Undressed with the Marquess (Lost Lords of London #3) - Christi Caldwell Page 0,23

a moment to register what he’d said. A sharp laugh escaped her. “Playing at marquess?” She rolled her eyes. “This is an entirely new approach to thievery for you. If I might give you some advice . . .” She didn’t wait for him to ask and granted her guidance anyway. “You just saved your neck. You won’t always be so lucky. Playing with the rank of nobleman will only see one result.” And she’d be damned if she was around for it. “Goodbye, Dare.”

“This isn’t a lie, Temperance.”

Temperance’s steps slowed, and then she stopped altogether. He’d been a thief of much, and capable of using the right words and tone to secure a person’s capitulation . . . but he’d never lied. And not to her.

He’d always told her precisely as it was, and even in marrying him, she’d known precisely what he was offering.

She turned back and faced him.

There was a serious set to his always easy features. “This is real.”

“What is . . . ‘this’?”

“Damned if I even know,” he muttered, and she noted those details to have previously escaped her: the slightly panicky glint in his eyes. The restless way in which he balled and unballed his fists. He scraped a hand through those beautiful dark-brown locks.

She stared at him questioningly.

Dare let his arm drop abruptly, and like it was a fancy bench, he motioned to a gnarled limb jutting out of the tree.

She should go.

She shouldn’t hear out whatever story this was.

And yet whether she wished it or not, she had bound herself in name and body to this man and, as such, needed to know what had brought him back into her life and why he was now insisting on a real marriage between them.

Her body stiff, she joined him and took a spot on the makeshift bench.

“I was recently caught in a heist.” Of course. She couldn’t stop the swell of jealousy for that, his one true love. “It was bold and risky, and yet the payout was significant.”

“They always are,” she said softly. The higher the booty, the greater the risk, and also the greater the certainty that Dare would take the job. It was why she hated that she’d fallen for someone who’d only ever been on a path of danger.

“I’d no other choice.” He uttered those far-too-familiar words with the same ease another person might issue a “good morning” or a “hello.” That matter-of-fact, straightforward justification he’d always given her. He began pacing. “The sum was sizable, and the person deserved stealing from.”

There it was . . . the remainder of that reasoning.

He’d not changed. He never would. A regular old Robin Hood is what he’d always been. Stealing from the rich to give to the poor. And she wanted to hate him for it . . . but she hated herself more for admiring how he cared about the downtrodden when, to the rest of the world, those people were invisible.

“Who did you steal from, Dare?” she asked.

This time, he didn’t meet her eyes.

Oh, no. This could not be good. “Who?” she pressed when he didn’t immediately reply.

He stopped pacing. “It was an earl.”

There was more there. She heard it in his voice, and knew it because she knew this man, more than she wished she did. “Which. Earl?”

He yanked at his cravat. “The Earl of Liverpool.”

“The prime minister?” Temperance cursed. He may as well have stolen from a damned king or prince. “Dare.”

He went on over her quiet chastisement. “He’s an oppressor who delights in taking rights away from the masses. His household was empty.” His mouth tensed. “Or it was supposed to have been. My reports had him retired to the country—”

She cut him off. “Prime ministers don’t retire in the heart of the London Season. There were clues painting the operation as a foolhardy one.”

The color rose in his cheeks, but he didn’t debate her charges. Which any and every other man she’d ever known would have. Dare, however, hadn’t been too proud to acknowledge when he was in the wrong. It was yet another reason she’d been so besotted by him. “The clues should have been warning enough.”

“I know that now, Temperance.”

So why hadn’t he seen it?

“The fact remains, I was set up.”

She tensed as the significance of that finally penetrated. It had been inevitable. When one stole from the most powerful, one secured powerful enemies. Too many knew of Dare and what he did, and though he was a legend, loved amongst the masses,