Undressed with the Marquess (Lost Lords of London #3) - Christi Caldwell Page 0,83

short journeys.” She’d always been endlessly brave and proud. “I have to do this.”

They locked in a silent battle. With a quiet curse, Dare scraped a hand through his hair. There was no way around this. Whether or not he wished it or liked it, the agreement Dare had struck with the duke required him and Temperance to fulfill certain obligations. “Fine.” He bit that single syllable out through clenched teeth.

“It is going to be fine,” she promised.

He rested his brow briefly against hers. “Are you attempting to convince me or yourself?”

Her lips twitched. “Perhaps a bit of both of us?”

Dare stroked the curve of her cheek. And for a moment, with the strangers present, the tension of their past melted away as Dare and Temperance were the young lovers who’d whispered secrets to one another when the world had ceased to exist.

The moment proved short-lived.

As Temperance hurried off to join the duchess and Lady Kinsley, Dare stared after them, wishing he could return to that previous tumble during their waltz, when it had been just them, and only them.

Chapter 15

Journeying from Mayfair to New Bond Street with her new sister-in-law and grandmother-in-law, it was hard to say which part of the day was most miserable: suffering the silent, stark company of each woman or enduring the carriage ride.

No, it was definitely the carriage ride.

Her body lurched with each sway of Dare’s elegant black barouche. Sweat dampened her skin, and she discreetly patted back the moisture at her brow.

Unlike her mother, who’d prayed regularly and believed there would be an eternal peace for those who suffered—those like the Swifts—Temperance had never believed in God. She’d never had any real reason to. Living through the hell of the Rookeries, one had plenty of reason to believe the Earth, a place of darkness, evil, and danger, had been shaped in the image of Satan. Only to find herself, all these years later, discovering prayer and a hope that there was a God.

Please, do not let me be sick. Please, not now. Not before these people . . .

After she had returned to her rooms, she had ruminated on what Dare shared about his childhood and everything she knew about him . . . in those years after. She had seen firsthand what his life had been . . . and there was only one certainty: if he didn’t secure the duke’s funds, he’d be lost—forever.

As such, Temperance had risen that morning with a renewed purpose: to see that Dare earned his twenty thousand pounds. Only in doing so would he be forever free of the chains of the Rookeries. She’d even found pride in being the one to lead the charge for her and Dare.

Only to be knocked off-balance once more with the discovery that he needed her help less than she required his. A good deal less.

Of course he could dance. And do so perfectly. With gliding, graceful steps that fell in perfect harmony to a song that he also perfectly hummed, while Temperance had stumbled through the movements and steps.

“I’m not from those elite ranks, either, Temperance,” he’d claimed when he was trying to convince her to join him . . . “We would learn to navigate together,” he’d said.

All the while, he’d remained wise to Polite Society’s customs and ways.

Perfect. Always perfect.

And she . . .

Wholly flawed. Her hands went to her stomach reflexively, and she cradled that useless womb.

Flawed, in every way that a woman could be flawed.

Awful.

All of this was . . . awful.

Her stomach revolted against the sway of the carriage ride, and Temperance swallowed convulsively. So flawed that she couldn’t even make a damned carriage ride anymore.

He’d tried to spare her from this.

At every turn, he showed himself to be the man she’d fallen in love with . . . and the man she would always love. For his failings and faults and mistakes, he was one who put everyone’s happiness and welfare before his own.

And she tried to focus on only that.

Tried to.

Feeling her sister-in-law’s gaze on her, Temperance moved her hands away from her belly, and folding them, she rested them instead on her lap.

Her hands clasped firmly, Temperance focused all her energies on one: she stared straight ahead at Lady Kinsley.

This was Dare’s sister; possessed of the same dark-brown tresses and a slight cleft in her angular chin, the woman was in very many ways a physical image of her brother. And yet that was where any and all likeness between the

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