determined to botch this meeting?
“You required me to find a wife—”
“You had a bride,” the duchess cried.
“One whom I can make my return to society with. And I have.”
Dare and his grandparents looked to Temperance.
Sailing to her feet, the duchess beat another retreat to the door. “If you will excuse me?” she asked, and let herself out.
The duke once again struggled after her.
And Temperance and Dare were left . . . alone.
Her husband broke the silence. “All things considered, I would say that went remarkably well,” he said dryly.
A curtain of fury fell over her eyes. Cursing, Temperance jumped up. “You are enjoying this.”
He stood. “Of course I’m not, but sometimes a situation calls for moments of levity.”
Yes, it was why everyone in the Rookeries—including Temperance herself—had fallen under his spell. “This is not one of those situations.” The fight went out of her. She sank onto the edge of the cream upholstered sofa. “You handled this . . . terribly, Dare.”
He hovered there before starting for the tantalus drink cabinet. “It was always going to go terribly.”
How damned matter-of-fact he was. She gnashed her teeth. The hell she’d let him to his alcohol. And furthermore, since when had he begun drinking? Temperance scrambled to put herself between him and those hated spirits. “So you made no effort, no attempt to make this easier for them?” For me. “For someone so remarkably smooth and charming in so many things, you really manage to make a blunder of so much, too.”
He bristled. “That seems quite contradictory.” Dare paused. A half grin drew the right corner of his mouth up. “Charming, am I?”
Her eyebrows shot up. That was what he’d focus on? Temperance jabbed a finger at his chest. “You couldn’t have handled this worse if you’d been trying . . .” Her words trailed off. Unless . . .
He frowned. “What?”
“Of course. It makes sense.”
“What does?”
“You didn’t want it to go well.” Her words came tumbling. “It was as I predicted . . . with you wanting to present us in dusty garments and stinking of horses.”
“I changed my attire.”
“All along, you’ve not really wished to meet the terms your grandfather expected of you, and yet the sense of obligation you have to help everyone didn’t allow you to simply walk away from a fortune. Your behavior, the decisions you made and continue to make, they’ve been self-destructive.”
“Bah, you’re making more of it than is there.” He tried to step around her, but she matched his movements.
“Am I?” she persisted, breathtakingly beautiful in that show of defiance. She’d always been the only one to defy him. “You wouldn’t walk away from all the people in the Rookeries who could be helped with the fortune the duke offered.”
He met that statement with stony silence.
“You’d deny you didn’t think of them?” Even if he did, she’d never believe him.
Color suffused his cheeks. “Of course I thought of them.” It had always been about the people of the Rookeries. “But you”—he gestured to Temperance—“you’re analyzing and overanalyzing decisions I’ve made.”
“I don’t believe I am, Dare,” she said in a hushed voice.
They remained locked in a tense, silent battle. Dare was the first to look away. “You’re wrong,” he said flatly, and this time when he headed for the liquor, she let him to it. Dare kept his back to her as he reached for a bottle and another glass.
“You have to determine what it is exactly you want more, Dare.” She spoke in those same quiet tones she had always reserved for her young brother. “Do you want the funds and future you can use to make life better for the people in the Rookeries”—and for him—“or do you wish to be free of this arrangement with me and your grandparents?” He stared at his still-empty glass. “But you can’t play at both.” His shoulders tensed. “And I’m not going to sit idly about while you risk losing everything your grandparents are offering because of the internal battle you’re fighting.” She couldn’t. Not when she’d already risked her heart and hopes and future in being here with him again.
And with that, she left.
Chapter 11
That night while the house slept, Dare walked the halls of his newly inherited home.
In the earliest years of knowing Temperance, they had rarely fought. They had been the best of friends, she being the only real one he’d allowed himself in the Rookeries. Not even Avery Bryant had he let in that close.
He’d known the very moment her girlish adoration