her, her scent coming warm and welcome. In a moment, he’d caught her in his arms, pressed her chest to his. “I confess, I’ve always liked the combination of beauty and boldness.” He whispered into her ear, loving the way her breath caught in her throat. “Perhaps we can make an arrangement after all.”
“My body is not on the tab
le.”
It was a pity. She was brazen as hell, and one night in her bed might be worth whatever she was after. “Then what makes you think I’m interested in dealing with you?”
She hesitated. A second. Less. But he heard it. “Because you want what I offer.”
“I’m rich as Croesus, love. So if you don’t offer your willing participation in my bed, there’s nothing you have that I can’t get on my own.”
He turned back to the house, going several steps before she called out, “Even absolution?”
He froze.
Absolution.
How many times had the word whispered through his mind? How many times had he tested it, low and quiet on his tongue as he lay in the darkness, guilt and anger his only bedmates?
Absolution.
Something rushed through him, cold and furious, and it took him a moment to understand it. Warning. She was dangerous.
He should walk away.
And yet . . .
He moved to capture her, using the speed for which he was renowned, one strong hand clasping her arm. He ignored her sharp intake of breath and pulled her along the street to a patch of lamplight at the door of his town house.
He lifted one gloved hand to her face, turning her into the light, taking her in—smooth skin gone ruddy in the evening’s frigid air, jaw set firm and defiant. Her eyes wide and clear, filled with honesty.
One blue. One green.
Too strange to be common. Too memorable.
She tried to pull her chin away. His grip tightened, making movement impossible. His question came quick and harsh in the night. “Who is your brother?”
She swallowed. He felt the movement in his hand. In his whole body. An eternity passed while he waited for her reply. “Christopher Lowe.”
The name singed him, and he released her instantly, stepping back from the heat that threatened, thickening his blood and setting his ears to roaring.
Absolution.
He shook his head slowly, unable to stop himself from speaking, “You are . . .” He trailed off and she closed her eyes, unable to meet his gaze. No. He wasn’t having that. “Look at me.”
She straightened, shoulders back, spine stiff. And she met his gaze without shame. Without remorse.
Christ.