“Poor Temple!” someone called. “He didn’t get his fight!”
“I should like to give him a fight,” another lady retorted, and the innuendo set the rest of the room tittering.
I don’t fight women.
How many times had he said it that first night?
But what if one were to challenge him anyway? In the open? What if a women were to offer to fight him for the money that was rightfully hers?
What if she were to back him into that corner where his red flag flew with cocksure arrogance?
Would he forfeit?
Could she win?
Her heart pounded in her chest. She could. This moment, this place was her answer. The Marquess of Bourne had climbed into the ring with him, and the two were in discussion.
Mara’s thoughts raced.
It could be that easy.
A reed-thin bespectacled man materialized at her side. “Temple requests that you meet him in his rooms. I am to take you there.”
Excellent. “I have every intention of meeting the duke.”
She intended to set him down. To prove him wrong. To prove herself stronger and smarter and more powerful than he thought her. To make him regret his words. To make him rescind them.
His kisses had distracted her too well. His strange, unexpected kindness had upended her keen awareness of this war they waged. But then he’d called her a whore. And she was reminded of his purpose. Of hers.
He wanted retribution; she wanted the orphanage safe.
And she would get what she wanted.
Tonight.
Her commitment redoubled, she and her guide emerged from the quiet passageway into a crush of bodies beyond, and Mara was grateful for her mask, the way it focused her view—men moving in and out of frame—the wheres and whyfors of their journey made irrelevant by her limited view.
The mask turned the entire evening into a performance of some kind—the men moving across a stage just for her, dressing for a larger, more important scene. For the main player.
Temple.
She let the man guide her back to Temple’s rooms, where he deposited her in the dimly lit space and closed the door behind her, throwing the lock without hesitation.
But Mara was already moving across the room, already heading for the steel door she’d watched from the other side of the ring. Knowing where it led.
She yanked it open, her plan clear in her mind—as clear as the plan twelve years earlier that had set her on this course. That had led her to here. To this moment. To this man.
She ignored the men on either side of the aisle that marked the clear path to the ring, grateful for her mask in those fifty short feet even as her gaze tracked no one but the enormous man still in the ring, his back to her as he reached for grasping, congratulatory hands.
The poor thing had no knowledge of what was to come.
She was so focused on Temple, she did not see the Marquess of Bourne before he stepped into her path, catching her by the arms. “I don’t think so.”
She met his eyes. “I won’t be stopped.”
“I don’t think you’d like to test me.”
She laughed at the words. “Tell me, Lord Bourne,” she said, considering her options. “Do you really think that you have any place in this? My entire life has led to this moment.”
“I will not let you ruin his retribution,” he said. “If you ask me, you deserve every ounce of it, for the devastation you’ve wrought.”
Perhaps it was the implication that he understood the long thread of past that stretched between Mara and Temple. Or perhaps it was the ridiculous entitlement in the words, as though the Marquess of Bourne could stop the globe from spinning on its axis if he wished. Or perhaps it was the smug look on his face.
She would never know.
But Mara did not hesitate, using all the strength and skill and lessons she’d learned from twelve years living on her own with no one to care for her, and from the man beyond, who’d refreshed them.
Bourne didn’t see the punch coming.
The smug aristocrat reeled back, a sound of shock and surprise coming on a flood of red from his nose, but Mara did not have time to marvel at her accomplishments.
She was ringside and through the ropes in seconds, and the moment she stood there, in the uneven sawdust, the room began to quiet. The men clamoring to claim their bets and call for a second bout turned to face her, like layers of onion peeling off for stew.
It took him a moment to hear the silence. To realize it was directed at him. At the ring.
A thread of uncertainty began at the back of her neck, starting its slow, curling journey down her spine. She willed it away.
This was her choice.
This was her next step.
She met his black eyes even as he started toward her, and she saw the surprise there. The irritation. The frustration. And something more. Something she could not identify before it was locked away in that unforgiving gaze.
She took a deep breath and spoke, letting her voice run loud and clear in the enormous room. “I, too, have a debt with The Fallen Angel, Duke.”
One black brow rose, but he did not speak.
“So tell me. Will you accept my challenge?”