Undressed with the Marquess (Lost Lords of London #3) - Christi Caldwell Page 0,63

offered. “When you are free of your work and we are able to talk, we shall strategize what to do.”

Emotion stuck in Temperance’s throat . . . pride at hearing her brother formulate a plan to help . . . and at Dare being there, as he’d been for so much of Chance’s childhood, promising to stand beside him.

The younger man bowed his head. “Thank you. And thank you for helping Lionel—”

“Do not even think of it.” Dare cut off the other man. “We’ll find out what to do about Rose’s da.”

Making his goodbyes to Temperance, her brother left . . . and it was just Temperance and Dare, alone.

Silence hung briefly in the air, and an awkwardness hovered there, a first for them.

Dare cleared his throat. “I needed you to stay before . . . for different reasons. For monetary ones related to seeing Lady Kinsley married off.”

“And now?”

“Now, there’s the babe to see settled.”

Oh, God. He didn’t know what he asked. She again bit the inside of her cheek, worrying that same bit of flesh. “Dare.”

“You were the only one who ever had a way with babes.”

This is going to kill me. This was an all-new, unexpected heartbreak she’d never thought she’d have to confront with Dare.

The loss of their babe . . . And now what would never, could never, be for her. Or them.

Say something. It is expected of you here . . .

Her throat closed up. “I only ever did what any other sister would do for her sibling.” How was her voice so steady? So even?

“That isn’t true,” he protested, his voice a tender baritone moving over her like the warmed chocolate he’d surprised her with as a girl. “You were always the one children came to in the Rookeries. You had a way with them. You have a way with them.”

Stop.

She wanted to clamp her hands over her ears and run screaming from the room. God hated her. There was no other accounting for the dagger Dare unknowingly scraped over a still-raw, still-gaping wound.

“You had a way with them, too,” she pointed out more to herself, her voice sad to her own ears. He would have made a wonderful father. If he’d allowed himself another marriage . . . with someone other than Temperance. If she’d not inadvertently trapped him and denied him even that opportunity . . .

I cannot . . .

Pressing her eyes briefly closed, she breathed deeply and grounded herself. “We’ll figure out the babe . . . together.” Her shoulders sagged slightly. “I may be a woman, but as long as Rose is here, the responsibility should be the both of ours.”

“Of course,” he said automatically. Dare moved behind his desk and reached for his ledgers.

That was it. Of course.

In a world where it was expected that women and women alone would serve in the role of caregiver, he—now a marquess—should accept that role.

It was settled, then.

And yet . . . it was not. Not entirely.

“The timepiece . . .”

“What of it?” he asked when she didn’t say anything else.

“Who did it belong to?”

“Me.”

Her lips twitched, and she drifted closer, joining him on the other end of the gleaming mahogany desk. “I wasn’t implying you stole it.”

“Though you would have been right to your assumption,” he said with a devastating wink that would have once distracted her.

But that was what he wanted; those were his intentions. A lifetime of knowing this man had taught her as much and made her able to focus. “Whose was it before it belonged to you?”

A muscle moved along his jaw. “The marquess’s.”

The marquess. “As in your . . . father?”

“I suppose that is one way of thinking of the man,” he said distractedly, shuffling through his papers.

“That is the way of thinking of him,” she gently corrected.

He briefly paused but continued moving those pages . . . and then he stopped on one. Dare grabbed for his pen and dipped it in the inkwell. He touched the tip against the edge, clearing it of excess, and made several notes in a very familiar-looking ledger.

Wordlessly, Temperance eyed his pen as it moved over the page, as he recorded details about Lionel and the boy’s family.

Dare lifted his gaze a tiny fraction, as if he’d just recalled her presence there.

“He was your father, Dare,” she said gently.

Some emotion darkened his eyes, turned those irises nearly black. It was . . . a coldness she’d never before witnessed from him, and she shivered. “He was a