He did not turn back, instead calling over his shoulder, “Feed the damn pig.”
When Mara arrived at The Fallen Angel, it was to a street virtually empty of people and noise, the opposite of how she imagined the exterior of one of London’s most exclusive gaming hells would be.
She wondered, fleetingly, if she was too late. If Temple had closed the club and left. If he’d decided to end this underground life of his and return to the light. Return to his dukedom. Return to his right.
That’s when panic set in.
Because in the damp, dark day, while she’d had nothing to do but walk and think, she’d realized that she loved this man beyond measure. And that she would do everything she could, for as long as she could, to make his life better than it ever would have been without her.
Of course, the moment she realized that, she realized that she was very very far away from the Angel.
But she was here now, and when she arrived, she knocked on the door, thrilled when a little slot opened in the steel. She stepped up to the space and said, “Hello. I am—”
The slot slid shut.
She hesitated, considering her next move. Knocked again. The slot opened. “I am here—”
The slot closed once more.
Honestly. Was every person having to do with this club obstinate? She knocked again. The slot opened. “Password.”
She paused at that. “I don’t—have one. But—”
The slot closed with a snap.
And that’s when Mara became angry. She began to bang on the door. Loudly. After a long moment, the little slot opened, the black eyes inside narrowed with irritation.
“Now look here, you!” she announced in her very best governess voice, underscoring her words with banging on the door.
The eyes in the slot went wide with surprise.
“I have spent the entire day on the streets of London, in the bitter cold!”
She punctuated the last with bang-bang-bang!
“And I have finally decided that it is time for me to face my desires, my past, my future, and the man I love! So, you will let!” Bang! “Me!” Bang! “In!”
She completed her tirade with a clattering of hits on the steel door with both fists. And added in a kick for good measure. She had to admit it felt rather good.
The eyes disappeared, replaced by a lighter, more feminine set—Dear God. Were they laughing at her? “Miss Lowe?”
She raised a finger. “I would think very carefully about the expression you present to me when you finally open this door.”
The locks on the door were finally thrown and she was allowed into the building to face a smiling Anna and a much more serious doorman. Indeed, he looked positively deferential when he said, “We’ve been searching for you.”
Mara shook out the skirts of her damp cloak and accepted a mask from him, settling it on her face before saying, all decorum, “Well, you’ve found me.” She turned to Anna. “Please take me to see Temple.”
Anna did as he was told, a look of smug satisfaction on her beautiful face as she reached into a nearby drawer and extracted a mask. Once Mara was protected from view, they made their way through the private passageways of the club, silent for long minutes before Anna said, “I am happy that you decided to return.”
“You didn’t tell him you saw me?”
Anna shook her head. “I did not. I know what it is like to have no say in one’s future. I would not bring it upon anyone.”
Mara considered the words for a long moment. “I don’t care about the future, as long as it is with him.”
The other woman smiled. “May it be long and happy. Lord knows you both deserve it.”
Warmth spread through Mara at the words, until Mara remembered that it was Temple who needed to accept her—Temple who needed to forgive her. For running. And for so much more.
If only someone would deliver her to him, so she could repair all the things she had broken. But Anna did not take Mara to him. She took her to the long, mirrored ladies’ side of the boxing ring, where it appeared all the people she had expected to see on the ground floor of the club had congregated.
She stepped into the dimly lit space, packed with women, her heart in her throat. She turned back to Anna. “There is to be a fight?”
“There is.” The prostitute guided her to the front of the room, to a place where two chairs sat close to the window.
At another time, Mara might be curious enough to watch it—curious enough to show interest in the fighters, whoever they may be. But they would not be Temple, who was too injured for fighting, and that was all she cared to know. She shook her head. “No. I don’t have time for this. I wish to see Temple,” she whispered. “I’ve waited too long. I want him to know I’ve changed my mind. I want him to know—”
I love him.
I want to be with him.
I want to start again.
Fresh. Forever.
Anna nodded. “And you will see him. But first, you will see this.”
The door to Temple’s rooms opened on the far side of the ring, and Mara came to her feet to see him approach the center of the room, her hands instantly pressed against the window.
“No,” she whispered.
He was naked from the waist up, devilishly handsome, and for a moment, all Mara could think of was how it had felt to slide against that skin, to touch him. To have him touch her. To want it again, the closeness. The pleasure.
The man.
And then her attention was on the bandage wrapped about his shoulder, protecting the wound he’d received in this very ring a week earlier. She turned to Anna. “No,” she repeated.
Anna was not looking at her. She was watching Temple ease into the ring. She tutted her displeasure. “He is favoring his right side.”
“Of course he is!” Mara said. “He is wounded! It shan’t be a fair fight!”
She should tell someone the arm was hurt. Demand to see the Marquess of Bourne. The elusive Chase. She should force the fight to be ended.
