Undressed with the Marquess (Lost Lords of London #3) - Christi Caldwell Page 0,124

model of English beauty. The counter opposite of Temperance with her black hair and olive-hued skin and coltish frame.

The young lady said something that earned a laugh.

And jealousy sluiced through Temperance. She took another, this time longer, swallow.

Kinsley leaned in. “Do not listen to her.”

Had she heard what her grandmother said?

“I didn’t hear, but I could imagine because I know how she is. She wishes for Darius to marry Lady Madelyn. But he’s married to you. And she’ll accept that in time.”

No, the duchess wouldn’t. Not when Temperance couldn’t be that which Dare needed.

“And do you know why?”

Devoid of energy and numb of emotion, Temperance shook her head.

“Because my grandparents will see what I saw.”

“What is that?” she managed to make herself ask. All the while, Temperance wanted to slink from the dining room and continue walking until she found a safe, quiet place removed from the world, and crumple under the emotion that threatened to drown her here before the ton.

“They will see that you are good for him. They will see that you have changed him.”

Changed him.

“I didn’t change him,” Temperance said softly, her gaze drawn once more to where he sat speaking to Lord Sinclair, several seats away. Whatever he’d said had brought the handsome, faintly greying gentleman to laughter, that mirth contagious for the other guests around them. “He never really needed changing in the ways that mattered,” she murmured for the benefit of the other girl, as much as for herself. “Not inside, not who he really was.” He’d simply needed to learn and know that he needn’t follow a criminal path to do the good he sought.

Even so, she didn’t know if he could ever truly set that life behind him.

“No, he has changed,” Kinsley insisted. “When we first met, he taunted me. He went out of his way to do so. Not anymore. And . . .” The column of the young woman’s throat moved several times. “He didn’t sell them. Not all of them. None of the portraits of my family and I.” Kinsley caught her lower lip between her teeth. “And that is because of you, Temperance.”

The guest on Kinsley’s other side called her attention over, and Temperance was left alone once more. Sitting back, a forgotten participant in the evening’s festivities, Temperance was afforded a glimpse of this newly evolved world . . . and how it would be for Dare. There was a family who loved him and saw his good. There was the chance to earn twenty thousand pounds, through marriage to a lady who’d equally charmed Dare’s end of the table.

He’d very nearly found his way and, after only a very short time, returned to Polite Society. He would emerge even more triumphant than he had as a thief in the Rookeries.

And sitting there, Temperance knew there was only one thing left to do.

Say goodbye.

Chapter 24

The night . . . had been a success. The guests had been warm in their welcome of him and Temperance to their folds. It had been a wholly unexpected response from members of the peerage, which was no doubt in large part a product of whom the duke and duchess had chosen to enlist support from.

And yet for the triumph the night had in fact been, through it he’d been singularly aware of Temperance—somber. Unsmiling. A shadow of who she’d always been . . . even in the face of every horror she’d suffered at her father’s hands.

The moment the house was empty and quiet, he set out in search of her. Expecting to find her where he invariably did every night—in the nursery.

Only this time, she didn’t sit beside little Rose’s crib.

Dare found her in the Opal Parlor . . . that room that had been eternally a source of conflict between them. Standing at the window with her back to him, she gave no indication that she’d heard his arrival.

Unnoticed, he used the moment to observe her. She’d not removed her evening gown, the silk clinging to the wide curve of her hips and the generous swell of her buttocks, making her already narrow waist impossibly smaller.

“The night was a success,” she said quietly, shattering the illusion that he’d been the only one aware of the other’s presence.

“Yes.”

Pushing the door closed behind him, Dare joined her at the window.

There’d always been an ease to their silence. They’d never been a couple who’d needed to fill voids of silence. They’d been as comfortable with nothing more than the quiet of