Undressed with the Marquess (Lost Lords of London #3) - Christi Caldwell Page 0,112

did not.

At most, there was just the faintest of pauses, so slight it might have even been imagined, as Temperance expected to find . . . some response from the woman.

“Now, what manner of trouble?” she asked, only after she’d lowered her cup back to its neat, floral-painted porcelain tray.

“Dare was attempting to help someone—”

“Your brother’s friend,” the duchess said, lifting her cup for another sip. A thin white eyebrow winged up. “Was it not?”

Temperance curled her hands tightly. “He is. Joseph Gurney,” she said needlessly, that offering useless. A woman like the duchess wouldn’t care about those like Joseph Gurney or Lionel. Temperance had always admired Dare. Appreciated what he did for so many . . . But now, seeing how different he was from all these lofty lords who treated the Gurneys and Swifts as invisible—her throat tightened—she loved him all the more.

“I seeee.” There was a wealth of meaning to Her Grace’s words. Ones that made it beyond clear who was responsible for Dare’s current troubles. “And so, Dare was attempting to help your brother’s friend, and . . . ?”

What manner of person would choose to make Temperance’s visit . . . about this? A wave of futility hit her, a sense of desperation. Her gaze fell to her lap. Her whole life, she’d had control over next to nothing. Why, beaten by her father since she was a babe, Temperance hadn’t even had control of her own body. Even as she’d loved Dare, their marriage had been born of her inability to exact change of her own over her existence.

Now she sat before his noble grandparents, desperate. Once more reduced to one without any control.

And as Dare’s grandparents stared on, Temperance wanted to leave. She wanted to storm out and say to hell with the duke and duchess and their damned tea and refusal to show emotion. But . . . she couldn’t. She couldn’t because she loved Dare more.

Firming her resolve, she looked squarely at the lofty pair. “Dare bribed a warden at Newgate,” she said quietly. Something he’d done so many times, blind to the fact that people had been plotting his demise. From the last time he’d walked across St. Peter’s Square to his arrest this night, someone—possibly Avery Bryant—had been attempting to rid the Rookeries of Dare.

His teacup forgotten, the duke rubbed at his chin. “Hmm.”

Hmm. That was what he’d say? A single-syllable utterance that he’d managed to slice in half?

“That is . . . it?” she asked incredulously, casting a disbelieving glance back and forth between Dare’s grandparents. “Just . . . hmm and . . .” She slammed her teacup down, splashing liquid all over the edge of the dish and onto the gleaming mahogany table between them.

“What would you have us do, my dear?” the duchess asked. “Give in to hysterics?”

“Yes,” she cried. Good God, what manner of people were they? “That is precisely what I’d have you do. I’d have you show some emotion. Or give”—she slashed a hand in the handsome pair’s general direction—“some indication that you care about Dare.”

Only the ticking of the clock served as her response. Sixteen and a half precise ticks before Dare’s grandmother again spoke.

“And how would that help my grandson?” the duchess asked in her perfectly even tones.

That gave Temperance pause. It wouldn’t . . .

“Do you truly think we won’t help our grandson, my dear?” the duke said in a surprisingly gentle voice that thoroughly confused.

“I . . .”

His Grace set aside his teacup. “We will do anything for our grandson.”

“And yet you’d not give him the funds he was entitled to without strings attached.” She couldn’t keep the trace of bitterness out of that question.

The duke made to speak, but his wife held a hand up. “Tell me, Temperance,” the duchess said. “What do you think he would do if we simply gave him the funds?”

Leave. There was no doubt of it. Dare would have left long ago and happily distributed it all over East London from the Rookeries on to the Dials . . . and would be searching for the next household to rob, to replenish those coffers.

“Strings attached, as you refer to it . . . are sometimes required, if a person cannot be trusted to act in their best self-interest.”

And turning to her husband in an indication that the topic was at an end, the duchess spoke. “You’ll go handle this.”

“I’ll go handle this.”

Collecting the duchess’s hand, the old duke pressed a kiss atop