Undressed with the Marquess (Lost Lords of London #3) - Caldwell, Christi Page 0,38
of fourteen who’d been a cocksure, overconfident boy believing himself a man who could command the world with a word.
In short order, he’d come to appreciate Temperance as one who’d not be cowed or impressed by him.
Nothing had shaken her.
Only to find at some point in their years apart, she’d developed sickness from carriage rides.
It didn’t fit with what he knew of the girl he’d bundled into countless hackneys to help her avoid discovery from her mean, drunken father.
He stared expectantly at her. “That is it? ‘Yes’? All of a sudden, carriage rides make you ill?”
She shrugged. “Just ‘yes.’” It defied logic. “Nor is it recent, Dare. It’s been nearly five years since I’ve not been able to tolerate them. I just haven’t seen you in five years, where you’d know it.”
Tension crackled in the air around them.
And he’d have to have cotton in his ears to miss that thinly veiled barb.
His face went hot. She would blame him for their estrangement. When he’d written, and then gone to her? “Let us be clear,” he said, taking a step toward her. My God, how many times would they circle around this? “I came for you,” he gritted out. “I found you. You were the one who insisted everything between us was dead. You demanded I leave. You insisted you never wished to see me again.” Even as she’d now rewrite the final collapse of their relationship.
The color left her cheeks. “How dare you?” She didn’t allow a word edgewise. “Do not pretend as though you came back to have a marriage with me.”
Tension radiated along his jaw, and he made himself unclench his teeth. “I told you it couldn’t be a real marriage. You knew precisely what I was offering. We were friends who knew what the other might expect.” He, however, had anticipated that it wouldn’t be enough, that the offer was folly. And yet, even knowing that and all that had come to pass between them, he’d still make the decision again if it meant freeing her from her father’s abuse.
Smiling sadly up at him, Temperance hugged her arms around her middle. “How convenient, your definition of a ‘real marriage.’”
Heat again splotched his face. He should let it go. He’d be wise to abandon this discourse altogether. Nothing good could come from continuing it. Nothing that would advance the new arrangement they’d come to. “And just what is that supposed to mean?”
“It is just . . . You made love to me, you consummated our marriage, and . . . often. As such”—stalking over so quickly her worn boots kicked up dirt and gravel, she stopped before him, the tips of their shoes brushing—“you can’t very well go about claiming that it wasn’t real.”
She wasn’t incorrect, and that dulled the edge of his fury.
“It was a mistake, making love to you, Temperance,” he said softly, and her lower lip trembled. “I always knew taking you in my arms and bed would complicate any deal we’d agreed to.” Which was precisely what had happened. “And yet”—Dare brought his mouth close to hers—“making love to you was a mistake I’d happily commit over and over.”
The wind teased and toyed with several black curls, tossing them about her shoulders.
Their gazes locked, and without thought, he slid his focus lower, to her wide mouth. Her breath kissed his lips in the embrace his body hungered for.
“Why did you come?” she whispered, her voice so faint he’d not have heard it had they not been as close as they were.
“You know. I require your assistance—”
“Not now,” Temperance said. She lowered her voice, protecting the secrecy of their words. “When I left, why did you even bother searching me out?”
He’d thought himself incapable of being hurt any more by Temperance, but this discovery that she’d not known how much he cared for her . . . “Of course I would have sought you out. You were my wife, and”—and more—“you were my friend.” That was what hurt most of all about this damn mess that he—they—had made of their relationship. She’d been the only person he’d let inside, close enough to care: a friend, whose happiness had mattered more than his own. And he’d learned firsthand from his connection to Temperance Swift just why he’d been right to never let anyone else in. “You were that, too.”
“A friend,” she repeated back. A sad little note underscored those two syllables. “It could have been more, though. If you’d been willing to give up thievery, Darius.”