Free No Good Duke Goes Unpunished by Sarah MacLean

. . .”
    No. She cleared her throat. Tried again.
    “ When I return, I expect to hear what happened to Napoleon.”
    Their collective groan sounded as she pulled the door shut with a snap.
    Alice seemed to know better than to say anything on the walk through the dark, narrow hallways. Mara appreciated the young maid’s intuition—she was not certain that she would be able to carry on a conversation with her heart pounding and thoughts racing.
    He was there. Below. Judge and jury and executioner, all in one.
    She descended the stairs slowly, knowing that she would never escape her past, and that she could not avoid her future.
    The door to the little study where they’d spoken earlier that morning was ajar, and it occurred to Mara that the two-inch gap between door and jamb was a curious thing—eliciting excitement or dread depending upon the situation.
    She ignored the fact that somehow, in this moment, it elicited both.
    He was not even a little bit exciting; he was entirely dreadful.
    She took a deep breath, willing her heart to cease pounding, and released Alice from duty with a halfhearted smile—the most she could manage under the circumstances—before pushing the door open to face the man inside the room.
    “You saw him.”
    She stepped inside and closed the door firmly. “What are you doing here?”
    Her brother came toward her. “What are you doing approaching that man?”
    “I asked first,” she said, meeting him at the center of the room in two short strides. “We agreed you’d never come here. You should have sent a note.” It was the way they’d met for the past twelve years. Never in this building, and never anywhere that she might be recognized.
    “We also agreed we’d never tell that man that you were alive and living right under his nose.”
    “He has a name, Kit.”
    “Not one he uses.”
    “He has one he uses, as well.” Temple. It wasn’t hard to think of him that way. Big as one, and as unmoving.
    Had he always been unmoving? She hadn’t known him when they were young, but his reputation had preceded him—and no one had ever called him cold. A rake, a rogue, a scoundrel, certainly. But never cold. Never angry.
    She’d done that to him.
    Kit ran a hand through already disheveled brown locks, and Mara recognized the weariness in him. Two years younger, her brother had been filled with life as a child, eager for excitement, and ready with a plan.
    And then she’d run, ruining Temple and leaving Kit to pick up the pieces of their unbearably foolish evening. And he’d changed. They’d traded secret letters for years, until she’d resurfaced, hidden in plain sight, Mrs. MacIntyre, widowed proprietress of the MacIntyre Home for Boys.
    But he’d been different. Colder. Harsher.
    Never speaking of the life she’d left him to. Of the man she’d left him with.
    And then he’d gone and lost all her money.
    She noted the hunch of his shoulders and the hollows in his cheeks and the scuff on his normally pristine black boots, and she recognized that he at least understood their predicament. Her predicament. She let out a little sigh. “Kit . . .”
    “I wish you wouldn’t call me that,” he snapped. “I’m not a boy anymore.”
    “I know.” It was all she could think to say.
    “You shouldn’t have gone to see him. Do you know what they call him?”
    She raised her brows. “They call him that because of me.”
    “It doesn’t mean he hasn’t come to deserve it. I don’t want you near him again.”
    Too late .
    “You don’t want?” she said, suddenly irrevocably irritated. “You haven’t a choice. The man holds all our money and all the cards. And I’ve done what I can to save the home.”
    Kit scowled. “It’s always the home. Always the boys.”
    Of course it was. They were the important part. They were what she’d done right. They were her good.
    But it wasn’t worth fighting Kit. “How did you even know he was here?”
    He narrowed his gaze on her. “Do