Her gaze threaded through the room, across the collection of chattering women. Recognizing several. A marchioness. Two countesses. An Italian duchess known for her scandals.
Surprise warred with curiosity as Mara considered the rest of the women—all of whom were dressed in stunning silks and satins, some masked, most chattering as though they were at a ladies’ tea.
These weren’t simply women. They were aristocrats.
And it was only once she’d recovered from that discovery that she noticed what she should have noticed the moment she’d been shepherded into the room, like a lamb to slaughter.
One entire length of the long, narrow, extraordinarily dark room was a window—a great shaded window that looked out on a roomful of men, all dressed for evening, clustered in a horseshoe of a crowd, at once not moving and in constant motion—shouting and laughing and enjoying themselves, vibrating with energy like leaves on a thriving oak in the heat of summer. The throngs of men surrounded a great empty space, blocked by rope and covered in sawdust, of which the women were afforded a perfect, unobstructed view.
The ring.
Mara moved closer to the glass, unable to stop herself from reaching out to touch it, amazed by the way the room glowed.
Thankfully, it occurred to her just in time that the men would see her if she came too close to the window. She stopped, pulling her hand back, even as she could not understand why not one of the men beyond seemed at all interested in the window or the ladies inside the small, dark room.
Were they so used to women watching the fights that they weren’t scandalized by the women’s presence? That they didn’t yearn to control them? To keep them at bay? What kind of place was this?
What kind of perfect, wondrous place?
“They won’t see you,” said a lady nearby, drawing Mara’s attention to her serious blue gaze, large and unsettling behind thick spectacles. “It’s not a window. It’s a mirror.”
“A mirror.” There was nothing mirrorlike about this window.
Mara’s confusion must have shown, as the woman continued, “We can see them . . . but they only see themselves.”
As if on cue, a gentleman crossed in front of the ring, close enough to the window to touch, before pausing for a moment and turning to face Mara. She leaned forward as he did the same on the other side, lifting his chin to fluff his cravat.
She waved a hand in front of his long, pale face.
He bared his teeth.
She dropped her hand.
He lifted one gloved finger, scrubbing it back and forth over the crooked, tea-and-tobacco-stained grimace before turning and walking away.
A collection of women nearby laughed uproariously. “Well. No doubt Lord Houndswell would be terribly embarrassed to know we have all witnessed the remains of his dinner.” The woman smiled at Mara. “Do you believe it now?”
Mara grinned. “This must provide you hours of entertainment.”
“When there isn’t a fight to do the job,” another woman replied. “Look! Drake’s entered the ring.”
The chatter inside the room dimmed as the women turned their attention to the young man climbing through the ropes into the sawdust-covered space where two others waited—the Marquess of Bourne and another pure aristocrat, pale and unnerved.
The crowd at the far end of the ring parted to reveal a large steel door, and the air in the room seemed to change, to grow thick with anticipation.
“Any minute now,” a feminine sigh came from several yards away, and the entire room—on both sides of the window—seemed to still, waiting.
They were waiting for Temple.
And Mara found that she, too, was waiting.
Even though she hated him.
And then he was there, filling the doorway as though it were cut to his size, broad and tall and big as a house, bare from the waist up, wearing only those scandalous tattoos and buckskin breeches fitted to his massive thighs, and the long linen strips she’d wrapped along the hills and valleys of his knuckles and around the muscles of his thumb and wrist, as she tried not to notice his hands. Tried not to remember how they felt on her skin. Tried to remember that he was a weapon.
And when he’d kissed her, she’d remembered the truth of all of it. He was a weapon, spreading desire through her body, like bullets. Wounding her with want.
“He’s the biggest, most beautiful brute of a man,” another woman sighed, and Mara went still, forcing herself not to look. Not to care that there was admiration and something more in the tone—something like experience.
“Too bad he’s never shown interest in you, Harriet,” another said, calling forth a symphony of laughter from the rest.
Forcing herself not to care that the experience in the lady’s words was a lie.
And then he was moving toward them, and it might have been her mind playing tricks, but it seemed like he was looking right at her, as though the magic window were a mirror for everyone in the room but him.