“Because you haven’t a choice. I disappeared once. I can do it again.”
He watched her for a long moment, the threat hanging between them, his gaze going dark with irritation. With something worse. Something closer to hate. And perhaps he should hate her. She’d crafted him with the skill of a master sculptor, not from marble, but from flesh and blood and fury. “If you ran, I would find you. And I would take no prisoners.”
The promise was thick with anger and truth.
He would stop at nothing to exact his vengeance. She was at risk, and everything she loved.
But she would not put the boys at risk.
She threw herself into the fray, already considering her next steps . . . how she would protect the boys, the house, and its legacy if he made good on his promise. She straightened her shoulders, and entered the fray. “If you treat me like a whore, you pay me like one.”
The words stung him. She could see it, the blow there and then gone, as though they were in the ring where he reigned. When he did not retaliate, she threw her next punch. “I shall do whatever you ask. However you ask it. I shall play your silly game until you decide to reveal me to the world. Until you decide to send me packing. And when you do, I shall go.”
“For your brother’s debt.”
“For whatever I wish.”
One side of his mouth kicked up in a fleeting half smile, and for a moment Mara thought that in another place, in another time, as another woman, she might have enjoyed making him smile.
But right now, she hated it.
“He’s not worth you.”
“He’s not your concern.”
“Why? Some kind of sisterly love?” His eyes blackened, and she let him believe it. Anything to keep him from the orphanage. “His is a face badly in need of a fist.”
Retribution.
“And yet you will not fight him,” she said, feeling angrier than she would have imagined. “Are you afraid to give him a chance?”
He raised a brow, but did not rise to the bait. “I’ve never been bested.”
She smiled. “Did I not best you last night?”
He stilled at the words, then looked up. She saw shock in his black eyes, in the way they widened just barely for just a moment. She resisted the urge to grin her triumph. “You gloat over drugging me?”
She shook her head. “I gloat over felling you. That is the goal, is it not? You owe me the money.”
“In the ring, Miss Lowe. That is where it counts.”
She did smile then, knowing it would annoy him. Hoping it would annoy him. “Semantics. You’re embarrassed to admit I beat you handily.”
“With the help of enough narcotics to take down an ox.”
“Nonsense. A horse, maybe. But not an ox. And you are embarrassed. I work with boys, Your Grace. Need I remind you that I know one who is embarrassed when I see one?”
His gaze grew dark and serious again, and he leaned in, closer to her. Close enough for him to tower over her, more than six feet of muscle and bone, power and might, scars and sinew. He smelled of clove and thyme.
Not that she noticed.
And then he whispered, so close to her ear that she felt the words more than heard them as they sent a chill down her spine. “I am no boy.”
That much was true.
She opened her mouth to reply, but no words came.
It was his turn to smile. “If you wish to fell me, Miss Lowe, I encourage you to meet me in the ring.”
“You will have to pay me for it.”
“And if I don’t agree? What then? You haven’t any choice.”
Truth.
“I also haven’t anything to lose.”
Lie.
“Nonsense,” he said. “There’s always something else to lose. I assure you. I would find it.”
He had her in his trap. She couldn’t run. Not without making sure the boys were safe. Not without securing the money that Kit had lost.
She met Temple’s black gaze, even as he seemed to read her thoughts. “You could run,” he whispered, “but I would find you. And you wouldn’t like what happened then.”
Damn him.
He wasn’t going to agree.
She wanted to scream. Nearly did, until he said, “You won’t be the first woman I have paid to do my bidding . . .”
A vision flashed—arms and legs tangled in crisp white sheets, dark hair and black eyes, and more muscle than one man should have.
“ . . . but I assure you, Miss Lowe, you will be the last.”
The words fell between them, and it took her a moment to refocus her thoughts on them. To realize that he’d agreed. That the orphanage would be saved.
Its price, her ruin. Her life. Her future.
But it would be saved.
Relief was fleeting, interrupted by his low promise. “We begin tonight.”
Chapter 4
“And who is able to tell me what happened to Napoleon after Waterloo?”
A sea of hands shot up inside the small, well-appointed schoolroom of the MacIntyre Home for Boys. Daniel did not wait to be called upon. “He died!”