Undressed with the Marquess (Lost Lords of London #3) - Christi Caldwell Page 0,42
at her questioningly.
“Not this one,” she clarified, gesturing to the cramped hall they’d made a meeting place.
Understanding dawned in his clear gaze. “Ahh.” He scoffed. “This world is as much yours as anyone else’s,” he said with such affront in his tone and expression, she smiled.
He’d always been offended on her behalf. “It isn’t, though, Dare,” she said gently. “I’ve dressed gentry, but never lords and ladies. I don’t know their dances or their customs or . . . anything about their ways.” And now he’d asked her . . . Nay, she’d agreed to play at marchioness.
Dare shifted, pulling himself around so they sat shoulder to shoulder. And there was a calming peace from that light touch, that shared connection. “This isn’t my world, either, Temperance.”
She looked up at him. “But it is,” she said with a quiet insistence. He might not believe it or want that to be the case. “Regardless of how many years you’ve been away from the ton, you were born to this, and that is all that matters to these people.” These people . . . whose ranks he now belonged to. Her stomach tightened. As the divide that had always existed between them now proved somehow, impossibly, even greater. “By your own admission, the funds are dependent upon your being seen in Polite Society with your sister.”
“And we’ll do that,” he said calmly.
So confident.
Laughing softly, she leaned against the wall and shook her head back and forth. “Oh, Dare.” There wasn’t a single challenge he’d not boldly confront. “You fear nothing.”
He lifted his broad shoulders in a casual shrug. “What good comes from that?”
“None,” she agreed. And she’d once prided herself on being at least like him in this. She, who couldn’t countenance carriage rides or the sight of blood. Temperance glanced up at him again. “And yet I’ve also come to learn that fear is a state that shouldn’t be ignored.” Reading those premonitions and listening to one’s body’s inherent unease could prove the difference between life . . . and death. It was an understanding she’d come to too late.
Dare brushed several tresses that had escaped her plait behind her ear. Those strands bounced back, resisting his attempts. Her heart thrummed . . . at the effortless ease of the intimacy of that afterthought touch. He smoothed her hair back once more . . . and this time, the locks complied. Yes, because Dare Grey could manage to tame even her recalcitrant curls. “You’ve grown more cautious.” In our time apart.
“Aye.” Temperance faced him and met his gaze squarely. “And you’ve become even less so.” He’d learned nothing from his latest trip to Newgate. By his own admission, some unnamed foe had maneuvered him into a noose, and he spoke with only a casualness about it. “You trust that everything will work out.”
“Because it will,” he said with that same arrogance that pulled another laugh from her.
She lightly knocked her head against the wall. “That isn’t how life works, Dare.”
“It does for me.”
It hadn’t for her. “You won’t always be so fortunate,” she said without inflection. “You will learn that not even you can bend the world to your will. That no matter how much you wish for something”—her gaze slid past him, to the very end of the corridor—“no matter how much you intend to make it be, that sometimes you j-just can’t.” Her voice quavered as, unbidden, a memory of the babe she’d held all too briefly slipped in. Feeling his piercing stare upon her, she schooled her features. “Polite Society isn’t simply going to accept me because you wish for it to be so.”
He flashed a half smile. “And you are wrong, Temperance. They’ll not only accept you; they’ll adore you.”
Laughing, Temperance rested her head against his shoulder. “You are many things, Dare Grey, but you’ve never been naive.”
“I don’t expect it will be smooth at first, but I trust that we will both win their world over.”
He would. That was a certainty. If for no other reason than the charm he oozed and the confidence he possessed, he’d make it happen. In time, however, he’d see that none of this would be effortless in the way he thought it would be. “Good night, Dare,” she said gently as she came to her feet.
In one fluid movement, he hopped up behind her. “You will see . . .” She was turning to enter her room when he lightly caught her hand.