Undressed with the Marquess (Lost Lords of London #3) - Christi Caldwell Page 0,94

in the Dials. I didn’t realize at the time that he was really intending for some reprobate to . . . pay for me.”

“Oh.” Kinsley’s breath caught on a gasp, and perhaps there should have been a greater sense of shame and embarrassment in Temperance speaking of her coarse, ruthless world. But there was not.

Mayhap if the other woman did learn, she could know some of what drove . . . not just her brother in the Rookeries but all the people forced to live there. “Someone did come up to me that night.”

“Darius,” the astute other woman murmured.

It was the first time Temperance had ever heard Dare’s sister call him by name. She nodded, needing the young lady to know what manner of man he truly was. “I’d my palms out, and Dare came up to me and placed a sovereign in them. ‘You’re done here,’ he said in the finest speech I’d ever heard. I thought he was a prince.” Gazing at him, she grew wistful, that meeting so very clear in her mind. “And mayhap he was. He took me to a tavern and used his coin to feed me, and then he walked me onward to London, showing me the places I was best to avoid there. He provided me clues as to which men to avoid.” She cleared her throat, not able to elaborate any more for Dare’s innocent sister. “He became my friend that night. My champion. My protector.” Just as he was for so many others.

Dare scooped up Rose, and holding her under the belly, he made as if to hurl the child into the water. Wild laughter spilled from the little girl’s lips, and the sight of it was too much. Temperance closed her eyes and imagined a different child in his arms.

“I don’t want a protector,” Kinsley whispered. She wanted a brother.

“No.” Neither did Temperance. Not anymore. She wanted so much more than that. Gifts that could never be hers.

“I used to want a family,” the young lady confided. “I dreamed of one for myself.” There it was . . . that word: “dream.” “I wanted the husband who would be devoted and a father to our children, and I wanted children who would be happy and loving.”

In short, she’d wanted everything she’d never known.

The women went silent.

Nor did it escape Temperance’s notice that the young woman spoke in the past tense. “There can still be that.” Those hopes that were dead to Temperance could still exist for Dare’s sister.

Kinsley’s lips twisted up wryly. “Oh, no. I’ve tried my hand at love, and I want no part of it. Not again.”

The gossips’ whisperings that day at the modiste’s resurfaced in Temperance’s mind.

“Yes, they were correct,” Kinsley said tiredly to Temperance’s unspoken question. The other woman stretched her legs out and hooked an ankle across the other as she continued watching her brother and Rose at play. “I gave my heart where I oughtn’t. Nor do I have any intention of making myself an arm ornament for some fine lord, as my grandparents wish.”

Temperance stilled. Dare’s hopes for that fortune were reliant upon his sister marrying. The same sister who’d no interest in entering into that state. Her mind slowed and then stopped altogether under the realization dawning at the back of her mind.

She sucked in a breath.

“You’re thinking of my grandparents’ requirements.”

She opened her mouth, prepared to give the lie, and yet . . . could not. “I . . . You . . .”

“Yes, I know about their offer to fill Dare’s pockets when I marry. Alas, it is fortunate for him that they allowed him an alternative to those funds.”

“The alternative,” Temperance managed through a suddenly dry mouth.

For God help her, she knew what that alternative was. The staggering weight of grief and loss and fury . . . There was that, too, all roiling in her breast, pounding there so that she wanted to toss her head back and keen from the grief.

Rose raced over. “Kinnnnneeee,” the girl cried excitedly, grabbing for the young lady’s hand.

Color spilled onto Kinsley’s cheeks, and she briefly resisted that show of affection. But even the most cynical couldn’t be immune to the babe’s charm. “Oh, very well,” Kinsley muttered, climbing to her feet. She let the child pull her onward, tugging her along . . .

Temperance sat frozen and watched the brother and sister and the little girl, Rose.

For a moment she thought he’d leave. His body stiffened, and knowing him as