Undressed with the Marquess (Lost Lords of London #3) - Christi Caldwell Page 0,106

her or himself? He had married her. Her father was supposed to have feared Dare’s reputation and influence. “He was to have left you alone.”

As if she could not meet his eyes, she glanced down at the floor. “Yes, he was.”

He took a step toward her, unable to get the question out, the one that would ultimately explain why she’d turned him away. Deep down, in a place where horror and terror dwelled together, he knew. “It . . . didn’t see you safe.” His words emerged as a statement, hollow.

Temperance squeezed her eyes shut briefly and sucked in a shuddery breath. She gave the faintest shake of her head, the barest bob of her neck. When she again opened her eyes, a chill scraped along his spine. “No.”

Haunted.

In that moment she was a woman haunted, and he would forevermore be tormented by the sight of her as she was, here. Now.

And she must have felt the cold, too . . . for she rubbed her hands frantically over her arms.

He shook his head. He was the coward she’d called him out as. Wanting her to stop. But she continued anyway. Because it was what he deserved. Because it was what she was entitled to . . . his owning the memories of those days after they’d wed.

“He was enraged. He’d other plans for me. Ones that didn’t include marriage to you. He wanted me to marry Diggory’s number two. My father resented us for thwarting him.” Her shoulders came back. “He beat me.” There was a peculiar calmness to her admission, one that warred with the tumult ravaging him.

His entire body jerked. “Temperance—”

“Mm-mm,” she said, cutting him off, giving her head a more definitive shake. Tears filled her eyes, and the sight of that suffering gutted him. She, who’d never cried before him. Not once. “I need to say this, and . . .” Her voice broke on a sob. He took another frantic step closer, but she held a hand up, staying him in his tracks. “And if you stop me, I don’t think I’ll ever get the words out.”

He nodded jerkily and gave her that which she needed—his silence.

“I was home. Chance came. He urged me to leave. I thought you were coming. I was so s-sure of it.”

A groan better suited to a wounded beast climbed his throat and spilled from his lips. No. No. No.

“My father arrived.” Her voice, her eyes, were deadened. “He beat me.” Oh, God. His eyes slid shut, and he wanted to block out each word, each revelation. Each reminder that he hadn’t been there . . . when she had needed him.

He’d failed her. He should have been there. What had been more important than her? Nothing. He couldn’t even remember the items he and Avery had filched—

“I was with child.”

His body went hot . . . and then cold. As through the haze of his own misery and regret and heartbreak, her admission slipped in. “What?” That question . . . his own, came as if down a long, empty tunnel.

She stopped rubbing her arms and stared out, her gaze locked on his chest—sightless.

His body went absolutely motionless. No.

It was a single-word litany in his head.

“I was so heavy with child, I was slower.”

A piteous moan spilled from his lips. “I didn’t . . .” Know. And isn’t that the very point she made, a voice taunted through his misery.

“I lost the babe.” She said the words he knew were inevitable in her telling. “I held her.”

Her.

His eyes slid closed.

Temperance continued speaking, her words coming as if from far away. “She was so tiny. Her skin was so clear you could almost see through it.”

Forcing his eyes open, Dare stood there, numb, taking each revelation about the child he’d never even known of like the deserved lash it should be.

Temperance touched a hand to the top of her head. “She’d this tiny little tuft of dark hair on her head. This little circular patch.”

Dare’s throat worked spasmodically. They’d had a babe . . . and that child had been a girl. Something in knowing that made the loss . . . even more. There’d been a little girl, who would have grown to be like her mother, with her fiery spirit and clever wit and . . . Agony shredded the rest of those desperate yearnings. I am never going to survive this.

And yet . . . she had. And she’d done so alone. Without him at her side,