Cross’s gaze fell to his hand, still opening and closing in careful rhythm. “How does it feel?”
“Eager to get me back in the ring, are you?” Temple joked, not feeling entirely humorous.
Cross did not smile. “Eager to get you back. Full stop.”
Temple looked down at the forearm of his ruined side, turning it over, considering it. Wondering if he should tell them what he suspected in the dark hours of the night, when it twitched and tingled and burned.
What would they say if he told them that he could not feel part of his arm? What would he be to them if he was no longer the unbeatable Temple? What would he be to himself?
No longer the friend they’d made, the man with whom they’d gone into business. No longer Britain’s legendary bare-knuckle boxer. No longer the man who spent his days in Mayfair and his nights in Temple Bar. Instead, he was something else. Some perversion of identity, born aristocrat and raised on the streets. The Duke of Lamont, who had not seen his land or his family in twelve long years.
No longer the Killer Duke.
Of course, he never had been.
A vision flashed, Mara in the ring, standing proud and unmoving. Stronger than any of his prior foes. Fiercer. Far more compelling.
Who would he be to her?
He ran his good hand over his face.
What had she done to him? What had he done to himself?
“You don’t have to do it, you know,” Bourne said quietly.
He looked in his friend’s direction. “Now you defend her? Shall I get you a mirror to remind you of the purple ring about your eye?”
Bourne smirked. “She is not the first to deliver such a blow. And she will not be the last.” That much was true. “All I am saying is that you can stop this. You can change it.”
“What’s put you in such a forgiving frame of mind?”
The marquess shrugged. “You care for the girl, obviously, or you wouldn’t be so destroyed by her. I know what that is like. And I know what it is to give up revenge for it.”
For a moment, he entertained the idea. He imagined what it would be like if he could change it. Imagined what life he would craft if given the opportunity. Imagined a little row of dark sons and auburn-haired daughters, each with strange, beautiful eyes and spines of steel.
Imagined their mother, leading their charge.
But imagination was all it was.
Reality was a different thing entirely.
The Duke and Duchess of Leighton had hosted their annual Christmas masque every December since their first year as man and wife, and the party had become so legendary that most of London made a point to return to the city despite the cold, dreary December weather to attend.
According to Lydia (who was much more of a gossip than Mara had ever realized), the Duchess of Leighton prided herself on filling out the guest list with dozens of impressive, if not aristocratic, London dignitaries. Lydia had actually used the phrase, “everyone who is anyone,” in the excitement that followed Mara’s receipt of Temple’s invitation—if a single line of black scrawl stating a time and the dress he would prefer she wear could be called such a thing—which Mara assumed meant that it was not coincidence that this was the event at which she would be unmasked to London. Literally as well as figuratively.
Except yesterday, before everything had gone pear-shaped, it might have been different. Yesterday, before she’d reminded him of their past—of the dozen ways they were enemies—they might have been friends.
And he might have reconsidered this moment.
Dream.
She gave a little huff of laughter at the thought. It was a dream. For there was nothing that would erase their past. That would erase what she had done. No amount of forgiveness that would change how this scenario played out. How this night ended.
With her ruin.
In all honesty, Mara was rather happy that the evening was finally here. Once her ruination was at hand, she would no doubt have a chance to return to her ordinary life, and be forgotten by the rest of Britain.
Forgotten by him.
It would be best. A boon, perhaps.
At least, that’s what she told herself.
She’d told herself that as she turned the orphanage over to Lydia that day, articulating the ins and outs of the place—pointing out the histories of all the boys, the files where she kept their work and the remnants of their past. The evidence of their birth.
She’d told herself that as she promised Lydia the funds she’d earned from Temple, even as Mara ached at the idea of calling the debts due. She hadn’t a choice. The boys needed coal, and Lydia needed funds if the orphanage was to be hers to run.
She’d told herself that as she’d packed her small traveling case and tucked away enough funds to get her to Yorkshire, to the place to which she’d fled twelve years earlier. To the place where she’d reinvented herself. Where she’d become Margaret MacIntyre.