She hesitated a second too long. Less. Enough for him to shoot from his chair and stalk her across the room, pressing her back, far and fast enough to send her tripping over her skirts.
One massive arm shot out. Caught her, the corded strength like steel across her back. Pulled her to him; she was caged against him. “For how long?” He paused, but before she could answer, he added, “You don’t have to tell me. I can smell the guilt on you.”
She put her hands to his chest, feeling the wall of iron muscle there. Pushed. The effort was futile. He would not move until he was ready.
“You and your idiot brother concocted an idiot plan, and you disappeared.” He was so close. Too close. “Maybe not idiot. Maybe genius. After all, everyone thought you were dead. I thought you were dead.” There was fury in the words, fury and something else. Something she could not help but wish to assuage.
“That was never the plan.”
He ignored the words. “But here you are, twelve years later, flesh and blood. Hale and healthy.” The words were soft, a whisper of sound at her ear. “I should make good on our past. On my reputation.”
She heard the anger in his words. Felt it in his touch. Later, she would marvel at her own courage when she looked up at him and said, “Perhaps you should. But you won’t.”
He released her, so quickly that she stumbled back as he turned away, pacing the length of the room, reminding her of a tiger she’d seen once in a traveling show, caged and frustrated. It occurred to her that she would gladly trade the wild beast for the Duke of Lamont in that moment.
Untamed, himself.
When he finally turned back, he said, “I wouldn’t be so certain. Twelve years marked as a killer change a man.”
She shook her head, holding his black gaze. “You are not a killer.”
“You’re the only one who knew that.”
The words were quiet and rife with emotion. Mara recognized fury and shock and surprise, but it was the accusation that unsettled her. It wasn’t possible that he’d thought himself her killer.
It wasn’t possible that he’d believed the gossip. The speculation.
Was it?
She should say something. But what? What did one say to the man falsely accused of one’s murder?
“Would it help if I apologized?”
He narrowed his gaze on her. “Do you feel remorse?”
She would not change it. Not for the world. “I am sorry that you were caught in the fray.”
“Do you regret your actions?”
She met his eyes. “Do you wish the truth? Or a platitude?”
“You could not imagine the things I wish.”
She could, no doubt. “I understand that you are angry.”
The words seemed to call to him, and he came toward her, glass still in hand, stalking her backward, across the too-small room. “You understand, do you?”
It had been the wrong thing to say. She skirted around an ottoman, holding her hands up, as though she could stop him, searching for the right thing.
He did not wait for her to find it. “You understand what it is to have lost everything?”
Yes.
“You understand what it is to have lost my name?”
She did, rather. But she knew better than to say it.
He pressed on. “To have lost my title, my land, my life?”
“But you didn’t lose all that . . . you’re still a duke. The Duke of Lamont,” she said, the words—things she’d told herself for years—coming quick and defensive. “The land is still yours. The money. You’ve tripled the holdings of the dukedom.”
His eyes went wide. “How do you know that?”
“I pay attention.”
“Why?”
“Why have you never returned to the estate?”
“What good would it have done if I returned?”
“You might have been reminded that you haven’t lost so very much.” The words were out before she could stop them. Before she realized how inciting they were. She scurried backward, putting a high-backed chair between them and peeking around it. “I did not mean—”
“Of course you did.” He started around the chair toward her.
She moved counter to him, keeping the furniture between them. Attempted to calm the beast. “You are angry.”
He shook his head. “Angry does not even begin to describe the depths of my emotion.”
She nodded, skipping backward across the room once more. “Fair enough. Furious.”
He advanced. “That’s closer.”
“Irate.”
“That, too.”
She looked behind her, saw the sideboard looming. This wasn’t a very large room, after all. “Livid.”
“And that.”
She felt the hard oak at her back. Trapped again. “I can repair it,” she said, desperate to regain the upper hand. “What’s broken.” He stopped, and for a moment, she had his full attention. “If I am not dead, you are not”—a killer—“what they say you are.” He did not reply, and she rushed to fill the silence. “That’s why I’m here. I shall come forward. Show myself to Society. I shall prove you’re not what they say you are.”
He set his glass on the sideboard. “You shall.”