The words were soft and strong and filled with a courage he might have admired. A courage he should have hated.
He hadn’t killed her. Emotion came, hard and angry. Relief. Fury. Confusion. A dozen others.
Dear God.
What in hell had happened?
He stepped aside, waving toward the dark hallway beyond the threshold. “In.” Again, not a request.
She hesitated, eyes wide, and for a moment, he thought she would run.
But she didn’t.
Stupid girl. She should have run.
Her skirts brushed against his boots as she moved past him, the touch reminding him that she was flesh and blood.
And alive.
Alive, and his.
Chapter 2
As the door closed, clicking locks punctuating the quiet darkness of his home, it occurred to Mara that this could well be the biggest mistake she’d made in her life.
Which was saying something, considering the fact that two weeks after her sixteenth birthday, she’d absconded from her planned wedding to a duke, leaving his son to face false accusations of her murder.
His son, who was no doubt considering turning those false accusations into truth.
His son, who had every right to unleash his fury.
His son, with whom she stood now in an unsettlingly narrow hallway. Alone. In the dead of night. Mara’s heart raced in the confined space, every inch of her screaming to flee.
But she couldn’t. Her brother had made it impossible. Fate had turned. Desperation had brought her here, and it was time she faced her past.
It was time she faced him.
Steeling herself, she turned to do just that, trying to ignore the way his enormous form—taller and broader than any man she’d ever known—loomed in the darkness, blocking her exit.
He was already moving past her, leading the way up a flight of stairs.
She hesitated, casting a look back at the door. She could disappear again. Exile Mara Lowe once more. She had lost herself once before; she could do it again.
She could run.
And lose everything she had. Everything she was. Everything for which she had worked so hard.
“You wouldn’t go ten yards without my catching you,” he said.
There was that, as well.
She looked up at him, watching her from above, his face cast in light for the first time that evening. Twelve years had changed him, and not in the ordinary way—from a boy of eighteen to a man of thirty. Soft, perfect skin had given way to weathered angles and dark stubble.
More than that, his eyes held no hint of the laughter they’d held that night, a lifetime ago. They remained black as midnight, but now they held its secrets.
Of course he would catch her if she ran. That was why she was here, wasn’t it? To be caught. To reveal herself.
Mara Lowe.
It had been more than a decade since she’d said the name aloud. She’d been Margaret MacIntyre since the moment she’d left that night. But now, she was Mara again, the only way to save the one thing that mattered to her. The thing that gave her purpose.
She had no choice but to be Mara.
The thought propelled her upstairs, into a room that was part-library, part-study, and all male. As he lit the candles throughout, a golden glow spread over furniture large and leathered in heavy dark colors.
He was already crouching to light a fire in the hearth when she entered. It was so incongruous—the great duke setting a fire—that she couldn’t help herself. “You don’t have servants?”
He stood, brushing his hands on his massive thighs. “A woman comes in the mornings to clean.”
“But no others?”
“No.”
“Why not?”
“No one wants to sleep in the same house as the Killer Duke.” There was no anger in the words. No sadness. Just truth.
He moved to pour himself a scotch, but did not offer her one. Nor did he offer her a seat when he folded himself into a large leather chair. He took a long pull of amber liquid and crossed ankle over knee, letting the glass dangle from his grip as he watched her, black eyes taking her in, watching, seeing everything.
She folded her hands to control their trembling, and met his gaze. Two could play at this. Twelve years away from money and power and the aristocracy made for a strong will.
A will they shared.
The thought whispered through her on a thread of guilt. She’d chosen this life. Chosen to change everything. He hadn’t. He’d been a casualty of a child’s stupid, silly plan.
I am sorry.
It was true, after all. She’d never meant for that charming young man—all muscle and grace and wide, smiling mouth—to become an unwitting victim in her escape.
Not that she’d tried to save him.
She ignored the thought. It was too late for apologies. She’d made her bed; now she would lie in it.
He drank again, lids shuttering his gaze, as though she could miss the way he stared at her. As though she didn’t feel it right to her toes.
It was a battle. He would not speak first, which left it to her to begin the conversation.
A losing move.