Undressed with the Marquess (Lost Lords of London #3) - Christi Caldwell Page 0,25

I can both go back to the lives we’ve chosen.”

She’d long known who he was and how he viewed all his connections.

And yet . . . “How . . . very mercenary you sound,” she murmured.

His cheeks flushed. “It is in all our best interests.”

It wasn’t in Temperance’s . . .

He wanted something that could never be, because of something Temperance wasn’t—a lady.

“I’m not part of that world, Dare,” she said, determined to disabuse him of whatever madness had sent him here. “I cannot be any kind of chaperone to the young lady . . . or anyone.” Temperance might dress them, but she didn’t dine with them. It just wasn’t done.

“Your mother was the daughter of a vicar. You speak the King’s English.”

“That won’t be enough for them,” she said impatiently. Surely he wasn’t so naive as to think her being able to speak the King’s English was enough to ensure her entry into Polite Society?

“I’m not from those elite ranks, either, Temperance. We would learn to navigate together.”

Together.

It was all she’d ever wanted. So desperately. A dream she’d even allowed herself, only to have it quashed.

My God, please don’t . . . do not . . .

Those distant screams of long ago pealed around her mind, and she folded her hands together to keep from clamping them over her ears.

And just like he’d proven her savior in the past, his voice reached through the darkness, and he plucked her from the abyss.

“Despite your low opinion of me, I didn’t come here to upend your world, Temperance,” Dare said quietly. “I would have you join me . . . of your own volition.”

Join him . . .

Those two words, that one thought alone was enough to shatter the reverie.

You always built Darius Grey to be more God than mere mortal. That legend of a man she’d built in her mind was what had gotten her a broken heart.

And she’d believed herself wholly at peace with that . . . only in this moment, with him before her, to find she’d lied to herself. “I cannot be your wife, Dare,” she said, her voice somehow steady. And while she trusted that she still had the strength to not break down weeping before him, she stood to leave. “I wish you the best. I wish you every happiness”—because she did; she’d never wanted him to suffer in any way—“and yet, I cannot join you.” Nor did she want to.

She couldn’t open herself back up to all those old hurts.

He nodded slowly. “I . . . see.”

Do you?

Those two words screamed around her mind.

What did he think he saw? Or believe or know?

Temperance began the trek back toward her cottage.

Because he could not know what had become of her in those days. Too much had come to pass. She’d managed to put the shattered pieces of her heart into some semblance of an organ that might beat. To be with him . . . and dream of the life she’d wanted . . . and dream of what could never be . . .

“I did come, Temperance,” he said quietly, unexpectedly. “I need you to know that as soon as I returned from the country, you were the first person I searched for.”

Temperance whipped about to face him. “You were late,” she whispered. Too late. “You always were.” She shouldn’t have needed his saving. She should have been capable enough to take care of herself. And yet that hadn’t been the way where her father was concerned. When she opened her eyes, she found Dare’s gaze intently on her. “And nothing will change that.”

“Sleep on it,” he called when she started onward to her cottage. “I leave on the morrow. In the event you change your mind”—she wouldn’t—“you can find me at the Black Seal.”

Sleep on it.

That favorite, familiar phrase he’d always given her when he’d wished for something from her . . .

A smile formed on her lips before her heart could remind her that she didn’t want to remember those happy thoughts of them together. “Nothing is going to change,” Temperance said, not allowing herself to look back.

For where Darius Grey and a future with him, any future with him, were concerned, nothing would ever change.

Chapter 6

“You . . . said . . . what?”

Early the following morn, Gwynn sat in the middle of Temperance’s bed, on her knees, and stared at Temperance.

Given all Temperance had shared about her connection to Dare Grey, the Marquess of Milford, that should be