How did he no longer care?
The fighter in him pushed to the surface. “I know he was here, Mara,” he said, seeing the shock on her face. After a moment, he said, “You are not going to deny it?”
“No.”
“Good. At least there is that.”
Tell me the truth, he willed. For once in our cursed time together, tell me something I can believe.
As if she’d heard him, she did. “The night I found you,” she said, “I came to you because of Kit.”
He looked to the sky, frustrated. “I know that,” he said. “To restore his funds.”
She shook her head firmly. “Not in the way you think. When I opened the orphanage, pretending to be Margaret MacIntyre seemed like the easiest solution. A soldier’s widow was respectable. Would not tempt questions.” She paused. “But no bank would allow me to manage my own funds, not without a husband.”
“There are women who have access to banking facilities.”
She smiled, small and wry. “Not women with false identities. I could not risk questions.”
Understanding dawned. “Kit was your banker.”
“He held all the funds. The initial donations, and the money that came from each aristocratic father who left his by-blows with us. All of it.”
Temple exhaled his frustration. “And he gambled it away.”
She nodded. “Every penny.”
“And you were desperate to get it back.”
She lifted one shoulder. “The boys needed it.”
Why hadn’t she told him? “You think I would have let them starve?”
“I did not know.” She hesitated. “You were very angry.”
He paced the little copse of trees, finally placing his hand flat on one trunk, his back to her. She was right, of course, but still, the words stung. “I’m not a goddamn monster!”
“I didn’t know that!” she tried to explain, and he spun to face her.
“Even you thought I was the Killer Duke. Even then.” Disappointment raged through him. She was supposed to know him. To understand him. Better than any. She was supposed to know he was no killer. She was supposed to see that it was all lies.
But she’d doubted him, too.
He wanted to roar his frustration.
She saw it. Raised a hand to stop him. “No. Temple.”
More lies. But he couldn’t stop himself from asking, “Then why?”
She spread her hands wide. “You told me that nothing I could say—”
The memory flashed, intertwined on the platform in Hebert’s shop, at odds. He’d been furious with her. “Christ. I told you there was nothing you could say to make me forgive you.”
She nodded once. “I believed you.”
He released a long breath, a cloud in the cold air. “So did I.”
“And there is a part of me that believed I deserved to pay for his sins. I turned him into that as much as I turned you into this,” she said. “I left you both that night, and my father no doubt punished him brutally just as London punished you.” She grew quiet. “My mistakes seem never to end.”
He was quiet for a long time. “What utter nonsense.”
Shock coursed through her. “I beg your pardon?”
“You didn’t make him. You saved yourself. The boy made his own choices.”
She shook her head. “My father—”
“Your father is the greatest bastard in creation, and if he weren’t dead, I’d take great pleasure in killing him myself,” he said. “But the man was not a god. He did not mold your brother from clay and breathe life into him. Your brother’s sins are his and his alone.” He paused, the words echoing in the darkness, and added, softly, “As are mine.”
She shook her head, moved toward him. “Not so. If I hadn’t drugged you. Left you. Failed to return . . .”
“You are not a god, either. You are just a woman. As I am just a man.” He exhaled, harsh in the darkness. “You didn’t make me. And we have made this mess together.”
Her eyes were liquid in the darkness, and he wanted to hold her. To touch her. To take her home and make her his.
But he didn’t. Instead he said, “I only wish it were over.”
She nodded. “It can be,” she said. “It’s time.”
She meant the unmasking. And perhaps it was time. God knew he’d waited long enough to have this life back—the one he’d been promised. The one he’d loved and missed with a stunning, stinging ache.
But as he stared down at her, it was all gone, lost to this woman, who owned him in some remarkable, unbearable way. He lifted his hand to stroke her cheek in a long, slow caress. She leaned into the touch, and his thumb traced the curve of her lips, lingering.
Something had happened.
He whispered her name, and in the darkness it sounded like a prayer. “I can’t.”
Tears sprang to her eyes, betraying her confusion. Her frustration. “Why not?”
Because I love you.