And yet this gown seemed to be magic with its beautiful lines and the way it shimmered in the candlelight and the way the color offset her pretty pale skin and played with the reds in her hair and the blues and greens in her eyes.

Hell. He sounded like a damn woman.

The point was, this was the Mara he’d never known—the one he’d not had a chance to formally meet. The one who had been raised wealthy as sin, with all of London at her feet. The one who had been set to be Duchess of Lamont.

And damned if she didn’t look remarkably like a duchess in that dress.

Too much like a duchess.

Too much like a lady.

Too much like something Temple wanted to reach out and—

No.

“The bodice should be cut lower.”

“Mais non, Your Grace,” the dressmaker protested. “The bodice is perfect. Look at the way it reveals without revealing.”

She was right, of course. The bodice was the most perfect part of the dress, cut beautifully, just low enough to tantalize without being too obvious. He’d noticed it the moment Mara had put it on—the way it displayed those pretty, freckled breasts to their very best advantage. The way it made him want to catalog every one of those little blemishes.

It was perfect.

But he didn’t want perfect.

He wanted ruinous.

“Lower.”

The dressmaker looked at Mara, then, and Temple willed her to protest. To fight the demand. To insist the cut of the dress be left as is.

Then he would have felt better about his decision.

It was as though she knew that, of course. Knew that he wished her to fight. Because instead, she stood straight, her head bowed in obedience he knew held no honesty, and said nothing.

Leaving him feeling twenty times the ass.

“How long?” he barked the question at the modiste.

“Three days.”

He nodded. Three days would work well. “She requires a mask, as well.”

“Why? Isn’t the goal to unmask me?” Mara answered for the dressmaker, her tone betraying her pique at being left out of the conversation. “Why hide me?”

He met her eyes then. She was a poplar, and he was a storm. She would not break. Admiration flared, and he hid it. She’d ruined him. She’d stolen from him.

“You are hidden until I choose to reveal you.”

She stiffened. “Fair enough.” She paused for a moment as the dressmaker unfastened the dress, and he gritted his teeth as it came loose, grateful that she caught it to her chest before revealing herself to him once more. “Tell me, Your Grace, am I to undress forever in your presence now?”

The room was hot and cloying, and he itched for a fight. And he didn’t think he could bear seeing her in her underclothes again.

He inclined his head. “I shall give you privacy, with pleasure.” He headed for the front of the shop, stopping before he pushed through the curtains to add, “But when I return, you had best be prepared to tell me the truth about that night. I shan’t let you out of my sight until you do. It is not negotiable.”

He did not wait for her answer before entering the storefront, with its walls filled with bolts of fabric and frippery. He took a deep breath in the dimly lit space, running his hand along the edge of a long glass case, waiting for an acknowledgment that he could return.

That she was once more clothed.

That Pandora’s box was once more closed.

He reached into a basket at the top of the case, and he extracted a long, dark feather, worrying it with his fingers, wondering at its softness. He wondered what it would look like in her hair. Against her skin.

In her fingers against his.

He dropped the feather as though it had burned him, and spun back toward the dressing room to find Madame Hebert standing in the entryway. “Green,” she said.

He didn’t care what color she wore. He didn’t plan to give her enough attention to notice.

And still he said, “I want the mauve as well. The one she tried.”

Years of practice kept Madame Hebert from showing her thoughts. “The lady should be in green more than anything else.”

For a moment he wondered at that, imagining Mara in green. In satins and lace and lingerie—in finely spun chemises and boned corsets and clocked silk stockings that went all the way to the floor.

He would pay good money to see her legs.

Perhaps he had seen them.

With that, frustration flared once more. He was irritated by the idea of her keeping secrets from him. Secrets that were as much his as they were hers.

“Put her in whatever color you like. I care not.” He moved to push past the Frenchwoman. “But send the mauve, too.”

“Temple,” The name on Hebert’s lips stopped him, and when he turned back, one hand on the curtains, she said, “I’ve dressed dozens of your women.”

“The Angel’s women.” For some reason, the qualifier felt necessary.

She did not argue. “This one is not like the others.”

It was a colossal understatement. “She is not.”

“Clothes,” the Frenchwoman continued. “They have a power that is undeniable. They can change everything.”

It was rubbish, but he was not in the mood to argue with a modiste on her field of expertise, so he allowed her to finish.

“Be certain you wish for what you ask.”

Just what he needed. A cryptic French dressmaker.

He pushed through the curtains, his gaze flying to the platform where Mara had stood in that beautiful gown, proud and tall.

The now-empty platform.

The now-empty room.

Shit.

She had finally run.

Chapter 6

Three minutes. Perhaps fewer.

She had that long to hide before he would be after her.

And if he caught her, the evening would take a turn.

Not that it hadn’t already done just that.

Mara pulled her cloak tight around her, thanking Lydia for convincing her to purchase a warm winter coat for her excursions with the boys, and tore down the alleyway behind the dress shop, desperate to find a nook in which to hide herself well and wait him out. She’d escaped while his driver wasn’t looking, the universe on her side for once.

