Undressed with the Marquess (Lost Lords of London #3) - Christi Caldwell Page 0,105

faced him once more. “What leaves me truly sad is that I’d begun forming a bond with your sister. We actually spoke to each other in a way that I understood, if not her, what she is feeling. And with what you did here? Inviting Avery Bryant back into your life . . .” Temperance gave her head a forlorn little shake. “You’ve gone and undone any connection I’d made.”

“We just have to see her married,” he said tiredly. “It doesn’t matter whether or not she likes you, Temperance.” Or him. Though for a very brief while in Hyde Park, it had almost seemed as though she didn’t quite hate him so much, after all . . .

“She isn’t going to marry.”

That brought him up short. “What?”

“Your sister, she does not wish to wed.”

Shock silenced him. He’d been forced here to London with the expectation and requirement that he see her married. Kinsley had represented the only real path forward to the duke’s funds. But that wasn’t the only way . . .

Briefly, a thought slipped in . . . of the alternative arrangement, one that would require him to have a real marriage with Temperance . . . a baby. A future together, and the hungering for that imagining was so great it weighted his eyes closed.

Temperance went on to explain, shattering that dreaming. “At Hyde Park, Kinsley shared with me that she doesn’t want to marry.”

He found his bearings. “She’ll marry. She is young.”

“She’s near an age to my own when you and I were married.”

His cheeks flushed hot. “That is different.”

“Why?” Temperance persisted. She lifted an eyebrow. “Because you and I need her to marry? Because you want her to?” She swept over. “She doesn’t want to, and that is all that should matter.”

Or mayhap you can have a real marriage with Temperance . . . one with a child. The memory of her with Rose in her arms slipped in, and a hungering for that vision filled him. Nor did it have anything to do with the terms of his grandfather’s arrangement, and everything to do with the idea of being a family . . . with her.

Shaken by the potency with which he craved that imagining, Dare headed for the gilded frames and began stacking them. “Her unwillingness to marry therefore seems to grant me even more reason to sell off the contents of the household, then.”

“You still don’t understand.” Temperance stalked over and lightly wrestled a heavy frame from his grip. She settled it atop the thick stack of dresses. “I think before this exchange, I would have railed at you for the ruthlessness in that thinking.” Her lips curled in a heartbreaking smile. “But now I know.”

He tensed, not wanting to ask, and yet unable to call back the question anyway. “Know what?”

“You make every effort to never have a bond with another person.” She spoke beseechingly. “It is why you married me and then left immediately. It is why you took such delight in baiting your sister. Or why you”—she gestured to the stack of gowns between them—“decided to sell everything the moment you had a meaningful exchange with your sister.” Each word, accurate in its leverage, hit like a perfectly aimed blow. “And any relationships you do have?” Her eyes bored into his, her stare penetrating and one he both needed and yet could not look away from. “You kill, Dare.”

Just as he’d killed theirs.

“Is that what I did?” His feet twitched, and he wanted to run. To flee from her accusations, the real and unspoken, ones he’d no wish to explore. “I killed our relationship.”

Her response was instantaneous. “That is precisely what you did.”

Heat flushed his cheeks. “You were the one who sent me away, Temperance.”

“Because you weren’t there,” she said imploringly.

“I came and found you.” And she’d turned him away, leaving him empty and broken in ways that even the separation from his mother and brother hadn’t. Done with a past they’d never see eye to eye on, he headed for the door . . . when her words reached him.

“Not when I needed you,” she repeated, her voice a faint whisper that he struggled to hear.

Dare sharpened his gaze on her face. Warning bells went off, ringing faintly. What was she saying?

“Chance insisted I leave, but I knew you would return.” And I did. I did. “My father found out.”

He stilled. “We always anticipated he would. That was the plan,” he said, faintly entreating. Did he plead with