The marquess left, closing the door behind him. Mara looked to Temple. “He did not wish you good luck.”
“We do not say good luck.” He moved to the table at the center of the room, and opened the mahogany box there and extracted a coil of wax.
“Why not?”
He pulled off two large clumps and set them on the table, pretending that he wasn’t utterly aware of her standing in the too-dark corner of the room. He wanted to see her.
He shouldn’t.
“Good luck is bad luck.”
“That’s ridiculous.”
“That’s fighting at the Angel.”
She did not say anything to that, instead crossing her arms across her chest. “Why am I here?”
He lifted a long, clean strip of linen from the wooden table at the center of the room, then laid one end across his palm and began to wrap the strip around his hand, being careful to keep it from twisting or folding. The nightly ritual was not designed merely to protect muscle and bone, though there was no doubt that in the heat of a battle, broken fingers were not unheard of.
Instead, the easy movement reminded him of the rhythm of the sport, of the way men had stood for centuries in this moment, minutes from battle, calming their mind and heart and nerves.
But there was nothing calm about his nerves with Mara Lowe in the room. He looked to her, enjoying the way her gaze locked on the movement. “Come.”
She met his eyes. “Why?”
He nodded to his hand. “How much to wrap it for me?”
She watched the movement. “Twenty pounds.”
He shook his head. “Try again.”
“Five.”
He wanted her close, despite the fact that he shouldn’t want any such thing. And he could afford it. “Done.”
She approached, removing her cloak to reveal the mauve dress Madame Hebert had promised him. She was beautiful in it, with skin like porcelain. His heart pounded as she came closer, pausing an arm’s length from him and extracting that little black book that she carried everywhere. “Five,” she repeated, marking the amount in her register. “And ten for the evening. As always.”
Reminding him that she had her own reasons for being here.
She returned the book to its place and reached for his hand. No gloves. Again. Skin against skin, this time. Heat against heat.
He was paying for it.
Perhaps if he remembered that, it would help him forget her. The feel of her. The smell of her, lemons in winter. The taste of her.
She resumed his ritual, careful to wrap the linen about his wrist and around his thumb, keeping the long strips flat and firm against his skin. “You’re very good at that,” he said, his voice unfamiliar even to him. She did that to him. She made him feel unfamiliar.
“I have wrapped broken bones. I assume it’s a similar principle.”
Again, a little snippet of Mara, of where she’d been. Of who she’d been. Enough to make him want to ask a dozen questions she wouldn’t answer. So he settled on: “It is.”
Her fingers were soft and sure on his hands, making him ache for them in other places. Her head bowed over her handiwork, and he stared down at the top of her head, into auburn curls that he itched to touch. He wondered what her hair would look like spread in wide waves across his pillow. Across the floor of this room. Across his bare chest. Across hers.
His gaze moved to her shoulders, to the way they rose and fell with each breath, as though she labored far more intensely than she did.
He recognized that breath. Experienced it himself.
She wanted him.
She tucked the end of the linen gently into the rest of the wrap, and he tested the binds, impressed.
Another thing she did expertly.
He turned away from her, lifted the other length of linen. Passed it to her and held out his free hand. Watched her repeat her ministrations in silence, muscles aching as he tensed beneath her touch, desperate for more of it. Desperate to touch her in return.
Christ, he needed another stretch.
That wasn’t all he needed.
But it was all he was getting. He extracted a mask from a nearby drawer. “Put that on.”
She hesitated. “Why?”
“You will have your first moment before London tonight.”
She froze, and he did not like the way it made him feel. “Masked?”
“I don’t want you seen yet.”
I don’t want it to be over.
“Tonight,” she repeated.
“After the fight.”
“If you don’t lose, you mean.”
“Even if I lose, Mara.”
“If you aren’t brutalized and left for dead. That’s the goal, isn’t it?”
It wasn’t, but he didn’t correct her. “All right; if I don’t lose.” He inclined his head. “But I won’t lose.”
“What is your plan?” she asked.
“You’ll see The Fallen Angel. Many women would kill for the opportunity.”
She lifted her chin, proudly. “Not I.”
“You’ll enjoy it.”
“I doubt it.”