The women around them were making raucous noise, shouting out their lewd comments. “Cor! You can’t take the title from the man, but you certainly can take the man from the title.”
“He doesn’t look like any duke I’ve ever seen.”
“My lord, he’s a beauty.”
“He might not be one, but he does look a killer if ever there was one.”
“I’d happily turn myself over to him!”
“I don’t believe she’s really alive, you know,” someone interjected. “I think he simply paid some painted whore to arrive and claim to be Mara Lowe.”
“It’s her. I came out the season she was due to marry the dead duke. Everyone talked about those eyes.”
“Well, either way, I’m grateful to her. She’s made the Duke of Lamont a marriageable match once more.”
Mara burned with anger, wanting to take her fists to every one of these women.
Someone laughed. “You think you can land him yourself?”
“I heard that he loves her,” Anna said, her eyes on Mara, her words deceptively lazy.
As she loves him. Quite desperately.
“Nonsense,” one of the women replied. “Who could love someone who did such a thing? I’m sure he quite hates her.”
He should. But somehow—by some miracle—he doesn’t.
Mara began to fidget. She wanted this all done. She wanted him.
Immediately.
“And besides,” the first said, “I’m a marchioness. And terribly young to be widowed.”
As though all Temple should be considering for his future happiness was a title. Mara hated the thought.
“I imagine there is quite a queue lined up for the position of Duchess of Lamont,” another said happily. “And not just the widows. My sister has a daughter nea
rly eighteen, and she would kill for a ducal son-in-law.” The room laughed, and the speaker continued. “It is not a jest. I would not put honest murder past some of these mothers on the marriage mart.”
Mara swallowed back the words that rose to her tongue, desperate to be spoken. He didn’t need a title. He needed a woman who understood him. One who loved him. One who would spend the rest of her days making him happy.
One who would keep him safe from them.
From the ring beyond.
She turned to Anna. “You must stop it.”
Anna shook her head. “The challenge was made. The bets have been laid.”
“Bollocks the bets!” Mara said.
Anna’s gaze filled with respect. “You sound like Temple.”
“You’re damn right I sound like him,” Mara pushed, worry and irritation and frustration warring for dominant position in her emotions. “Take me to Chase. He shall listen to me.”
Anna’s eyes betrayed her surprise. “Trust me, Miss Lowe, Chase would change nothing about this night. There is a great deal of money on this fight.”
“Then he’s no kind of friend. Temple is not ready to fight again. His wound is still unhealed. He could set himself back days. Weeks. Worse.” She turned on Anna. “Was he forced to do this?”
The prostitute laughed. “Temple has never been forced to do anything in his life.”
“Then why?” Mara’s gaze moved to the ring, to where he stood half naked and proud and beautiful. She moved for the door, and the enormous security guard there blocked her from leaving. She turned back to Anna. “Why?”
She smiled at that, soft and sad. “For you.”
“For me!” Insanity.
“He avenges you.”
Even now. After all she’d done.
Her gaze fell on him, taking in the ripple of his muscles, the set of his jaw. The way his gaze tracked his opponent. But there was something different in this Temple. Something that she had not seen all the other nights.
Anger.
Desperation.
Frustration.
Sadness.
He loved her.
Just as she loved him. Mara closed her eyes. She might not deserve him, but she wanted him nonetheless.
She pressed her hands to the window. “He thinks I am gone.”
“Yes,” Anna said.
“Take me to him.”
“Not yet.”
That’s when the second fighter entered the ring. Her brother. “What is he doing here?”
“Showing his idiocy,” Anna said. “He came to the club and challenged Temple.”
She’d given him money. A chance to leave. And still, he’d come here out of greed and insolence and childishness.
She shook her head.
“Your brother insulted you.”
Mara had no doubt that Kit had done so with colorful aplomb. “Nevertheless, you must stop it.”
Anna looked to her, eyes suddenly wary. “Why?”
“Why?” Was the woman mad? “Because he shall hurt himself!”
“Who? Your brother? Or Temple?”
Had everyone in the entire world gone mad?
Mara faced Anna. “You think I don’t love him.”
“I think he is a man who deserves more love than most. And I think you are the reason why. So yes, I worry that you don’t love him enough. I worry that in this instance, you want the fight stopped for a different reason.”
She wanted the fight stopped so she could be with him. So she could love him. So she could finally, finally put the past to rest.
But the fight began before she could say so, and this new, angry Temple led the bout, coming out hard and fast, striking first with several blows, a right hook. A right jab. A right cross.
Always the right.
Kit recovered, coming at him with one blow, a second of his own, sending Temple dancing back across the ring. Mara watched the bandage, saw the linen ties that kept it in place loosen. Turned to Anna. “Please. Take me to Chase. We must end this.”
The prostitute shook her head. “This is his fight. For you.”
“I don’t want it.”
