Undressed with the Marquess (Lost Lords of London #3) - Christi Caldwell Page 0,114

thumped the bottom of his cane upon the floor. “I’ve told you once before that no grandson of mine will hang. And that holds true.” The duke released the monocle he still held in his other hand; that little glass cylinder swung loosely at his neck. “But you are certainly complicating matters by making this a regular occurrence.”

“How?”

“Your arrest was nothing more than a setup, orchestrated by some uncouth street thug”—Avery Bryant—“and I am a peer of the realm. As such, I’ve handled the warden . . . who has been accepting bribes over the years, and as such, he found himself in a similarly tenable situation if he didn’t agree to release you.”

He . . . was being freed. He’d have the opportunity to start over. To begin again. And to do so . . . with Temperance.

There wouldn’t be a fortune . . . because he wouldn’t force his sister to wed. And there couldn’t be a babe because . . . because . . .

Every corner of his soul seized with the aching loss of grief . . . at what he’d only just realized he’d lost long ago with Temperance.

But there could be babes. The unwanted orphans, like what he’d become . . . And there could be a life with Temperance. Together, they would build up what had been stolen and lost in his absence. And together they could bring the change they wished for the world.

“Thank you,” he said hoarsely.

“You shouldn’t thank me, but rather your wife, who’s got a clever head to realize when to ask for help and”—his grandfather passed his monocle over Dare’s cell—“which people are reliable enough to turn to.”

Avery Bryant.

Dare winced.

He deserved that. He’d realized as much . . . just too late.

Just as she’d been right . . . about so much. Dare had been so determined to do things his way, to help by any means, that he’d been too blinded to see that the one who’d set him on the path of thieving had shifted, becoming the one determined to take him down.

Dare scrubbed a hand over his face.

I don’t want it to be that way . . . I want to live a different life. The kind Temperance had urged him to live for years now, and one he’d believed himself incapable of carrying out . . .

Until now.

Before this moment, he’d seen himself through his father’s eyes. He’d seen a person who was bad and broken and incapable of anything but a life of sin and strife.

Temperance had opened his eyes to the fact that he . . . was not the person his father had believed him to be. That there was good and worth in him. And he was capable of exacting change . . . in ways that did not involve stealing or bribery, or working with the likes of Avery Bryant and Wylie to bring about that change.

And I want that life . . . with Temperance in it . . .

The duke cleared his throat. “Shall we leave this place, Darius?”

Dare glanced over at the older gentleman, taking in the details that he’d not allowed himself to see these past weeks: the heavy lines around the duke’s eyes. The deep wrinkles in his cheeks. He was a man who’d been aged by years . . . and grief.

Dare nodded slowly. “I would like that . . . Grandfather,” he said quietly.

Tears filled the duke’s eyes, and then patting Dare awkwardly on the back, he led him out of Newgate and onward to the path he wished to make for himself next.

Chapter 22

The following evening, Temperance prepared for her first real entry into Polite Society. She and Dare had not spoken since his return the night prior.

More specifically, they’d not spoken since Temperance had revealed her loss to Dare . . . and he’d returned early the following morn . . . with the duke.

Freed once more.

But then after what she’d shared, what was there to say? After what she’d shared, everything had changed between them; her telling had claimed their ease in being with one another.

What had she expected him to say? Or for them to be? No words from either of them could have changed . . . anything . . . She could not be the one to get him his twenty thousand pounds. Not with her broken body. Nor would she want a future with him that way—a child, if she could have given him that,