He was losing his patience. “Where?”
She shook her head. “I don’t know. She did not say.”
“When will she be back?”
She looked to the floor and he heard the answer before she spoke it. “Never.”
He wanted to scream. He wanted to rail against idiot women and cruel fate. But instead he said, “Why?”
Lydia returned her gaze to him. “For us.”
What utter nonsense. The words were nearly spoken aloud when Lydia continued.
“Thinks we are all better off without her.”
“The boys need her. You need her. This place needs her.”
Lydia smiled, small and sad. “You misunderstand. She thinks you are better off without her as well.”
“She’s wrong.” He was better with her. Infinitely so.
“I agree. But she believes no aristocrat will leave his children with someone with a past as dark as Mara’s. No donors will give charitably to an orphanage run by a liar. And no duke will ever return to Society with a scandal like her hanging over him.”
“Fuck Society.”
The crass words should have shocked Lydia, but instead, she grinned. “Hear, hear.”
“How did you meet her?” Temple asked, not knowing where the question came from, but desperate to know more about this woman whom he loved so much.
Christ. He should have told her he loved her. Maybe then she would have stayed.
Lydia smiled. “That’s a bit of a story.”
“Tell me.”
“There is a house in the North Country. A place that is safe for women who are looking to change their fate. Daughters and sisters. Wives. Prostitutes. At this house, women get a second chance.”
Temple nodded. It was not unheard of for such a place to exist. Women were not always as valued as they should be. He thought of Mara’s mother, stabbed by her husband. Of her, beaten and forced into a marriage with a man three times her age.
He would have protected her.
Except, he wouldn’t have been able to. Not once she was married. Not once he was returned to school.
And he’d have always hated his father for marrying the woman of his dreams.
Lydia was still speaking. “Mara was there for several years before she was offered the chance to return to London to open MacIntyre’s. I had been there for a year. Maybe less. But she spoke of this place as something more than a simple home for boys. I think it meant more to her. I think it meant everything.” She met Temple’s gaze. “I think she was trying to make up for the punishment she’d given one aristocratic son by helping two dozen others.”
Of course she had. The truth of the words threatened to destroy him.
And those boys were the most important thing in her life.
When he retrieved her, he’d buy them an estate in the country, with horses and toys and enormous grounds on which to run and grow. He’d give every one of them the chance at life she dreamed.
But first, he would give that chance to her. “I asked her to marry me.”
Lydia’s eyes went wide. “Well.”
Indeed.
“I offered to make her my duchess, to give her everything she ever wanted. And she ran.” He ran his fingers over the gloves. “She didn’t even take the damn gloves.”
“She didn’t take anything.”
He turned to face her. “What do you mean?”
“She said she couldn’t take anything more from you. She left everything. She wouldn’t take the clothes, or the cloak.”
He stilled, remembering the way she tore up the note he’d offered her. The funds she’d earned during their idiot arrangement. “She has no money.”
She shook her head. “A few shillings, but nothing substantial.”
“I offered her enough to keep her for years. A fortune!”
Lydia shook her head. “She wouldn’t have taken your money. She wouldn’t have taken anything from you. Not now.”
“Why not?”
“You don’t understand women in love, do you?”
In love. “If she were in love, she wouldn’t have left me in the first place.”
“Don’t you see, Your Grace,” Lydia explained. “It’s because she loves you that she left. Something about a legacy.”
A wife. Children. A legacy. He’d told her that’s what he wanted.
And she’d believed him.
“All I want is her.”
Lydia smiled. “Well. That is something.”
He couldn’t think of her loving him. It would make him mad. He had to retain his sanity if he was going to find her. And then he would lock her in a room and never let her go, hang sanity. “She left here in the dead of winter with no gloves and no money.”
“I’m not certain why the gloves matter so much—”
“They matter.”
“Of course.” Lydia knew better than to argue. “So you can see why it is that I was rather hoping you would turn up. I was rather hoping you would find her.”
“I will find her.”
Lydia let out a long, relieved breath. “Good.”
“And then I will marry her.”
She smiled. “Excellent.”
“Don’t get too excited. I just might throttle her after that.”