“And yet, you receive it all the same.”
Another right hook. A right jab.
That’s when Kit saw the pattern.
Mara looked away. A child could see the pattern.
He was going to lose.
How many times had he told her he did not lose? How many times had she heard of him, the great Temple, the winningest bare-knuckle boxer in Britain. In all the world. Unbeatable. Undefeated. Unbreakable.
Kit might be drunk, but he was no fool. He knew that Temple was weak on the left side, so he went for it, landing blows inexpert enough to have marked his own demise ten days prior. But now, those blows were hard enough to inflict pain. Hard enough to set Temple back.
He was not unbeatable. Not tonight.
But Kit had insulted her, and he would take the loss for himself before he would take it for her.
“Christ, why doesn’t he use the left? Why doesn’t he block on it?” Someone asked, and Mara heard the frustration in the woman’s voice.
“He can’t,” Mara whispered, her hand on the shaded window as she watched her love take another blow and another. For her. Again and again.
His arm wasn’t working correctly.
He was going to lose.
Kit landed another blow, and Temple came to his knees, the crowd counting the seconds he spent on the floor of the ring, before he looked up at his opponent and spoke. Kit danced away, and Temple pushed himself up to stand once more, blood running down his cheek.
He would fight until he was destroyed.
He would not give up. Not when Mara’s name was on the line.
He loved her.
His words from the prior night returned. What am I if not unbeatable? If not a fighter? If not the Killer Duke? What is my value then?
He would not stop. Not until her brother killed him.
Anna saw it then, the inevitable end. And when she looked to Mara, she said, “It will be over before we can stop it.”
Mara wouldn’t hear no.
The man she loved was ten feet away. Fewer. And he needed her.
Dammit, if she was the only one who would save him, she would.
She moved without thinking, lifting the chair in her hands before anyone in the room could predict her actions. Anna reached for it too late, calling out, “No!”
But Mara had one goal only.
Temple.
He was going to lose.
His left side was screaming in pain, the muscles protesting the bout—too soon after the stabbing. And that was without the nerves, sizzling in fits and starts down his arm, causing as much pain from the inside as Lowe was from the outside.
He was going to lose. He could not avenge her.
Not that it mattered; she had left him.
She’d run from him. Again.
Lowe landed two powerful blows to his left side, sending Temple to his knees. There, in the sawdust, he wondered when the last time was that he had been on his knees in the ring.
With Mara.
The afternoon they were alone here. The afternoon he’d driven her away the first time. The afternoon when he should have collected her in his arms and taken her to his bed and never released her.
He looked up at Lowe and said, “You may win today, but I will ruin you if you ever speak ill of her again.”
Lowe danced back from him and taunted. “That’s if I leave you alive.”
Temple came to his feet for what he knew would be the final portion of the bout, assuming Lowe had the stomach for it. But before any further blows could land, the room exploded.
The mirror hiding the ladies’ viewing room shattered in
massive, ear-splitting perfection, every inch of it collapsing to the floor of the main room, like spun sugar. The sound was like nothing he’d ever heard, and he and Lowe—and the rest of the room—turned to watch as the window slid away, and the women inside went screeching and running for cover of darkness, not wanting to be seen or identified.
The men crowded around the fight stilled, hands in the air, clutching bets and markers, mouths frozen open in their perverse cheers, but Temple cared for none of that.
He cared only for the woman who had caused the devastation.
The woman standing alone at the center of that broken mirror, proud and tall and strong like a queen, the chair she’d used to shatter the window still in her hands.
Mara.
His love.
She was here. Finally.
She set the chair on the ground and used it to climb over the ledge and into the ring, caring not a bit about the men around her. Looking only at him.
He was moving toward her even as the last of the glass tinkled to the ground, caring only for her. Wanting to reach her. To hold her. To believe that she was there. She reached up and removed her mask, letting all of London see her for the second time in as many days.
A murmur of recognition moved like a wave through the room.
“I grew tired of waiting for you to come find me, Your Grace,” she said, loud enough for those near to hear her. But the words were for him. Only him.
He smiled. “I would have found you.”
“I’m not so certain,” she replied. “You seemed somewhat occupied.”
He looked over his shoulder. “What, him?”
Her gaze tracked his bleeding face, and he saw the worry in her eyes. Saw the way her hand lifted to touch. To soothe. “I thought I might help.”
His brows rose as she climbed into the ring and faced her brother. “You, Christopher, are an ass, and still the child you were when I left you twelve years ago.”
Kit’s gaze grew dark and foreboding. “Well, this child would have destroyed your duke if you hadn’t distracted us.”
She ignored the words and the glee in them. “How unfortunate, then, that I did distract you.” She looked around the room, taking in the hundreds of men who had come for the fight. Who had taken pleasure in watching Temple fall. “Let’s make it easy, shall we?”