Undressed with the Marquess (Lost Lords of London #3) - Christi Caldwell Page 0,100

she said between clenched teeth. “You may refer to me in no way at all.”

“Friendly as ever,” Bryant crowed, and it was all she could do to keep from flying across the room and clawing the face of the man who’d introduced Dare to the dangerous life of crime that had nearly seen him hanged too many times. The one whom Dare still couldn’t separate himself from. And she wanted to throw her head back and rail at his inability to help himself and stay on a path that was good for him.

He was working again with Avery Bryant . . . and what was worse, he’d brought her brother into the fold.

“You’re no friend of Dare’s.” He never had been. She teemed with rage. Of course, Dare’s having gone to Bolingbroke’s . . . He’d have only gotten that information from this one. “And you’re most certainly no friend of mine.”

“He’s helping, Temperance,” Chance said in urgent tones.

“Helping?” she spat. “Avery Bryant only ever helped himself.”

Her brother came forward with his callused palms outstretched. “They’re going to hang Joseph, Temperance.”

Her breath caught. “What of Mr. Buxton? I thought he would—”

“I still have not heard from him, Temperance. There isn’t time.”

So he’d turn to dishonorable means, bribing the likes of Wylie, who’d happily sent Dare to the gallows once. Wylie would line his pockets, and that was only if he didn’t hang Dare first. “It doesn’t have to be the way,” she implored, directing that to Dare.

That seemed to snap Dare’s sister from her shock. The young lady glanced from her brother to Temperance, and then ever so briefly to Avery—that hated figure—before returning her focus to Dare. When he didn’t immediately respond, she raced over to Avery, who had sense enough to eye her with a proper wariness. Kinsley wrestled the bust from the street thief’s hands. “What is going on here?”

And it was a like fury Temperance understood all too well. One that she’d felt and appeared destined to feel where Dare Grey was concerned.

Only silence met the girl’s query. Dare’s gaze hovered just over the top of his sister’s head. The coward. Well, she’d be damned if he didn’t tell his sister precisely what he intended.

“He is selling it,” Temperance said quietly when Dare refused to answer.

Confusion welled all the more in Kinsley’s eyes, and she stared at the bust. “You are . . . selling it?”

When Dare didn’t respond, Temperance answered for him. “To help free Mr. Gurney,” she murmured. He would bribe a public official, a man not to be trusted, all in the name of saving those in need of saving.

The bust slipped from the young lady’s fingers and tumbled noisily to the floor.

He’d not changed. He never would.

And Temperance hated him for it, and more . . . she hated herself for continuing to believe he could be different.

Chapter 19

Dare was always going to sell the contents of the Mayfair household he’d recently inherited. There’d never been a doubt. It hadn’t been a question of “if” but rather . . . “when.”

Selling extravagant baubles was simply what he did. He cleared homes, stripped them of the clutter, and converted those objects into something important—money.

Objects didn’t matter. They never had. What came out of them, however? Their value, the money they brought? That was something he cared about. The fortune that could be squeezed out of material pieces was the difference between people living and dying and going without or having food in their stomachs.

That was a lesson he’d come to appreciate from his time on the streets. In the end, everything could and should be sold.

Temperance knew as much. She knew it was how Dare operated.

So how could she still look at him with the disappointment she did now? How, when he’d help Chance free his friend and Rose’s father?

And how, when she knows who you are . . . ?

Because she always wanted him to be better. She wanted him to rise above theft and bribery and operate within the confines of the law, failing to see that sometimes . . . there wasn’t time.

Kinsley was the first to speak following that revelation. “He is . . . ?” Lady Kinsley moved her gaze between Dare and Temperance. “What is he doing?”

Now the lady who lived here . . . He’d not considered how she would respond. He tugged at his collar.

The duchess finally reached the hall. “What is . . . going on?” she asked, faintly panting. The older woman leaned