Elation.
She released a long breath, and he came off the ropes, approaching her, sending a thrill of anticipation through her. He reached for her, and she did not hesitate, leaning into the touch, to the stroke of his thumb high on her cheek. She lifted her hand, holding him there, skin against skin against skin, and whispered, “You are alive.”
Something flashed in his gaze. “As are you.”
For the first time in a dozen years, she felt so. This man made her feel it, somehow. This man, who should have been her enemy. Who likely remained her enemy. Who no doubt wanted her destroyed for all the things she’d done. All the sins she’d committed.
And who, somehow, saw her for all she was.
“I thought you would die.”
He smiled. “You wouldn’t have it. I did not dare disappoint.”
She tried to match his smile. Failed. Instead, thinking of another patient. Another death.
He saw it on her face. Had to have. “Tell me.”
And suddenly, she wanted him to know.
“I couldn’t save her,” she whispered.
He didn’t move. “Who?”
“My mother.”
His brow furrowed. “Your mother died when you were a child.”
“I was twelve.”
“A child,” he repeated.
She looked down between him, at her silly silk slippers, peeping out from beneath her plain borrowed frock, toes nearly touching his bare ones.
So close.
“I was old enough to know that she was going to die.”
“She contracted a fever,” he said, and she heard the consolation in his words. You couldn’t have known. There was nothing to be done. A dozen people had said the words to her. A hundred.
They’d all believed the same story.
Except she hadn’t had a fever.
Or, rather, she had . . . but not the way her father told the story. It hadn’t come with sickness. It had come with infection. With a wound that would not heal.
And she had been in terrible pain.
Temple’s hand moved, lifting her chin, raising her gaze to his. All warmth and strength, huge and rough. And honest.
She looked up at him, into those eyes, dark as midnight and with its focus. “He killed her,” she whispered.
“Who killed her?”
“My father.” Even now, years later, it was hard to label him as such. Hard to think of him that way.
Temple shook his head, and she knew what he was thinking. It was impossible. A husband did not kill a wife.
“He did not like it when Kit and I went against his wishes, and she did all she could to protect us. That day . . .” she hesitated, not wanting to say more but unable to stop herself. Lost in the memory. “He’d purchased a new bust. From Greece or Rome or Persia—I cannot remember.
“Kit and I were running through the house, and I tripped on my skirts.” She laughed without humor, lost in the memory. “I had just been allowed to wear long skirts. I was so proud of myself. So grown up. I tumbled into the statue, which was perched atop a table on the upper landing of the house,” she said, and Temple inhaled sharply, as though he could see what was coming. What she had been unable to see as a child.
She shrugged. “It toppled over the banister. Fell two stories to the floor of the entryway.”
She could see it now, the way it lay broken and unrecognizable what seemed like a mile below. “He was furious. Came charging up the stairs, met me on the landing.”
“You didn’t run?”
The words surprised her from the memory. “Running would have made it worse.”
“The beating.”
“I could have taken it. It was not the first time he punished us. Nor would it be the last.” She hesitated. “But my mother decided she’d had enough.”
“What did she do?”
“She went at him. With a knife.”
He sucked in a long breath. “Christ.”
Mara had played the scene over again and again, nearly every day since it happened. Her beautiful mother, an avenging queen, placing herself between her children and their father.
Refusing to let him at them.
“He laughed at her,” Mara said, hating the softness in the words. Hating the way they made her sound like the child she had been. She swallowed. Met his gaze again. “He was too strong for her.”
“He turned the knife on her.”
Another wound, blossoming with blood. This time, unlucky. “The doctors came, but there was nothing to be done. She was dead the moment he struck the blow. It was only a matter of time.”
“Christ,” he said again, this time reaching for her, pulling her tight against his broad, strong chest. Speaking into her hair. “And you had to live with him.”
Until he offered me to another man, and I had no choice but to run.
She kept those words to herself, in part because she did not wish to remind him that he disliked her. That she was the reason his life had taken such a turn. She liked the comfort and strength of him too well.