Now, to hide.

The closer to the shop, the better.

Temple would think she’d have run. He’d be calculating the time she’d had and the distance she could have made, and he’d be checking that radius. She simply needed to sit quietly and wait for Temple to pass her.

He’d never expect her to stay close.

She’d learned well how to hide in the last twelve years. Indeed, she’d learned to hide in the first twelve hours after she’d run. But she didn’t have a mail coach with a well-paid driver and a legion of people willing to help her now. Now she was in Mayfair in the dead of night. And she was on the wrong side of one of London’s most powerful men.

If he caught her, she believed he would force her to tell the truth.

But the truth about that night—about her life—was her only power. And she would be damned if he’d get it from her so easily.

That wasn’t why she’d run, though. She’d run because she worried she might not be able to resist him as well as she’d once thought.

Her heart began to pound.

Thank goodness for Mayfair’s strange architecture. She was quickly lost in a maze of mews and tiny alleyways before long, and she tucked herself behind a large pile of God knew what, trying not to inhale too strongly for the stench.

Even the aristocracy made garbage.

In her experience, the aristocracy made more garbage than most. And the things they made that were halfway decent were those they attempted to toss out anyway.

One man’s meat was another’s poison, after all.

Footsteps.

Heavy, masculine footsteps.

She pressed her forehead to her knees, willing herself smaller, holding herself utterly still, refusing to move or even breathe. Waiting for him to pass.

When the footsteps faded away, she leapt to her feet, knowing now was the most important time. She had to run. Far and fast. In the opposite direction.

It wouldn’t work. They were impossibly intertwined, now.

It would work for tonight. And with distance, she could think. Regroup. Strategize. Wage war.

She took a deep, stabilizing breath and tore out of the alleyway, getting not five feet before slamming straight into a wall of man.

Temple.

Except it wasn’t. She knew because, of all the things he made her feel—fury and frustration and irritation—he never made her feel fear.

Not like the man who held her now with his heavy, painful grip and his foul stench. And his “Well, well, wot ’ave we ’ere?”

She stilled, a rabbit caught in a trap, as he tossed her to his companion, who held her in an iron grasp as the first man gave her a long assessment from head to toe and back again. When he was finished, his appraisal turned to a leer, and his lips spread wide into a rotted-toothed grin. “Ain’t we the luckiest men in London tonight? A girl just landin’ in our laps?”

Her captor leaned in close, speaking in her ear, the words a horrifying threat on a wave of sour breath. “That’s where ye’ll be in a bit.”

The words unstuck her, and she began to struggle, kicking and squirming until her captor caught her close and the stink of him—drink and sweat and days of unwashed clothing—overwhelmed her. He leaned in and whispered at her ear. “We don’t like it when women get uppity.”

“Well,” she said, “that is a bit of a problem, as I am feeling quite uppity.”

He pushed her back into the alley, up against the stone wall, hard enough to expel the air from her lungs. Fear and panic flared, and she squirmed beneath his hand, no longer desperate to scream.

She couldn’t get enough air into her lungs.

She couldn’t breathe.

She knew that he hadn’t done enough to kill her. That he’d simply knocked the wind from her. But it was enough to terrify her.

The terror turned to anger.

Tears sprang to her eyes, and she struggled more, willing to do anything to free herself from his hand. She squirmed and pushed, and still he held her, his free hand tearing her coat apart, sending buttons flying before he grasped at her skirts, pulling them up, letting the frigid air curl around her ankles, her calves, her knees.

“Hold ’er,” the first man said, reaching for the fall of his trousers as breath returned, miraculously, and her fear turned from death to something else. Something worse.

She clawed at her captor, hands punching and hitting at his arms, but she was no match for him. She changed tack, feeling for the knife in the lining of her cloak, trying to stay calm. Trying to focus.

She found it as she felt the other man’s hands grab harshly at the skin above her knee, and she closed her eyes, unable to shake the vision of his filthy hand on her skin there. Slid the knife from its mooring.

But her captor saw it before she could use it. Caught her.

Was too strong for her.

He wrenched it from her hands and pressed it to her throat. “Silly girl. Weapons like this are too dangerous for the likes of you.”

Fear gave way to horror.

And then he was gone, her blade clattering to the cobblestones, the loss of his weight accompanied by a deafening roar that should have increased her fear, but instead brought relief like none she’d ever known.

Temple.

She was free, her captor releasing her the moment the duke arrived, at first attempting to rescue his friend, but now standing back, unable to tear his gaze from the fight. She scurried backward, clutching her knees to her chest, and watched as well.

Temple pummeled her attacker, now pressed against the wall just as she had been, and no doubt feeling a fear similar to hers as England’s winningest bare-knuckle boxer used every ounce of his skill and force to mete out justice.

But this was not a professional fighter who fought with rules and regulations, somehow finding a space for sport in the fight.

This Temple was out for blood. The movements were precise and economical, no doubt the product of years of training and practice, but every blow carried the heavy weight of his anger, hitting again and again until it was the momentum of his fists that kept her attacker upright, and nothing else.

He was stronger than gravity.